Warning: mentions sensitive words/topics that may be triggering.

MICHAEL

I wake up to a burning throat and a bloody mouth, my head throbbing violently and my entire body aching. I don't think I should have been surprised, considering the effects of the injection are due to begin just about now, but I am anyway. I'm not used to waking up in pain.

My wrists and ankles are still pinned to the metal table from the night before, my ears flicking sensitively at every small sound. The moment my eyes open and the bright lighting filters through my eyelashes, I begin to choke. Blood has filled my mouth to the point where it has nearly blocked off my throat, and no oxygen is able to get through to my lungs. I cough feverishly, blood spitting from my lips as I struggle to get oxygen to my weak lungs. It proves to be difficult due to the fact that the blood has hardened at some areas in my mouth, and won't budge no matter how severely I cough. My lungs begin to burn and tears prick at the corners of my eyes, my arms and legs pulling against the restraints.

I want to scream, but there seems to be no one around to hear it. The facility is dangerously quiet, and I start to wonder if they left me here for dead.

I hear the steel door twist open in the corner of the room and I turn my head rapidly to watch someone in a white coat step calmly inside, my eyes panicked and frightened. My chest shudders, not enough oxygen being delivered to satisfy the blood cells churning in my veins. The man's eyes fall on me, and I recognize the brown irises as Sam's. He smiles when he sees me, immediately rushing over and grabbing his clipboard from the corner of the room. Draven enters through the room as well, files of papers tucked under one arm as he arrives. Sam walks over to me, uncapping a pen and poising it above the clipboard, blinking down at me from behind his glasses.

"Okay, so let's see how he reacted." Sam says, mostly to himself as he sets down the clipboard, peering down at my horrified face. His fingers press against my jaw, forcing my mouth open as he stares at the blood that has filled inside. He turns my face, allowing a bit of the blood to spill from my mouth to the cool metal table. Then he pulls out a flashlight, shining it down into my eyes.

"Don't blink." He orders, and I try my very hardest not to, well aware of the punishment. The intense light causes my eyes to water, but after a moment Sam flicks it off, scribbling down something on the clipboard.

"Bleeding from mouth and ears. Pupils are dilated." Sam reports, and then turns his beady eyes towards me. "Anything else hurt?"

I cough, struggling to talk around the blood in my throat.

"Well? Speak up."

"M--My head. My arms. Ev--Everything." I stammer out, scrunching my eyes shut as I listen to Sam's pen scrawl against the paper.

"Everything." Sam chuckles lightly. "Okay." I watch him turn around, looking back at Draven. "When do we test on him again?"

"In a few hours. We need the bleeding to cease for him to be healthy enough to survive another experiment. We'll take him back to his cage in a minute. Thank you, Sam." Draven answers, his voice rough.

I barely register Sam picking up his clipboard and leaving the room, the steel door sliding open and closing with a massive slam, rattling the table I am lying on. I have managed to spit out the majority of the blood from my mouth to where I can breathe somewhat properly again, although I find myself preferring when I couldn't. It felt a bit like a way out, even though it's not a healthy one.

I can barely remember what it was like living in the woods, before I met Luke. I remember it being free. I remember loving it. I don't know if I ever questioned why we stayed hidden behind the trees, but I don't know if I would have believed my parents if they told me. A place like this is hard to grasp on, with the steely faces of the detectives and the rough treatment, throwing me around like a worthless penny.

I never believed that being a hybrid was a bad thing, because that is how I grew up. My parents taught me to believe that my ears and tail were not an oddity or an aberration, but just a few added features that other people don't have. They never bothered me, and neither did my shy personality. It was just me, and I was unaware that there was anything wrong with that. I guess now I'm just suffering the consequences.

Draven crouches down next to the table, analyzing me with a puzzling expression. His eyes trail down to my pale wrists, which have been marked with a rim of blistering red from the restraints. He runs a calloused finger over the skin, making me want to recoil away from him.

"You like resisting, don't you?" He says, more of a statement than a question. I shut my eyes, my eyelashes brushing the top of my cheekbones. I don't want to answer, don't want to force my swollen tongue to talk to this man who has done nothing but paint bruises on my skin, like my skin is just a canvas for his bleeding paintings.

