*Trigger warnings* kidnapping/ containment, unethical experimentation, dark, torture, brainwashing, conditioning, control.
I come to in a haze of white and metal.
Everything reeks of disinfectant. The lights are too bright—sterile, humming with that awful clinical buzz that vibrates in the teeth. My wrists burn. So do my ankles. Leather straps bite into my skin, and it takes a moment to realize they're holding me down.
I'm strapped to a hospital bed.
No—not a hospital.
A lab.
I know the difference now.
A camera blinks red in the corner. One of those one-way mirrors sits across from me like it's waiting for me to entertain it.
And then the door hisses open.
She walks in like she owns me. White coat. Pale gloves. Clipboard. One of the lead researchers—I've seen her before, in the corners of meetings, whispering things behind my back while pretending I couldn't hear.
"Dorian," she says like it's not my name, just a designation. A case file. "You're awake."
"I'm going to kill you," I croak, throat raw from screaming. "Soon as I get out of these—"
"Highly unlikely." She taps her pen. "Unless you'd like to collapse this facility like you did your room."
I blink. "...What?"
She tilts the clipboard toward me. "The damage you caused exceeded 1.4 million dollars. The bedframe split in half. The ceiling imploded. All metal within a five-meter radius warped. You turned your mattress inside out with nothing but a panic attack."
I don't remember it. Just the roar. The collapse. And—
"Ardere."
My voice breaks.
The scientist ignores it. "Your powers are emotion-based, but not in the vague, sentimental way most people assume. You're not just stronger when you're upset. You are unstable—an uncontained atomic core reacting to emotional trauma."
She leans closer, too calm. Too calculated.
"You are quantum-sensitive. Your mind doesn't just feel things. It reacts at a subatomic level. It pushes reality. Warps matter. Forces localized space-time to bend. When your emotional state becomes volatile, your body becomes the epicenter of a quantum event."
I stare at her.
She continues, like she's explaining a math problem to a child. "In other words: if we hadn't intervened, you would've brought the ceiling down and liquefied everything inside this building."
"Then maybe I should've."
She doesn't flinch. "If it makes you feel better, we've learned a lot."
I lunge against the straps, teeth bared. "You're experimenting on me—"
"Studying," she corrects, almost bored. "So we can help you. We modified your suppressors. Made them smarter. Now, instead of forcibly damping your energy, they reroute your cognitive feedback—train your brain to stay neutral. Sedated. Safe."
"Neutral?" I spit. "You want to make me numb?"
"We want to keep you from collapsing a city block every time someone breaks your heart."
The room goes silent.
I feel the scream clawing at the back of my throat, but it doesn't come. Just the pulse, deep in my skull. Like something inside me is shifting again. Waking up.
The scientist looks pleased.
"Oh. There it is," she whispers. "That spike in your vitals? That's the pattern we saw right before your last surge. Fear and grief, simultaneously. It's fascinating how deep it runs."
"Let me go."
"You'll stay here," she says, backing toward the door, "until you're ready to be in the world without breaking it."
I stared at the wall.
She didn't mind. She walked in like this was her office, not my cell. "It's good to see you awake. The last episode was…" She paused. "Informative."
I hated how cold her voice was. No curiosity. No guilt. Just cataloguing my suffering like data points in a lab report.
"You lost control again," she went on. "Not surprising. Your neural links to the prefrontal cortex are easily overridden by high-emotional stimuli. That's why your powers spike during episodes of grief. Rage. Panic."
"Why are you telling me this?" I croaked. My throat felt like gravel.
She smiled faintly. "Because I want you to understand what you are."
I didn't respond.
"The destruction isn't just tied to your emotions," she continued, crouching slightly to meet my eyes. "It is your emotions. That's what makes you valuable. That's why we kept you alive."
My stomach turned.
She tilted her head. "You're not dangerous when you're calm. You're… manageable. Pathetic, really. But when you're spiraling?" She let out a soft, satisfied exhale. "You tear holes in the world. You're a walking reset button."
