A.N: OK, first off, I'd like to apologise for the length of time its taken to get this chapter up, but I've been suffering with writer's block for this fic. I'll try not ot let it happen again. Secondly, thanks to everyone who reviewed.
Please enjoy the chapter:
Familiar
It was still battleship grey, the walls, the ceiling, the bed sheets, the clothes. The only things in the tiny cell that were a different shade were the black iron railings and the darker grey patches of mould that dotted the room.
Raine rolled over onto her right side, staring through the almost darkness into the aisle that ran between the rows of cells, her eyes straining to see. What she was looking for she didn't quite know. It was night time, or, at least, what she assumed was night time. In actually it was probably just the time that they told them to sleep, just as they told them when to eat, exercise and work.
Silence hung heavily in the long room, the inhabitants resting quietly, occasionally letting out snores or snorts in their sleep but even those sounds were few and far between, as if the treatment the captives received had broken even their sleeping habits.
Not Raine's though. Not yet.
'Not ever. I'll be damned if I ever give into these human sons of bitches'
Anger. It was the only emotion she had felt since sensation had returned to her after the separation from Genis. Even the thought of her little brother on his own wasn't softening her now and with a fresh stab of anger over being torn from him, she threw back the sheets and began to pace.
Her bare feet hit cold cement as she walked in circles, thick anger roiling in her stomach. There wasn't anything she could do to relieve it either.
Back home she would've gone for a walk, done some long overdue training or just sat down and written rubbish on a piece of paper, anything to alleviate the feeling. Here, there was nothing to do and eventually she found herself kicking the slop bucket that sat in the corner furthest from her bed, the act's noise amplified by the silence, waking the other prisoners up.
Murmurs filled the dark chamber, sleep-hazed confusion or irritation at being woken, but she didn't care and grabbed the black bars, forcing her hands against them until the already pale skin went completely white.
Down the hall a metal door slowly opened and slammed shut, bright lights flickering on and blinding everyone in the room, waking those few who had miraculously managed to sleep through the noise.
"What's going on in here?" The voice was rough with the rude awakening, clearly irritated like the half-elves at the few hours of slumber being broken.
"Come on! Which of you is making a nuisance of your pathetic selves more than usual?"
Every woman in the room stepped away from the bars of her cell except Raine. The professor hung onto the metal bars, staring angrily at the man as he approached her, drawing a beating stick from the back of his uniform.
The door was opened slowly, the guard slipping inside and shutting it firmly behind him. Raine stood her ground as he stalked towards her, fingers wrapped tightly around the wooden rod, eyes darkening in anger at her defiant stance.
"Unless you wanna be beaten, I'd suggest you behave and lie down on the bed like the obedient little creature you are."
Raine stepped away from the bars, two steps back, before turning and staring at him, azure eyes fixed onto his, ignoring the warning.
He raised the baton, letting it fall into his left palm in another warning, the sound of wood striking flesh solid and loud in the stale air.
"Not playing by the rules, huh? Well, no one can say I didn't warn you."
He lunged forwards, intending to grab her bare arm, but she trotted backwards neatly, avoiding the snatching motion, a mocking smile twisting her lips.
"Too fast for you?"
"You little…"
"Hmm? Little what?"
The soldier didn't answer but lunged for her again, and as before, she trotted neatly backwards, glancing through the bars to see the other half-elves crowded against the front of the cells, curiosity piqued by the disruptive new arrival.
"You really think you're gonna outrun me in here, woman?"
"No…but I think I can get the message across that you're not going to beat me down like you have everyone else here."
"Heh…we'll see about that."
He took a few long strides towards her, expecting her to back up and frowning when she didn't. Raine smirked. There may not have been a way out for her here, but gods she was going to have fun winding these bastards up. It was the least she could do for her race, she thought, catching the sunken eyes of the woman across the way.
The guard suddenly took the opportunity to strike as his target drew her attention away from him for a second, and he wrapped a large hand around her throat, using the grip to force her down onto the bed and using his weight to pin her there.
