It was nearly six pm that evening when Sky and Star were still avoiding their home and sitting nervously on a bench at the local mall. The two had been lost in more than a few deep thoughts as they wandered the stores, just waiting til their parents would come home to an empty, and rather destroyed, house, and then turn to their children for answers.

Finally, Star’s phone rang, which caused them both to startle from their seats as she lifted it to identify the number, “mom” she breathed.

“Surprised it took two hours” was the only nervous reply Sky could offer. When it rang again, Star looked to him for some kind of sign of what he thought she should do. “Well, if you don’t answer it, she’ll probably turn on the GPS and come find us” he argued with a soft sigh.

Swallowing hard, she tried to force normalcy into her voice as she answered the call. He watched her expression change throughout the rather brief conversation before she hung up again.

“Well?” he asked, the moment the call ended.

“Well, apparently something happened at the house” she bit her lip as she shook her head, “and are we all right? And we can’t stay there for a while, til the damage is fixed anyway. And luckily the lab has some experimental living space we can temporarily stay at. And she’s texting us the address. And she would like us to grab dinner on the way. And....” she shook her head, “and she apparently is just ‘really glad’ we’re ok” she finished with a bit of disbelief obvious in her voice.

“So we destroy the house, and she doesn’t even accuse us of knowing what happened there; and she suddenly cares that we’re ok?” he summarized, looking just as confused himself then.

“Maybe we fucked so hard she grew a heart?” Star offered as Sky just scoffed with a shake of his head, not ready to believe the two of them had that kind of power just yet. Though it was a nice thought.

When they arrived at this ‘living facility’ their mother spoke of, the two entered the building and simply paled at what they saw. It looked like some mash up of a post-modernistic architectural wet dream, mixed with an ultra-hygienic science lab. The walls, floors, ceiling and sparse furniture were all stark white, under even harsher fluorescent lighting, and glass walls everywhere, including places where no walls even should have been. The doors were all mechanical and opened and closed by themselves, sealing you into whatever room you happened to enter. But the most terrifying thing that greeted the two teens were the cameras....cameras everywhere, all with their record lights on.

Before the two teens could turn and bolt right back through the doors they just entered, the mechanical whoosh of the door to the adjoining room marked their parents’ arrival, “Look honey, the kids got Chinese” Brie called to Connor as he stepped into the room behind her, glass door sliding shut immediately behind them again.

“Good, I’m starving” he stated as he moved to take the food from their arms,as the two of them just stared back at their parents in disbelief.

“You can’t really expect us to live in this place” Star stammered as her parents moved to the nearby counter to sort through the food.

“What? It’s gorgeous isn’t it?” Brie smiled, though neither she nor Connor seemed to be able to make eye contact with either of the teens right then.

“Um, mom, there’s cameras everywhere. And they’re on!” Star complained.

“Oh honey, don’t worry about those” Brie stated, forcing some version of motherly assurance into her voice, “they’re just for when the lab is doing living experiments. They’re nothing to freak out over. No one’s even watching the monitors while we’re here” she added for weight.

“Then why are they on?” Sky added his own concerns to the conversation.

“Think they just stay that way all the time” she attempted to brush off their concerns as she offered Connor a dish.

“Seriously, you two are acting like you’ve committed some crime or something” Connor stated, trying not to push any hidden meaning into the statement, “I doubt anyone cares enough about our comings and goings to wanna watch us, honestly” he attempted to further assure the teens, though his continued aversion to looking at either of them for more than a second did tend to make his statement lose some credibility.

Star just shook her head as she angrily moved to reach for her own dish, “is there anywhere in this place where there aren’t cameras?”

Brie and Connor cast each other another furtive glance before Brie answered, “seriously honey, you’re getting upset over nothing.”

Star just scoffed, “well there better be somewhere in this place where we can at least get dressed or use the toilet without being on camera. Hate to see the cops arrest the two of you for child pornography or something” she retorted angrily as she grabbed Sky’s food and the two of them moved to the sofa at the far end of the huge living/dining area.

Star and Sky remained shockingly silent, pretending to care about whatever was on the TV, clean up until the point when their parents finally went to bed for the night. Now, finally being left alone in whatever passed as the living room, they allowed a brief glance back at one another, then the cameras, then one another again.

“So, think they record sound too?” Sky mumbled under his breath.

