Subject Zero's cell was burning. Rays of sunlight were intruding through the window, engulfing the room in golden flames that danced across the walls. Zero's eyes opened, then immediately closed as they were greeted by the light. There was a throbbing pain in her head, starting in her occipital lobe and spreading throughout the rest of her brain. She carefully touched the back of her head, making contact with a strange lump that hadn't been there before, the action causing her entire body to flinch as the pain momentarily increased tenfold.
She tried to remember what had happened the night before. Images of herself hiding under her desk came back to her. A hand reaching in, grabbing her by her neck and pulling her out as she screamed and clawed at the arm of her assailant. She had been dragged down the hallway to the labs, but somewhere after that the images were put to an end by a syringe being plunged into her neck.
She looked around her cell. The room was as eerily silent as always, due to its soundproof walls and window. Occasionally, if the person was loud enough, she would briefly hear the sound of footsteps when someone walked past her door. But other than that it was if she was all alone in the world. Just her and her headache.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door opening . Every time she heard that sound, for just a second she would imagine herself tearing through whoever had entered the room with her biotics and then escaping this godforsaken place. However, every time she had tried to act on this impulse it had resulted in failure, then punishment.
She turned her head and saw a stone-faced security guard kicking a tray over to her bed, the object making a rough hissing noise as it slid across the floor before colliding with one of the bed's metal legs. Subject Zero looked down at the tray, then back up at the security guard with an expression she hoped he found intimidating, until he turned and left.
She picked the tray up off the floor, frowning at the all too familiar 'food' it contained. Three times a day she had to eat this stuff. It had been genetically modified by the scientists at the facility to contain the exact amount of everything Subject Zero needed. To Zero however, it just seemed like beige, tasteless sludge. Reluctantly she picked up the plastic spoon on the tray and started eating, knowing that she wouldn't be given anything else.
Days like these were strange to Zero. The world outside was beautiful, and the sunbeams bouncing off the puddles in the yard and through her window made her cell just as breathtaking. But it was still a prison, still the source of all her misery and pain. It didn't make sense to her.
She could see the other children gathering in the yard outside. Most days she would have immediately started trying to catch their attention. She'd scream at them, bang at the window, but they never even as much as glanced at her. Today however, she didn't bother. Besides, the complete silence that surrounded her was actually kind of comforting. At least it was better than what was about to come.
Subject Zero was only ever brought out of her confinement for three things. Fights, torture and experiments. She had already been subjected to the latter last night, so it would probably be at least a week until next time, Zero reasoned. That didn't rule out the other two options though, as her captors seldom let her rest. She probably didn't have more than an hour or two before the guards would get bored and come to find a way to entertain themselves.
And sure enough, an hour later the door opened once again and in walked a female guard Zero recognized all too well, followed closely by the stone-faced guard from before.
"Get her."
The male guard did as he was told, closing in on Zero and extending his arms to grab hold of her.
She knew there wasn't any point in resisting. He was a grown man and she, without her biotics, was just a six year old girl. It was a fight she could not win, anyone could see that, but it had never stopped her before. She wasn't going to let them think they had broken her, that they had won. She instinctively raised her right hand and, to her surprise, saw a small mass effect field generating around it. The device on her arm shattered, then there was a great noise as a wave of blue hit the man before her, picking him up and throwing him across the room in a mere second.
The other guard watched with both shock and excitement in her eyes as her coworker crashed into the wall. Never before had Subject Zero been able to inflict such harm upon adults with her biotics, let alone break free from the restrainers. Her hands immediately went for her pistol, fearing that Zero would attack her next.
But the kid wasn't attacking. She was lying on the floor, clutching her naked head, screaming. She didn't seem to notice as the guard grabbed her and dragged her out of the room and towards the courtyard, the battered male guard limping behind them.
When the pain began to decrease and her awareness started to return, Subject Zero found herself in the courtyard, surrounded by eyes and concrete blockades. Most of the guards were around, some of them gathering up the other children, others watching over her. When she first came to the facility she rarely came in touch with the other children. She'd see them outside her window and uselessly try to make contact with them, but they always ignored her.