"You're new here, girl," he muttered through gritted teeth "but it's no excuse…an animal like you should know its place instantly. Now since it hasn't sunk in yet, let me lay it out for you.
"It doesn't matter what you did, or who you were before you got here. I don't care what your name was, 'cos now you're #1017, you're job….if you had one, is irrelevant and your personality will be broken and reset into what we want it to be within a few weeks."
He pushed himself up and off her, standing by the side of the cot where she now lay "You're just an animal here…get used to it."
She glared, starting to rise from the bed.
"Nuh-uh. Behave now. Night night."
With a harsh grin, he raised the baton over his head, swinging it downwards towards her head.
Raine heard the crack as the truncheon slammed into her skull, felt bone crack under the blow and blood run, felt the pain rushing through her system.
As her vision greyed sadistic elation faded, replaced with a misery that could consume.
--
Bright light snapped into existence, bleaching grey walls of colour and Raine groaned, turning, wincing at the headache that was fogging her mind. Too bad it wasn't her senses that were being dulled. In fact, the splitting pain in her head only seemed to make light and sound that much more unbearable.
"Up! All of you get up and out!"
Raine cracked an eye open, instantly regretting it as unnatural light flooded in, making it snap shut again. Cautiously, she tried again, finding that the light wasn't so oppressive this time and that she could focus on the grey clad figures filing out of their cells, movements stilted and robotic.
One of them, who moved with a slight fluidity, stood outside her cell, calling to her quietly.
"Hey, get up."
The professor groaned quietly, a hand moving up to cradle the epicentre of the headache, her fingers running into blood crusted hair.
"If you don't want to get into trouble, get up."
She slowly pushed herself up from the hard mattress, mind slowly gathering together memories of last night.
'Oh Gods, I've made this ten times worse for myself…'
"Look, I can't wait for you much longer."
Raine finally looked up to the owner of the voice. She was younger than Raine, perhaps only by a few years or so, slim and pretty. It seemed that she hadn't had any less of a hard time here, though, for her face was scarred along her cheeks, some of them being relatively recent injuries.
Sliding off the bed, the teacher staggered to the door, giving it a gentle push. To her surprise it swung open easily and the half-elf waiting by the bars trotted over to her, laying a steadying hand on her shoulder.
"I'm #0998. Also known as Siofra to everyone here." She whispered "And you are?"
"Raine." The professor answered through gritted teeth as Siofra started to guide her from the room.
"You caused quite a stir last night."
"I'm not surprised…"
"But…"
"But what?"
"While it gives the girls who've been here a long time hope to see someone who's willing to stand up to the guards…well, they tend to get crushed pretty quickly."
"Is that advice to settle down and behave?"
"Yes. For your sake."
Raine shook her head, grimacing at the wave of nausea it caused. "I'm not backing down just to satisfy these…." She hesitated, as if unsure about her word choice "…people."
"Hmph. That's what everyone with half a gram of backbone says when they get here."
"Maybe so, but I'm not just anyone."
Siofra remained silent as she steered Raine through the door at the end of the room and down a narrow corridor, into a mess hall where all the female half-elves had to congregate to eat.
Raine gasped.
There were hundreds of them. The hall was completely packed out with half-elven females, from eight year old girls to elderly woman who hunched over in the corner, worn down by age and ill-treatment.
They swarmed in all directions, some lining up quietly to get their meals, others jostling to get to friends and relatives, fighting against a sea of other women and girls who were all trying to do the same thing.
Raine had had a feeling that there would be a good amount of half-elves here, considering the amount that had been taken from Exire alone…but she hadn't imagined there were so many people like her in the world, so many of half blood. And this was just the females.
If there were as many on the male side of the facility, there could be well over 2000 half-elves here.
"Amazing isn't?" Siofra was speaking "I didn't realise there were so many of us until I got here, either….this isn't even the entire population. There could be hundreds more in the world, hiding out there somewhere."
"Yes…I imagine there are. It is not possible for every Desian and every Renegade to have been wiped out or captured…and they made up a good part of the race."
"Renegades?"