I clenched my fists. "I don't want to be this."
"That's the point," she said brightly. "The more you fight it, the worse it gets. The worse it gets, the more power you let out. The more power you let out… the closer we get to figuring out how to contain—or replicate—it."
I wanted to throw something at her. But all I had were my shaking hands and the burn in my chest that hadn't left since Ardere.
"You used me," I whispered. "You knew I was breaking down. You did something to me. Messed with my head."
She stood. "We didn't mess with anything, Dorian. We just… unlocked you. And now that we know the key, we can train you."
Her heels turned toward the door.
"But here's the part I think you'll find… motivating," she added, pausing. "You don't spiral over nothing. No. Your power latches onto grief. And love. Especially her."
My breath caught.
She turned back toward me, savoring it. "Ardere Anderhale is your pressure point. You love her, hate her, need her. You'd burn a city to see her again. That's why we'll keep using her."
I stumbled to my feet. "Don't you touch her."
She smirked. "We don't have to. All we have to do is remind you. Of every time she left. Every time she looked at you like a monster. Every time she swore she'd never love you again."
I surged forward—blinding, white-hot. The floor cracked beneath my feet. My fingertips buzzed like static—like they were being pulled inside out.
The scientist just watched, impressed. "Good," she said. "Let it hurt. That's when you're strongest."
—
The lights in the training chamber are so bright they hum. There's no clock, no window, no way to mark the time anymore. Just smooth metal walls and a mirrored surface that shows me all the ways I've failed to keep her safe.
They said this was training. Said they were going to help me "get a handle on things." But everything in this room is a trigger. Everything in this room is her.
The scientist—Dr. Thorne—is back. Clipped steps. Gloves so white it's blinding. Clipboard. Cold smile. "Let's try something new today."
I'm already shaking before she says anything else. My skin prickles like static. I can feel it—whatever's inside me, whatever they jammed loose or forced awake. It's in my blood now, in my lungs. It's not sleeping anymore.
She lifts a remote and clicks something. A projector casts grainy security footage onto the far wall. It's a looped clip of Ardere. She's pacing a cell. Pacing fast. Hair pulled back. Jacket gone. Her fists clench and unclench like she's keeping herself from breaking the walls down with her bare hands.
She looks like she's panicking.
I stumble back before I even think. "W-Where is that? What did you do to her?"
"She's not here," Thorne says smoothly. "This is old. But it's enough, isn't it?"
I try to stop it. I do. But that thing in me—that pulse—starts up again. The air shivers with heat. My vision fuzzes at the edges. The mirrors tremble.
"We learned a lot from your reaction last time," she says calmly, walking a slow circle around me. "Your love for her? It's like a tether. It gives us precision. Motivation."
"I'm not your experiment."
"You've always been one. You just didn't know."
I lunge at her.
I don't even make it two steps before the collar at my neck flashes. White-hot. Everything in my body locks. I hit the ground hard, breath ragged.
The projection flickers. Now it's her voice. Old footage. A snarl, half fury, half heartbreak: "You asked Riven to screw with my head. You couldn't just let me choose, could you?"
I curl in on myself. "Stop."
"You ruined me, Dorian. Don't you get that? I'll never love you again."
My scream cracks through the room like thunder. The mirrored wall shatters. Shards rain down like lightning, jagged and glinting, and yet she doesn't flinch.
Thorne just watches me burn.
And smiles.
"Good," she says softly, stepping over the glass. "That's the power we need."
I can't move. My hands are bleeding. My throat's raw. But I'm still breathing.
She leans close, voice like poison. "She's your leash now. And every time you break, we get stronger."
I didn't remember how they got me to the white room. I just remember the feeling of the floor beneath me—polished and too clean, like it had never touched blood or grief. I wanted to stain it. I wanted to rip it open like a wound.
The scientist—she didn't tell me her name. Or maybe she did and I just didn't care to keep it. She stood in the corner, clipboard in hand, watching me like I was some exotic species too stupid to understand what a cage was.
"Let's begin," she said.
