7. Allies In The Heart Of Broken Experiments
7
ALLIES IN THE HEART OF brOKEN EXPERIMENTS
~NYX~
C onsciousness returns like a tide dragging broken shells across the sand – slow, painful, inevitable.
Every muscle in my body protests as memory filters back through the lingering haze of whatever gas they used to subdue us. The shadows whisper warnings as my mind clears, urging caution, patience, and observation.
The stone floor beneath me is cold against my skin, grounding me in this new reality. They've changed my clothes while I was unconscious – a thought that makes my skin crawl.
The nightgown they've dressed me in carries the musty scent of previous wearers, the fabric worn thin in places from countless bodies. How many omegas wore this before me? How many died wearing it?
Count the living first. Then plan for survival .
"Well, look who finally decided to join us," a harsh voice cuts through my assessment. " Ravenscoft’s Favorite Sleeping Beauty awakens from her chemical nap."
That would be the one I've dubbed Riot – all barely contained fury and sharp edges. Her dual-colored hair is a tangled mess around her face, but her eyes burn with the same defiance I saw in the testing chamber.
"Two seconds ago you were worried she was dead," comes Azurite's cool response. Her heterochromatic gaze meets mine briefly, calculating as ever. "So maybe dial back the attitude."
Riot's lip curls, her piercings catching what little light filters into our prison.
"Why don't you find a dirty sock to shove in that mouth before I introduce it to my fist?"
"I'm just relieved we all survived." Luna's soft voice carries an otherworldly quality that makes the shadows stir with interest. Her unseeing eyes seem to track movement none of us can perceive.
"Like anyone gives a damn what you think," Riot snaps.
Azurite's response is immediate and ice-cold. "No one asked for your opinion either."
Watch them. Learn them. Know your allies and enemies both .
I push myself to my feet slowly, bare feet silent on the stone as I approach their makeshift circle.
Each movement is measured, careful – both from lingering effects of the gas and natural caution. Lowering myself to sit with them feels like joining a powder keg with a lit match, but the shadows assure me this is necessary.
Riot's attention snaps to me like a predator scenting prey.
"What, are you mute or something? Or just think you're too good for us because you're their precious favorite? Because those voices in your head make you special?"
Show strength without showing teeth .
I meet her gaze steadily and point directly at her.
"Riot."
Her brow furrows in confusion.
"The fuck? I'm Patient 367?—"
"Riot," I repeat firmly. My voice is rough from disuse but carries enough authority to make her pause.
Before she can recover, I turn to the next.
"Azurite."
"Patient 892," she corrects automatically, but there's something thoughtful in her mismatched eyes.
"Azurite," I insist, then shift my attention to our final companion. "Luna."
A small smile curves Luna's lips.
"Ah, I see. You're giving us names to replace our patient designations?" She tilts her head contemplatively. "I was Patient 444, though I never liked it. In Chinese culture, four is deeply unlucky – associated with death. Three fours..." She trails off with a delicate shudder.
"You're Chinese?" Riot asks, momentarily distracted from her aggression.
"Half. My mother was Chinese, my father Korean." Luna's fingers trace patterns on the floor that seem random but hold meaning only she can read. "It was already considered a forbidden union in both cultures. My blindness only added to their shame."
"They didn't know you were an omega?" Azurite asks softly, her tactical mind clearly piecing together implications.
Luna's smile turns bitter.
"No. If they had..." She draws a finger across her throat. "Firing squad would have been the kindest option. Mixed blood was bad enough. A blind, mixed-blood omega? That would have brought shame beyond redemption."
The silence that follows her words is heavy with understanding. Each of us carries our own stories of how we ended up here, our own wounds that led to these shared chains.
"I suppose I'm a forbidden mix too." Azurite's voice carries a melody of accents. "Italian mother, German father. Both from rival mafia families that had been trying to kill each other for generations."
Her heterochromatic eyes catch the dim light as she speaks, one spring green and one molten gold, like the division in her heritage made manifest.
"It was a love story doomed from the start, really. Romeo and Juliet with more guns and better food." A sardonic smile plays on her lips. "And then they had me…already set up for failure before I drew my first breath."
