ใ
คthis isn't what she'd signed up for. truth be told, she didn't know what she was signing up for when her boss asked her if she'd be willing to go undercover, infiltrate a supposed mental health facility from which no one ever returned. in recent months, they'd received missing persons complaints from distraught citizens โ rebellious teens running away from home, family members who turned to drugs and ended up on the street. she'd heard it all. she'd heard enough.
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คaccording to the flyers they'd left behind, they all had one thing in common: the murkoff corporation. it was ironic, in a way, to have sent someone so desperately in need of actual therapy into the very mouth of madness. the ride there had been more akin to a kidnapping than anything else โ dragged into the back of a car, a bag shoved over her head. upon arrival, she'd been stripped, prodded, poked. drilled into. and when they were satisfied, they'd sedated her, and she'd woken with a start in a strange bedroom.
ใ
คand shortly thereafter, she was thrust into hell itself.
ใ
คshe and three other newcomers โ reagents, the doctor had called them โ were ushered onto a shuttle through metallic pod - like doors, strapped down and forcibly gassed with hallucinogens to unnerve them before the trial proper, made to witness gruesome images of mangled bodies pulling at their own intestines like spaghetti, prime assets abusing the corpses of dead reagents.
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คthe trial had been a visceral ordeal. she'd encouraged cooperation throughout, tried to help her fellow reagents in any way she could... but in the end, it was not enough. she'd clocked one's bloody demise only by their screams of terror from a far - off room. the other had died crying and pleading for help, trying futilely to reach for her hand. the ride back to the sleep room was silent, neither of the remaining women able to speak.
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คsince then, she's grown fairly apt at avoiding the pushers in trials, metal braces creaking amidst the puff puff of their gas nozzles, their psychotic rambling, coaxing, about therapy and fixing the reagents through full psychosis, cured only by the mercy of finding antidotesโฆ or managing to outlast the skinner man's pursuit. she'd seen firsthand what happened to those who failed: tied down and wheeled off on gurneys, their minds irreparably damaged and making them now ineligible for the program. the therapy.
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คshe was not sent into this trial with help, and some strange part of her can't decide whether that's a relief. the doors open, and she steps out, immediately eyeing an empty bottle that she has to wrench from a corpse's rigor - set hand. soon enough, she's found this trial's main attraction, and steps into the sea of awaiting onlookers, corpses and mannequins alike focusing what remaining eyes they had on her as she approached.
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คobediently, she awaits her instructions, what hell she's meant to put herself through today.