"Listen. The less you resist, the easier this will be, and the less painful it will be." Draven says, twirling his glasses around his fingers. I hardly listen to him, my mind melting into a puddle of dazed thoughts and emotions. My heart leaps in my chest, struggling to free itself from behind my ribcage, wanting nothing but to be freed into the night. I clench my jaw, swiping my tongue over my lips in an attempt to wet the cracked skin.

"Besides, it isn't as though you aren't helping people by doing this." Draven says as he sits up, turning his back to me as he fiddles with the equipment beside the table. "Maybe we'll find a cure to some incurable disease using one of the injections tested on you."

I don't answer, staring up at the blank ceiling. I pull my wrists weakly against the metal restraints, my muscles too tired to put forth much effort. It's a useless one anyway, since it is impossible to escape them. I have only been here for a few days, but I am already exhausted from staying here. I am tired of the blank walls and the expressionless faces of the scientists, the chains and the syringes and the unconscious bodies. I'm tired of it all, but I am unable to free myself from it.

"I mean, I doubt that, since we haven't been able to find a cure to anything in years, but whatever." Draven adds as an afterthought. Then he lets out a sigh. "My point is, there is no use resisting. This is your new home. There is no handsome blonde boy to come save you anymore, okay? Just get that through your head and you'll be fine."

I can't decipher if he is trying to be encouraging or sarcastic, but I don't care enough to find out. I continue to lie here, pinned to this hard table, and I feel absolutely helpless. There isn't anything I can do to help myself in this situation, strapped to this table with needles piercing my skin. I hate feeling like this, like there is nothing I can do in my own willpower to weave myself through this dangerous building. I am at a complete loss of what to do.

Draven reaches over and does something to the chains, causing them to go limp against my welting skin. They part and fall to the sides of my wrists and ankles, allowing me to curl my limbs closer to my chest, rubbing my fingers over the blisters created over my skin. My heart skips a beat in relief as I fold myself together, relishing in the ability to move again.

"Get up." He demands, prodding at my sides painfully. I quickly unravel myself from the ball I had curled into, sliding over the edge of the table. The moment my feet hit the ground, my legs collapse from under me, and I fall helplessly to the ground. My muscles are weak, much too weak to support my weight from having been restrained for so long.

"Oh, for fuck's sake." Draven grumbles, gripping the collar of the hospital gown and dragging me across the floor to the door. I struggle to regain my footing, but I have trouble even moving my legs. My limbs are completely limp, my head bowed in defeat with my ears pressed against the top of my head as Draven drags me through the hallway, scientists and detectives glancing down at me as they pass. They're faces are guarded, no expression making to their facial features. They hardly acknowledge the blood staining the corners of my lips and ears from where they had bled, my eyes red rimmed from tears that had stung my cheeks.

Draven pushes open a door at the end of the hallway, revealing the familiar thin room lined with cages. I squeeze my eyes closed as he continues to pull me to the crate, pushing me in with a kick through the gap of the metal. I do my best to pull my tired body into the enclosure, metal scraping my skin and my tail getting caught in the wires as Draven slams the door shut, firmly clicking the locks.

I start shaking once he walks away, using my last drop of energy to push myself to the back of the cage. I swallow dryly, catching my breath as I stare at the black bars of the crate. His words fly through my head. He's right, after all-- there is no way Luke can save me now, locked under restraints inside a hidden facility in the middle of nowhere.

"Um--Excuse me?" A soft but firm voice speaks from the right of me, revealing the girl who was unconscious yesterday. Her eyes are now open and staring at me through the black bars of her cage, black ears standing upright on her head. She looks anxious, her pale eyes flitting over my bruised skin and my shaking tail. She is wearing a gown identical to mine, falling over her slim figure limply. She looks weak. Tired. But hell, aren't we all?

I part my lips to answer her, but I'm not sure what to say. The air is silent and clean, and I don't want to ruin it with my stuttering voice. The girl senses my vulnerability and pulls back a little, crossing her legs and playing with her thin tail, black as night, in her lap. She looks shy, which is common for cat hybrids, so I'm not surprised when she talks timidly to me.

"You are Michael, right?" she asks. She looks at me again, at my bright hair and my pale skin instead of making eye contact. Her eyes are insipid, a blue in the very lightest color. "Or, um. Hybrid 303?" She lifts a finger to point to the nametag at the front of my cage. I clear my throat quietly, looking away from the girl and tucking my knees up to my chest, resting my chin on them.

