Admit Defeat (TMR fic 2)

Chapter 1

(song~)

I fight to wake up. Whatever drug they gassed me with is in my blood, forcing me to stay unconscious. I can't wake up. I'm stuck.

I want to be frightened, but I'm too exhausted...

The memory creeps up on me in my vulnerable state. I see myself being led by a group of adults into a building. White corridors burn into my mind. Smooth tile floors, blank walls... there's a lingering scent of disinfectant filling the complicated mess of passages and hallways lined with musty offices... I know that place.

My dream-self is young, probably only eight or nine years old. She's trembling slightly with fear, but she keeps her back straight as she follows them through the twisting paths.

"We brought the new girl," one of the adults says to a man at a desk. My younger self doesn't wait to see how the conversation goes. Instead she turns and bolts, running back towards the entrance. I don't know what she's looking for, but I can tell she thinks that something was left behind.

The adults run after her, and I feel her terror pulsing in my blood. She quietly opens a door and slips into a side room in an attempt to lose them. The dream shifts perspective. I'm looking through her eyes, now, at the room she just entered.

There are four figures in the room. A boy is chained to a desk, staring downwards stubbornly. Ahead of him there is a small glass room with something inside of it. I would call it a person, but it's sickening, covered in scabs and wounds and screaming soundlessly from behind the glass. Bleeding and missing chunks of hair, it continues to scream. I can't look at it without feeling sick, repulsed.

Aside from the boy and the insane creature, there is only a young girl, and a soldier shoving the tip of a pistol against the side of her head. They don't seem to notice my dream self.

"Press it," the soldier orders, and the boy shudders. I can see a button set into the desk in front of him.

"Why?" he asks, and as he looks up to glare at the soldier I catch sight of his face. Green eyes blaze with anger, and my heart stops for a moment. He may be just a kid, and his blond hair may be short, but I can recognize Newt's eyes anywhere.

"We're testing guilt. It doesn't really matter what you do," the soldier says, smiling darkly at Newt. "If you kill it, fine. If you don't, your sister dies. Either way, it's your fault."

The girl whimpers, shivering slightly.

I can't breathe.

The soldier shifts his hand on the pistol, his finger caressing the trigger.

His clenched jaw contradicting the emptiness in his eyes, Newt slams the button.

A dark gas begins to fill the glass room in front of him. The figure inside it seems to grow even more desperate and insane, trying to escape the smoke-like poison.

The door behind me opens, and the guards I was running from in the first place grab me, dragging me away. As I'm pulled out of the room, Newt looks up at me with surprise. The soldier holding his sister, though, just smiles at me as if he knows what watching that has done to me.

I understand.

I understand more than I ever wanted to about this world. 

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A/N: We're back, lads! It's gonna be a fun one, this story really does ramp up as it goes along :P