Raine smiled and shook her head, wishing she hadn't when that nausea returned.
"Just an organisation. They don't exist anymore anyway."
"Right…"
"I didn't think there were this many women in the corridor we're 'housed' in."
"There aren't." Siofra pulled Raine to the side, into a queue for what was presumably breakfast "Our section is for women aged 21 to 35, chronologically and I know that there are at least eight or nine more rooms that hold that category."
"How many in each room?"
"Twenty, twenty-five. Most of us have to share a cell too…you're quite lucky to have one to yourself. For now, anyway."
"Hmmm." The professor stared around the room, taking in the sight of so many people crowded into this small area. Siofra led her along the queue silently, apparently understanding how Raine needed to take this in.
She wasn't aware how long she was staring out at the moving mass of half-elves, but she found her sleeve being tugged and she was presented with a bowl filled with…well, Raine wasn't one to use such a term but…crap, basically. At the very best, it was very thick, lumpy and cold gruel which looked like it could clog up the arteries like tar.
"Gross, huh? And yeah, we have to eat it; it's all we've got for the next twelve hours."
Siofra grimaced at her before flinching her head towards the far side of the room, beckoning Raine to follow.
She did, following the unruly fuchsia pink hair that Siofra sported, the easiest thing to see in a crowd of grey uniforms and greasy, dull heads.
Pushing her way through a group of women that had decided to stand around pointlessly, she saw Siofra chatting to a couple of women and girls.
"Hey, Raine! Get over here."
Muttering an apology to the group she had just squeezed through she joined the pink-haired girl.
"These are my friends," she announced proudly "I'll let them introduce themselves. I can't be bothered, there are too many…I'm just so popular, you know?"
The young woman rolled her eyes exaggeratedly at Raine, motioning for her friends to move up and make space for the new arrival.
"Everyone, this is Raine."
Greetings were murmured as a few heads turned to look at her, nods being sent in her direction which she returned in turn, feeling herself relax around these people. Everyone here was in the same position, was the same as her and even if they had only been gathered to be slaves, she was sure that they could be roused into being something more.
With a smile starting to tug at her lips, Raine lifted a spoonful of gruel to her mouth, thinking that maybe this place wouldn't be as bad as she thought.
--
Itwasn't as bad as she thought. It was worse. Shortly after Siofra had introduced her to her friends, a bell had rang and Raine had watched with growing anxiety as every half-elf in the room had fallen silent and jumped to their feet, standing to attention in long, organised rows.
Guards had filed in, a party of near two hundred, and without a whisper of argument, the captives had marched out, splitting off into different directions.
Raine, of course, hadn't known what she was supposed to do or where to go and had merely jumped behind Siofra, feeling an instinct to cling to something even vaguely familiar sink in. She had followed Siofra out of the room but had been grabbed by one the guards on the door and held behind, watching as the pink haired woman disappeared down the corridor, a pair of remorseful violet staring at her as she walked away.
Raine had been taken to a small room filled with desks and chairs and ordered to sit the easiest exam she had done since she was about sixteen.
Now, she was waiting in an even smaller room, sitting on a wooden bench, though she wasn't quite sure what she was waiting for.
It was pretty much all she done since getting here though, wasn't it? Waiting in various small rooms, not knowing what was going to happen next.
She could hear voices approaching though, male, low, the words they were speaking muffled by the walls of the room.
Eventually, the door to the cupboard-like room was opened and a pair of soldiers shuffled inside.
"Congratulations #1017. Seems that you've got one of the best job assignments in this place."
"I'm thrilled." Raine replied, not bothering to look at the two men.
"Humph. Well, anyway, you're going up to the lab."
They walked to her side, flanking her and without a word, Raine stood and walked from the room, following the two men that walked slightly ahead of her now.
Blank, grey walls blended into each other as she walked to her destination, broken only by white doors or dark corridors heading off elsewhere, until they finally reached an elevator.
She was shoved inside, the doors pulled shut on her and then sent up on her own.
