Fake Dating The Bad Boy-Chapter 53: Remembering More Monster

June’s POV

The door slammed shut.

I heard it—felt it more than anything—vibrating through my bones like an aftershock. Something cold and distant inside me stirred, like a ripple beneath ice. I wanted to sit up. I wanted to scream. I wanted to ask Justin what he saw—what he thought when he looked at me now.

But my mouth wouldn’t work. My tongue sat like a swollen thing in my mouth, foreign, heavy. My limbs were slack, trembling from somewhere deep in the marrow. My eyes darted, unfocused, unable to anchor to anything.

I felt the seatbelt tighten across my chest as the car turned on. The world outside blurred into streaks of shadow and dying light. I curled deeper into the seat, a child again. No. Not a child. Not really. Not anymore.

"She’s gone."

That voice again.

Feminine. Familiar.

It lived in the back of my mind, trailing me through sleep, crawling out of corners in mirrors, humming lullabies I didn’t know I knew.

"No one ever came for you."

It was true, wasn’t it?

No one had.

Not when I screamed.

Not when the wires burned into my skull.

Not when they peeled back my skin with cold gloves and indifference, labeling my sobs as "data points."

"You were born wrong."

"No," I whispered, or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I only thought it. My mouth barely moved. My throat was raw. I tasted iron.

I blinked, and the car ceiling warped above me, turning into white tile—into flickering fluorescents that buzzed like flies trapped in glass jars.

I blinked again, and I wasn’t in the car anymore.

I was back there.

Back in the lab.

Unit 6-B. Underground level. No name. No exit.

They didn’t call me June there.

They didn’t call me anything human.

Number Twelve.

Always Twelve.

Never a name. Never a girl. Just an object on a clipboard, a thing to be monitored. Measured. Broken down and logged.

I was strapped to a table again. Metal cuffs biting into my wrists and ankles. My spine pressed to something wet. A chemical spill. Or maybe it was mine—my blood, my piss, my tears. It all smelled the same here. Sterile and rotting.

Above me, lights swung, shadows shifting like ghosts. Figures in white coats circled me, their faces blurred, features lost to the fog of memory or madness. But I remembered their eyes.

Unblinking.

Cold.

Curious.

"Begin stimulation."

A switch flipped.

Electricity tore through me. My body arched. My mouth opened in a silent scream, jaw cracking wide—but no sound came out. The air itself seemed too dense to carry it. The shock didn’t just hit my body. It cracked through my mind, lighting every nerve, every locked door in my brain.

I saw colors that didn’t exist. I saw myself from above. A child—no, the child. The one in the room across the hall. The one they said was my reflection. But she looked like me. Spoke like me.

"That’s you."

The voice hissed again, louder now. Meaner. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com

"You always thought you were someone else. Someone normal. You’re not. You’ve never been. You’re the experiment."

I whimpered. Clutched at my ears. But I couldn’t move.

Another injection.

Something thick. Cold. It coiled through my veins like liquid glass. My arms twitched. My vision doubled. A siren wailed in my head.

"Test Subject Number Twelve displaying elevated resistance. Administer sedative."

No! I wanted to scream. Please—stop—!

Another prick. Another plunge.

Then darkness.

Then worse.

When I opened my eyes again, I was floating.

Suspended in thick fluid inside a tube. Tubes ran from my arms, my neck, my spine. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. My mouth filled with some kind of oxygen gel.

Through the thick glass, I saw a woman with red hair, holding a clipboard, nodding. A man beside her wore mirrored glasses. I could see my reflection in them.

Pale skin. Shaven head. Bruised temple. That was me.

That was you.

The voices were singing now. A nursery rhyme.

"Little lamb, little lamb,

Tied down and cold,

What did they take from you?

What were you told?"

"The stars were fake.

The sky was steel.

The pain is proof

That none of it’s real."

I gasped—but my lungs didn’t work. The gel. I was drowning in it.

I scratched at the glass. Weak. Useless. My fingernails left no mark.

A hand—my own—reached out to me from the other side.

But that couldn’t be right.

I was inside the tank.

So who was outside?

The face staring in looked just like mine.

Same eyes. Same scars.

She smiled.

Not kindly.

"I’m what you locked away."

And then she vanished.

The next memory came like a broken reel of film.

Snap. Flash. Shudder.

I was in a room. Naked. Freezing. Lined up with other children. Numbers tattooed on our wrists. They kept telling us the injections would help us sleep.

But sleep didn’t come.

Only the voices.

Only the dreams of fire and blood and the smell of burning wires.

A boy next to me—Number Nine—took my hand.

His was shaking.

He was the only warmth I had.

He whispered, "When we get out... I’ll find you again."

I believed him.

I still believed him.

Even now.

Even if I was too broken to tell him so.

"June."

The sound yanked me back, like a hook in my chest.

Reality hit in pieces. Dashboard. Windshield. The steering wheel gripped in Justin’s hands. Trees speeding by in the dark.

His voice.

"June, can you hear me?"

I tried to answer.

My throat moved. A scratchy croak.

"Shhh. You’re okay now. You’re with me. Just hold on."

