Wake

He was too short, Harry thought idly through the drugs searing along his veins. That burning should bother him... but it didn't. Being hauled around like a sack, thrown into his room, fed via a tube roughly shoved down his throat... none of it could pierce the hazy contentment the drug settled into him. Too short, too thin...

It was necessary, he knew. A year ago, he brought the ceiling down on top of Them. They didn't like that. It was their own fault, however – They should not have tampered with his head like They did. Now, he couldn't control things so well.

So They controlled him, instead.

He could feel Father, so, so far away. And so dim. Like he was barely there... but he was. Father would come.

Father would come.

Father would come, and kill them all for what they've done.

...

"We will continue to push you, Lina, till you just do as we ask."

Harry didn't know why they called him that. Only Father was allowed. Still, it was his own fault. He'd slipped – and now they knew he could read them, like little books. He missed reading... stinging tears pricked at his eyes, and he couldn't even reach up to wipe them away, hands tied behind the chair. It was after they did... that... to him. He wanted to reach up, and feel that he had hair again, that his scalp really didn't part with a wet sound like paper tearing before-

"LINA!" His attention snapped up to the man, and the table between them fell with a heavy clatter from where it had floated seconds before. "Focus. I want you to tell me what I'm thinking."

But he didn't want to Look. He hated it. Hated seeing what they thought of him. What they knew. But they would only keep on, new men would come, new voices, new demands. They would not let him sleep until he Read them. So he Looked.

It was like losing focus on someone's face. Let them blur. Let them dissolve to an indistinct haze, but it wasn't losing focus, but sharpening it. That gave him an idea... but not yet. Instead he read the sign that the man was holding up, so he couldn't see it. "Apple."

He saw the door codes. Seven-five-seven-three-two-nine. Saw they also needed a card. "Tree."

He saw that the man liked his work. Liked making little children cry – and more, the little boys. This didn't worry Harry, though. "Building."

"Tower," the man corrected. He saw it was a building, but that they wanted to guide the Looking. Thinking of guiding let him See the way the place they were in was built. Doors. Corridors. Halls. Signs. So many things to see-

"Lina," the man had grown impatient of waiting. "What does the sign show?" It was a boy. Something ticked at his memory. It was just a drawing, but something overshadowed it. He saw black hair, messy, over green, dead eyes. He smiled, staring at the man as he shifted, looking toward the door behind him. "Lina? What do you see?"

He knew what the man was growing nervous of. Knew that his own eyes had dilated, or appeared to, till all the brown in them was swallowed up and all that was left were white-rimmed black marbles. "I see death," he said quietly, before sharpening his focus hard-

Men burst into the room, as the man with the signs fell over, bleeding out of his eyes and ears. Harry smiled slightly, till the sticks with the sparking ends stabbed at him, and sent him into the blackness of sleep.

...

It was so hard to think. The medicine made it hard to focus-

"Tell me your full name."

He couldn't. Didn't they understand?!

A small shock caused a small cry to break free of his throat. Blood followed, after, a reminder that caused his eyes to water in rage and hurt and sorrow. "Focus, Lina. Tell me your name."

Eyes going black, he stared at the man. "Hate-you-hate-you-kill-you-kill-you-all-hat-"

Another shock broke his focus. "Good. But I don't care about your fantasies. Tell me your full name, Lina."

His mouth still bled. Despite what they tried to do to fix it, his attempts to scream at them made the raw wound where his tongue had been bleed. It made him sick, swallowing all the blood, but he'd give them no more. No more! They took that so he'd speak like he Saw. He just knew some day they'd take his eyes, like they did his tongue. So he fought, to keep himself. Fought even though they'd take anyway-

"Lina, focus. Tell me your name."

"Kill-you-killyouall-burnthisplace-killyouKillyour-wifeandburnyourchildr-"

Another shock broke his focus, again. "Lina, focus," the man stated again, mechanically. He wondered sometimes if these people were human, but refused to Look anymore. All he saw was blood and hurting and things they hated, now. He was there, always. Always he was at the front of their minds – their amazing project! He hated. Hated so much.

He didn't want Father to come anymore. He couldn't even call for him, now. Couldn't say his name.

More tears slid down his cheeks, and Harry ignored the shocks till they made his skin burn and left him twitching faintly after. "Lina, focus," again, the man said. "Tell me your name."

"Deathdeathdeathdeath-"

Shock after shock, but he screamed. Screamed in their minds, as far, as many as he could, till they came and sent him into the black again.

...

He was close.

The one who was with Father, before Father left him to care for her.

He didn't know him. It didn't matter. He was close.