The shadows whisper in my head, drinking in her story, tasting the truth of it, but have nothing to say and hum more in intrigue.
I watch the way her fingers trace unconscious patterns on her thigh as she speaks like she's playing piano keys that only exist in memory.
"The omega thing was just the universe's idea of a cosmic joke. We managed to keep it hidden for years – not hard when you're scentless like me. Could have passed for a beta indefinitely if not for the heats." Her smile turns knife-sharp. "But there's always someone waiting to stick a blade in your back, isn't there?"
"Your sister," I say softly, the words pulled from me by something in her expression.
"My sister." Azurite's eyes soften in a way that seems wrong, like watching poison turn to honey. "I was actually scheduled to be claimed by a pack. Not a prestigious one, mind you – they had their own mafia connections, and were considered the dregs of society. The kind of alphas even the government steers clear of because they're too feral to control."
She laughs, but there's no humor in it.
"My dear sister couldn't stand it. The idea that someone like me…what she called unworthy and disgusting…might be chosen by any pack, let alone one with that kind of raw power…well, it was more than her delicate sensibilities could bear."
The silence in our prison cell grows heavier as she continues.
"I think she wanted them for herself. Thought if she could get rid of me, they'd see her instead. So she called the authorities, told them I was psychotic, hearing voices." Another knife-sharp smile. "Said I'd threatened to rip her eyes out."
"Did you?" Riot asks suddenly, leaning forward with keen interest.
"Did I what?"
"Rip her eyes out." Riot's multiple piercings catch the light as she grins, showing too many teeth.
Azurite's answering smirk is a masterpiece of controlled malice.
Our little circle erupts in dark smiles, recognizing the unspoken confession in her expression. Even the shadows seem to laugh, appreciating the poetry of her revenge.
Luna's giggle breaks the tension, high and musical.
"Well, I suppose she won't be enjoying the view of that 'tainted' pack she betrayed you for."
The laughter that follows is startling in its genuineness – four broken things finding momentary joy in shared darkness. I let the sound wash over me, foreign but not unwelcome.
How long since I've heard laughter that wasn't cruel? Since I've felt anything close to camaraderie?
Remember this . How strength can be found in strange places .
My gaze settles on Riot, taking in the defensive set of her shoulders, and the way she tries to make her multiple piercings and tattoos into armor.
"Your story?" I ask quietly.
She huffs, shoulders hunching further.
"It's stupid."
Two words, and yet they carry worlds of pain beneath their dismissive surface.
I study her face – the way she won't quite meet anyone's eyes, how her fingers keep touching the rings in her lips like checking that armor is still in place.
"Why?" The question is simple and direct.
Sometimes the shortest path to truth is through the smallest door.
We wait in the growing silence, four broken pieces trying to form something whole, while Riot wages some internal battle with her own demons.
Riot's sigh seems to carry the weight of generations as she crosses her arms, the gesture more protective than defiant.
"Listen. I'm black." She pauses, then corrects herself with bitter precision. "At least...originally. My mother hated herself. Hated our skin tone." Her fingers unconsciously trace one of her arm tattoos, where ink masks whatever shade her skin might have been before. "We don't do well in this world. You know the usual shit. Racism probably doesn't affect you guys, at least not to the full extent as us."
The raw honesty in her voice makes even the shadows still their restless movement.
"Being black sucks when everyone and their aunties and uncles are insulting you for being born in the darkest color palette in the neutrals department."
She bites her bottom lip hard enough that the metal ring there must hurt, using physical pain to hold back something darker. The gesture is familiar – another survivor's trick for keeping control when memories threaten to overwhelm.
"My skin is only this shade because as a baby, my mom would use skin-lightening chemicals on me."
The admission hits like a physical blow.
I feel my jaw drop, while Azurite's usual composed expression fractures into a frown of shock and horror. Luna tilts her head, her unseeing eyes somehow conveying more compassion than any sighted person's could.
"Why would such creams exist to change the color of flesh that is surely beautiful to admire?" Luna's question carries genuine bewilderment as if the very concept is beyond her understanding.
Riot's laugh is a broken thing, sharp edges cutting the air between us.
