Lauren bowed, staring at his feet. Protocol, she reminded herself, she had to keep to protocol. Right now, he had complete control over her. After all it was his toxins in her body that made her this way. At a single thought he could drive her insane, literally. He had complete control, and it terrified her.
She should have known when they'd first met that he wasn't who he said he was, but he'd come to lab, and getting there should have been close to impossible if you didn't have permission from the new Ash.
Suddenly, he tugged at the chain of the collar, and she fell onto her hands and knees. She hated him, abhorred his entire existence, but there was nothing she could do. There was nothing the light could do either. All she had was the simple hope that maybe, just maybe, Bo would somehow pull one of her tricks and get her out.
"Have you been good my pet?" He asked, words greasier then take-out.
"I've been trying," she all but hissed. "But I don't have the right tools or equipment." The collar was tightened around her neck, her air cut off as she stared at his face, trying to keep as calm as possible.
The man fed off chaos and insanity but he was hungry and she wasn't giving him enough. When he removed the insanity curse and told her what she wanted, immediately she agreed, not because she wanted to do it, but because he promised her sanity and at that moment, she was so desperately clinging to any shred she had that the relief was evident.
She hadn't realized until he'd placed her in the lab and left her alone, that what he was asking for was biological warfare on the fae.
So she feigned it impossible, of course she knew she had the resources to make what he asked for, but it'd be difficult, time consuming. She just hoped that he wasn't invested in the sciences enough to realize.
The collar released and she grabbed a breath desperately before she slowly sat up, onto her knees. Placing the mask of calm over her face, she internally, attempted to pull inner peace inside and block him from his food. He could taste her emotions, and as he darted out a tongue and licked his thin lips, she knew she wasn't kidding him or herself.
"Doctor Lauren Lewis," he jumped off, out of the cold, iron throne and walked over to her. His hand stroked her face. She felt it twitch and crawl with repulsion as she kept her eyes steady on the throne. "If you're not good for this, then what are you good for?"
She felt insanity creeping in her head, but she remained firm as the hollowness inside her grew. A single tear spilt out of her eye, but she refused to acknowledge the hot tear on her face.
'Bo,' she reminded herself 'Bo will come.'
He kissed her forehead, and she shut her eyes. Her jaw cramped and her eyes blurred when she opened them again. She was in pain but she couldn't do anything about it. "I'll try again, with what I have," she whispered. "I'll try harder."
"You're a good human," he patted her head and watched as her shoulders fell in defeat. "Now, go run off. I don't want to see your mutt face here anymore." She stood up, felt the chain handed to one of his followers, and then followed the instant yank back into the lab as she stumbled to keep up. Only there in the small lab was she alone, allowed to cry briefly without judgement.
She could create something to kill herself, sometime to...but he'd just bring in someone else, and who's to say they'd be strong enough to survive, to not kill them. Who's to say they wouldn't kill more people by accident? No, it'd be selfish and weak to do anything but what she planned.
And she wasn't the only one here.
"Lauren!" she shouted. Lauren bent down and picked up the little girl into her arms. Little six-year-old Ava was the daughter to the previous scientist, but if her captor's words meant anything aside from subtle threats, it was implied that the little girl was the result of an unwanted consort.
But she was good, quiet and happy enough to just watch Lauren and walk around in a lab coat too big for her as she played with the magnifying glass.
Usually she spent time in a cell with a bathroom and a bed, and kept herself preoccupied either in the green house she was allowed to sit in, or the library. A magnifying glass was the closet thing she'd ever had to a toy.
Lauren had seen her the first day and offered to look after her, begging for some human contact as it helped her to work to her best. She went on about talking a loud and having someone listen before her captor waved his hand, muttering that he really didn't care what happened as long as she got the job done.
Placing Ava on the table, Lauren smiled. "Do you remember what you learnt yesterday?" She asked.
"Human have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes and fae has...twenty-eight pairs?"
Lauren smiled, "close, the one we were studying yesterday had twenty-eight pairs, but different fae have different numbers." Ava sulked at the wrong answer before Lauren handed her the stethoscope. "Today though, we'll learn about the heart." She adjusted the stethoscope in Ava's ears before placing it on her own heart.
"I can hear your heartbeat!" she said.
"A human heart usually beats at 60-90 beats per minute," she began. Lauren went on from there, explaining the heart to the curious child before she went back to work on the virus.
Somehow she had to think of a way to create something that affected the fae momentarily. Something that would give him enough time to think she'd accomplished what he'd asked, and that as the tricky part. There were too many variables that would need to be altered. Creating the weapon was easy, theoretically she knew how to, but creating one that only affected for a certain amount of time with enough of an affect persuade her captor?
That was difficult.
There was also the chance that he'd keep her captive even after promising, or perhaps he'd just outright kill her.
Quietly she worked, creating a minor version of the toxin to show him. Showing that she had an idea, that at the least, would keep her alive for a while longer.
However, if she got carried away and manipulated the strands of the virus too much...
Lauren sighed. She was a healer, a scientist with a healthy curiosity. She didn't create biological weapons, she studied them and worked out how to reverse the effects. She was losing herself, losing what she stood for.
"Lauren." She pulled away from the microscope and turned to Ava. "Did you mean what you promised?"
"What did I promise?" She asked.
"That you won't let the bad man get me." Lauren's expression turned soft as she looked at the vulnerable Ava, fiddling with her stethoscope. "I don't want any more scars," she whispered. "I don't want any more needles." Lauren frowned at her.
"What do you mean needles?" She asked, curiosity sharp in her voice. Ava dropped the stethoscope in her lap and pulled up her long sleeve. Down her arm was a range of different needle marks. Lauren took the arm and ran her fingers over them before she looked at Ava's eyes.
Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a penlight and flicked them over Ava's eyes. She hadn't noticed, which was unusual, usually she noticed things like this.
"You're not human," she whispered, but the girl didn't appear to be a fae either.
"Mama said I was an abomination." Lauren ducked her head down, licking her lips nervously as she repressed her anger for the previous scientist.
"Ava, you listen to me ok? You're not an abomination, you're special, unique." Ava smiled softly. "I promise you that somehow we'll get out of here, ok?"
"You're really pretty," Ava stated suddenly, "I hope Bo finds us." Lauren blinked, her eyes going wide before narrowing.
"I've never talked about Bo."
"No, but you think about her all the time. She's really pretty too."
"Can you read minds?"
"I can't read, I see pictures and hear words sometimes...mostly I just feel that you're sad a lot and you hurt, but sometimes when you're really sad, I can see pictures," Ava told her. "It's like a movie, but sometimes it's really fast and I can't tell what's happening. That's why I'm here, Alec likes to put me in a room with his prisoners and hear what they're thinking, usually they're just remembering their family and saying goodbye and they hurt a lot."
Lauren's heart pulled, a maternal instinct inside of her wanted to reach out and hold Ava in her arms and protect her from the world. A little girl didn't deserve what she had gone through.
"I promise," she whispered, "I promise to fix this, and keep you safe, Bo will come for us."
"Alec wants her dead. He tried to get you to kill her didn't he?" Lauren's jaw tightened before she nodded stiffly. "I heard him talking about her, she's very powerful. There's a prophecy about her in the Keep."