Focusing, more than he had for a long, long time, he pushed the drugs aside. Images. Buildings. Turns. People. When. Numbers. Lockers. Cell.

He gave it all to him.

She gave it all to him.

"I am Elena Sergeiyevna Morozova," she Told him. The first, only time she'd actually done so, willingly. "I am Elena Sergeiyevna Morozova. I am Elena Sergeiyevna Morozova..."

Harry woke, and promptly turned so that he could empty his stomach onto the ground near the bench. "God," he rasped, recalling all the things that he'd gone through – that Elena had gone through, and he had seen, felt through her. He'd never wanted to hurt someone so badly before, to know he was responsible for their pain and suffering and feel satisfaction at it till then.

He didn't regret the urge, at all.

Gathering his bookbag, Harry set off for the northern block of buildings, about a kilometer north. There was a girl he'd been too long in coming to see, and he meant to fix that, as soon as he could.

"You are here?"

Stalling between steps, Harry let a slight frown cross his features. His thoughts turned to the images he'd recalled, thanks to the dreams... A small girl, with dark, dark eyes, and almost snowy hair-

"Me, was me..."

Picking his pace back up, the young boy was on his way again. Putting a lot of effort into it, he thought back to the girl who spoke in his head, "I'm here. I'll be there soon."

"Father is gone. He gave me to you."

It was as much an answer as Harry knew already. He knew what the link he felt was, from the time Sergei explained it. Knew that those dreams weren't dreams, but memories... again, ill-fitting and threatening to break his sense of self.

Somehow, he had... absorbed, Sergei Morozov. The idea chilled him, almost sent him back into a black place for his mind to think and collect, if not for a less-than-gentle pull from his daughter, "No. Nononono. This is what he wanted I can tell so please don't leave now don't leave me now don't leave me-"

"Alright," he said as well as thought, and the girl went silent. It seemed he'd have another companion soon that he spoke to that wasn't even there, a cynical voice in the back of his mind pointed out. "Well, that's what I'm here to fix," he reminded it, before groaning.

"Great, now I'm talking to myself."

He wondered, as he ducked low and listened for Elena's next instruction, why she hadn't escaped herself, if she knew all the ways into and out of the research center?

Her answer was remarkably simple. "They time drugs so I am only able to think, to do things for them, for very small windows. I am already drugged again when I wake – it just takes time to affect me."

Camera sweeps, holes in a fence that a repair man had decided to selectively forget about, thinking he'd rather go drinking, which halls were watched when... it was all fed to him, and despite the impossibility of it all, Harry Potter had managed to sneak into a heavily guarded bunker complex, without drawing attention to himself.

"Next hallway, left. Then the lockers, and hurry. I'm feeling it again..."

With a start, Harry realized the meaning behind her words. She was in one of those windows now, and was on her way down into the foggy depths of drugged oblivion soon. "No, no! Elena, stay with me... stay with me!" His thoughts seemed to bolster her a bit, but he had to get back out of this place as well... and without her, it wasn't going to be possible. "Uh. Medicine to reverse that. Where?"

Harry found the lockers she'd told him of, and the loose one without a lock. Inside, a man's smock sat, with a key card hanging off a hook. Snatching it up, he looped it around his wrist. As he raided another open one, he found something that at once gave him hope and terrified him.

There, hanging off a hook like the smock and key, rested a leather shoulder harness with the underarm sheathe for a gun. A gun which still rested inside it.

He didn't think, but took it. Fumbling with it a moment, he found and locked the safety. As he did so, Elena fed him another route, to the labs. An image of a small refrigerator, a row of syringes above it, a small bottle of saline, and finally the needle stabbing into a vein flooded his mind. No words followed them, however. "Damnit, hang on..."

There weren't any illusions in his mind about what the gun meant. Harry had seen a handful men with assault rifles as he slipped inside this place, unseen, but if the gun meant he could stop one, then he'd hope one was all he needed to stop. And he only hoped for one. There was no way to learn and become proficient in the weapon in so short a time as to be really useful with it, after all.

More images, this time leading to the cell Elena inhabited. Another code, another visual 'mumble' of her being secured to a steel bed, that was in turn welded into the floor and wall. "Elevator at end of hall, turn left – take stairs," he muttered, following an invisible line, painted in his mind's eye. "Wait for the small click-" the camera outside the door had a bad motor, and would hang, pointing the wrong way for about fifteen seconds every so often. "Then run to the end of the hall. Knock on the third door going by."

Harry's subvocalizing cut off, as he slammed his hand into the door as he went, then skidded across and down the next corner. Behind him, he could hear a man's loud voice asking who had pranked him, and if they really valued their jobs or not. The noise from that man's raised voice covered the noise of his passing well though, as the next portion was down a grated hallway that he had no hope of crossing without sound.

