It was dark, as it usually was. Cold and dark, and utterly horrible. No windows, no lights, no nothing. Just a room barely two square metres across, with a door in one wall and a pot in one corner. Lucy didn’t even have clothes.

Of course they made sure she didn’t die from Hypothermia, they needed her of course. Or at least weren’t yet done with her.

Lucy wanted to die. She had tried to kill herself so many times already that she had long lost count. She tried to stop eating, to strangle herself, to drown herself, get in a fight so that they shoot her, try to have other Labrats kill her whenever she had the chance, nothing ever worked.

She was alone and cold. And utterly sick of life. If you could even call it that.

The darkness was creeping around her, cold and domineering, like a monster that just waited to strike her. Yet, despite all her wishes that it might finally strike her down, nothing ever happened.

She had long since given up, long since given in to despair to the point that not even that daunted her even more. There was nothing in this world, or the next, that would be able to phase her. She wanted to die.

How long it had been here since she first arrived she didn’t know. She had been small back then, much too small to really understand what was going on. The only reference for time she had was that at some point she started getting her period, which she only understood after she was able to exchange a few sentences with another Labrat, a much older woman. And that had been ages ago.

But she no longer cared about such things. She just wanted to die, if only to deny them her own powers, the things she was kept alive for. She didn’t understand what it was, exactly, she only knew she had a power, some kind of power that had something to do with blood.

It would be useful for suicide, if it weren’t for the bracelet on her arm. It suppressed her power if they didn’t want her to use it, and controlled her so that she only used it the way they wanted her to.

The door opened, blinding light piercing the near perfect Darkness, causing her pain in the eyes. She didn’t care to blink, taking some form of twisted enjoyment in the pain, the only feeling they really let her experience. An unwelcome reminder that she was not yet dead.

A figure stepped inside, their looks unimportant to Lucy, as they hoisted her up and pulled her out of the room, making her stumble. In the light of the perfectly white corridor she could see her body, malnourished and barely even human. She had once had red hair, but it was nearly black from dirt and inattention, the fur on her fox ears and tail in much the same condition.

She knew she looked awful but she simply didn’t care.

As they walked they passed another guard with a Labrat, a young boy it looked like, half human, half spider, although four of the eight legs were broken, the pedipalps ripped off and the fangs as well. He looked as bad as she did, but neither of them could give any less of a fuck.

She noticed the same glassy and empty look in his eyes that she knew hers showed, and she wished they could give each other the satisfaction of death. Alas, that was not to be.

Lucy didn’t care for others, honestly she didn’t even care for herself, the only exception were the other Labrats, the only people in this god forsaken life that understood her pain.

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Eventually she found herself in the same room they always dragged her into without fail, a white room with a chair, a bed with some poor soul strapped to and the overseer present who would control her powers.

Same old, same old.

She let herself be pushed into the chair, enjoying the stabbing pain of its uneven surface, and looked at the ground in front of her, not having the energy or motivation to do anything else.

With no word spoken the overseer began their ritual, speaking in weird tones and gesturing with their hands weirdly, and Lucy just waited for the familiar grip on her being that followed. It was, as always, icecold and domineering. Like something gripped her soul and squeezed.

She didn’t even shudder. It had long since become normal to her, the only other sensation she could feel apart from pain.

The overseer began their gruesome task, whomever they had strapped to the bed screaming in endless agony. She wished she could just make it stop, to kill them, to grant them the peace they so desperately wanted.

The peace she so desperately wanted.

But alas, they controlled her, they were the ones in power. Her only wish was to just… stop. Make her powers go away so that they finally kill her.

Those things were not meant to be however, the icecold grip on her soul ensuring her compliance. Idly she poked at it, mentally. It was such a strange sensation, although she couldn’t say if it was an unusual one or not.

Upon closer inspection she felt how… brittle the connection was. It felt domineering, utterly unopposable, yet there was something there that piqued her interest, even if it was only in a bored-out-of-her-mind way.

There was something there that was not right, the entire thing that was the grip felt more and more unnatural, like some alien perversion of what the base concept should have been. Curiously she studied it, spending the entire time she sat on that uneven chair with it. She had nothing better to do, and they didn’t stop her, so either they didn’t care or they didn’t notice. Not that it mattered much.

All too soon they were done, another body mangled beyond any recognition into something far more grotesque and the familiar fatigue settled over her. It always left her barely able to walk and she had to be dragged to her cell, where she once more found herself in darkness.

She was given her daily allotment of food and she ate in silence, mind absent and focused on this new thing she discovered today.

After weeks of trying to starve herself she had simply given up, they would force her to eat, either with that weird control over her or by injecting something into her directly. And while she took some perverse pleasure in bucking against them at the time she had come to realise that there wasn’t much of a point, really.

So she ate, not tasting whatever they had given her. To her mild surprise the water tasted cleaner today, although that didn’t mean too much, every once in a while the water would be of better quality but that would change again soon enough.

Once done she lay down on the floor again, the piercing cold her constant companion. It was just cold enough to be unpleasant but not cold enough to threaten her life, they were consistent that way.

In the darkness she once more found herself lost in thought, letting her mind wander, and wondering for the umpteenth time when this all would end. She had once spoken to another Labrat and he had mentioned praying for salvation. She had tried it for a time but it hadn’t changed anything so she had stopped.

Bored, and with nothing better to do, she tried it again, praying that the darkness would finally consume her, kill her, and end her misery.

Expecting nothing to happen she was shocked when she felt a response. It wasn’t quite what she had hoped, the darkness didn’t rise up and suffocate her, but there was something there, something that had changed. Suddenly she felt less… alone in the dark. It had been a long time since she had been afraid of the dark, but now it felt almost… homey, protective.

Whatever had answered her silent prayer, it had given her comfort. It was not a solution to her problem but maybe, just maybe, there was a chance. Maybe, if she just prayed hard enough, one day it would answer her and finally end her life.

It wasn’t much, but with this small spark of hope she let herself drift off to sleep.