Omega 7, heat response trial forty-three.
I'm on the table. The metal bites cold against my spine through the paper gown. Leather restraints buckled too tight. He likes the marks. He documents the bruising patterns.Subject shows characteristic resistance despite awareness of futility.My ankles strapped, spread apart, cold air against my inner thighs where the gown's ridden up so they can access my slick. The overhead light positioned so I can't look anywhere except into its center.
The needle slides in. Synthetic heat compounds enter my bloodstream and burn. Liquid fire races through my veins. My belly cramps before the needle's even out, muscles clenching around nothing, and slick floods out of me in a rush I can't control.
Let's see how your body responds this time. I've adjusted the compound ratio. The onset should be faster.
It's always faster than I'm ready for. The heat slams into me. Every nerve firing at once, screaming for touch, for something to ease the desperate hollow ache. I'm empty. I'm so empty it feels like dying. I know what I need and it's not here. It's never here. The knowing is its own kind of torture.
The room shifts. I'm in a vehicle now. Floor vibrating. Engine through my bones. Blindfold tied tight. Hands zip-tied behind my back, shoulders screaming from the angle. The gag tastes of bile and copper.
Someone’s sobbing next to me. Another omega I’ll never meet. Wallace keeps us separate.
I want to reach for her but I can’t with my bound hands and the heat is still burning through me and the emptiness is a clawing demand that drowns out everything else.
Another shift. Another table. Newer restraints. Same cold metal. Same surgical lights burning into my retinas. Same antiseptic smell over something organic underneath, the smell of fear and suffering that no amount of cleaning can fully erase.
The voice is different here. Or maybe the same voice. Maybe all the voices have blurred together over the years into one endless drone of clinical observation.
Fascinating. Most subjects show complete psychological breakdown by trial thirty. You just keep going. The resilience is remarkable.
He sounds impressed. Like he's paying me a compliment. Like I should be grateful for my own stubborn refusal to shatter the way he expects. I want to scream at him that it isn't resilience. It isn't strength. It's that dying takes longer than he expected. I've been breaking for years. Slowly. Piece by piece. Trial by trial. One day there won't be anything left of me except the thing they made.
The compounds burn through me again. Another injection. Another trial. I seize with need, cramping around emptiness, desperate for relief that won't come. I arch off the table as far as the restraints allow, every muscle pulled taut, and the sound that comes out of my throat isn't human anymore. The camera’s red light blinks in the corner, recording everything.
“Espie. Espie!” Something taps my cheek, too insistent to ignore.
The room comes back in pieces. Couch under me. Blanket. Aubrey's chest under my cheek. The lamp Sera turned low. The house. The house. I'm in the house.
Ezra's on his knees in front of me. I don't know when he moved. He's just there, on the rug close enough to touch.
Sera's on her feet by her chair. Hands fisted at her sides, eyes flared. Kev and Lex are leaned forward in their chairs, hands on their knees, jaws set. Every one of them is watching me.
The air smells wrong. Burnt sugar laced with copper. Sharp enough to scrape raw on the inhale.
That's me.
I'm broadcasting distress so loud the alphas are flinching from it. I haven't scented this version of myself for a while. Some part of me had hoped never to smell it again.
Aubrey rocks me in his arms. He’s shaking as much as I am. “Espie. Espie, I'm here. Come back. Please come back.”
Just my name and his hands and the words looping over and over. His cedar pours out warm against the burnt sugar coming off me, and somewhere under the slamming of my heart his purr vibrates through me. Low. Steady.Here, here, here.
“Espie. It was a dream. You're awake. You're with us,” Kev’s voice is hoarse.
A dream.
That wasn’t a dream. It was a memory my head plays back at me with the volume on full.
“You’re not there anymore,” Kev says.
“Espie. Please. Tell us. I need to know what just happened to you.” Sera's voice cracks halfway through.
Aubrey brushes his thumb over my cheekbone. “I want to know what that was, too,” he says.
I clench his shirt, because I don’t want to think of it anymore. I want to put it all behind me and lock it in a safe that’s never opened again. “I don’t want to.”
“I know. I know, baby. But you can’t leave it bottled up. And I know that’s exactly what you’re trying to do,” he says.