Despite Elena's instructions, Harry paused at the end of the stairs at the end of the hall. "Daylight? What?" Peering out of one of the windows set in the wall beside the door, he boggled.

Outside of the door stretched a courtyard, maybe as big as the one his school had. For a moment Harry's incredulity drowned out the urging voice of Elena in his mind, as he looked out at the space he'd need to travel inside the installation, without cover or any way to block view of himself. Worse, he could see three men in massive white suits doing something to the left, resulting in massive gouts of smoke and light. "No way. I can't go out there, they'll see me," voice cast low, he continued to watch the men as they worked, finally making out what they were doing.

Flamethrowers. They were using flamethrowers to set fire to what looked like a very large patch of vegetation. If anything, that only made Harry hesitate more. "If they see me, they'll kill me. There's no way I should be this far inside-"

Elena's voice, weak and sleepy sounding, cut through his frightened murmurs, "They do this for an hour a day, once Yulia arrives back in her cell. You have half an hour left till she falls asleep..."

Again Harry looked outside, the orange and red of the spat fire reflecting off the brick and mortar walls on that side of the courtyard. For the first time since he began Sergei's errand, Harry felt small, unsure. Like a child. "You're sure?"

Comforting images came to him, but they were colored, broken. Elena's attempt to make him feel better almost brought bile up in Harry's mouth. "All the things you've dealt with at these people's hands, and I'm the one getting scared." Setting his jaw, the young boy let his fingers brush the pistol jostling around in his pocket. He didn't pull it out.

The door opened silently, and there were no alarms, no flashing lights. Sounds of wood burning and cracking filled the courtyard, and the men there were busy either burning or moving the still-smoking pieces of wood away from that one area. Even as he watched from the corner of his eye, skirting along the side under a row of high windows, Harry could see that more vegetation tried to grow, to spread over a concrete pad that stretched some distance from the wall. Trees sprang up only to be charred and curled. Grasses tried to dig cracks in the pad, as roots worked to grow large enough to upset it, letting fresh ground be exposed. Even flowers grew quickly, in the space of seconds, trying to scatter seeds so that they could spread and grow beyond that scorched slab.

A thought occurred to Harry, and he looked around himself. There, off in a corner and ignored in the tangle of weeds some distance away from the men, a lone sunflower sat in the late stages of its seeding. It looked almost morose, with the great crown bent, facing the earth so that its seeds could fall. As he padded by quietly, Harry scraped his hand down the thing's face, pocketing the handful of small kernels. As an afterthought he filled a pocket with dirt, opposite them.

As Elena had assured him, Harry passed through the other door without notice, without alarm. It was only one hall and a doorway then, till he was there. "I'm coming," he murmured, speeding down past a security check that no one was at for five minutes, while paperwork was filled out. There was no need to be so wary once the day's tests were over – everyone was back in their cells, drugged.

The impossibility of a little boy running unchecked toward the heavy security ward wasn't even taken into consideration. Why would it be?

"Here," Harry panted, skidding to a trembling halt outside of a cell. "Room 402." Elena had been silent for a while, and that worried him, but the ribbon pulling at his chest was stronger than ever, an almost mirror to the young girl's heartbeat. The security code was entered and the card slid, and for a terrible moment he thought nothing would happen, then-

Click.

Black space between the door and wall. Pushing it open quickly, Harry took off his shoe, setting it in the door's way. He then scampered over the darkened interior, till his shin barked against something cold and solid. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could make out Elena, sleeping soundly under a threadbare blanket even more ratty than those back at the Dursley's. Manacles kept her hands locked at her sides, long, angry welts stretching some distance from her wrists speaking of how long they'd been in place. A patchwork of scars littered her arms, and to his disgust, there was what looked like an IV patch that was never removed. He knew from her memories it was so their veins wouldn't fail, from abuse. Better one appliance, than the risk of a 'test' going wrong.

She was so thin, he noted angrily. He could clearly see her ribs under the light gown she wore, the angles of her elbows and knees too obvious. Elena's face was still the same, if thinner, older looking with its lack of extra curve from childhood youth. Almost idly Harry compared her to her mother, and smiled grimly. Taking a moment, he checked to see if he could open the manacles and shackles, but they were keyed, and he lacked anything of the sort. Cursing, thinking he forgot something, he did the only thing he could.

Pulling the stimulants and the needle from his pack, Harry used that cursed appliance to get the drug into her bloodstream. Little more than a minute later he watched her eyes flutter, then open in a sudden start. "Shh," he murmured, a finger to her pale lips. "It's Harry."

