NOISE.

So much noise. It drilled into my brain. Every second of every day, pushing any thoughts I might have otherwise aside to focus on the sheer never-ending pain it brought me.

As I often was, I was lost in the noise. It consumed me, and all I could do was immerse myself in it. I'd learned that I needed to let it do to me as it pleased, or I would go mad trying to push against it. It was better to exist in harmony with the pain than to fight whatever it was. I had found, not peace, but at least stillness, within the pain. Relief, in so far as I was capable, was a matter of losing myself to it. Of allowing myself to fail to be a person. To exist only within the chaos.

At least I had my sister to hold me when I next became lucid.

Warmth radiated within, repelling the terror for just a moment. Lily. She was waiting for me outside. In the reality that hurt so much. She was the only thing that made this existence worthwhile. I wondered if she was holding me right then. I couldn't remember.

It didn't matter. The thought of her was enough to console me as the cold, horrible fingers of the noise crept back in, threatening to tear me apart if I dared to dream of a world where I didn't let it own me. Control me. I was its slave, to what end I could not imagine, but it wasn't my place to discover. I was simply its vessel. A conduit for whatever chaotic end it pursued. Thought vanished into pain.

A sharp crack suddenly snapped me back to reality in whole, senses reeling as I crashed into existence once more. My mind couldn't help but focused on the sudden stabbing physical pain in my leg that overrode the ethereal pain of the noise just long enough for me to become present again. I winced and whined as I instinctively reached for my leg, only for my strapped arm to meet resistance against my shoulder, reminding me that I was perpetually trapped inside a strait jacket.

One of the formless shadowy things that haunted my physical home stood over me, holding a rod against the bare flesh of my upper leg, now welted by the strike I'd just been given. It unleashed a sighing admonishment, no doubt scolding me for zoning out when it had been speaking. I looked up at it with terror in my eyes until the noise overrode the pain in my leg, and I felt myself slipping away again, forgetting physical pain as I fell once more toward numb thoughtlessness.

The monster exhaled its horrible groan again and began walking toward the front of the room. That was when I felt the warmth against my other leg, under the table I sat at. Turning my head with what little awareness I still had, I saw her. Lily. I smiled through the pain, and in a moment, I was brought back up from the brink of dissociative oblivion by her presence. "Are you okay?" she whispered to me.

The room came into focus. I was in the classroom. They had been teaching us... something. I couldn't remember. I hadn't been able to afford the attention. Trying to process what the thing at the front of the room said through the noise was agony in its own right.

I nodded slowly to Lily, the cushion of the steel muzzle locked around my face resisting my movement. The ache in my leg was nothing compared to what I endured constantly. "Head feels worse," I mumbled back. My head ached so badly already. It was worth it to see her face. That stemmed the tide of the noise alone. Just a little. Just for a bit.

She nodded. "Try to pay attention as best as you can, okay?" She squeezed my leg reassuringly, and I trained my eyes forward, still failing to process the words.

After Lily had taken matters into her own hands to spend time with me and comfort me, I had learned to take some small bit of control of myself back from my rampant mind. I'd learned to delve deep inside myself and become a part of the noise so that it didn't clash so roughly with my awareness. It still hurt. Life was agony. But one could acclimate to astoundingly terrible things. I had paradoxically learned to grasp a sliver of control every so often by letting the noise own me. At least, most of the time. I wouldn't let it have my time with Lily for anything.

Of course, in those stolen moments of lucidity, I was now well aware of just how insane I had been driven. The restraints I was constantly locked in reminded me that I couldn't be trusted with agency over my own body, never mind my mind. I felt the primal urge to sink my teeth into my own flesh, to feel the sting that the monster's rod reminded me of, the shock that made my flesh sing in wonderful physical agony that could momentarily keep the noise at bay. The blood in my mouth, proof that I was more than just a forsaken conduit. I wanted to hurt in novel ways that would even momentarily break its spell over me.

I shouldn't hurt myself, though. That scared Lily. That made the monsters retaliate. Not that I even could. They made sure of it after my ill-conceived mad attempt to transfer my pain to poor Lily.

A quiet scoff from behind me made me want to quit reality once more. Cassandra wasn't wrong about me. She had told me before, when I was at my lowest, that I was a worthless failure of a person. The worst of all seven of us. That I should have been aborted like so many other of our kind. She'd made sure to hammer it home every time she saw me, curled up, inconsolate, sobbing in agony in my cell. I couldn't disagree. I even comforted myself in her words. I let the fact that I was a failed thing, rather than a person, comfort me in the long moments of suffering. That was before Lily showed me that there was kindness in this horrible world.

