War isn't over • LM / SS

Chapter 33 - operation eichen house [2]

"i was meant to love you,
i knew i loved you at first sight,
if i abandoned love,
i'd be a man without dreams."

word count: 5.2k

A pair of white earphones dangled down the front of Max's navy blue sweater as he twisted a thread from his jeans around his finger. Cigarettes After Sex was blaring into his eardrums as he sat outside of the gate leading to the closed unit.

Scott and Liam remained adamant that they could break through the mountain ash barrier to help the others get Lydia to safety, but so far their efforts had failed.

He had slumped to the floor when the fear started to make him light-headed. Sometimes he found himself envying his sister for being able to turn her emotions off whenever it got hard to cope with. He didn't have that option. No matter how difficult it got, he had to feel every single thing, and Eichen House was exactly the kind of place an empath hated to be.

It was common knowledge that Eichen was unethical towards their patients. Compared to other things he had seen and felt today, he had a nagging thought in the back of his head that human experimentation was only the tip of a sickening iceberg.

He had felt every trepanation wound in the base of his skull, felt every bucket of ice-cold water poured in the shower, every needle being jabbed through his skin. He had felt every harrowing, torturous act that the staff members at Eichen had inflicted on people they were meant to be caring for. It was an abuse of power.

Throughout his life, he had seen gruesome events in visions and felt a lot of negative emotions when he was in a place where bad things had happened. After he inherited his empath abilities, it came as a surprise that his powers tied in with being a seer. It gave him a bit more sympathy when he thought back on his dad.

Both so alike, bonded by what they saw and felt, yet both pushing the other away because of the fear that they wouldn't understand.

As the song faded to an end, he could faintly hear the panting from Scott and Liam after their attempts to break through the barrier had failed.

He cracked his eyes open an inch, wiping his clammy palms into his frayed jeans. He properly looked up, Liberty averting her eyes but he had already caught her staring. Perhaps it was the curiosity of having never seen his powers taking a toll on him before.

A rosy colour brushed over her unusually pale face and she ducked her head strategically, allowing her locks of mousy brown hair to hide it. Shuffling her weight to her other foot, she raised a brow at Scott, who was checking to make sure the pair were alright. "This isn't a circle of mountain ash——— half of the building's full of it," she bluntly declared.

Without her husky as a support beam to fall back on, her patience was wearing thin and she didn't bother to filter what she was saying.

Both Scott and Max winced and clutched at the spot above their navel. The alpha tugged at the hem of his lilac shirt, pulling it up to expose the freshly opened wounds that bled from his abdomen. He must have overdone it with the effort to get through the barrier and, in turn, managed to reopen the wounds that his cousin had inflicted the night she murdered him.

Max rose to his feet, running a hand through his curls to relieve some pent-up energy— he had never been particularly good at staying still. He shoved his earphones and his phone into his back pocket and he stood opposite the witch as the four of them huddled into a little makeshift circle. There was an unspoken defeated feeling between them and he scuffed his Nike shoes against the floor.

Both Stiles and Jade had less than five minutes to get in, get Lydia and get out. Ten minutes had gone past, the reboot was over and the key card wouldn't work anymore.