A screen flickered on. A static blur of white noise before it cleared.
Ardere.
Not her in real time, no—just a video. From a hallway camera. She was walking ahead of her brother and Riven, coat billowing behind her like smoke, fury in her steps, but unmistakably her. My ribs caved in around her name.
"You're going to watch this," the scientist said. "Every time your heart rate spikes—every time your emotions shift toward her—your body's going to respond."
I didn't understand what that meant until the restraints clicked on. The collar around my neck, the metal cuffs on my wrists, the nodes they'd dug under my skin along my spine.
She pressed a button. The first pulse hit.
My back arched. The pain wasn't sharp—it was deep, like every nerve was turning inside out. My powers clawed up my throat, uncontrolled and starving. Light cracked behind my eyes, too much of it, screaming like it had a voice.
And Ardere just walked, unaware. Smirking at something her brother said. I would've given anything to be there. To walk beside her. To feel her elbow knock into mine by accident like she used to.
Another pulse. Harder.
I screamed.
"Do you see what we're doing?" the scientist asked, crouching beside me, her voice soft like a mother's—like she thought this was for my own good. "We're building an instinct. A response. Love doesn't motivate you. Obsession doesn't control you. But pain? Pain teaches."
I couldn't breathe. Her fingers tapped the pulse trigger again. A flash of Ardere's eyes filled the screen—brown, furious, hurt—and I convulsed.
"You'll begin to associate her with this," the scientist whispered. "The ache. The loss. You'll learn not to crave her. You'll learn to obey when she's near."
I sobbed and called her name.
The pulse dropped again.
And the power in my chest reacted—not because I wanted it to. Because it had to.
Because Ardere Anderhale was the switch they had wired into my spine.
At first, Dr. Thorne walked me through the theory. Explained how the emotional centers in my brain were overdeveloped. Said my powers clung to feelings, fed off of them, devoured them like parasites. Joy made light. Rage made fire. And heartbreak?
Heartbreak could turn cities to ash.
They wanted heartbreak.
That's why they kept showing me her.
I wasn't restrained, not physically, but I might as well have been. I didn't know when they sedated me—maybe I never fully woke up. They hooked my brain up to something I couldn't see, lights flickering in my peripheral vision like faulty stars, always pulsing just before it began.
A recording would start. Grainy footage. Ardere in the catacombs, eyes bloodshot, mouth trembling. Her voice cracked from crying. Screaming my name.
"Dorian—Dorian, you lied to me—"
She was sobbing. I reached for the screen every time like an idiot, like I could grab her through it, like it wasn't a loop.
"You made him change me. You used me."
The lights would spike. Something inside me would burn. Not physically—but a slice, a psychic tear through something invisible. The sensors attached to my temples would whir to life. Dr. Thorne's voice would echo behind me like a ghost.
"Yes. That's it. You're perfect like this."
They kept showing me versions of her I had never seen. Ardere afraid. Ardere broken. Ardere hating me. Some real. Some fabricated.
But it didn't matter. My heart couldn't tell the difference.
I tried not to react. I bit my tongue until it bled. I clawed my own forearm to distract myself, to anchor myself, to stay me.
But my powers responded anyway.
The more I suffered, the more they learned.
Then came the worst of it.
They put me in the room with her.
Or someone made to look like her.
She stood there—silent, trembling, the perfect imitation of Ardere Anderhale. Same red hair, same eyes, same clenched fists that looked like they wanted to hit something just so she didn't cry. She wouldn't speak. She didn't have to.
Dr. Thorne only whispered to me:
"You love her. And because of that, she will always be your pain."
That was the command.
Something inside my skull shifted. I could feel the conditioning fusing. Like barbed wire curling around my ribs, anchoring power to memory, memory to feeling, feeling to her.
They bring me back to my room. If you can call it that. More like a cage with carpet. The walls are too clean. Too white. Like they're trying to sterilize what they've done to me.
