Teenage Bones

Heavy Reactions

"This started with you, Elijah! It's you who forced me to go through the lab's experiments and- and-" Esmé's breathing is rushed and unstable. Taking the gun away, she takes the bottle of Jack Daniel's and paces around the large space.

"You can't turn on me because you fucked up," I say, debating lunging for the gun. She was swinging it around while taking swigs of the bottle, stumbling every now and again.

"That's ironic considering you wanted me to stay at the lab before you realized you were going to be killed and only now do you realize the lab is shit. You are a selfish, coward of a man." 

Something in my chest drops and I feel my expression toughen and eyes darken. Esmé laughs sadistically, "ah, I hurt your feelings." 

"The plan was always to get you out," I grind out, "and personally, I hope Tyler gets what Lily has in store for him- because he ruined everything."

"He looked after Jace and me!" 

"And who do think perswaded Suzanne to spare Jace? Who contacted Starr to get you out? Who personally searched for a home for Jace to stay at? ME." The anger was prominent in my voice and I stand as she finishes the bottle again before chucking it down on the table.

"I get it," she slurs, "you're jealous. You wanted to save me all by yourself." The muzzle of the gun hits my chest, just above my heart. "You wanted me to imprint with you, you wanted me to fall in love with you because you have nothing left." Esmé leans up, an inch from my face. "I could never love a man who watched me get cut to pieces and did nothing." She spat, pushing the hammer back gently and handing me the gun before stumbling for another bottle, settling on the sofa again, pouring another drink. "If you wipe the 'poor puppy' look off of your face and fetch a glass, you can have some."

And that's exactly what I do.

_*_

Esmé Peter's POV

I regret giving the gun back. Running away by myself seemed the safest option I have, just winging it and running from the whole situation and the country. Although they've all looked after me, I don't know if staying with them is best to stay out of the attention. I could just get on a plane.

Elijah retreats from the kitchen with a glass and his jacket shoved on the kitchen tops and gets comfortable on the sofa opposite me, holding the glass out. Reluctantly, I fill it halfway and he takes the whole thing, asking for more and we repeat the cycle until we're doing shots together and the bottle is gone. There are loads, bottle after bottle. We drink until the sun is just below the horizon, winking at us.

"You know Tyler betrayed you, right?" Elijah askes while I pour more alcohol into his glass and gently filling my own.

"He didn't know what he was doing," I say, swallowing the whole glass of alcohol, mirroring Elijah. 

"He didn't realize he would fall in love with you, but he chose to sell you, Esmé. Tyler knew what he was doing," Elijah's glass was thrust into the air again and both of our glasses are filled.

"Maybe. But I owned it to Hope to look after him," we downed our glasses with ease before I fill them again. We're getting scarily close to the end of the bottle.

"Hope is dead. Her honor doesn't matter anymore," and he swallows his glass of alcohol. "You know you will be going back, right?"

I pause, filling my glass as my chest fills with slight panic, and I don't fill his, "no, I can't go back."

"Esmé, they have a trained army of experiments and soldiers. How are we meant to fight them all?"

"Starr and Lily can make them drop, or- I'll crush them. All of them." My hands start to shake as my lips connect to the vibrating glass.

"You can barely control it. Starr and Lily will run the minute they have to fight directly." He scratches his jaw and my body heats, "you are useless against them Esmé. You will go back eventually."

"No, I won't!" I scream, balling up my fists just as both drinking glasses break and the bottle shatters. Elijah's hand releases the deformed glass above the table and just rolls his eyes like I just proved his point. Fuck him. Throwing my glass pieces on the table, I grab another bottle and head for the only bedroom.

Fuck him.

Slamming the door, I am immensely thankful there's a lock but as I twist it, the wooden headboard of the bed cracks in two, releasing some built-up anger in my chest. Quickly popping open the bottle, I chug some of the bottle, placing it on the wooden stand by the bed. The liquid briefly burns my throat before I lay on the bed, limbs splayed out.

Elijah Clarke's POV

Esmé is driving me fucking mad.

Tie her up, gag her, and put her to bed.

Though it was tempting, I know it's wrong. There is glass all over the table, and she didn't even have the decency to clean that up. No, she left that just for me. So, I get to work. I find a dustpan and brush under the sink and bin the glass, look through the freezer for food and decide microwave chips and frozen cod was our best option- Esmé wouldn't agree but she was being childish. I set to work preheating the modern oven and shoving the cod on a baking tray before sliding them under the heat. Fishing out two plates, knives and forks, and two glasses of water, I keep busy, thinking about anything other than being caught by the lab.

Training to join their team had been bad, being a traitor and caught would be unimaginable. Some soldiers said that if you were caught, you'd become an experiment but they would trial you with the worse experiments they had. A few years back, a teenager was caught giving information to a nearby police station, his punishment? Pumped with drugs, beaten black and blue, then his bruised skin would be peeled back and cut from him. No one knows what they did with it. This would repeat every day except to heal, and then the new scars would be targeted, bruised, and cut off again. Patches of scaring were all over his body after the first year, after the second he was unrecognizable- even his eyelids had a thin layer of skin taken. They would send me in to beat him sometimes when I was younger, he was so pumped up on drugs, he couldn't even see me, or stand, let alone defend himself and he was always curled up, always ready for a new beating. When I first met him, he was a loud, obnoxious pig- always bragging about his training and had a fiery temper, he was 'popular'. He was almost unrecognizable when I last saw him.

I think his name was Dominic. His parents were killed while he was young and he lived with his uncle who kicked him to the streets after disowning him- and 'rescued' by the lab. Sometimes when I walked by the door of his room, I would hear him banging sluggishly on the door, begging someone to have mercy and just to kill him quickly, only to be dragged away by the guard and injure whatever punishment they had for him. Sometimes they would even go as far as to break bones, letting them set wrong and in odd angles, only to rebreak them and mangle the bones more. Dominic's screams echoed in my head for countless nights after and only when I was used to hearing the choking, gurgling, shrill sounds was when I could nearly sleep. I never agreed with punishment for fear, and have never beaten a test subject to 'train' them- which other scientists and soldiers called me soft for.

But Dominic had been just as bad.

And that was true. To others, he was amazing at training his test subject to be obedient, quiet, and smart but the girls he got looked hollow after the first two weeks staying with him. Most of the time, there were always bruises somewhere on them, mostly on their expressionless face or thin arms. Coincidently, every single one of his test subjects was female. 

So the thought of being dragged back was terrifying, but I know it's definite. They have more resources and generally more of everything- we can't run forever.

The cooker timer bleeps and I rise to get the food out before I fall to the ground with pain at the back of my head.