It hurt. I didn't have much lucidity left, and I was irritated that Cassandra would take my concentration. "Congratulations on finally leaving your cell, you animal," she grumbled.

Something shifted in me. In the moment, I didn't recognize it as something wrong. It felt natural to be angry at Cassandra for her words. The desire to inflict even a fraction of my pain unto her bellowed forth from logical pathways that made sense to me. But a foreign influence had touched the surface of my mind.

I grit my teeth, fury rising in my gut. How dare she take what precious little time I had for my sister. My Lily. I was nothing. Nobody of worth. But the audacity she had to steal these moments from me... I noticed myself shaking, the rage pushing back the noise just for a moment. She just made me so angry... until I couldn't hold it in anymore.

Giving a pathetic cry, all eyes shot to me. My body moved without thought. I planted my foot into the edge of my seat and awkwardly pushed myself up and backward, intending to throw myself into the target of my hatred, unable to think beyond the moment of sudden malice that had possessed me, the only option available to me against the demon that tormented me in these fleeting moments of awareness.

I flopped down onto the ground uselessly, lacking the physical strength or dexterity to use myself as a full-body missile like I had intended, and in that moment, clarity struck me anew.

Why... had I just done that? Everyone was staring at me. Cassandra, in front of me, had an unimpressed but curious frown on her face as she watched me settle down. Lily knelt on the floor next to me and offered her own concerned words, trying to check that I was okay. I was not. What was that?

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Confused, reeling, and with the monsters starting to gather over me, peeling Lily away, I started to sob. It was like someone had walked into my mind and cultivated the seed of annoyance I already felt toward Cassandra into seething uncontrollable rage. A fire that could not be contained.

Oh.

I turned to see Sarah's face between the gathering monsters, sat in a chair on the other side of... someone. A manic smile was plastered on her face as she stared deep inside of me. Or past me. I wasn't sure if she saw me at all, those wild eyes filled with so much glee at my plight.

And then all at once, the noise flooded in to fill the gaps left by the fading emotion, and the monsters consumed me. I floated off once more into the agonizing, lonely, void of pain.

—

"Meryll?" I startled awake, and almost jerked my body away from the voice if I hadn't been held tight by something warm wrapped around me. Something was in my mouth. Fuzzy. The bizarre texture on my tongue brought me to my senses quickly.

Theseus. I was in Theseus. That was a long time ago, and I was Theseus now, and I was safe. There was no noise.

The previous night came flooding back to me. Ray and I, we shed our clothes, wrapped in each other's embrace, quietly discussed our most intimate experiences, explored each others' bodies. Despite our vastly different bodies, it all felt so real. It felt nothing like I had remembered from my false life before joining the crew, fuzzy dreams of false lovers who had never been. It had been... amazing.

And now, I lay beneath her, wrapped in her enormous arms that made me feel safe and wanted, except one of them was in my mouth, and my mouth was locked to it like I was trying to tear flesh free from beneath the layer of fur.

I unclenched my jaw slowly from Ray's arm, and slowly looked up at her, my face surely white with fear that I'd hurt her. She looked more concerned than anything, and it took me a moment to realize that I probably couldn't hurt her if I tried. "S-Sorry," I stammered, looking away from her eyes. "Night...mare. Memories." I wasn't feeling coherent enough for complete sentences yet. Sarah's grinning visage still haunted me.

"Hey. It's okay." Ray spoke gently, holding me more tightly against her. Tension drained from me as the nightmare washed away in the comfort and love that flowed from her.

Love. I couldn't help but smile. I did my best to wrap my arm around hers. Sleeping more frequently like this... it invited the nightmares. But maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I could wake up like this.

"You were working through something there, though, huh? Do you want to talk about it?" she asked, one of her arms loosening its grip as I felt fur and claws stroke gently up my bare back and then down again over the back of my head. I shuddered and gave a quiet moan as my body relaxed into her once more.

Did I? I think I just wanted to savor that moment more than anything, melting into her touch, maybe coaxing her into reaching somewhere more intimate again. I just wanted to feel safe in the strong, beautiful woman's arms. I wanted to drown what I'd just experienced in hedonistic pleasure and comfort.