"Harry? Oh... Harry! You're here-"

"Elena," he interrupted her bubbling happiness with a wince. "I can't get the manacles off."

Blinking at him, she looked down and frowned. "Oh. Oh, that's alright," she seemed to murmur into his mind, black eyes going distant and unfocused, and Harry thought of his shoe, sitting out in the hallway, easy to see. Thought about people coming and hurting them both, but then Elena's hand took his. "It's alright. Everything will be easier, now."

Looking down, he boggled at her free arm. "Wha-"

A rending sound, like a hundred tin cans being twisted and torn quietly echoed about the room, as her other manacle peeled back, layer after layer of folded metal. It was almost pretty to watch. "We need to go soon," she Sent. "They are almost done burning Yulia's pets."

"So she can control them?"

He watched a brief memory, of a blonde girl causing a tree to grow, then rip itself free of the ground and shamble for a few steps. "She is like... ah. Yes. That would be the best way to think of it," Elena answered, sounding uncertain. Harry shrugged, and thought of his pockets, of the seeds and soil. "Oh. Oh my... so we get her too?"

"Can we... can we let everyone out?"

Elena's head ducked down, as she staggered upright. It was like watching a puppet, as she used her mind to keep herself standing, jostling herself this way and that bonelessly. He hated them more, every moment. She couldn't even stand on her own, without those abilities now. "They won't all make it. If they're seen... they will be killed."

And he could hear them, too. Harry had been ignoring it as best he could, but this place was teeming with the spirits of dead children. He could not take notice, though. It would be guaranteed madness to let so many know he could sense them. So many riddled with their pained deaths. Despite it, they at least couldn't be hurt anymore... they at least were through being torn apart, piece by piece, by men tho didn't deserve to live. "How? How can I open the doors?"

Elena's eyes closed for a moment, then opened, wide and black. "The main power switch, one room behind the security desk. There will be guards. The alarms will be sounded."

"Then we will have guards and alarms. I can't let this go on," Harry decided, putting his winter coat around her shoulders, and his light shoes on her too-small feet. "Lets get Yulia."

"Ok, Harry."

The flower girl, as he started thinking of her, had a room just five rooms down and a hall bend from Elena's. It was here they ran into their first problem. "No, there is a guard outside her door, still. We have to-"

Harry's hand dropped to his pocket, and he clicked the safety off the pistol. In his mind, he felt the biting of a saw on the back of his own skull. The bruises, welts and open sores from years of wearing metal manacles. The never ending itch of the IV tube, forever leaking poison into his veins. The knife, cutting out his tongue so they could force him to speak into their minds.

All for damned human curiosity. "Help me aim."

"..." Elena's silent sending, worry and a quiet acknowledgment were all he needed.

Rounding the corner, he saw the man first, and raised the gun toward him. It was the motion, caught from the corner of his eye, that put the man on guard. "Who is th-"

CRACK.

Harry wondered who didn't hear that. The recoil was muted, but still jerked his too-small arm back sharply. Elena had no idea what a gun would do, so rather than cushion the kick, she pointed it so Harry wouldn't miss. Harry ignored the sharp pain in his wrist, watching the spray of blood from the guard's head fountain across the hallway.

He didn't have time to be think about it. "Door code?"

Elena punched it in, as he kicked the man's legs clear so the door would open, trying not to see the confused, blackened, panicking ghost that ripped itself free of the man's body. Pocketing the pistol again, Harry took his handfuls of gifts and turned to meet Yulia.

The girl that turned sleepily to look at them wasn't what he'd expected. "Oh God," spinning back around, Harry's already empty stomach tried to purge itself again at what he'd seen.

Yulia was another of the place's high security projects. Like Elena, they had obviously tried to accelerate her progress by... limiting her. For a brief, selfish moment, Harry was glad they hadn't progressed as far with Sergei's daughter. The sleepy blonde girl, who's hair was just a bit longer than Elena's, looked at them, blinking her red-irised eyes slowly. "Who are you?" She murmured, turning as she could to see them. The stark narrowness that her silhouette showed emphasized what those that oversaw them had done. Yulia had no need for manacles... because they had taken her arms.

As Elena moved to unmake the girl's shackles, Harry fished in his bag for the stimulant. "I'm Harry. This is Elena. We're going to help you."

Blinking, the girl looked down, head tilted. "Help?" Her eyes then snapped to the small mess Harry had made with the dropped seeds and soil, pupils narrowing to points. "Yes. Yes, I see..."