Raine glanced around the new room as it came into sight above her head. Small, grey…now didn't this seem familiar? Right down to the pair of double doors embedded in the wall facing the elevators gates. Cautiously, she pulled the gates aside, stepping out onto cold concrete.
There were no cameras in here, as there were in other rooms, no doubt hooked up to a projector somewhere and the only sounds reaching her ears were those of her guards voices.
With no other alternative, Raine stepped towards the double doors, grabbing a silvered handle and pulling one open before stepping inside.
It was white. Glass and metal. Clinical. Clean. A lab.
She had been greeted with a glass wall, chrome and glass door set in the middle of the pane for entrance to the rooms beyond.
A long corridor ran straight ahead from the door in front of her, smaller ones branching off to various areas of the labs, sectioning small rooms off.
Work stations were set up in each of the rooms, a handful of half-elves in tattered looking white lab coats leaning over them or standing back and taking down notes.
Raine pulled the door open, stepping through to the main corridor, feeling conspicuous in the pristine white surroundings.
Sounds of machines whirred around the hall, voices carrying, the smell of chlorine hanging faintly in the air.
The sound of a fist rapping on glass snatched her attention and Raine turned to the noise. A half-elf inside on of the booths was stepping out cautiously, beckoning her.
"You're new to the labs, right?"
Raine nodded.
"Follow the main corridor right to the end and go straight in. They've just got a new load of scientists in and you reallydon't want to be late for the briefing." He pulled away to walk back into his cubicle, his colleagues watching him and the newcomer.
"Oh," he added as an after thought "Don't tell them I told you where to go…they don't like us talking when we should be working."
With that, he pulled himself fully back into the room, the glass door closing with a brush of plastic on plastic and Raine nodded to him again, in thanks, before walking down the rest of the corridor.
The room she was heading for wasn't all that far away, as it turned out, and it seemed this outer area was probably lower level research.
Raine pushed through the doors into the lab.
"Ah, I late arrival, I see."
The voice greeted her instantly, drawing attention to her tardiness as the group turned to look at her.
"No matter, you haven't missed the main event. Join the back of the group and listen up.
"Now, as I was saying, you will all be stationed doing different jobs in this lab, some of you doing research, some of you doing practical development, testing or manufacture of items for your project. Ultimately, we're all working together on the same thing, just doing different bits.
What will happen now is I will call your number and you will go to the assigned area I tell you to, where you will meet your team for the project."
A murmur ran around the small group of half-elves gathered in front of the speaker, anxious at the idea of being split up.
"#1010 – manufacture, down to the left
#1012 – development of techniques
#1009 – testing of techniques
#1017…"
Raine felt her head jerk up at the number, hating that she responded to the number already.
The speaker had fallen silent.
"Where is #1017?"
She pushed through the others that were standing in front of her.
"Oh my dear, I'm quite impressed…"
'Dear? What on earth is doing being…he's a half-elf?!'
The speaker, she found, was a middle aged man, his long dark haired tied back into a braid, pointed ears protruding from tufts of hair which tried to cover them.
"You're to work on the highest level of research. Actually, you're the second one today…I wonder if you know the young man we've just sent up."
"Why do you think that?"
He smiled kindly "You'll see. Everyone, get to your areas quickly before the guards get up here. You," he looked at Raine "Miss…?"
"Sage. Raine Sage."
"Come with me Miss Sage."
He trotted off further up the walkway quickly, towards a staircase.
"What project is this exactly?"
"…we've never been given a specific project as such. Or at least, we've never been told what our overall goal is."
"So how do you work this project?"
"They give us specific areas to concentrate on. I suppose when we reach the overall objective we'll find out."
"So you just blindly follow orders? They could be making us do anything!"
"There isn't much of a choice in case you haven't realised…not if you want to live, anyway. A few of us have found out in the past, what this ultimate goal was, and refused to work towards it.
They were tortured and killed a few days after."
"Surely that's a sign that we shouldn't be doing it then? That we should resist."
"Perhaps. However, many are too scared to do that and besides…there is a good percentage of the half-elf population working here. If we all resist, most of our race gets wiped out."