But I had to face my problems. I swallowed the growing urge to beg to escalate her adoration. Instead, I leaned into her petting and talked. "Re...calling more. From back in the l-lab. They were trying t-to teach us someth...ing, but I couldn't focus. Then Cass-Cassandra taunted me, and all of a s-sudden I was overcome with this horr...ible rage and tried to attack her. I... th-think I probably got sedated again after th-that."

"Must have really pissed you off." Ray continued stroking my hair and back. She made me feel so small when I was pressed up against her like this. Like I was a fragile doll being tenderly handled by a caring collector. It felt safe. Comfortable. It made talking about everything so much easier. Like I could trust her with my pain.

I shook my head at her words, though, unintentionally nuzzling against her chest, though I rested my head into her afterward, remembering how soft she was in certain places despite how firm she was in others. "Sarah, she..." I frowned as I tried to put into words what I remembered. Instead, I closed my eyes and pulled up the only documentation I had on my sisters: Fuller's reports, made specifically for Doc and I to learn more of my sisters. They couldn't give a full picture of what they were capable of, since the scientist had left the project before our psychic talents had become obvious, but they offered insight.

—

Sarah.

Sarah was a frightening girl. She had to be kept physically restrained at all times. A strait jacket and muzzle were a part of her everyday outfit. She may have been as dangerous as Cassandra was, in that she had a sheer willful desire for violence. Rage consumed the girl, and she reveled in it, trying her best to injure and maim anyone that got near her if she could manage to free herself of restraint, which she had managed more than once. She would injure herself frequently in order to escape, dislocating limbs to escape conventional straitjackets or cuffs before we learned to tailor them to her habits. She didn't care if she was the target of her own fury, she just wanted blood, and to take it by whatever force she could manage.

The others often called her a wild animal, growling, making animalistic cries as she exerted herself, and thrashing about when she was handled. Sarah was the most physically formidable of the six, but she was still just a girl grown in a lab. She certainly did her best to make up for her frailty in spirit, though. She'd surprised several of my colleagues, overpowering them when they were performing routine checks on her. Some of us theorized that there was something wrong with her adrenal system, but while testing did find elevated epinephrin in her blood across multiple tests, it was difficult to tell if that was because of a glandular problem or if she was producing more simply because of her constant aggressive mood. It was a classic chicken and egg scenario.

I always wondered if there was some sort of pheromonal issue as well. I'd begun to note that her handlers were becoming more irritable and assertive themselves after spending time with her. At first, I thought that it was merely because of her uncooperative and dangerous behavior exhausting them, but even on days where nothing went wrong, those who spent lengthy amounts of time around her acted sullen and angry, and had on rare occasions even lashed out at their coworkers. It was like her violent nature was mildly infectious.

Near the end of my tenure on the project, we had begun making progress on taming her mood. She still rarely spoke, and when she did it was often simple, guttural phrases. We were getting through to her though, because she had begun to calm down more often. However, her handlers only seemed to grow more irate despite her becoming an easier subject to manage.

I can't fathom what was going through the girl's head, but she's another of the clones that I hope hasn't survived this far, for her own sake. That girl will never know peace, and I would pity her if she weren't so frightening.

—

I nodded to myself as I pored over Fuller's notes, partially distracted by the slow, gentle cuddling of the Mammon I was wrapped up beneath in the physical world.

"Well, whatever happened, it was a long time ago. She can't hurt you here," Ray spoke soothing words that helped dull the pain of the hole in my amnesia. "You're a different person now. And if she does find you again, you've got armor and guns, and a crew that will fight for you."

It was certainly a comfortable reminder. While I was still pretty physically frail in the flesh, I was now also a machine. A formidable ship, even if it was closer to a scout vessel than a fighter. And I had people by my side that I trusted, who knew what it was like to be against everything. And I had her. I knew now more than ever before, Ray could keep me safe.

Finally, I opened my eyes and rested my head back into her, muttering to myself, "Ac...tually, I think it was m-my other sister that pissed m-me off..." Perhaps even much more directly than Cassandra could, at that.

My thoughts were interrupted as I let out a squeak. I felt Ray's claw move lower down the front of my body, and I tensed up, recalling where that had often led last night. "Enough talk..." she leaned down and murmured in my ear. "We'll worry about it later. Let's enjoy our morning before breakfast, okay?"

I couldn't think of much reason to disagree. In another moment, I wouldn't be in a position to think of much else besides her at all.

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