Chapter Text
Seven didn't know if she'd had a life before being a prisoner of the laboratory. If she did, she was too young to have remembered it. The lab had been the only place she'd known; she hadn't realised that the even was a world outside of it until they switched her from using her powers on animals to humans.
To the scientists, she was a goldmine. She had the ability to control someone's body for a short period of time, make them do or say anything she wanted them to, and at the end of it, they'd be none the wiser; they'd think their actions were all their own.
The first time Seven had taken someone's memory back to her own body with her was a shock. She hadn't meant to do it; she didn't even realise she even could do it.
She remembered looking through the boy's eyes. He was only a little older than she was, but he'd 'overstayed his welcome' in the lab, which was code for him no longer being of any use to them, so he was nothing more than a test subject for the other children's powers. He could read and talk, and through his eyes and with his memory, so could Seven. She could finally use words to communicate; she wanted nothing more than to remember how to so she could do it using her own mind.
When she returned to her body, she was delighted to find that she could still read and talk. She spoke for the first time; her voice came out small and hoarse after not using it for the first six and a half years of her life.
"Hello." She'd said, testing her newfound ability. "Can... Understand?" Despite now being able to read and write, her grasp of the English language was still weak. After all, her only exposure to it at that point was when the scientists would speak to her to instruct her to do things.
The scientists seemed excited when she spoke, quickly jotting down notes and mumbling amongst one another. This excitement was short-lived, and chaos ensued when they asked the boy to talk again, and they found that he no longer knew how. Instead of the positive murmuring of a new development, they looked terrified.
Seven was punished for what she'd done; it was the first time she was taught any sort of moral lesson; it was drilled into her - stealing is bad.
At the time, Seven didn't understand why they were so upset with her. She thought she'd done something well; she'd developed a new power. It took a while for her to realise that they were scared of what she could now do with this new power.
Despite their apprehensions, they decided to continue on exploring this new skill. They discovered that she could take not only someone's skill but also a memory. They'd find test subjects and ask them about important events in their lives; then, Seven would be instructed to use her powers to dive into their mind and retrieve that memory.
One of the first memories Seven had taken from someone without permission was their first time watching Bambi. She hadn't meant to take it; she'd stumbled upon it while trying to find the memory she'd been instructed to take. But, when she realised she had taken it with her, she didn't tell anyone; she lived on edge for a while, worried they'd notice, but to the man she'd taken it from, it was just a tiny memory; he didn't even notice anything was missing. So once she realised she was in the clear, Seven treasured that memory.
On the long days, the days when the scientists were too busy prodding and poking at the other children to push their powers to the limits, she'd replay the movie in her mind. There were some blank spots where the man she'd taken the memory from had clearly looked away from the screen or closed his eyes for a short period of time, but the movie was mostly there. She saw a lot of herself in the little deer. Whenever they'd pushed her powers too far, her legs would shake, and she'd struggle to stand, much like Bambi struggled on the ice.
She'd seen pictures of herself in the minds of the scientists, her head was regularly shaved, but you could still see the beginnings of red curls sprouting from her scalp.
Her eyes were large and blue; in the minds of the kinder of the scientists, they looked innocent, but to some, they looked devious, like she was always plotting something.
So, since Seven wasn't exactly a name, she called herself Bambi.
By the time she was fourteen, Bambi could remember twelve births of a first child, ten weddings, and five graduations. None of these memories were her own; she felt horrible keeping them, especially after being taught that first time that stealing was bad. But the scientists didn't care about any of that; they only saw how Bambi's powers could be used against the Russians.
Her powers had grown to the point where she could now return the stolen memories or implant false ones into their minds. Admittedly, she wasn't able to craft completely false narratives, but she could adjust the existing memories using the ones she'd stolen.
For example, she could take the memory of someone's first son being born and, with a little bit of tweaking, replace it with someone else's memory of their daughter being born. It was a small part of her powers, but it would be useful nonetheless.
Thanks to her new stolen memories, Bambi knew more about the world outside the lab, and she wanted to get out there and explore it.
In an ideal world, her escape would have been as easy as her controlling a guard's body and freeing herself from her cell, then carrying her body out to one of the exits and unlocking the door and if she caused enough damage to his mind, she could use the minute or so it took for the guard to remember how to walk and talk and regain control of his own body to run as fast as she could and as far away as she could.
However, the scientists had considered this before she'd thought of it herself, so Bambi had multiple guards on her at all times, and they were instructed to alert the scientists should any of them exhibit some out of character behaviours.
So, Bambi had to craft a better plan. Usually, the lab was quite good at making sure they swapped the guards out regularly, but they'd been short-staffed for a while, and Bambi had been given an excellent chance to quietly study the guards.
There was one named Richard, she caught him sleeping on the job often, and the other guards didn't seem to care enough to wake him up. So, testing the waters, she controlled him while he was sleeping one day so she could filter through his memories. Most of them were average; he was a thirty-seven-year-old man, single with no kids, no pets, just lived alone in a little bungalow off the highway. He was always tired since the cars on the nearby highway kept him up at night. He was a bit of a mama's boy; she'd taught him how to sew when he was seven, but he'd never used that skill since, so Bambi felt safe to take it.