I sit in the farthest corner, my back against the wall, knees drawn up. I can still smell her. Not her—but the synthetic copy they built to shatter me. I knew it wasn't Ardere, but that didn't stop me from reaching for her. Didn't stop my heart from dragging its corpse forward like some pathetic little marionette on strings. I hated myself for that.
They didn't even have to touch me. They just let me destroy myself.
And now that I'm quiet again—now that I've stopped screaming—they send her in. The woman with the soft voice and the dead eyes. The one who never looks afraid, because she has nothing to lose.
She enters without knocking. Like she owns me. Maybe she does.
"You've stabilized," she says, checking her clipboard. "Good."
I watch her from my corner. "What are you going to use me for?"
She glances up. There's a pause—one of those heavy ones, like she's considering whether I've earned the truth.
"Oh, Dorian." She gives a breathy, almost pitying laugh. "You know the answer."
"Say it." My voice is hollow. "Say it out loud."
She steps closer. "You're going to be the one who brings Ardere Anderhale back to us."
A chill slices down my spine, colder than anything they've pumped into my veins.
"You're going to find her. Hurt her. And when she breaks—you'll be the reason."
"No," I whisper.
"Don't worry," she whispers. "When it's time… your heart will recognize her. And it'll tear itself apart trying to get to her."
She turns for the door. "And when it does… we'll be watching."
****
I think of her name.
That's all it takes.
A whisper of her voice in my mind, a flicker of her face behind my eyes—and my body shatters from the inside out.
My nails split down the middle, crack like dry branches. Skin tears open across my knuckles, my forearms, my ribs. Not from impact. Just… because. Because my cells don't know how to hold themselves together anymore. Because they want to fall apart.
Veins tighten like wire pulled too tight, then ignite—searing bolts of fire racing through me until my jaw locks and my back arches and I scream.
The walls of the room don't even bother absorbing the sound anymore. They know better. I'm not meant to be heard. Just broken.
I collapse to the floor, twitching in the puddle of my own blood and spit. It takes a while before I can breathe again. Before I can remember that I have a mouth. A name.
Her name.
No—
No, don't think it. Don't feel it.
But it's too late.
The second the warmth creeps into my chest—the second I imagine her hands touching mine, or her eyes burning like they always did when she was about to call me out on my shit—my spine convulses and the light behind my eyelids flares white-hot.
They're turning me into a bomb.
And she's the fuse.
I curl onto my side, pressing my forehead to the cold metal of the floor.
They did this on purpose.
I thought the pain was a punishment at first. A punishment for not cooperating. For screaming too loud or breaking too soon.
But it's not.
It's training.
They're carving a scar so deep between me and her that even my love for her will become a weapon. They want me to crave her and fear her in the same breath. To see her as the soft edge of a knife they can use to gut me open every time I disobey.
Every time I resist.
She's not even here. And still, they own me.
I can't even think about Ardere without falling apart.
And someday—
God help me—
They're going to send me to find her.
I try to think of her smile.
Just her smile.
Not her voice. Not her skin. Not the way she used to lean into me when she was half-asleep. Just her smile.
But even that—
A searing pressure detonates behind my eyes. My hands curl without meaning to, nails bending until they snap and peel like thin shells of bone. Skin splits along my forearms, slow and soundless, like paper tearing under water.
I choke down the scream. That's what they want.
They want it to hurt.
They want to teach me.
"Good," a voice purrs from the dark corner of the room. One of them. Maybe her. Maybe another. I don't know anymore. I keep my eyes shut tight.
Because if I look, I might see her.
Not her—not Ardere. The other one. The mimic. The ghost they keep parading in front of me like a dog treat I'm supposed to earn.
"She's the key, Dorian," the voice says. "Your body knows it. Your mind will catch up soon."
I shake my head. "You can't make me hate her."
Another wave of heat tears through my spine. My knees hit the floor. Hard. I bite down on my tongue so I don't scream her name.
"Who said anything about hate?" The voice gets closer. A hand slides into my hair. "We're conditioning you. Not corrupting you. You'll still love her. That's the beauty of it."
