I'm here with yet another Lab Rats story. You know, I really am coming up with ideas for different shows I swear, but when I have an idea for LR, I just kinda have to go with it, you know?

I'm actually really excited for this story because it's a lot differently done from my other stories, plot and genre wise. And the updating will be much more clean, which I will further explain in the bottom A/N.

For now, please read on and enjoy my new story, Different Summers.


It's much like a prison - not that noone calls it that. At least, not anyone who knows better. The standard cells are three cement blocks on each side of you, with the front wall being thick iron bars that give you a magnificent view of the guard with jangling keys standing straight outside, taunting you with the freedom they never plan on handing to you.

But my room - the room where I've been thrown into since the Blackout, I assume - is much different: as are the people keeping me under their careful watch. Along with the regular security guards, people in important lab coats with bunches of files and papers, zoom in out, poking and prodding and getting their daily fill of toying with me, before leaving me to pull at the wrist restraints cutting into my bloodied wrists.

From careful observing whenever the metal slab door slams open and closed, the halls are as bleak and sterile as my room, but still maintaining it's differing looks from halls that led down prison cells. That same medical, bleach kind of smell that rots through hospitals is here, increased by the draft floating in through the crack splintering the wall from a corner of the tiny slot cut out of the far wall, meant to be a window. That's the only thing that keeps it from cell status - with walls of concrete and cold, it could very be a cell if it isn't for the lack of bars and noticeable presence of a door.

But I am sure, if someday I do see outside the door, there will be a guard, standing on duty to torture me with freedom these people don't plan on giving me any time soon.

It's been three, five das since I've come to conciousness here. With every moment, it's like the first when I woke up. A small blur of bland and blidning white, the unmistakable whir of machinery around me, and the coin like taste of blood stuck in my mouth. My head stills pounds, my body still aches, and my wrists still sting from the bite of the cuffs locking me in my current position.

Nothing changes, except for the flow of Them coming in to monitor, prod, question, and observe. They aren't as bad as this place defines them to be, really. With their tight-lipped expressions, low and commanding voices, and emotionless way of acting, I assume they could be much worse if ever allowed to act on their own accord. But no, They go about their routine as almost robotically, following the motions like someone orders them around, up above yanking their strings. From the time I've been able to, everything I've seen Them do is the same, unless suddenly different because of someone giving carefully measured yanks to their strings. Goverment charged and caged, I'm sure.

With every drug pumped fresh and new into my veins every handful of hours, and the slowness of everything around, it's unclear how my brain is able to keep up with the unfamiliar terms spewed to identify me.

"Subject C, operation 2-2-9 is currently in place. Status: unresponsive to the accquired treatments provided by Lab Dorm X. Memory: invalid." There comes one. She is, from what I can tell, one of the better ones. She talks but still manages to prod for what she needs, unable to realize what I can give her. The only thing she lets define her is the white strip of block letters pinned on to her crisp lab coat: Quint.

"How are you feeling?" Her tone is as listless and indifferent as before, the last time They drugged me, I mean.

I give a hopeless tug to my restraints, feeling the rusty metal cut into my bloodied wrists. "Why am I here?" The question slips off my tnogue, one of the only things I give as a response.

A solid click of a pen, the little scratch-scratch of the end meeting paper. That damn clipboard used to chart my unflattering stubbornness, I assume.

With cold nimble fingers, the IV sticking out of my arm is out and I am up, in relief but aching. Everything hurts.

The woman is clearer now; her strict bun and wrinkled eyes now in my line of vision. I clanch my arms, the cuffes no longer holding me down. I feel an odd, brimming grateful emotion, but also pitying despair. Who knew what being released meant here?

"There have been steady requests for more appropriate strategies to be taken on your case," she says after instructing me out of the room. "The heavy medial arragements seem to hold no desired affect on you, much like the others."

