Chapter One
Subject Seven, a Zoroark with a matted mane of red hair, claws clipped short enough to expose her fingertips, and dull blue eyes, hunched over the screen of an old, battered laptop. She had once believed that the strings of text attached to the forums she visited were real people, people that she could beg for help if she found the right words, until Ghetsis showed her the room of psychologists he had on staff, there for the sole purpose of teaching her how to act human. Now, only a part of her attention was on their fingers as they raced across the keyboard.
The cell of gray metal surfaces consisted of a bed just large enough to accommodate her tall, slender frame, a sturdy metal table with one matching chair, a shower, and a toilet, all visible to anyone standing in front of the cell's opening. Deceptively promising freedom, the removed wall was guarded by a vaporous, transparent green barrier that disintegrated organic matter.
Beyond the barrier that separated her from the rest of the material world, a thick metal door cordoned off the humans' research area and the holding cells for their test subjects. Seven could only see two occupied across from her, one holding an amorphous pink blob designated "Fourteen" and the other housing a carefully tended blue serpent, known as "Twelve." The serpent would, from time to time, raise its slender neck and gaze around with the same dull expression Seven saw in her laptop's reflection, before resting its head again on its tail. The blob, when it ever bothered to stir, which it hardly ever did, stared intently at her with beady black eyes and an unnerving, wobbly grin.
After a few minutes, the door opened. An enormous metal cart shoved its way through the opening, holding tray after covered tray of food. Seven could smell her rations, a platter of chopped berries and a raw slab of beef, as a tired-looking attendant placed the tray on the floor and shoved it through the barrier. The green mist parted around the metal, hissing against the gleaming surface. Seven had tried, once, punching a hole through the lid, sticking her arm through it, and hitting a safety switch right next to her cell. After that incident, an electrician rewired everything into the other room, and her trays, along with every surface of her abode and object within it, were replaced with a material sturdy enough to defy her power.
She plucked the meat off the plate with her fingers and swallowed it whole, and then she plucked the berry pieces one by one and crunched them between her teeth. She left a small cluster of tiny red berries off to the side. Just as she had reduced the sixth berry to a squishy pulp between her pointed teeth, the door opened again. The hair rose on her neck as a cane thumped on the metal floor, filling the hall with an echoing ring. His coat was black, regal in appearance with a high, stiff collar, billowing sleeves, and a trailing cape. Dirty-blonde hair, going gray at the roots, One eye, the color of salted ice, regarded her with faint amusement, while the other, obscured behind a blocky red monocle, zipped back and forth as it read walls of text and images on its screen.
Ghetsis walked up to Seven's cell and peered inside. "Hello, Subject Seven. How was the food today?"
Seven shivered and looked away from him. "It was fine."
"Good to hear." He tapped his cane on the floor. "Today's tests are cancelled. I'll be doing more work with Three, and after that, I have a meeting with the other Sages."
Seven struggled to keep a smile off her face. Ghetsis leaned forward, nearly touching the barrier with his nose, and said, "Behave while I'm gone."
Seven's heart raced, and she twitched between the his icy gaze. "Yes sir."
Ghetsis leaned back and gave her a wry smile. "Have a nice day off, Seven."
Seven waited for the footsteps to recede down the room before letting a smile expose her teeth. She tucked the metal cover beneath the table on her legs and plucked the cluster of red berries on her plate. She snapped one into her mouth, grimacing at the harsh metallic taste, and after she verified that no one was looking, pressed the metal tray up against the underside of the table, covering a tiny sensor hidden there. Through some experimentation, she had learned that the sensor could trace any use of her power, at which point a guard would walk over and inspect her cell. The guard never came if she covered it up.
Free to use her abilities undetected, Seven covered each of the six cameras with a still image of her sitting at the laptop, as though watching a video. Then, after verifying that no one was watching, she rolled the handful of red berries across the floor and into the barrier. They vanished as they entered the vaporous green space and emitted a harsh cloud of green gas that blended in with the barrier, obscuring the other side.
While holding the tray in place, Seven stood up and shoved the chair underneath the table, propping the tray cover over the sensor. Then she walked over to the shower and peeled back the plastic liner on the bottom, exposing a large hole. In exploring her cramped confines, she learned that, after she had nearly escaped last time, they had never replaced the metal plumbing with the more robust alloy. Months of careful excavation chipped away at the metal and concrete beneath her cell until she hit a corridor of electrical cables snaking through the facility. Though the space was cramped, hot, and almost too dark for her to stomach, she found she could squeeze through.
A sound of loud roaring echoed into her cell. Seven paused for a moment, listening for approaching footsteps. Once the roars reached a fortissimo, she dropped down through the hole and pulled the liner back until only a sliver of light entered. Her skin crawled in the darkness, and she ached to pull back the liner, but she forced herself through the wires. Seven followed a huge black cable over to an emergency hatch located just above a construction project within the building. She watched and listened through a hole in the ceiling as men in orange vests and yellow hats drilled holes in walls, wriggled cables through, and bolted light fixtures into place. First, she picked out individual voices as they asked for screws and drill bits and connected them to faces and names. Then she waited for a particularly noisy drill to hit a beam while the other workers were looking away from her side of the hall. She dropped down and made herself invisible. No light came from her, but that meant no light reached her either. No darkness could be more complete.
