Dear Lila,

It’s been 3 months since I've last heard from you. I'm starting to get worried about you, and mom hasn’t stopped crying. Every time I bring you up, she gets so scared and then mopes around all day.Things haven't been the same since dad died, but did you real you have to move across the country? I miss you, please come back to us.

~Your brother, Liam

I put the letter in an envelope and then attempted to stack it in the box full of all my other unmailed letters. There’s no point in sending them anyway, she’ll never read them or send one back. Then suddenly I hear a loud bang and crash coming from mom's room. What is she doing late at night?I thought to myself. I race downstairs as fast as can, and all I see is broken glass and purple liquid everywhere.

“Mom, what's going on?” I say

“Liam, how many times have I told you to stay out of my room”.

“I only went in here to get-” She cuts me off before I can even explain myself.

“You do this to me all the time, never obey what I say”, she screams at me

Hearing her raising her voice like that reminds me of the days she and dad used to argue. I always asked him what was so wrong with mom being a scientist, but he’ll just growl and walk away. One day he told me“ your mom isn’t who she used to be”. Ever since that day, I started to look into mom’s job too, just out of curiosity. I asked her co-workers what they do in a day, and I even sometimes followed her to work. Never got anything from it, besides the point

when she leaves the building. I watched the building for days, and I’d never seen her go in or out of it unless it was time to go home.So I went through her room and searched it up and down. After all that searching I open up her mini-fridge and that's whenI see a purple luminous liquid. So I took one and made a run for it. I asked some of her very trusty co-workers if they could do their magic and tell me what it was. And that’s what brings me to this day,

At this time.

“Mom, if you let me explain myself to you first”, I say surprisingly with confidence.

“Explain yourself.! You know I hate it when people go through my room, better yet my mini-fridge. You wanted to explain yourself, go ahead and tell me why you went into my room and stole my stuff”.

Stumbling and stuttering on the words coming out of my mouth, I tell her a lie.

“Be-ca-cause you, you umm…. You told me to check the degrees of your mini-fridge. And that's what I was doing, and we all know you have to do that from the inside”. I say proudly

“Okay, this is your last warning Liam. Your last one”. She says it to me like it’s a threat

Our conversation ended with the ringtone of her iPhone. She waves me to go back upstairs, as I go up the stairs. Mom seems agitated and angry, so I just close my room door and continue doing what I was doing before. Lila is still MIA and no matter how many times I call, text, FaceTime, and check her location I always get no response from her. I'm starting to wonder if she‘s okay. I go to bed thinking about how Lila.

I wake up to my 6:30AM alarm clock and see a note on my nightstand.

Went to another city for my work. I will be back in the next couple of days. Be safe

-Love Mom

I read it over and over, it just doesn’t make any sense to me. I shrug it off and continue with my morning routine. I checked the mail and nothing from Lila as expected. I put the mail opener in my pocket and eat my breakfast.I go to the gym around 7:30 and do my daily workout. I pushed myself beyond my limits with all the thoughts going through my head, and I almost fainted.

“I’m done”, I shout to the workout teacher and wave to him goodbye. As I'm leaving the gym building I get a phone call from the science department. I quickly swipe the button to answer it.

“Hello”, I say desperately.

Waiting for a response from them, but all I hear is heavy breathing. I hang the phone up and try to call them back, but no answer. I continue walking to my car confused. What was that? I whispered to myself. I’m standing near the front door of my car, then suddenly I see someone from the reflection of my

car window. My heart skips several beats which cause me to have a delayed reaction. By the time I turned around they had already injected me with the sleeping drug.

I wake up feeling sick and strapped to an electric chair. The site is awful. The ceiling is dripping, muddy water puddles, and stains on the wall. It smells like many things died in here. I feel like I'm in a sewer. The door to this room opens and I'm greeted with a masked person wearing a white coat with barely visible red stains on it along with what looks like a mask where it is sharpened at the end like a penguin nose. The sound coming from his mask sounds like a nebulizer when it‘s turned on. The masked person takes out his checklist and speaks into his headset piece and says “ get the first stage prepared”. the masked person comes up to me and chuckles. When they walk out another person enters with the same mask on. They grab my arm and inject me with yellow drugs, one in each arm. The burning sensation races up to my face and spreads all over my body. Grunting and holding onto the chair, I begin to

shake as if a demon is being exercised from my body. Yelling in aching pain louder and louder. Am I dying? What's happening? What is this constant pain? I think to myself. Shaking back and forth, for what felt like hours, the masked doctors called out 45 seconds.

“Stage one is finished”, said the masked doctors. The masked doctors leave the room for about 5 minutes and bring in someone else. They strap her to the chair, and I can hear her struggling to try to get out of them. Still feeling the pain, from the injections, I look over and say

“Hey……You…. What is this place?”I say trying to catch my breath

“It's A testing facility. Where they run tests on people to give themselves monstrous powers”. She says trying to struggle her way out.