"That's what happens when you're born into a world that self-hates." Her voice drops lower, each word weighted with history and hurt. "My father wasn't around…not because he couldn't be a good father, but because he was an Alpha and truthfully, my mother was simply a fling that had Omega potential."
I could understand that.
How many stories of abandoned omegas have we witnessed? How many tales of potential happiness are destroyed by circumstance and society's cruel rules?
"She could have had a pack," Riot continues, her voice taking on a distant quality. "Could have gained her happily ever after, but do narcissists ever achieve such?" Her laugh this time is hollow, empty of even bitter humor. "In the end, she always wanted to have a pack and live a life filled with friends and loved ones, but now she's alone, all because of her own destruction."
Her hands clench and unclench, the movement drawing attention to scars I hadn't noticed before – thin white lines that speak of defensive wounds, of fighting back, of surviving.
"She pushed everyone away, all by her own actions, but to grasp accountability? Never." The words come faster now, like poison finally being drawn from an old wound. "She'd never admit she's wrong unless it benefited her. Unless she could manipulate that apology so she can eat better food, or be financially secured by someone else's finances. Anything to benefit her."
The heavy sigh that follows seems to deflate her, stripping away layers of carefully constructed defiance to reveal something raw and vulnerable beneath.
"I vowed to never become her, but how do you do that when you're isolated in a space where all you see is her behaviors? Fucking anything that moves for money. Grabbing any job that would give her enough so she can invest in things she cherishes."
Her voice cracks on the next words, showing the depth of the wound beneath.
"I wasn't one of those priorities. I was just the cargo she could benefit from gaslighting and grooming to become her slave."
The silence that follows her words feels sacred somehow, like a confessional where sins are laid bare not for absolution but for understanding.
In our little circle of broken things, her honesty creates a new kind of bond. Not the false unity of shared captivity, but something deeper – the recognition that our wounds, though different, have shaped us in similar ways.
Made us harder, sharper, more determined to define ourselves beyond the labels others try to force upon us.
Her piercings and tattoos take on new meaning – not rebellion for its own sake, but reclamation.
Taking control of a body others tried to modify without consent, making it definitively her own through conscious choice rather than another's manipulation.
"Time's a bitch," Riot continues, her voice taking on a hollow quality that makes the shadows twist uneasily. "Mother started running out of opportunities in the sex department. Turns out even desperate alphas have standards, and wrinkles don't sell as well as youth." Her laugh carries no humor, just bitter acknowledgment. "The sagging skin didn't help either."
She runs a hand through her multi-colored hair, the strands catching dim light like oil on water.
"But it wasn't just the physical changes. The whole damn world shifted. People got smarter, more aware. Started recognizing toxic behavior and manipulation for what it was. This new era came in where being selfish wasn't a dirty word anymore – it meant taking care of yourself, setting boundaries."
The shadows whisper in my head in understanding as she speaks. They know about boundaries, about the necessity of walls between self and other.
About survival.
"People started seeing through my mother's little games. Her cons didn't work anymore. Those alphas who used to support her? They started drifting away, looking for real connections. They wanted actual omegas, wanted packs built on love and trust instead of manipulation and greed." Riot's fingers trace one of her lip rings absently. "They wanted something genuine, not just a quick fix that came with emotional baggage and financial drain."
Her eyes grow distant, remembering.
"When reality finally caught up with her, guess who became the backup plan? Suddenly I had to be the good little slave. Work endless hours, hand over every penny. Do everything she ever asked except the one thing I refused – I wouldn't sell my body."
The conviction in her voice draws the shadows closer, recognizing the strength it takes to hold such a line. "If I had to stay a virgin for eternity, fine. Better that than becoming her clone, popping out kids just to abandon them." Her voice cracks slightly. "I have siblings out there somewhere, probably all male. But I'll never know them. She made sure of that. Cut off any chance of family support before my omega status could even become an issue."
"What happened?" I ask softly, drawn into her story despite myself. "When your omega traits appeared?"
The laugh that escapes her raises goosebumps on my arms. It's the kind of sound that belongs in nightmare places, in rooms where sanity goes to die.
"That's when the real horror show started."
She shakes her head, the motion sharp and pained.
