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THREE YEARS AGO . . .
THEIR GRIPS WERE tight. Their steps were loud. Their voices were rowdy. Their intentions were cruel. Three didn't know what to do. She didn't think there was anything she could do.
The fourteen-year-old screamed and cried as she was dragged down the hallway. She watched her friends and enemies peer through the glass on the doors they passed to try and catch a sight of what was occurring, without finding the courage within them to step out and help. Guards in white marched down the hallway incase the employees' grasps on the powerful girl slipped and fell useless. Still, she kicked and shouted and clawed at the air while desperately hoping that what she knew would happen, wouldn't.
Thirteen minutes prior, everyone had been in the main room. The center, they used to call it. Three had been sitting on the floor next to Eleven, her only friend in the madness of the daunting laboratory, as they moved circles around with their eyes. Their sight flicked from side to side, allowing the shapes to smoothly fly across the device in front of them. Three only stopped when the bottomless pit of her stomach started to swirl uncomfortably, forcing her eyes to see shadows cast by the doors at the front of the room. The young girl immediately stood up.
Eleven watched cautiously, unmoving, as her friend quietly stepped towards the door, leaning her ear up against the thin crack in the middle.
"She's a weakness in our system. We're risking it all by keeping her alive," Three heard one of the workers say in a hushed tone. It went silent for a moment, except for the slow ticking of the clock in the background.
"You have little faith," she heard Papa say. Innocently, she smiled with pride. He believed in her, and that's what she'd been taught had mattered.
"You're being naïve . . . we can't afford that here. You're the boss, it's your call, but I say let her fry."
