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( 01 一 LOVE LOST. )
Clara had long since settled into the never ending cycle that was days at Thurmond. When she first arrived, back at the very beginning in the testing facility, she would stare out the window of her cell at the woods surrounding the building. She would see Blue Jay's soaring above the trees. Her father had pointed them out to her long ago, before he left. Their blue feathers made them easy to spot. She would pretend she was a bird, flying far away from the scientists and the metal tables and the locked cells. Pitiful fantasies of a traumatised child, just like Clancy said they were.
Time passed differently in Thurmond. Seconds ticked by slower, hours felt longer. Each day bleeding into the next until it was a monotonous mess of broken spirits and shattered dreams. No one was quite sure how long they had been held there but Clarissa's roommate Sam suspected it to be around six years if they based it off the seasons changing. Clara knew she had been in the testing program for three years and if Sam was right that meant she had lost nearly a decade of her life.
The drab, grey walls were endless and draining, sucking the life out of every inhabitant leaving them with no motivation to try and escape or rebel. Clara lost hers before she even stepped foot into the cabin that would house her for years to come. Her time in the testing facility had taken its toll, scars lined her head, visible even after her hair had grown back. Some peaked out from the top of her hairline, one particularly nasty one ending just beneath her left eyebrow.
The girls in her cabin knew where she had been beforehand. It was hard to ignore a malnourished ten year old with a shaved head covered in gruesome scars. Even if she never explicitly told them they could figure it out.
Eventually about a year in the night terrors decreased from three times a night to a few times a week at most. Clara learned to push it all down, to never think of her time strapped to metal tables. But that included pushing down everything to do with Clancy Gray and Nico Ramirez too. She loved those boys, or at least she thought she did, but that was a sacrifice she was willing to make. Self preservation before all.
Sam and Ruby helped make it almost bearable. They shared a companionship that developed a week after their first meeting. Sam had tripped while collecting her lunch effectively spilling all her food across the pristine floors. She was punished by a harsh slap across the face and was instructed to clean it up. By the time she finished lunch was over and the girls were sent back to their cabin. Clara's bunk was across from Sam's and when they entered the cabin, walking to the back, she pulled a gleaming red apple from her pocket and handed it to the blond girl without a word.
With a toothy smile in return a friendship blossomed. Sam introduced Clara to Ruby, a timid girl who shied away from touch, and from then on none of them felt quite as alone as they did before. They protected each other, looked out for one another. They formed a family when they had been so callously ripped away from their own.