But that was until someone came up with the idea to pit her against the other children, to test her abilities and to get a clearer view of the effects their experiments had on her. In the past few months however, it had become a way for the guards to kill time, and so she had gotten used to standing like this in the courtyard. She had almost begun to enjoy it.
She could hear the guards speculate as they rounded up the children. "How many should we start with? Five, six?" one said.
"You didn't see what she did to Lundgren. Give her ten." That was the female guard from before. Zero recognized most of the kids that stepped into the makeshift arena. They were the ones the guards picked when they wanted to see her struggle. They were older than her, taller than her, and they all hated her. One of the guards tapped her Omni-tool a few times, disabling the remaining biotic restrainers and giving the children their cue.
Immediately, three of them jumped at Zero. She dodged the first few punches that came her way with ease. Having to defend herself like this daily for the past few months had honed her reflexes and made her far more agile than any regular six year old. She ducked, then jumped sideways to her right, only to find another punch flying towards her from that direction. With no time to get out of the way she raised her left hand, catching the fist while simultaneously making one of her own with her right, then ramming it into her opponents gut, knocking him to the ground.
She spun around and saw four more kids coming at her. She clenched her hand, the muscles in her arm tensing as she prepared to unleash a biotic shockwave on them, but as if on cue the pain was there again, forcing her to her knees instead. She didn't even feel the first blow as it struck her face.
She didn't realize what was happening until she was on the ground, the children kicking her, punching her, clawing at her. This hadn't happened before, this wasn't supposed to happen. She wished naively that the guards would intervene, but she knew they were getting a kick out of it, somehow finding humor in the abuse. She could feel her hands getting warmer. She could hear herself let out a bloodcurdling scream. She saw the world around her explode into azure.
Everything was a blur. The children were all scattered around her, lying motionless on the ground. All she could hear was the sound of her heart furiously pounding in her chest and everything was either covered in blood or shrouded in a thick, blue mist that was slowly clearing. And then she saw the girl.
She was small, even smaller than Zero, which was probably why she hadn't noticed her before. She was slowly backing away from Zero, staring at her with wide, dilated eyes. Without hesitation Zero threw herself at her, the girl covering her face and screaming futilely.
Zero felt something warm and wet touch her hand and she realized she was holding the other girls head, banging it against the concrete barricade. The screaming had stopped and the mist had cleared, but Zero didn't stop. She was waiting for one of the guards to grab her and drag her away, but nothing happened, so she kept staring at the girl's now misshapen head. Blood splashed against her face. She kept banging.
Zero was back in her cell. It was just as silent as it had been this morning, but outside her window the sun was going down, making the sky and her room darker with every passing minute. She wasn't sure how long she had been sitting on her bed like this, or how she was brought back here, or when the restrainers had been put back on. Her memories became blurry after the girl.
The girl, Zero remembered. The deformed nose, the blood, the split open skull, she felt something warm inside her as she pictured them. She had felt it then too, it was a soothing, reassuring feeling. She wasn't sure what it meant, where it came from, but she knew she liked it, and that she wanted more.
She didn't know why the guards hadn't returned. She hadn't been fed since morning, and though they sometimes starved her for a few days as a form of torture, they'd still come around to beat her or abuse her some other way. Maybe she had scared them, she thought, but she doubted it. They should be scared though, her mind said as she shifted on the bed.
She decided to spend the night like that, sitting on her bed, facing the cell door. They were probably just waiting for her to go to bed so they could get her in her sleep. That wasn't going to happen anymore, she decided. She focused on the door, expecting it to open at any moment, and continued to do so until dawn. But sometimes her thoughts would slip and she'd hear the scream of a little girl and see a small, bloody skull in her hand, and for a moment she'd forget about the guards and the scientists, and feel at peace.
a/n: I wrote this for The Urban Spacemans A Day in the Life of... contest. It didn't turn out exactly how I had planned but I thought I might as well enter it anyway. Thanks for reading.