Fake Dating The Bad Boy-Chapter 56: On The Verge Of Brink

Justin Pov:

Rico’s hand was steady. It always was. The sedative entered June’s bloodstream like water slipping into the cracks of a fractured wall—quiet, unseen at first. She didn’t fight it. Not really. Her thrashing slowed, her breathing evened, and her lips—those trembling lips once screaming numbers and half-buried names—parted just slightly as the silence took her.

She finally went still.

Her body, which moments ago thrashed like something drowning in fire, now lay quiet on the narrow bed tucked into the corner of the cave’s sanctuary wing.

The silence I had begged for came like a curse.

I watched her head slump sideways on the plush, black leather couch we kept in the upper lounge. Her hair spilled over the armrest like ink, dark and tangled, matted with dried tears and bits of blood that didn’t belong to her. The flickering lights overhead made her skin seem almost translucent. Her veins, barely noticeable before, pulsed with secrets.

And all I could do was sit there.

Frozen.

No voices, just my own breathing, fast and erratic.

Rico was already gone, disappearing into the other side of the mansionette—our hell, our sanctuary—the Cave.

Not a literal cave—despite what the name suggested.

The place looked like a fortress from the outside, perched in the outskirts where silence held more weight than time. But inside, beyond the heavy gates and cameras, it was something else entirely.

Two halves.

Two sides of the same coin.

One, clean and deceptively elegant—quiet corridors, modern tech, rooms that smelled like order and purpose. The other—a hidden underbelly—was something else. That part of the mansion was the real "Cave."

Stone floors.

Chains still hanging from hooks embedded in the walls.

Blood-stained tables, padded cells, interrogation rooms, some so soundproof even screams got lost inside them.

That was where the monsters screamed.

That was how I used to scream.

Where I made people scream.

Doctors. Guards. Those who once wore white coats and clipboards like goddamn badges of honor.

But now, I stood on the quiet side, the sanctuary side—watching her chest rise and fall with drug-induced calm. Rico’s sedative hadn’t just knocked her out; it had dulled the fire.

Temporarily.

From the outside, it was a fortress. Hidden deep in the valley woods, masked by biometric locks and misdirection fields. The world thought it was an abandoned bunker built by some old war-fearing tech mogul. Inside though, it was... beautiful in the most grotesque, ironic way. A polished sanctuary designed by broken people, for broken purposes.

The Cave had two halves. One of pain. One of healing. Both served the same god: Control.

On the far side—past the reinforced steel hall, down a curved stairwell, and behind the double-bolted doors—lay the dungeon. Brick and steel. Chains. Salt. A room where memories screamed louder than mouths ever could. That was where I’d taken the doctors, the guards, every bastard I’d hunted down after escaping the lab. I had silenced my voices one scream at a time.

But it hadn’t worked.

Because now... here she was. June. Number Twelve.

The other half of the Cave—the one we sat in now—was all sharp marble, soft leather, velvet and air fresheners that tried too hard. There were bedrooms, a kitchen, a therapy room none of us used, and security cameras in every corner. It looked like comfort. But it was a mask.

Just like me.

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, fingers tangled in my hair.

God, I’d almost forgotten what she looked like asleep.

I remember when we were children—before they started the harsher trials—she used to fall asleep on the cold tile floor of our shared cell. Back then, her hair had been shorter. Ragged, like mine. We didn’t have names, just numbers. She was Twelve. I was Nine. She’d hum to herself in the dark, and sometimes... if we were lucky, she’d whisper stories. Stories about places she made up. Oceans. Stars. Something about chocolate cake.

I didn’t even know what cake was back then.

One night, after an especially brutal injection that had caused her to seize and bleed from her nose, I crawled to her corner. I wasn’t supposed to. We were punished if we crossed the lines they drew on the floor.

But she was shaking.

So I crawled.

Held her hand until she stopped.

"Don’t forget me," she whispered. "If I go."

I didn’t.

But she had.

She had forgotten me.

That fact was clawing at me now, raw and bitter, while I sat beside her unconscious body in a room built from our survival and our rage.

"I’m still here," I whispered, reaching out to brush her hair from her face. "You said you’d come back."