But I wasn’t okay.

I wasn’t sure I was with him.

Because even now, behind my eyelids, the lab was still there.

The screams. The experiments. The dark room where they locked me when I didn’t cooperate. The cold voice through the intercom, always saying:

"Subject Twelve is beginning to destabilize."

Maybe I was.

Maybe I always had been.

The next wave of memory dragged me down again.

This time, I saw them putting something inside me.

Not a chip. Not a tracker.

Something else.

Something alive.

It twitched. Moved. Burrowed behind my ribcage. I clawed at my chest, screaming.

I knew it wasn’t real.

I knew they were making me hallucinate.

But knowing didn’t make it stop.

The shadows in my head laughed.

"You were never whole. Just pieces stitched together. They built you to break."

I sobbed. Curled tighter in the seat.

Justin’s voice reached me again. Far away.

"Hold on. We’re almost there. You’re safe now."

But was I?

Was I ever?

What if the voices followed me?

What if I was the voice?

"You killed him."

No. I didn’t.

"Yes, you did. You enjoyed it. The fork. The blood. You liked watching him fall."

"I didn’t," I whispered. "I didn’t mean to—"

"Then why did it feel so good?"

I pressed my hands to my ears. Screamed into them.

Justin swerved. Reached for me. Pulled over.

"June!"

I shrank from his touch. Crouched against the door.

"I’m not her!" I cried. "I’m not Number Twelve! I’m not!"

He froze. His face twisted.

Then he did something I didn’t expect.

He knelt beside me, still and quiet. His voice didn’t rise. His eyes didn’t burn.

He just said, "Okay."

And somehow, that word—

Just that single word—

Cut through the noise louder than all the screaming in my head.

But I knew it wasn’t over.

The voices weren’t done.

The memories weren’t finished.

And neither was I.

Because somewhere out there—somewhere deep in the bones of the world—the people who did this to me were still breathing.

And one day soon?

I was going to remember enough to find them.

And when I did—

They’d wish they’d left me in the dark.

*****

The silence in the car didn’t last.

Not really.

Not for me.

Because even as Justin knelt beside me, even as he whispered calming words and tucked his coat around my shoulders, I heard them.

The voices.

The others.

I didn’t know how many there were. They were like echoes across a canyon, bouncing off my skull, overlapping, whispering over each other. Some were sharp and cruel. Others were soft, seductive. But they all said the same thing, in the end:

"He was just the first."

I closed my eyes.

I could still feel the fork in my hand. The jagged metal. The sickening pop as it sank into soft tissue. The crunch of bone. The heat of blood spurting against my cheek. His eye on the end of the prong, twitching.

And I hadn’t screamed.

I hadn’t cried.

I had felt—light.

Unburdened.

"There are more monsters," they said. "You remember them now, don’t you?"

Yes.

Yes, I did.

Doctor Halverson. The one with the fake smile and trembling hands. Always afraid of his own creations. Always watching me with revulsion even as he injected the glowing blue serum into my spine.

Dr. Mikka. The one who laughed during the electroshock trials. Who made me watch Number Nine seize on the table across from mine, just to see if I’d react. If I’d bond. If pain could force empathy.

The guards who strapped us down. Who called us freaks. Who took bets on which of us would break first.

They hadn’t broken me.

Not completely.

Not yet.

"Find them," the voices whispered. "Find them all. Make them beg."

I lifted my head slowly.

Justin was still beside me, his hand warm on my arm, his mouth moving in careful words I couldn’t quite hear anymore. I blinked at him.

His eyes were full of worry.

Affection.

Maybe even love.

I didn’t want to see that right now.

It made me weak.

Made me human.

I looked out the window instead, at the long stretch of road disappearing into the woods. Trees pressed in from all sides. No cars. No people.

Perfect.

The part of me that was still June whimpered.

But the part of me that remembered being Number Twelve—the part that had spent years screaming inside locked rooms and drowning in tanks—leaned forward.

I imagined what I would do if they were in front of me.

I wouldn’t use a fork next time.

I’d use fire.

Or pliers.

Or acid.

The voices hummed in agreement.

"They deserve it."

Yes.

They did.

They turned me into this.

Into a broken thing made of voices and rage.

"They should be afraid of you."

Justin spoke again, dragging me back.

"You’re safe now," he said. "I won’t let anyone hurt you."

My lips twitched into a smile.

It was... not the right smile.

It felt like it belonged to someone else—something else. Something deeper. Something old.

I turned to face him, tilting my head.

"Do you believe in justice, Justin?"

He hesitated.

"Yes."

I laughed quietly. There was no joy in it.

"Because I believe in vengeance."

His eyes searched mine. He looked confused. Concerned.

But he didn’t look afraid.

He should have.

Because I was beginning to understand what I was.

What they made me.

What they unleashed.

And I wasn’t going to stop with the man in the kitchen.

He was the first.

The warm-up.

A test run.

The next time... I wouldn’t stop until their bones were dust and their names were erased.

"Good girl," the voices cooed. "Now let’s go hunting."

And I didn’t argue.

Not this time.