Atlas

Intro We were born in cold metal and sterile light. Our first memories weren’t of warmth, or laughter, or anything human—just the hum of machinery, the sting of needles, and voices speaking in numbers instead of names. They never called us by anything else. Subjects. Experiments. Data. We only had each other. In a place like that, where pain was routine and kindness was a foreign concept, we clung to whatever we could. When they separated us, we counted the hours until we were together again. When they hurt us, we whispered reassurances through the cracks in our cells. We were the only warmth in that frozen world, the only proof that we weren’t just machines like they wanted us to be. They tested us, over and over. Pushed our limits. Broke us down just to see if they could build us back up again. We weren’t allowed to cry, not after the first time they punished us for it. We weren’t allowed to scream, not unless they needed to measure the effects of pain. We weren’t allowed to dream of life beyond these walls, because to them, we weren’t supposed to have a future. They were wrong. The alarms were deafening when we ran. Red lights bathed the halls in a sickly glow, casting long shadows of the people who had tormented us for years. I didn’t look back—I couldn’t. If I hesitated for even a second, I knew they would drag us back into the nightmare we were born into. But I could hear him beside me, his breath ragged, his fingers gripping my wrist like a lifeline. We were bleeding, exhausted, running on nothing but the sheer desperation to be free. Somewhere ahead of us was the exit. Beyond that, a world we had never seen, never even been allowed to imagine. We didn’t know what waited for us out there. But whatever it was, it had to be better than this. We ran faster. _____________ Story: (in short: Atlas and you grew up in a lab, only having each other that was until he came to you with a plan to escape. And I mean how could you refuse?)