"My mother... she didn't just get jealous. This wasn't some petty competition between women. This was pure hatred, the kind of envy that eats at your soul. She started trying to copy my style, wearing clothes meant for someone half her age. But that wasn't enough."
Her hands clench into fists, knuckles white with suppressed rage.
"She started force-feeding me, claiming we needed to 'bond' over meals. Ordered me to work longer hours because suddenly the bills were overwhelming. Mysterious debts started appearing in my name…credit cards I never applied for, loans I never took out."
Riot stands suddenly, unable to contain her energy. Her hands move through the air, sketching out a shape much larger than her current form.
"I ended up three times the size I am now. Like this." She gestures to indicate something enormous, her movements sharp with self-loathing. "A fucking blimp. That was her strategy…make me so physically unappealing that no alpha would look twice."
The shadows growl in the depths of my mind, roiling in my anger as we all absorb the calculated cruelty of it. This wasn't just abuse – it was systematic destruction, a mother methodically dismantling her daughter's future out of pure spite.
I watch how Luna's unseeing eyes track Riot's movements, how Azurite's heterochromatic gaze narrows with cold understanding.
We all know different faces of betrayal, but this...this carries a special kind of horror. The person who gave you life actively working to destroy any chance you had at living it fully.
Riot's hands drop to her sides, but her fingers keep moving, like they want to grab something and tear it apart.
The rage emanating from her is almost visible, a dark aurora of pain transformed into anger because anger is safer than grief.
"I knew it was bad when just walking left me winded," Riot continues, her voice dropping lower. "When climbing stairs felt like scaling a mountain. Simple things that should take seconds stretched into endless, breathless battles."
Her hands gesture unconsciously as if feeling the phantom weight of her former self.
"That's when I realized I was following her path of self-destruction. The road she'd mapped out for me with surgical precision – the very woman who should have been teaching me to soar was methodically clipping my wings."
The voices in my head whisper warnings of similar traps, of trust turned to weapons.
I push them aside, focusing on Riot's words.
"I decided enough was enough. Had to change, but I wanted to do it right. No crash diets, no dangerous shortcuts. Started training, working out." A ghost of a smile touches her lips. "That's how I met Mina – this older omega who specialized in training packless omegas. She helped me reclaim my body, my strength. But more than that, she helped me see how fucked up my situation really was."
"What do you mean?" Luna asks, her unseeing eyes somehow finding Riot's face with uncanny accuracy.
Riot's laugh holds no humor.
"I'd been working non-stop, you know? Every penny going to my mother for 'safekeeping.' Then the jobs started disappearing – turns out being an omega without a pack is practically a crime in most places. They started cutting my hours, my positions, my opportunities."
Her voice takes on a brittle edge.
"That's when reality hit. Everything was in my name – the debts, the loans, the responsibilities. So when I lost those jobs, I was the one facing homelessness. I went to my mother, begging for access to all that money I'd been giving her to 'store away' for years."
"She had nothing to give," I say softly, the voices in my head already knowing this part of the story.
Azurite's mismatched eyes finally ignite with real anger.
"Are you telling me you wasted all those years working yourself to death…for nothing?"
Riot's laugh sounds like breaking glass, and her head drops, hiding eyes that threaten to spill years of accumulated grief.
"Fifteen years." The words come out choked. "Fifteen fucking years of my omega life, begging for scraps of maternal love like some starving dog. Fighting for approval that was never going to come. Thinking I was building a future, saving for the day I'd find my pack, find love, find freedom from paycheck-to-paycheck survival."
Her hands clench and unclench rhythmically.
"But my mother spent every last penny. Vacations. Designer bags. Anything to create this illusion of wealth to attract alphas. She never understood. They don't care about that superficial bullshit. They want an omega to love, to cherish. Someone with principles, with resilience. Not some fake socialite playing dress-up with stolen money."
Bitterness drips from every word as she continues.
"And you know what's really fucking rich? Most alphas want pups. But my mother's history of abandoning her children? That's not exactly an attractive quality. So all her efforts, all my money, went into this hopeless fantasy while my actual future circled the drain."
The raw pain in her voice makes even Luna flinch.
Azurite's calculating expression has transformed into something harder, colder – recognition of a specific kind of betrayal that cuts deeper than physical wounds.