I gasp in pain as my veins light up like wires fed too much voltage.
"That's the point, darling," she whispers. "You'll love her so much that just thinking about her will tear you apart. Which is exactly what we'll need you to do when the time comes."
I don't answer. I can't.
Blood drips down my chin, maybe from my nose, maybe from my tongue. My hands tremble against the floor. Every cell inside me is screaming, but I keep clawing for something—anything—real. Something that isn't built by them.
I try to remember the last time she touched my face. How soft her thumb was against my jaw. How she smiled like I was something she didn't want to run from.
Just that.
Please.
But it hurts. God, it hurts.
They wheel her in like it's nothing.
No announcement. No warning.
Just the creak of that metal door splitting my breath in half.
She steps in like Ardere would.
Moves like her.
Stares at me with those steady, molten-glass eyes like she always used to when she wanted me to come back from wherever I'd disappeared inside myself.
But I know it's not her.
I know it's not her.
And still—
my body shatters.
My nails splinter, curling under with a grotesque crack. My jaw locks up so violently I think my teeth are going to break off in pieces. My back arches without permission, ribs compressing like the weight of her name alone is suffocating me.
"You're doing well," one of them murmurs behind the glass, as if I can't hear them through the intercom.
"As expected. Emotional trigger: highly effective."
I try to fight it. I try.
I clench my eyes shut. Think of her laugh—God, her laugh. I think of her singing off-key in the truck at 1 a.m., slurping noodles she said she hated five minutes before. Her curls in the wind, her fingers tangling in mine like the world wasn't burning around us.
But even those thoughts—
Even the good ones—
Burn.
Veins light up like molten wire beneath my skin. My chest concaves and splits open with invisible claws. I scream through my teeth, biting down so hard blood floods my mouth.
She—it—walks closer.
I throw myself back against the wall like it'll do anything. My wrists tear against the restraints, bruises already yellowing to green. But I can't stop.
Every muscle wants to obliterate, to surge with power I don't even understand yet. I'm a second away from turning this entire room into ash.
Not because I hate her.
Because I don't.
Because my body has been rigged like a landmine.
And she's the trigger.
The mimic tilts her head. "Dorian?" Her voice is soft. Exactly like Ardere's.
Too perfect.
I gag.
"End session," someone says.
"No," replies another voice—calm, cold, scientific. "He's stabilizing. Let it escalate."
Let it escalate.
They want to see what happens when I go nuclear.
They want to see if love can kill faster than rage.
I try to speak. Try to say her name without choking on it.
But my throat is magma and my mind is fracturing and all I can think is—
What if the next time it's really her?
What if they put her in front of me, and I don't know until it's too late?
What if I lose control—
and she never gets a chance to run?
"Dorian," the mimic says softly. "It's okay. I'm here."
She moves toward me, arms out like a fucking salvation. Like she's the answer to every damn thing I've lost.
I flinch back. Clench my fists. I will not break.
But she touches me.
Hand against my chest—just a brush—and everything inside me ignites.
The power inside me detonates.
And then I'm gone.
There's screaming. Metal twisting. The world bleeds red and white and black as my mind shatters down the seams. She's on the ground in seconds, her neck at a brutal angle, and I'm on top of her. Not her—it—the mimic. My hands are already slick and shaking. Something inside me is snarling. Laughing. Rejoicing.
No one stops me.
Not the guards. Not the scientists. Not the man behind the mirrored glass whose voice I still hear in my sleep.
They want this.
They trained for this.
And by the time I come back to myself—breathing hard, hands still curled like claws—I know it worked.
It fucking worked.
The mimic is barely breathing.
I sit back, covered in her blood, and try not to vomit. Try not to scream.
One of the handlers steps in through the door, calm like nothing happened, and sets something small and silver on the tray beside me. A reward.
Chocolate.
A piece of it.
Just like the one Ardere used to sneak me when we'd hide out behind the school, when the world still made sense.
I don't touch it.
I can't.
Because the worst part isn't that I hurt the mimic.
It's that it felt right.