Spectrum

3.4: Red

Upon the subsiding of pain, Copper Williams breathed in and out slowly again, trying to gather her thoughts of something other than sharp agony throughout her entire body. It had moved slowly, much like a terrapin on hot sand beating its way through the brush during the windiest of sandstorms - painful, exhausting, and terrorizing. 

The door to her cell opened, and the guard from the beginning of her stay walked in. 

"Miss Copper, you shall come with me now for your sc-sc-sc-scientific testing." The voice glitched in and out, making the teenager's head fly up in confusion. Were all the guards robots, or merely upgraded humans? Something told her that she didn't want to stick around long enough to find out. She felt a slight confidence as she walked out, knowing that nothing could feel worse than the pain she was just subjected to. Or, at least, she thought. 

She was wrong. At least, on a physical level. Nothing could have prepared her for seeing her childhood tormentor after all these years of silence and freedom, nothing could have been done to prepare her to see her best friend clinging to his arm, her nails long and sharp. Nothing could have been done to prepare her for one of the worst emotions this world has prepared for us - betrayal. However, she watched as her friend's eyes widen when she saw who was shoved into the room, her skin stained red. 

Yet, as she was guided towards a chair in the menacing room, that single emotion resonated deep within her like the chiming of a steeple bell. Betrayal. These were the people that had sent her into deep pits of sharp torment, and while it was to be expected from Aaron, this sort of treachery from September was highly unexpected. 

"I hope you have enjoyed your stay, Mrs. Williams…" Aaron's voice had gotten deeper since the last time she had seen him, though that was to be expected - it had been almost eight years. "Your living choices haven't been what I had guessed; looks like I owe you some money, dearest." September looked mortified. 

"Aaron Frazure! You never told me the Saturation Unit Representative was Copper!" Anger and shock filled her voice, and she ran around the desk towards the female, who flinched as the girl's fingers touched her skin. "Is this blood?" 

"That's the option she chose, honey. I really wish you had left when I told you too; it would have saved us all this drama. Honestly, I wouldn't expect you to react this way; I thought you didn't care about her… thats what you said, right?"

Copper was growing bored with this chatter - she wanted to just get this whole endeavor over with, even if the only way she could do that was to die. The female just wanted to sleep, to climb onto the saggy couch in her dreary apartment and fall into the deepest recesses of slumber. 

"Will you two just shut up and tell me what I'm doing here?" Silence fell like a guillotine blade on the shoulders of the three. Her two captors looked at her, Aaron's red eyes narrowing into slits of anger and malice. However, he merely sat back down in the chair behind the steel desk cluttered with papers and a rather cliche-looking skull. 

"September, leave. I want to talk to this inane girl alone."