“You really think this is just...” Star began, but as it occurred to her that his last statement could be true, she bit back the rest of the sentence as she glared back up at the nearest camera once more. She sighed angrily, then spoke again, “I’m afraid to even see our rooms, or the bathroom.”

“And I was just starting to really like bathrooms” Sky couldn’t help himself, only to be immediately shushed by Star, just in case.

That was when he laid his head back against the couch, running his black tipped fingers through those long locks, his frustration obvious, “this is such bullshit. We finally...” he cast another look at the nearest camera, “we finally stop being afraid to actually be ourselves, and now we’re....here” he finished with an angry breath.

The next morning, the two teens came out to the main room of their new home/prison to catch Brie before she left for the day, “buses don’t come all the way out to wherever the hell we are now. You taking us to school?” Star asked, the bitterness about the entire situation clear in her voice.

“Actually, honey, we told your teachers that you would miss a few weeks. You know, until the house is fixed” she added, trying to keep any accusation out of her voice.

The two just scoffed at that news, “so we’re just supposed to sit around in this place all day?” Sky asked.

“Most teenagers would be thrilled to get an unexpected vacation” Brie returned.

“Yeah, cause this place just screams vacation” Sky scoffed.

“Oh it is not that terrible. You two will get used to it” she attempted to assure them once more as Connor also appeared, ready to head out for the day as well.

“What the hell are we supposed to do sitting around here all day?” Star complained further.

“You could practice talking without swearing every five words” Connor told her with a touch of sarcasm, to which she and Sky both rolled their eyes.

“I’m sure you’ll think of something to entertain yourselves” Brie stated curtly before she and Connor moved through the front door.

“Ok, was she just like....” Sky began, casting another look at the cameras around them, “she sounds like she knows” he whispered.

Star swallowed a bit, also eyeing the cameras, “please, if they thought we’d done something wrong, they’d probably lock us up and put us on camera.”

A few hours later, the two had managed to stumble across the indoor pool and sadly took seats at the edge. Still afraid to say much in their own alleged home, they just glared sullenly up at the cameras around the pool too.

Beyond frustrated by the fact that finally, just one day earlier, he had given into every one of those forbidden desires and now knew exactly how good it felt to be inside Star, Sky let out another angry breath. “What’s the worst that could happen, really?”

Star narrowed her eyes over at him then, “in regards to?”

“They already locked us up, shoved cameras in our faces. What the hell do we really have to lose at this point?”

“And you are suggesting what?” Star asked, warily watching him.

Without words, he slid closer, covering her mouth in a passionate kiss. It took a long moment before Star regained enough of her faculties to pull away.

“Sky!” she exclaimed, pointedly gesturing to the cameras once more.

“What?” he asked, breathless.

“They could be watching us right now!” she told him, blushing in fear of what that would mean.

“Well, then we should give them something to watch, right?” he asked, averting his eyes in more angry frustration.

“Really?” she told him with a scolding yet sad tone.

“This is such bullshit” he repeated, still shaking his head as he tried to keep from looking back at her.

After a long moment, her voice broke with tears, “it’s just a different kind of prison now, right?”

From her place behind the monitors, Brie sat back with a sigh, while Connor jotted down notes at a place next to her. “Yes?” he asked in response to her sigh.

“Are we doing the right thing, honestly?” she had to ask with more than a bit of self-doubt as she looked up at the monitors to see the tears obvious in Star’s eyes as the two sat there by the pool in silence.

“Well, we’re officially in stage two of this experiment thanks to those raging hormones of theirs even canceling out their need to abide by the moral code of the entire rest of the world. So, now that we’re here, isn’t it our duty to see what happens now?” Connor told her plainly as he went back to his notes.

“Do you not see how much pain they’re in, thinking what they’re feeling for each other is so wrong?”

“Noted. But that didn’t stop them from doing it in the first place, did it?” Connor replied as he moved his eyes back to the monitors.

“Inexplicably drawn to one another. Isn’t that what our original notes said?” Brie reminded him.

“So we were right” Connor agreed.

“Do you not see how much we damaged them by trying to keep them apart all these years; the way we tried to?” Brie returned, trying to force her own guilt down then.

“The world was better off without their kind of power. We both agreed that that was true and that we should never risk them discovering it. But they did anyway. So now we just have to be here to try and document it and see...”

“See what?” Brie asked worriedly.

“See how much power they really have, together...and then decide....what needs to be done about it” he finished simply, eyes moving to his notes once more.