"What others?" I ask dumbly. Of course, she doesn't answer. Instead her heels continue to click-click-click down the hall, providing the unspoken command to follow. I trail reluctantly behind, rubbing my sore wrists. The skin in sickly pale and layered with dry crusts of blood, sprinkling up the back of my hand. I flex my hands and wince in pain, unused to being able to do the ability. As unresponsive as I seem to whatever treatment inflicted on me, my brain activity and high level of anxiety have ceased to heavy fatigue.

"General Whitman has been assigned to your case, one of the upmost reliable candidates for cases much similar to yours."

I want to ask my endless amounts of questions, but by now I know better than to spout my tongue for it would result in more pen scratching and heavier interrogation methods.

For me, it appears highly unfair I'm kept from knowing what kind of case mine is exactly - when inprisoned, even the prisoners themselves are given information such as that. The only thing I've come to know of symptoms is extreme fatigue, large spaces of memory loss, and impossibly painful aching.

As she makes a sudden stop in front of a metal door, I recite the information I do know:

I was taken.

She shoves me inside the room; a deadblot locks me in, no chance of escape.

I have a family.

A seat at the table is waiting for me.

I'm not the only one.

A man, a shadowy figure dominates the other side. He says nothing as I sit down, keeping my eyes planted on the steel silver table top. The room stays silent, my hefty breathing the only thing in the sharpness of the quiet.

It takes a few moments before a glossy picture slides in front of me. It's a man. His dark, short hair is scruffy, his skin is pale, and his are sunk into his face, his cheeks hollow. I am supposed to know this man, but I don't.

"Who is this?" I ask, picking it up and holding it right in front of me, clear to see in the dim lighting of th interrogation room.

General Whitman takes his time with saying anything. He doesn't actually, until slamming his meaty fists hard against the table top, standing so abruptly his chair goes flying to the ground. "Don't play dumb with me, son." His voice is as bulk and deep as his appearance would make it seem. He dioesn't have a lot on me hieght-wise, two or three inches at most. But he looks pretty stocky, with an extra 30 or 40 pounds on me. His eyes are a dark kind of gray, like the cement surrounding us, locking us in. He wants answers, but not the ones I can give him.

"I'm not!" I protest. The picture flies from my hand and back to the table, slipping close to the edge. I must have a habit of talking with my hands, because they fly as fast as the words from my mouth. "I've never seen this man before in my life!"

"Don't you lie to me!" His loud, angry, accusing voice bounces off the wall, his potbelly pressing into the table as he leans closer. I swallow the knot in my throat but don't look away, meeting his challenging gaze. Challenging me to defy him.

This place's doubt in me couldn't be anymore obvious.

Two more glossy square are thrown in my face. I scramble to catch them, not letting them fall to the floor. I set them on the table ginerly, taking in the faces. One's a girl. Her dark hair falls down her shoulders, her eyes mischevious despite the clear bruises swelling over her eye and the cuts slicing her eyebrow in half. Her lips swell and the corners stay down, her pride evident but defeat clear, too.

The boy is similar, yet keeps his air of a fighter. He looks stronge, the sides of his hair singed in a way, cuts blooming around his mouth and his nose crooked to the side, broken. But still, he is full of pride in his dark eyes, although defeated.

A pang. A pounding in my head growing sharper until I have to drop the picture, clutching my head in my hands. I start to breath faster and faster, the room spinning.

General Whitman's banging grows louder, the sharp contact of his fists to the metal a horrible hurricane of noise in my ears. I nearly fall from my chair in pain.

The two photos - the guy and the girl. They're doing something to me. Something so strong and urgent it knocks at the side of my head, in between my eyes, makes my senses sharper. But why? What did I do with them? Were they from the large gaps I can't collect? Are they, somehow, here too, suffering along with the prodding and questions and drugs just like me?

General Whitman probably doesn't stop his banging until he realizes he lost me, that I've tipped from my chair and fall to the ground, my head banging on the concrete floor and rendering me useless.