“ How long have you been here? I ask her

“ Months now. At least 3 or so”. She replies

I grunt loudly in pain, as I still feel the burning sensation going up and down my body.It burns hotter than any fever, maybe even worse than it. Shocked by the side effects of the drug, I slowly get my eyesight back and start to look around the place again. I look to the left and see the girl who just got brought in. I know her. That ‘s

“Lila?Lila is that you!”I exclaimed.

“Liam? What are you doing here? How did you get here?” She says in a nonplussed way

“So this is where you've been all this time”.

“Yup. Stuck in this trap and constantly get tested on”. She replies in a sardonic tone

We sit there in silence, and I slowly start to doze off’.

“Hey”. Lila yells at me “ don't go to sleep, it’s dangerous”. She tells me.

Rocking back and forth to keep myself awake, whispering to myself don't go to sleep just yet. The door beeps and opens, I look over and see them bringing another girl in.They give Lila a blue one shot I'm the arm and the girl the purple one, shortly after that the masked doctors quickly leave the room.

“Those dang freaks!” the girl shouts

“I swear to God when I get out of here I'm going to”. Lila stops midway in her sentence

They started shaking back and forth and the girl's eyes rolled to the back of her head and you can almost see her eyeball come out, blood coming out of her

nose. Lila started choking onwater that came from nowhere, banging her head against the back of her chair. Shocked in fear of not knowing what to do, I slouch back in my chairwith the constant fear of hopingI'm not next. Once Lila and the girl stopped shaking I asked them if they were okay. The door beeps and the masked doctors come in. “You did great”, They said to us, and walked back out. Every time they come into the room I feel immobilized,I just want to live life and keep moving forward.

Hearing that ceiling dripping into that muddy puddle, listening to every sound, I start to say drip with every drop that goes into the puddle.

Drip… Drip…Drip…Drip….I kept saying it over and over in a monotone way.

“Stop”, the girl says in an irritated voice

Drip….Drip…Drip…-

“Can you please stop?It's so annoying”. She says tells me in an irritated voice again

“I can’t help that I'm so bored”, I say wearily.

Lila sits up in a very lethargically. Just seeing her struggle to move and to make a full sentence come out of her mouth, makes me feel so bad. She finally got all her energy together and said to me-.

“Liam, when did you get here? And whatever you do, don't let them inject you”.

I responded saying that I got drugged and ended up here.It’s too late I also tell her and she begins screaming and cussing at the camera watching us.

“Can you guys shut up!” the girl screams at us. Thinking that I'm going even crazier, I think to myself why is it that every time she gets a little bit angry the room shakes?

“What's your name anyways? I’m Liam and the girl over there is my sister Lila”.

“ My name is Kami and I just want some peace and quiet. Please!” Kami tells us as a teardrop falls down her face.

Sitting here in silence and just being bored I start to doze off. When I wake up I see them taking Lila and Kami away, Trying to break free from the metal cuffs. Negativity floods my mind about how a weak guy like me can’t even save two girls. Down in my feelings, the masked doctors come in and give me two shots, an orange one and the blue one. Feeling too weak I just give up my arm and say do it quickly and go. The masked doctor turned their head with

concern. They then gave me the shot and left the room quickly. Shortly after that Spiders started crawling on me, big tarantula spiders. Screaming saying someone gets them off. Shaking my chair back and forth, trying so hard to slide my hands from the cuffs, I start to bleed from it. Screaming and yelling in fear, I started praying as fast as I could hoping that God could get these spiders off of me. Then suddenly water gets splashed all over me, still screaming from fear, the doctors say in their mic that I was hallucinating. I looked down at myself and there were no spiders. I give out the biggest relief ever and calm myself back down.

“Be back to test out your powers”. the masked doctors said to me. The masked doctors leave the room and Lila and Kami are right next to me. Tired and freezing from the water getting splashed on me I shout “Let me Out”. Moving and wiggling around in my chair I feel something in my pocket. I remember that I put an envelope opener in my pocket. Smiling to myself and trying to think of a plan to escape. Is it straight up in my chair and start calculating the math and the other things to see if they add up.

“What powers do you have?” I suspiciously ask them.

“I’m a banshee.That’s why have this thing around my throat”. Says Lila

“I can control people's minds”, Kami tells me.

I tell them about my plan, but they don't seem to be happy, they seem more surprised and disappointed. Lila had already tried my plan and scored a huge punishment.

"When I found out that I could use my voice to get me out, I put a plan into action.Thinking thatIgot away, that I-I-I tricked them. Shortly after that,I realized that they let me get this far and it was a trap.They dragged me to a dungeon even worse and horrid than the one we are in now.They chained each of my arms up and put the chains around my wrist so tight that even making a fist would bust my veins.They came into the room with headphones on and started whipping me and telling me to scream. I screamed and screamed and screamed until eventually one of them started dripping blood from their ears. That one masked doctor slowly fell to this hard cemented ground and cracked his head open, Blood leaking from his head leading a trail right to me." Lila continues with her story but Kami tells her to stop. Knowing about her experience doesn´t change my mind.

"I wanna get out of here alive." I say in the most determinest way.