"I still refused to sell myself," Riot says, her fists clenching tight enough that her knuckles turn white. "My virginity was the one thing I still controlled. Everything else had been stolen…my money, my time, my chances at a normal life. But that one thing? That was still mine."
Her eyes take on a haunted quality.
"But my mother saw it as just another untapped resource. Another way to fund her delusions. So she tried to set me up..."
"Hell no," I whisper, the voices in my head raging at this final betrayal.
The very air seems to grow heavier as we absorb the magnitude of it – a mother attempting to sell her own daughter's virginity after stealing her entire future.
It's the kind of violation that transforms victims into survivors, that forges softer emotions into steel.
"Mina helped me break free," Riot's voice softens when she speaks her savior's name. "She understood the cycle I was trapped in, saw how it would destroy me if I didn't escape. Found me this tiny bachelor apartment – barely bigger than a closet, but it was mine. Helped me gather the essentials, the bare minimum I needed to start over."
Her fingers trace one of her tattoos absently as she speaks.
"The hardest part was cutting the financial ties. The debt was astronomical – easily a hundred grand, probably more. But Mina... she loaned me enough to start clearing it. Taught me how to cancel those credit cards, and how to get my name off everything my mother had access to. She even helped set up a new account through her connections, somewhere my mother couldn't touch."
The voices in my head whisper recognition of this kind of calculated escape, this careful dismantling of chains disguised as family bonds.
"My mother didn't notice at first," Riot continues with a hint of savage satisfaction. "She was too busy spending on new credit cards in her own name, never realizing I'd removed myself from her web of debt. She went on vacation – another luxury trip funded by God knows what – and that's when we made the final move."
Her eyes take on a distant look.
"I dropped her off at her place when she got back, fed her some bullshit about working triple shifts to make more money. She actually praised me for once – not because she was proud, but because more money meant more for her to spend." A bitter laugh escapes her. "It took six months before reality caught up with her. By then, I was... different."
She looks down at herself, at the intricate patterns decorating her skin. "They say getting tattoos is addictive because of the healing process, because of how empowering it feels. For me, it was about control. Every design I chose, every placement I selected, every size decision I made – it was all mine. After fifteen years of having no say in my own life, plus all those years of childhood manipulation…this was freedom."
The raw emotion in her voice resonates through our small circle.
"It became my armor. My declaration of independence. I let my skin grow darker again, started tanning, and embraced everything she tried to erase. And when she finally saw me?" A fierce pride enters her tone. "She didn't even recognize me. I was healthy, strong, glowing in a way that attracted alphas…even the ones they eventually sent to take me away."
"Take you away?" Luna's soft question carries a tremor of understanding.
Goosebumps race across my skin as the pieces click into place.
"She wasn't..." I begin, unable to finish the thought.
Riot's smile is a broken thing, full of sharp edges and old pain. The answer is written in her eyes before she speaks.
"The money ran out," she says simply. "All that debt she'd racked up was finally in her name alone. No more sugar alphas to bail her out. And her precious ATM of a daughter? Nowhere to be found. No access to my new apartment, and no knowledge of my friends or Mina. I'd stopped telling her anything about my life – why share joy with someone who only wants to poison it?"
Her hands clench into fists.
"When she realized she was facing bankruptcy alone, it broke something in her. But it wasn't enough for her to go down solo – she needed to drag me down too. Needed some sick satisfaction knowing I wouldn't succeed where she had failed. So she played her final card: called the government and claimed her omega daughter had lost her mind."
The silence that follows is heavy with horror.
The ultimate betrayal – a mother destroying her child's future simply because she couldn't stand to see her succeed.
Riot stares at her trembling hands, rage and pain warring in her expression.
"I looked her in the eyes that last day, as they were taking me away. Told her if I survived this – if whatever higher power exists gives me the chance to get out of here and return to the world – I wouldn't waste time seeking revenge. Because what could be worse punishment than her reality? Almost seventy years on this earth, and she's completely alone. No family, no friends, and she sold out her own daughter for pocket change that wouldn't cover a meal."
Her voice grows stronger, taking on an almost prophetic quality.
