Inhaling sharply, I watched as children of all ages ran past me frantically. They were escaping from this place, a place of constant horror, hurt, and fear.

I knew that the people attempting to escape were like me. They were freaks born and raised in this horrible place.

Some looked to be the results of attempted DNA-crossing experiments, but some looked almost normal. None of them were. They were all the products of some adult's sick, twisted ideas.

Suddenly, out of the stampede of people, a girl with reddish-brown hair and shiny orange eyes came to a halt in front of me. She looked at me sorrowfully. If I wasn't trapped in a metal cage and chained to the bottom of said cage, I would have hugged her. She was going to free me, after all. She wouldn't just leave me trapped here in this place, right?

She slipped her right hand between the bars of the cage and gently caressed my face. Unshed tears glistened in her eyes.

"I'm so sorry..." She whispered.

I watched in agony and heartbreak as she retracted her hand and fled with the rest of the escapees. Tears slid down my cheeks, and loud, broken screams filled the air as I cried.

Should I have expected anything else, though? I was a freak among freaks. A mutant freak among mutant freaks, actually. No one would ever care about me. Was I really surprised that I had been left to rot in this hellhole?

No. Not in the slightest.

~X~

Those events had happened around six years ago, or that's how long I think it's been, anyways. It's very hard to keep track of the time when you spend most of your day either sitting in a cage or being forced into a lab where they do god-knows-what to you.

It had also been the largest escape from The Facility in history. The scientists and owners of The Facility had not been pleased in the slightest.

They were frustrated, and they decided that the few of us left were the ones responsible for their misery and frustration. They took it out on us in a multitude of experiments and tests.

I seemed to be a favorite test subject. They always seemed to choose to experiment on me. I blamed it on the fact that one of the leaders escape was very close to me. It was that, or they just enjoyed using me for their sick procedures and trials. I hated it.

I was leaning against the back of my cage lazily. I glanced around at the other eight children around me. They were like me. They were mutants. Perfection among imperfection. Humanity's better.

"Subject number four," a flat, emotionless voice called.

Looking briefly into the blue eyes of the silver-haired girl beside me, I pushed myself up and waited for the scientist to unlock the cage. Once the door was open, I allowed the person to slip a cold metal band onto my right wrist. It acted like a leash, forcing me to follow the scientist.

Casting my eyes to the ground, I walked out of the cage filled room towards the lab of untold horrors.