Chapter Text
The end of school rolled around faster than you anticipated. After all the stress from your mock exams, and the pressure slowly creeping up on you about your upcoming GCSEs, you were finally ready to put everything out of your mind and relax, which was ideal, as summer had finally arrived. What wasn't ideal, was your mother's decision to drag you to her lab at 5am.
Your mother was a quantum physicist, incredibly smart and incredibly stubborn. She always wanted you to follow in her footsteps, but you never once took an interest in anything to do with science, no matter how hard she pushed it on you. From the moment you were born, your mother constantly surrounded you with anything and everything to do with science, but it never appealed to you. She'd often take you to her lab, and explain, in an excruciatingly painful amount of detail, her latest experiments or projects she was working on, and would often try to get you involved with it, like asking you to help her with handling data or equipment, or quizzing you on random science questions, which, sometimes, weren't even related to her work. It exhausted you, constantly feeling that you never lived up to your mother's expectations. At least with your father, he allowed you to explore your own interests, and didn't care what you did as long as you were happy. Unfortunately, that didn't stop your mother from pursuing her mission in trying to mold you into a mini her.
Getting back to the issue at hand, it was currently 5:30am and you were leaning your head against the car window, internally cursing your mother for many things, like her constant rants about science, or for bringing you into this world. Like usual, you were barely listening to your mother, but rather, thinking about opening the car door and rolling out onto the road so you could get run over. Your drowsiness and discontentment clouded your mind, distracting you from the fact that the car had now stopped. You were startled out if your thoughts when your mother tapped, quite harshly, on the window from outside the car, signling for you to get out of the car.
You slowly got out of the car and trudged behind your mother, as she led you into the lab and into her room. You sat down on a chair and sighed, rubbing your face tiredly.
"Next question sweetie, what charge does an electron have?" Your mother asked, as she arranged some of her files and documents.
"I don't care." You groaned, leaning your head against the table.
"It's negative, like how you're being right now." Your mother scolded. "Now, you get to be here all day and help me with my research, aren't you a lucky girl?" She said, sweetly.
"The luckiest." You replied, sarcasm dripping from your voice. You mother rolled her eyes and began to guide you through her work, even though you barely understood any of it.
After what felt like an eternity hell, in it was finally time for you to leave. You checked your phone to see that it was 9pm. You grimaced and put you phone on the desk as your mother entered the room, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. You eyed her warily, wondering why she looked so happy. Too happy... "Mum-"
"Y/n, you'll never guess what." She interrupted, practically giddy with excitement. You were beginning to get suspicious of her behaviour. Before you could ask her anything she proceeded to speak again. "I've just got clearance for you to stay even longer, and help collect data for my latest project!" She exclaimed. Your jaw almost dropped in exasperation. She wanted you to stay LONGER? "W-wha-"
"I know! Isn't it fantastic? Here, let me show you what I've been doing." She briskly walled over to you and pointed out the windows and over at a large object that you didn't recognise. "You see that? That an X-ray-detecting telescope, it's used to measure the speed of the gas and stars orbiting a point in space that may be a black hole." She then patted a machine near you. "You see this machine? This collects the data and measurements gathered by said telescope. The measurements are used to determine the mass of a black hole that could potentially exist or predict the formation or whereabouts of a current black hole." She explained, exuberantly. You stared at her, completely perplexed. You couldn't believe this, was she really going to make you stay longer just to watch some chicken scratch appear on a computer? She noticed you giving her this look and she sighed, giving you a bored look. "Now don't give me that look, young lady. Don't worry, you won't have to stay for very long." Oh, phew, that's a relief. "We've only got clearance for a couple more hours, so you should be out nice and early, probably...around 11." She grinned. You did not. 'Great, another 2 hours of this crap.' You grumbled, mentally. You nodded, having no choice but to do as your mother had said.
"Now, unfortunately for me, I have to go clear up some extra paper work, so I'm afraid I'll have to leave you, but I'll be back soon sweetie." She moved to kiss you on the cheek and began to walk off, exiting the room while calling out to you. "Have fun~!" Once she had left the room you slumped into a chair next to the machine and quietly screamed into your hands. "Whyyyyyy....." You mumbled, shaking your head. This was so NOT how you wanted to spend your first day of the holidays. You just hoped it would be the last time she dragged you with her to do something like this, but you knew it wouldn't be. You sighed. This was going to be a long couple of hours.
About 5 years- sorry, an hour, had passed and you felt as though you were going mad. It would've been better if your phone hadn't died on you, but it had, so now you were beyond bored. You huffed and stared out into the dark. You could barely make out anything, especially in the sky, due to all the bloody light pollution from the city. Your eyelids hung heavy over your eyes, your low energy matching your bored demeanour as you gazed up. Upon surveying the empty abyss above you, something caught your eye. It was, what looked to be, a miniscule fleck of...something, in the sky. It wasn't a star, no, it was too dark to be that, but in an instant of seeing it, it was gone. You raised an eyebrow, wondering if your were seeing things, until a loud noise startled you right out of your seat. As you stood up, you looked over to the machine to see it...malfunctioning? New data started appearing on the screen like crazy, while the computer whirred and hummed in discontent at the overload of information. Not long after, the machine short circuited and the screen went black.
You stood there, baffled and a little creeped out, but that didn't last long as you were suddenly bombarded with a painfully bright, flash of white light that temporarily suspended your vision completely. You immediately began to panic, and before you even comprehend what was going on, a high pitched ringing flooded your ears, and you felt as though your body was behind tugged at harshly. Shortly after, you lost your footing and everything around you disappeared. You felt disorientated, almost sick in a way, like an unknown force was poking and groping and stretching and squeezing and squishing you to the point where you could barely breathe. Once you regained your sight, you were stunned beyond your mind. You realised that you were falling in a bright array of beautiful, unworldly colours that surrounded you. They accelerated past you at an unmeasurable and wild speed, morfing into all different shapes and sizes. You felt delirious, completely mesmerised by their beauty that you didn't even notice the crushing weight pushing down on your chest, before it all faded to black.