"Yes. That's me." I run my hand through my hair, which is slowly fading into a paler red each day. My hand catches against the beginning curve of one of my cat ears, and I feel the soft fur under my fingertips, crusted with the remains of dried blood from the experiment. My nose wrinkles in disgust, no longer liking how the fur feels under my touch. It feels like a mistake now.

"I'm Lila." The girl tells me, her voice quiet in the deathly silent room. None of the other hybrids locked up in the cages utter a sound. "They call me Hybrid 288, though." I notice that she speaks normally, a lot like I do. From the few hybrids I have managed to hear speak from trapped inside their cages, it seems like they don't know how to speak very well. They stutter on every syllable and can't pronounce a lot of their words correctly. It makes me wonder if they grew up here and never learned human communication outside of this facility.

My heart pangs. If they haven't been able to get out in the long time they have been here, how can I?

"You know, you're kind of famous around here." Lila comments gently, peeking at me from behind her long eyelashes. "Well, infamous with the detectives, but famous with us hybrids."

"Why?" I ask, my voice a bit dull. The injections and needles and the blinding light from the testing room have tired me out, weakening every muscle in my body to where it takes a great amount of effort to simply move.

"The detectives aren't so crazy about you because of how you lived and escaped them before you ended up here. But, you kind of gave us hope. Well, at least you gave me hope. It was uplifting to hear that there was some hybrid out there who was living with humans, like how we have always wanted to." Lila says, licking her lips as she drops her tail into her lap and flicks it to the side. She exhales lightly, running a finger over the top of the crate.

"You've always wanted to live with humans?"

"I've always wanted to be accepted, and you obviously were if you lived with them." She says, looking at me silently before returning her gaze to her hands. I don't bother speaking much, and we both let silence fill the air.

I play with my fingers, thinking through her words carefully. It appears that she never lived with humans, which isn't surprising considering I wasn't supposed to in the first place. I was supposed to stay hidden in the woods with the birds and the squirrels. I'm just fortunate that it was Luke who found me, not some ignorant human who would call the police immediately.

I bite my lip, looking around at my surroundings-- trapped inside a cage in a facility, scars cut into my skin. I suppose it doesn't matter now.

"What was it like?" Lila's curious voice fills the tension as I glance over at her. Her eyes are wide with curiosity, staring at me with what can only be called admiration at my ability to bond with humans that lack a tail. When I don't answer immediately, she backtracks. "I don't mean to intrude or anything, I was just wondering. I heard that one of them fought to keep you and stuff, and--I don't know."

"It was nice." I say quickly, my voice tender. "Luke was nice."

"Luke." Lila repeats, a blush coating her cheeks. "Was he your--?

"Boyfriend." I finish for her, my chest throbbing a bit. "He was amazing. He did everything he could to keep me safe, but...this was bound to happen, I--I guess. It was inevitable." I avoid her gaze, staring back down at my hands and pressing on my knuckles, digging into the skin until a faint bruise begins to form. My eyes begin to burn and I quickly blink, not wanting any tears to fall on my cheeks, like a glittering diamond for everyone to see.

"I'm sorry." Lila says genuinely, but I don't have the energy to reply. She sees how vulnerable I am, my throat closing up and my eyes swelling with tears, so she turns away, curling up to rest and giving me as much privacy as possible in this claustrophobic area.

I don't understand why I am getting so worked up now, when I haven't cried much in my time here at the facility so far. Something about the depressing state of all the mistreated hybrids here, along with the painful aching of my bones and the cuts in my skin from all the needles, combined with the fact that I am so utterly alone in this cramped room, is enough for me to break down.

I can practically feel the distance between us pulsing under my skin, too vast and too thick to ignore. I miss his light hair and his melodic voice more than I should, more than what might be considered healthy. I blink back a few more tears, resting my head on the hard surface of the metal cage. Judging by my heavy chest and my drooping eyes, I feel like the distance might kill me before the injections do.

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A/N oh god this needed to be updated. i'm sorry for the waaait

but anyways. thanks so much for 60k. 60k. holy fucking fuck. you guys are so rad

i don't have much news to update you with except for the depressing fact that my spring break is coming to a close and i can already feel the anxiety that accommodates school creeping back into my bones

please vote and comment and all that fun stuff and i'll try and reply without being too awkward! (a very difficult task). i love you guys so much and i hope your thursday is fucking great :)) i'll see you in the next update byE