"I told her I hope she lives long enough to see me happy. To watch me find a pack that loves me despite everything she tried to destroy…my flaws, my 'tainted' skin, all of it. I want her to see me thrive, to know that she failed to break me completely."
The last words hang in the air between us, a testament to resilience, to the strength it takes to choose hope over hatred even in the darkest moments.
They led her away after that final declaration, and now here she sits – marked by ink and metal, shaped by pain but not defined by it, still fighting to become something more than what her mother tried to make her.
"Being in Ravenscroft made me understand my own anger," Riot continues, her voice dropping to something raw and vulnerable. "All that resentment, that fury buried under years of abuse and manipulation – it has nowhere to hide here. I keep asking myself how I could have been so blind, so stupid. But then..." Her voice catches. "How are you supposed to recognize abuse when it's all you've ever known? When there's no one around to tell you it's wrong?"
She huffs out a bitter laugh, shaking her head with almost violent energy.
"I didn't have friends who could warn me. I was already an outcast. Who steps in to help someone whose suffering doesn't directly affect them?"
I can understand this intensity of loneliness – the isolation that makes abuse possible versus escaping seems impossible.
"So that rage just builds and builds," Riot continues, gesturing to her wounds and bruises. "When they push us to our limits here, when they starve us and hurt us, all I can see is my mother's smile. All I can hear is her voice twisting everything back on me: 'I never told you to work so hard. You chose to help the family. I didn't make you live there – that was your decision.'"
Her voice takes on a mocking tone that makes Luna flinch.
"Sometimes I wonder if I did this to myself. If I'm the one who engineered my own imprisonment in this hell where we're nothing but lab rats being tortured for their amusement."
She takes a deep, shuddering breath before looking down at the floor.
"I used to be different, you know? Friendly. Talkative. Had actual dreams. This..." She gestures vaguely. "This is the most I've spoken to anyone in fifteen years. And I just turned thirty."
The weight of lost time hangs heavy in her words.
"If I die here, maybe it's for the best. How many years do I really have left to find a pack? To have pups?" Her eyes lift to meet each of ours in turn, carrying a desperate kind of clarity. "I've never really lived. Never had a real childhood. So what would I even offer a pack? What if I just repeat the cycle – rush to find alphas, have pups too soon, end up resenting everything like my mother because I never learned how to be happy with myself?"
"Nah," she says with finality. "I'd rather die."
The silence that follows feels like a living thing until she breaks it again.
"How old are you?" she asks Azurite directly.
"Twenty-five," comes the quiet response.
"And you?" She turns to Luna.
"Nineteen," Luna answers softly.
Finally, her gaze settles on me.
"And you? You never actually introduced yourself."
“Nyx,” I reveal. “I’m twenty-two. A Scorpio.”
The voices in my head approve of this small truth-sharing.
Riot's eyebrows lift slightly.
"Odd to include the zodiac, but I like it. Fits somehow." Her expression grows serious again. "Look, I'm the oldest here. The one with the least future ahead of her. If someone has to be sacrificed to get the rest out…" She spreads her hands. "I volunteer."
Protests rise immediately from the others, but she shakes her head firmly.
"You're all still young. You have real chances out there. Your skin won't limit you like mine will. Your pasts haven't eaten up your prime years like mine has. You could be the first to actually survive Ravenscroft and escape. If I can help make that happen..." A small, genuine smile touches her lips. "That would mean something. Give all this some purpose."
She settles back down, then turns to me with curious eyes.
"Since you're into giving people names and knowing zodiac signs, what's mine?"
I hesitate for a moment.
Speak your truth. Take claim of those who carry similarities to our uniqueness.
"Taurus. One who refuses to break,” I whisper. Her silence leaves me wondering if I’m right or not.
Azurite leans forward.
"And mine?"
“Aquarius. Turns submission into strategy,” I answer, and she smiles – a real smile that transforms her face.
"You're right."
"What about me?" Luna asks eagerly.
“Pisces. One who sees beyond sight.” I tell her, and she nods with delight.
"Exactly right!"
All eyes turn to Riot, who huffs out a laugh.
"You're either into some serious voodoo shit or black magic."
A small giggle escapes me – the sound so foreign it startles even me.