Overall, the only interesting thing Bambi could find about Richard was that he knew where the spare key to her cell was kept.
A week after her first dive into Richard's mind, Bambi caught him sleeping at the end of his shift and knew it was the perfect time to hatch her plan. Bambi controlled Richard's body for about ten minutes in total. For her, it was a long period of time and caused her entire body to ache with the strain of it; she only hoped that none of the scientists would notice and suspect she might be up to something.
While in control of Richard's body, she'd used her knowledge of him to go through his usual handover and go and collect his bag. Thankfully, no one paid much attention to Richard, and no one noticed when he diverted slightly from his usual routine as she made him go and get the spare key to her cell and stick it on his keychain. She instantly grabbed hold and took the memory of doing so away from him, so he wouldn't remember that he'd taken the spare key.
Bambi had been keeping hold of a memory she'd stolen a while back, one that was so insignificant to the woman she'd taken it from but was incredibly important now. It was just a simple memory of needing to get a spare key cut. Adjusting the memory slightly, she managed to plant it in Richard's mind just as her grip on him was slipping the further away from her cell he walked.
Desperately, she used a tissue she'd managed to hide in her bra to wipe away the blood dripping from her nose, a tell-tale sign she'd used her powers, stuffing it back into her bra before closing her eyes and letting the exhaustion take over her body.
The next day, Bambi grabbed an opportunity to control Richard again. She was still aching from doing it the previous day, but she had to know if he'd gone through with it. She had to hold back the grin when she realised he had.
"I'm gonna go take a leak," Bambi told the other guards as Richard, standing him up and walking him away before anyone had the opportunity to tell him to wait for his break. This was a completely normal move for Richard; no one would be able to tell it wasn't really him. On his way to the bathroom, she made him drop off the original spare key back into the drawer where it was kept, doing the same thing she had before to make him forget the slight diversion. She let him go once he was outside the toilet so he could do his business and return to his position by himself.
It took another two weeks for Bambi to get a chance to continue her plan. Richard had been sent to grab her meal for the day, which always consisted of two plain slices of bread and a plastic cup of water. The moment he'd been instructed to do so, Bambi grabbed hold of him, making sure as she left, she gave the other guards Richard's usual grunt of annoyance at being asked to do anything more than sitting around twiddling his thumbs.
On the way back from the kitchen, she slipped the key off of Richard's keychain and hid it between the slices of bread. As she had before, Bambi pulled the memory of doing so away with her, grabbing the one of getting the key cut as well, just in case she didn't do as good of a job at tying up loose ends as she thought she had.
Bambi sat up from the bed and smiled innocently as Richard, in control of his own body again, dumped the tray in front of her and left. She slipped the key out while no one was looking and hid it in her bra, which had quickly become her favourite hiding place; they rarely ever went as far as to check there.
Now, she just had to wait for the right time to make her escape.
Bambi estimated it had been about three more months before the right opportunity finally came for her to make an escape. One of the other kids had kicked up a fuss, breached containment somehow and killed a few guards; it was either Two or Three, given the direction the guards who had previously been watching her were rushing in. Everyone had gone to help neutralise the threat, but Bambi was left unattended. As fast as she could, only pausing to grab the stuffed bunny she'd been allowed to keep throughout her time there, Bambi unlocked her cell door and peered down the hallways. They were empty.
Adrenaline coursing through her body, she ran in the opposite direction, she knew there was a fire door there, and from what she could recall from the memories of the scientists, there was a drainage pipe that led outside the fences.
Her bare feet slapped against the cold, hard tile, the sound echoing in the now vacant halls. She reached the door with a singular guard. Before he had a chance to react, she took hold of his mind and unlocked the door. She hated herself for doing it, but she took away his ability to walk and talk as she left. He could learn them again... probably... but it would incapacitate him enough for her to make her escape.
As she returned to her own mind, he crumbled to the floor and opened his mouth, only an unintelligible groan coming out. Bambi ran from the door, the sticks and mud hurting her feet as she did so, but she couldn't care less. Her lungs filled with fresh air for the first time in her life, but she didn't have the time to relish in it. They'd notice she was gone soon enough; they'd send people out to get her.
Finding the pipe was easier than expected; she knew roughly where it was, and it was plenty wide enough for her to crawl out of. From there, she was in what she assumed to be a forest; she'd only ever seen them in memories and the few books they were allowed in the rainbow room. She'd not been in the rainbow room recently, not after the massacre that happened there over a year ago.
Shaking the thought from her mind, she ran as fast as her legs would carry her, which wasn't as fast as she'd hoped. She'd never run before; her legs were burning and begging her to stop and the rest of her body ached after what happened with the guard, but she wouldn't stop.
She couldn't stop.
She needed to be free.