Immediately the smell of sweat fills my nostrils upon entering the room, the air musty and stale. The room is dimly lit with orange tube lights that flicker every so often reveal several worn large sandbags dangling from the ceiling, likely for punching and some other basic exercising equipment.
"This is where we do most of our training and fighting," Rilo informs me.
"Fighting?" I repeat. It is quite baron, and the equipment that is here looks heavily worn from constant use, it is nothing compared to the gym back at Umbra, but I would much rather be here than there.
"Yes, every few days we have fights. There isn't much entertainment around here so anyone can give it a try. Trust me, it's fun." he says with a sly grin.
"Fun? Right. Trust me I get enough bruises as is, I'm not eager to volunteer for more." I scoff.
"Suit yourself." He shrugs turning his heel to leave.
"So what is this place exactly?" I question the dark-haired mutant beside me. Rilo had offered to show me around, so far he has shown me the canteen, sleeping quarters, a greenhouse of sorts, and now a training room, gym, whatever but I still do not even fully know what this place is or why I am here.
"Where you are going to be living for the foreseeable future. We call ourselves the Sentinels, all mutants can have a place here if they want it. Once you become a mutant there's no going back to whatever life you had before, even if you might remember it, it would put all the other mutants at risk."
"Who says I would ever want to go back?" I mumble, trudging after Rilo.
"What?" Before I answer a brunette comes walking towards us. She beams happily when she catches sight of us both.
"Hi, squirt. Whatcha doin'?"
"Showing one of the new guys around," he responds to the woman standing on front of him, they look remarkably similar. They share the same dark hair and azure eyes.
She turns to me soon after, "Oh, you must be the crazy guy from the canteen, with the bloody knife and everything."
"Yeah...that would be me." I grimace thinking back to the experience and Rilo seems to notice when he shoots a disapproving glare in her direction.
"Oh, right sorry, my bad. Anyway, my name's Ashley." She smiles extending her hand.
"Axel." I take her hand and shake it. My eyes to linger on her arm after the handshake, noting the chain of ink flowers wrapping their way up her arm.
"I'm the tattoo artist around here." She explains, noticing me staring.
"What you are is a handful. Don't you have salvaging duty or something?" Rilo sighs.
"Uh, yes unfortunately so." she says with a great lack of enthusiasm before plastering a smile back on her face, "I'll see you around then."
"Don't mind my sister, she can be a bit..blunt," Rilo says after Ashley walks away.
When I chuckle pain shoots out from my torso making me wince.
"Sick-bay will be our next stop," he states firmly. I bite back any retorts and trudge on after him, he probably will not take no for an answer this time.
We soon arrive at the sick-bay, it looks almost identical to the room I woke up in, only this one actually has people in it. A bright light shines through the windows all along the walls up near the roof. It makes my eyes a moment to adjust due to the light bouncing off the white tiled floor, making everything hard to look at.
"That's Amy, the closest thing we have to a doctor around here," Rilo says motioning over to a blonde-haired woman in a white lab coat hunching over someone lying one of the beds. She flicks a spiralled lock out of her face and speaks softly to the man lying on the bed, "This will only hurt a bit."
I watch as she picks up a long string and pushes it into his arm. The way it sinks slowly into his arm sends a shiver down my spine.
Sobs can be heard from the other side of the wooden door. I reach up putting small hand onto the knob to turn it. The door creaks as it opens revealing a woman sitting back on an old filthy looking sofa.
"What are you doing up? Go back to bed, Axel," she says rubbing her watery eyes and sniffling.
"Are you okay Mommy?" I ask seeing the empty syringe lying beside her and the angry bruise on her eye.
"Mommy's fine, now go back to bed." she runs a hand through her dishevelled hair and forces a smile onto her face.
Smashed glass sits scattered across the floor, multiple pieces of furniture have also been knocked over around the room. My eyes land again on the syringe causing me to let out a shuddered breath.
"I said go!" She suddenly snaps.
My eyes snap open, scanning my surroundings. Rilo and Amy are in front of me both saying some inaudible. Their lips are moving, but no volume comes out.
The high pitched sound begins ringing in my ears again, and the world seems to move, everything getting a little hazy. I stumble backwards collapsing onto some flat surface behind me in an upright position.
I take a few heaving breaths in attempt to calm my body down. Slowly the world ceases spinning leaving me with a sore head. As the ringing begins to subside Rilo's voice soon becomes audible again.
"Hey are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah I'm fine, just a little dizzy is all." I wave my hand in dismissal.
He gives the woman beside him a look before turning back to me and cocking up and eyebrow, "Evidently not."
A/N: Thanks for reading! I sort of changed how flashbacks work a bit so yeah I will edit them in previous chapters. This update feels like it took a lot longer than two weeks to write. Look at me actually being a responsible writer.
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Experiment VII
Science-Fiction"Experiment number G7, that's all I am now. Who we were, everything we had, gone. We're just a bunch of failed experiments, but they made a mistake. They underestimated us, and now they're going to pay." Started: April 12, 2019 (approx.) Finished: ...