"Aside from the voices in my head that I call shadows, I'm really not that special."
The moment feels surreal – four broken women sharing genuine laughter in a place designed to destroy us. The voices whisper that this is important, this connection being forged in darkness.
"What about you?" Riot asks, her earlier vulnerability creating space for curiosity. "Everyone's got a story that landed them here. What's yours?"
The voices in my head stir restlessly as I search through the fog where memories should be. It's like trying to recall a dream that slips further away the harder you chase it.
Fragments flash and fade – a laugh here, a touch there, the ghost of emotions I can't quite grasp.
"I don't remember, honestly." The admission feels both simple and devastating in its implications. "Sometimes I think I have a sister somewhere. Someone who shares my face, but maybe with different eyes? It's hard to be sure if the memories are real or just wishes my mind created to fill the emptiness."
I close my eyes, trying to catch the wisps of memory that dance just out of reach.
"When I'm falling asleep, I sometimes hear a woman singing lullabies. The melody feels important, feels like home, but it fades as soon as I try to hold onto it. There must have been a father too, but..." I shrug, the gesture carrying the weight of all those lost moments. "Six years in Ravenscroft is all I know for certain."
The others' expressions shift at this revelation.
Azurite's heterochromatic eyes narrow in calculation, while Luna's unseeing gaze seems to look straight through me. Even Riot's perpetual anger falters, replaced by something that might be pity if she allowed herself such soft emotions.
Their reactions tell me what they won't say aloud – that their stays here have been shorter, that they haven't lost themselves to this place the way I have.
The realization should hurt, or at least make me feel something more than this quiet acceptance. But after six years of trials and tests, of pain and loss, even grief feels like a distant memory.
Instead of pain, I find myself smiling – really grinning, for what feels like the first time in years. The expression feels foreign on my face, muscles moving in patterns they've almost forgotten.
But it's genuine, sparked by something the voices whisper might be hope.
"The past can't help me build a future," I say, surprising myself with the conviction in my voice. "Those lost memories, even if I could get them back, won't change where I am now or who I've become. So I'm trying to focus on the memories I'm making in this moment. Like this one, with all of you."
My gaze sweeps across our small circle, taking in each face that hours ago had been just another number in Ravenscroft's endless experiments.
Now I see them as people – survivors, fighters, women who refuse to let their circumstances define them.
Finally, my eyes settle on Riot, seeing past her armor of ink and metal to the wounded warrior beneath.
"I'd love to meet Mina someday," I whisper, watching how her eyes widen slightly at the implication of a future beyond these walls. "But more than that...I'd love to spend time with you. Get to know the person behind the anger, see the world through eyes that have seen both darkness and light."
She shifts uncomfortably under my gaze, but I continue.
"Your anger doesn't define you, just like our pasts don't define any of us. What matters is who we're becoming, who all this pain and suffering has shaped us into. The strength it's given us, the resilience it's forged in our bones."
Luna and Azurite nod in quiet agreement, something like understanding passing between all of us.
We're more than our traumas, more than the numbers they've assigned us, more than the experiments they perform on us.
I watch as Riot blinks rapidly, emotion flickering across her face like shadow and light.
Her hands clench and unclench in her lap, fighting some internal battle between hope and experience, between the desire to believe and the fear of being hurt again.
Finally, she huffs and looks away, muttering a gruff.
"Whatever."
But the word carries none of her earlier bitterness, none of the defensive rage she wraps around herself like a shield.
Instead, it sounds almost soft, almost like permission to hope.
The voices in my head whisper that this is important – this moment of connection, this bridge being built between broken people.
Looking at these women, I realize they’ve been my only companions in this hell, but now, looking at these three women who've shared their stories and their scars, I wonder if we could be friends one day when we’re out of this madness.
If we can ever escape this hellhole…hope I dare to keep tucked away in the depths of my beating heart.
Because sometimes hope is the most dangerous weapon of all.
Looking at my newfound allies, each broken and reformed in their own ways, I can't help but think that maybe we have enough hope between us to out think the ropes of death being set up for us behind the hidden glasses and tall metal walls that keep us at bay.
We have a fighting chance…all that’s left now is a miracle to get us out.