Seven feared the darkness. Darkness meant scalpels biting into her skin, syringes shoved into her veins, and straps binding her to an operation table. It stung even more when Ghetsis told her that some of those procedures were to drive that fear home. Now, turning invisible was as suffocating and enticingly easy to break as holding one's breath an inch from the surface of a pond. Goading herself forward, she counted each step she took.
One. Two. Three. Invisible nylon straps jerked around her wrists.
Seven. Eight. Nine. Two phantom needles jabbed into her forearms.
Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. A thin, icy sensation split her chest.
Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. She hoped no one would notice the drops of sweat pooling on the floor with each jagged, silent breath.
Twenty-six. At that number, Seven turned, leapt forward, and pushed against a door. When she heard it shut with a soft click, she lifted the darkness and slumped against the wall, taking long, deep breaths and rubbing her wrists. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears as she strained her hearing out the door.
After five minutes, she heard the clomp clomp of leather boots stomping towards the other bathroom. She waited for the other door to close before cautiously opening her own, creeping into the other bathroom and standing beside the occupied stall. One minute later, the man zipped up his pants and opened the stall door. Seven grabbed his throat, shoved him against a wall, and pinched a blood vessel leading up to his brain. She held him fast as he flailed his arms, battering her face and chest with blows that grew progressively weaker before he blacked out.
Seven stopped just short of killing the man, letting him slump to the floor. She rummaged around his front pocket until he found his wallet. Inside, she found a shiny white keycard. She bundled this into the fur behind her head. After that, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and wrapped herself in an illusory copy of the unconscious man. In the mirror, she could see minor imperfections in the disguise. One strap on the jacket was missing, and the pants were a touch too bright. She hoped it would be enough to fool the workers.
When she walked out of the bathroom stall, she passed all the other workers and approached a door at the end of the hallway. Ten feet away from the door, she turned and said, imitating the unconscious man's voice, "Hey, I'm getting a snack. Anyone want anything?"
"A snack?" one of the workers snorted. "What happened to that diet of yours?"
Seven smiled and shrugged. "What can I say? A man's gotta eat."
One man called for a bag of chips, and two more asked for water. Seven nodded, accepted bills from them, and walked to the bare metal door. She glanced back, making sure no one watched as she pulled the keycard out of her hair, swiped it on the door's reader, and tucked it back in. The reader's light turned green, and the door clicked open. Seven's hand shook as she opened it.
She walked into a small reception area, with a few cloth-cushioned chairs, three vending machines, and a bored receptionist flipping through an old issue of GameInformer behind a large desk. Seven gave the receptionist a small wave, which he ignored, and walked towards the doors. Beyond the glass doors, she could see the parking lot. Two distinct groups of cars were parked on either side of the lot, one housing shiny luxury vehicles, and the other, banged-up, rusting pickups. Beyond the bright black asphalt, a small hill lined with flowering shrubs obscured the road ahead. Looking up, Seven saw the sky for the first time, a brilliant light blue with a billowing white cloud floating through it, a real sky, and not a shallow image strung together with pixels and hex code.
"Hey, where are you going?" the receptionist called.
Seven turned back. The young man had set down his magazine and had his hand over a large red button on the counter.
"I left money in my car," she answered.
"What about what's in your hand?"
Seven glanced down at the green bills crushed in her left hand. "That's the other guys'. I'll be back in a sec."
The receptionist stared at him for a moment, and then shrugged. "Alright, I'll buzz you out," the man replied. "Make sure you follow procedure next time."
"Thanks."
Still gazing in wonder at the sky, Seven took a step forward and placed a hand on the door handle. So transfixed she was on the scenery in front of her, she didn't notice a bright blue light flicker to life above her. After one pace through it, all the energy was sapped out of her limbs. Her legs crumbled beneath her, and she collapsed to the floor. In front of her, she saw her arms, stripped bare of her illusion. She struggled to raise it, but she couldn't even make her fingers budge.
She heard the receptionist drop his magazine and slam his hand on the button. Sirens sounded across the facility, and a metal barricade slammed down inches in front of her outstretched arm. Minutes later, security guards and researchers swarmed around her. Manacles were clapped to her arm, her hair was frisked and stripped of the keycard, and she was dragged through a private entrance and thrown into a different, bare cell. From this vantage point, she could see cells one and three, housing large red fox-like creature and a hulking, rocky green behemoth respectively. One sat on the floor, facing away from the cell's window, while Three thrashed and gnawed at sturdy chains binding its arms and legs while researchers injected sedatives into its armpit.
The thumping of the cane announced Ghetsis' approach. Seven shrank into the corner and pressed her face against the cold metal.
"I told you to behave," he said flatly. "Nevertheless, I'm impressed that you made it that far. I'll see to it that you have a nice meal after a couple days."
Ghetsis left. Hunger gnawed at her as each hour crawled past. With no bed, no desk, no chair, no nothing, all she could do was curl up in the corner and wait for sleep to take her.