She twitched, a soft noise escaping her lips. Not pain. Not relief. Something in between.

She looked younger in sleep. Her usual guarded scowl had faded. Even the ghost of trauma etched in her expression was gone for now. I wondered how long the peace would last.

I stood, pacing. The pressure in my chest wouldn’t release. I could feel it—those memories pressing in.

Blood on tile. Chains on wrists. Screams that didn’t stop when the mouths that made them died.

Flashes of white light. Electroshock machines whirring.

Twelve strapped down beside me, tears mixed with saliva, begging them to stop. Not for her. For me.

"She doesn’t react," one of the doctors had noted. "Number Twelve exhibits resistance to guilt-inducing stimuli. Possible sociopathic tendencies."

They hadn’t understood. She wasn’t unfeeling.

She was surviving.

That was what they didn’t get.

She had saved me more times than I could count. Taking beatings meant for me when it became too intense that i was on the verge of unconscious. Screaming loud enough to draw attention when I collapsed during an experiment. Biting a handler’s hand so he’d drop the syringe meant for me.

She remembered none of it.

She was rich now. Or at least, cared for. Her adopted father, the bastard I saw her stab earlier, had power. She had clothes, a future. A home.

A lie. A cover for what she was enduring behind closed doors.

She was Number Twelve. The girl who used to stuff scraps into her sock for me during our weekly "meals." because I was too naughty to deserve food according to the doctors. Who memorized the hall schedules so we could sneak into the nurses’ room and steal antiseptic for our wounds. The one who whispered, "Don’t die, Number Nine," right before they split us up for individual testing.

I didn’t even know what to live for back then. But I remembered the words.

I sat down beside her again.

Her body was still. But I could see the flutter of her eyelids, the occasional twitch in her fingers. The sedative wasn’t dreamless. No. She was still down there, in her mind. In the lab. Probably reliving every horror.

My fault.

If I hadn’t waited so long. If I’d pushed harder. If I’d searched sooner...

"I thought you were dead," I said aloud, my voice hoarse. "I wanted to believe you were dead. Because otherwise... you left me."

My hands clenched. I wanted to smash something. Bleed. Scream. Anything to stop this ache inside me. But she needed peace now, not more chaos.

So I stayed.

Minutes passed. Or hours. Time was warped in this place. It always had been.

I got up eventually, found a blanket, tucked it around her. She didn’t stir.

My fingers brushed her cheek again, tender this time.

"You’re still in there," I murmured. "I know you are."

I glanced toward the doorway. Rico hadn’t returned. No one did. No one stayed here long but me.

I knelt on the floor beside her couch, like a prayer.

"You kept me alive once," I whispered, lowering my head to her hand. "Now it’s my turn."

And for the first time since I was a child, I wept.

Not because of the pain. But because I was afraid that this time... I wouldn’t be enough to bring her back.

******

I sat beside her.

My arms draped over my knees.

I was still covered in dried blood—his blood—but none of it felt real anymore. Not after seeing her like that. Not after watching the last spark of recognition vanish from her eyes as the voices took her.

I could still hear her screams echoing through my skull, tearing me in half.

Her voice.

But it hadn’t been her voice.

It was them.

The voices she once used to whisper to, laugh with like imaginary friends—only now they weren’t friends. Now they were something else.

Predators.

They had devoured her.

She lay there, still breathing, still warm—but not here. Not fully. And God, I’d seen that look before.

I knew what it meant.

They’d almost taken me, too.

"Number Nine, do you hear them now?"

The woman’s voice was ice through a speaker.

I was strapped down. Metal on my wrists. Ankles. A needle being threaded into my neck.

I shook my head. "No. I don’t hear anything."

"That’s impossible," she said, turning to the man beside her. "The serum’s active. He should be responding."

They looked confused. I was glad.

Because I did hear them.

Whispers.

Crackling.

A voice like mine, only sharper, darker, coiling in the back of my skull.

But I wasn’t going to let them know.

I wouldn’t let them win.

But June...

She had let them in. Maybe not by choice. Maybe it was the years. The layers of hurt. The betrayals. Her father. The trauma I never got to protect her from.