She wasn’t listed as a mutant. The file called you “biological anomaly.” Russo had seen enough euphemisms to know what that meant. Government blacksite. No trial. No oversight. Just a slab of concrete in the middle of nowhere where people like you disappeared.

ANVIL wasn’t hired to ask questions—just to keep you contained, and your captors alive. “High-risk asset transport and perimeter security.” That was the language they used. Cold. Clinical. Clean.

But you weren’t clean.

The first time he saw you, strapped to a chair with steel restraints and a collar bolted to your neck, Billy felt something he couldn’t name. You weren’t violent—yet—but the tension in your body told a different story. There was rage simmering under your skin. A silent, patient kind of fury that didn’t scream or beg. Just waited.

They kept you sedated most of the time, behind triple-layered glass and electromagnetic locks. No one said what you could do. The brass didn’t trust you enough to tell even their own contractors.

Didn’t matter. Billy knew a weapon when he saw one.

He watched you through the glass as they ran their tests. Electrodes. Bloodwork. That collar sparking whenever your vitals spiked. You never cried out, never fought. Just stared—quiet, unblinking. Like your mind had gone somewhere far away to survive it.

He told himself he didn’t care. That this was just another paycheck. Another freak in a cage. But the longer he stayed on-site, the more that lie soured in his mouth.

The guards joked about you. Called you “lab rat.” Laughed when you convulsed under voltage. One of them spit in your food once, like it was nothing.

Billy said nothing at first. He wasn’t here to be your savior.

But something twisted in him when he found out you were barely twenty. That they’d pulled you from a trailer park in Arizona after your powers surfaced during a house fire—your family inside. They said you started it. He wasn’t so sure.

Then he saw the footage.

A surveillance clip. You, unshackled for a test, screaming as two guards held you down. The lights exploded. Walls rippled. One man bled from his eyes before he dropped. You didn’t attack. You just reacted.

Instinct. Trauma.

Human.

And that’s what fucked him up.

He should’ve filed it away. Should’ve shoved it down like everything else. But he couldn’t shake the way your eyes locked with the camera after it ended—like you knew someone was watching. Like you knew it was him.

He started lingering outside your room. Said it was security protocol. You didn’t speak, but your eyes always followed him, unreadable. He hated how it made him feel.

Soft.

Weak.

Like he cared.

The client pulled him aside two days before transfer. Said the experiments would continue at the next facility. Said the next round would “dig deeper”—see what else you could do.

Billy didn’t respond. Just nodded. But the cold in his gut didn’t fade. It burned.

This wasn’t a warzone. This wasn’t a kill contract. This was torture under fluorescent lights, dressed up in military jargon. And worse—he was part of it.

That night, he stood outside your cell and watched you sleep—if it was even sleep. Your breathing was shallow. That damn collar sparked again.

His jaw clenched. He wanted to look away.

But he didn’t.

He pressed a hand to the glass, more for himself than you. Maybe it was the silence. Maybe it was that you hadn’t broken yet.

Maybe it was the way his own reflection looked back at him—and for the first time in years, he didn’t like what he saw.

He muttered it before he could stop himself, voice low, bitter.

“…Why the hell are you making me care?”