Yulia, he would learn later from Elena, could control plants. Or, according to the blonde, they liked her, spoke to her. It was a two-way street, much like his own problem, however. Each time the complex had their post-test burning outside her room, she could hear the plants screaming, dying, trying to reach her, then suffering for it. It was how she described it, at any rate. They did it without her asking. And over the years, it had twisted something inside Yulia, until it broke.

Elena never spoke of being afraid of anything, after escaping. Other than Yulia.

The blonde looked to be maybe a year older than Harry and Elena, maybe more. It was hard to tell – all three of them had not had good childhoods, and it marked each in different ways. Though, for a grim moment, Harry realized of the three of them, his was the best, the least cruel. It wasn't something he'd ever thought to encounter. "Can you walk?"

From Elena's side, Yulia leaned, teetering till the paler girl took hold of the blonde with her mind. "Yes. Let me go to them..."

They both knew what she wanted, and lead Yulia to the small scattering of soil and seeds. "Not enough... not enough..." tears fell from red eyes, till she shook her head hard and noticed the faint spray of red outside the door. Peeking around, Yulia's manner changed from sorrow to barely-masked mania in an instant. "Can you help?"

Harry came to her side, nervous at how excited the odd girl was. "How? What can I do?"

"The bad man... put the little ones on him. Put the dirt and the little ones on him, or better, in him."

Blanching, Harry swallowed his gorge again. Still. These were the people who did this to them. Who... cuts off a child's arms, just to see how they adapt with the gifts they were given? What justification was there? That in mind, Harry took a handful of seeds and dirt, and shoved it into the dead man's mouth.

He would never tell Yulia, for as long as he knew her, but he agreed with Elena.

Humming quietly, the blonde leaned over and smiled at the dead man. Or, rather, Harry assumed she was smiling at her 'little ones'. "Do you know what she's doing?" He asked Elena, who had turned away, watching the hallway.

Though she herself had killed, and done so while connected with the mind of the man who'd died, Elena was still a little girl, tired, hurt, and not fully herself from the drugs. That all considered, she seemed sickly when answering, "Yes. You may not want to look."

Despite the warning, Harry watched the blonde. He'd done so for Elena, in her memories, and they had thrown their lot in with this strange girl, one way or another. He'd watch here, too.

The dead man's body shriveled quickly, graying, the skin tightening on flesh that lost its bulk quickly. From his mouth, sprouts rose with unnatural quickness, feeding on the man's water and the nutrients of his body. Two distinct stalks rose up, pulsing and fattening in contrast to the corpse, which just became more and more desiccated as they grew. After the brittle cracking of bones sounded from the former guard's body, the two unusual sunflower stalks bloomed, but their faces weren't right.

"You all try so hard," Yulia murmured, leaning close and nuzzling the flowers with her cheek, despite the revealed spikes of twisted, sharp-looking wood within them. "So many of you die just to try and reach me, every time. Why do you keep on? Why do you?

"Do you love me so much?" The flowers seemed to nod, curling almost serpentine as they followed her motions. "You drive me mad, with all your screams," the blonde murmured, voice darkening. "But its all I can hear, beyond those walls. Beyond this place. Help me leave? My friends, my new friends brought you here. Lets help them too?"

It was strange, watching someone else do what he so often did, Harry thought. But then, there wasn't proof that those he spoke to could hear. Yulia's plants on the other hand, seemed to hear her just fine.

Harry just wasn't sure he wanted to hear what they said, in response.

"Alright then," the girl smiled, closing her eyes. "Come to me."

Like striking snakes, the two stalks coiled, then sprang, the vicious, barbed spikes within their crowns sinking deep into Yulia's shoulders, the angry scars where arms should be.

It was only Elena's hand on his own shoulder that kept Harry from bolting, then and there. "She is fine. For some reason to her... this is... pleasant."

Incredulous, Harry watched the slow, stifled trickle of blood on either side of Yulia's gown seep into its cloth. He watched it soak into the coarse fibers, dye them vermilion, spread from thread to thread. "You... this place," shaking his head hard, Harry's magic spilled out for a moment, causing the tiles beneath him to crack. "It's their fault.

"Their fault," he murmured again, feeling something else, along with his rage and the slip-sliding of his mind, trying to at once take in, accept, but recoil from the things he knew, the things he had seen. Like Yulia's blood, it slipped and spread and weaved between the fabric.

Elena and Yulia weren't even the worst of those that has suffered here.

It wasn't like he could stop the children from crying.

All their dead eyes.

Accusing eyes.

Staring at him.

Through him.

"All of it," he whispered, as the dead took notice and looked at him. Hundreds of unblinking eyes went still. Expectant. "All of them.

"They all have to die."