"As long as there are humans and elves who'll interbreed there will always be half-elves."
"True, but do we really want to rely on our oppressors to continue our race? None of them want anything to do with us…all the elves care about is hiding away in their forest and keeping themselves pure and as for the humans…well, they all hate us."
"Most," Raine corrected, casting her thoughts back to her friends, the last time she saw everyone together… "Most hate us."
"You know any humans who don't?"
"Yes, I do."
"…then you are very fortunate …may I ask how many?"
"…seven."
"Considering most human attitudes, that's a fair number. They're…friends of yours?"
Raine nodded.
"Hmm. You're very fortunate indeed."
"…yes, I suppose so."
"I hope I haven't spawned any doubts there."
"What? No, no…I was just thinking about…them."
'Or rather HIM'
"I see. Miss Sage, I don't mean to be the voice of doom but don't."
"Thinking about my friends may be the only thing to keep me going in here."
"Most of the prisoners find that thinking about friends they'll never see again cripples them."
"I imagine it would."
"You're not the type to give in, I see. That's good; it'll serve you well here."
The half-elf pulled himself up the last few steps of the towering staircase, Raine right behind him as he walked to another pair of double doors. A small mana panel set in the wall glowed softly as he approached and he lay his palm on it before tapping in a number.
"This is the lab that you'll work in. In the morning you'll all come in together so don't worry about getting a code etc. It'll all be unlocked for you before you get here each morning."
Hydraulics hissed behind the doors, metal clicking and rattling as metal bolts were drawn back.
"Go on."
With an uncertain look at the man, Raine stepped forward, placing her hand on the cool metal of the door and giving it a heavy push. It grated against the floor, moving inwards slowly and she only managed to push it open wide enough to slip inside. As soon as she was in she let go, watching as it ominously swung shut before she turned to look at the lab.
Half-elves dressed in white coats strode about the lab in every direction carrying clip boards, others hunched over desks and scribbling frantically, others checking over machinery and calculations. It hummed with life and activity, yet there was an overshadowing feeling of fear and darkness. It was etched onto the faces of those who scurried past her, barely noticing her existence.
The door behind her hissed open and closed again and she found the man from before joining her.
"Come along now, meet the team and we'll get you into your lab."
He led her through a maze of machinery, weaving through people who crowded the lab, into a room at the back where a group of people were standing.
"oh…our newest member…I'll let you meet her before we continue. Wouldn't want…" the woman speaking glanced down at her notes "#1017 to feel left out now, would we?"
The group turned around to face her, and Raine straightened her back under the scrutiny, raising her head as…
"Raine!"
The voice was male; coming from the front of the group and so familiar and then Genis was pushing his way through the other half-elves and running to meet her.
"Genis…you're safe!"
He kept running until her almost collided with her, stopping just in front of her.
"Yeah, I'm fine…are you ok?"
She nodded.
"Cool…uhh…I think we have to…" he hitched a thumb in the direction of the watching group.
"We'll be showing you to your stations now anyway…"#1017 and #1018, you two come with me."
Genis trotted after the woman, beckoning for Raine to follow.
"Now you two will be researching the relationship between mana signatures and genetic variation among…"
Raine's thoughts wandered as she walked by her brother's side, her eyes travelling over towering machines and computers, soft lights flickering as they carried out their tasks. The area of the room they were heading to was quiet, confined.
A large machine stood near the back wall as they approached a workstation, its cables leading to a tank hidden inside the wall. A small glass window was set into the wall, blue and lavender light spilling from it, colouring the white walls of the room.
Raine frowned. Something about that light was so familiar.
"So, I'll let you get started."
The woman who had been explaining…something, turned and walked away, leaving Raine and Genis to stand alone together in the lab, clueless.
Genis watched until she was out of sight before throwing himself at Raine, his arms wrapping around her in an overzealous hug.
Smiling, she returned the embrace, appreciating the love of her brother. The attention of someone who was familiar in this place of fear and slavery.
Ok, so I hope it was ok. Actually, I hope it was great. As always, please review. Next chapter should be up within a couple of weeks.