He is done with me for now.

{~~~~~~~~}

It's three days later before I wake up. The lack of metal cuffs and IVs poking out of me catches me off-guard, bring me up from the rock hard cot I'd been placed on. It surprises me They are not hovering and prodding like usual too.

The sudden change confuses me and make my head spin.

"They brought you here Tuesday," a slightly high voice says from my right. I jump. They put me with someone else too. This also shocks me.

Slowly, with clear caution, I ask into the dark corner, "And what day is it now?"

"Thursday," it says, repsonding again, "You've been out for...65 hours."

"How do you know this?" I stand on shaky legs, taking my time with walking to the other side of the room. That's another thing - the room is much more cell-like, but still no iron bars; we're still in that damn place They run.

A boy much skinnier and shorter than me lays on a cot indentical to mine, hanging from rusting chains attached to the wall. his eyes are closed, his dark skin is pale, and he look too young to be any type of crimminal mastermind. Is he here under the kind of circumtances I am?

Gingerly, I take a set next to him. The cot creaks; the boy says nothing.

"What's your name?" I ask.

"Leo," he says simply. While he talks, his eyes never open. His face never changes, doesn't falter from it's default expression. "But here They call me EX-49228." Leo holds up his left arm to make a point, as if wanting me to look at it. My curiosity eats at my mind, so I take it and flip it to reveal the underside of it. The short sleeve of his olive green shirt falls away, and I get a glimpse of the black inky letter stamped onto his upper forearm. Right there it reads exactly what he said: EX-49228.

"Does that mean I have one, too?" I frantically pull at my sleeves, rolling it up to expose my skin. The only flaw of my arms though are the nasty bruises of the restraints and the many pokes of the IVs.

Leo doesn't react to panic. "Probably, but they don't put it in the same place on everyone. Yours must be where you can't see it."

"My name is Chase." It slips out before I can stop it, before I can think if it's true. But the minute it's out there, hanging in the air with finality, I know it's true. One of the few details I can gather from my past life.

"Nice," Leo comments, shifting to cross his legs. Despite his surroundings he looks completely comfortable, at ease almost, with the entire situation. "But I've heard of you before."

"You have?" I say surprised. "How? I hardly know who I am myself."

He says nothing for a while, and my next question slips out of me before I can hold on to it and stop it. "Why are your eyes closed? Don't you know where you are?"

"Are they? Closed, I mean?" Leo sighs, like he's tired of explaining his story. It's then I wonder how many times he ever had to tell it, how long They've kept him, people like me, here. "I can't ever tell anymore. Not since They took it away."

I stumble, a strangled noie erupting from my throat. My feet trip over each other and I've clumisly landed on my own cot, breathing fast as I face the truth: They made Leo blind. They robbed him of his sight - purposely. But why? How can They stamp us and rob of us of our senses when some of us don't even know what we did? And for the ones who did know, what if it was for something good?Is making a stand no longer the better choice?

"Why? Why did They do that to you? Why do they keep us here?" I ask, my voice is high and loud, angry as it hops over itself bouncing off the walls.

Leo's answer is simple.

"Because we're the experiments."


Okay, so how the updating will go is pretty simple and I think you guys will think it's much more effective. It goes like this:

I will write three chapters at a time, then post them within a three-to-four day radius of each other. The only time it should take longer is when I'm writing the next three chapters after the third one posted. But depending on the process, the next set of three chapters should already be in motion by the time the second chapter is already up and the third chapter waiting to be posted.

I tried to make that as simple as possible, so please don't call me crazy. I thought it sounded like a good process, made the updating much faster for the readers, and was something new I wanted to try. If it works out well, it will be this way for a lot of my upcoming Multi-Chap stories.

And as for the story itself - the summary matters a lot for the first, I don't know, four chapters? It makes it a lot easier to understand and the plot a lot cleaner than I think it is.

Please review and tell me your thoughts on Different Summers!