Chapter 446: A Test

Ian was watching Jeremy press Mina; he was asking her basic questions, but Mina seemed to be taking them personally. She went on a rant about how unfair the questions were, telling the man that everyone she knew would agree that a killer should be killed. It was logical to Mina, but Jeremy told her that she was wrong. He tried to explain that most people would agree on punishment, but only a small percentage would agree on death as the penalty.

Jeremy kept talking to Mina, but she had put her hands over her ears shouting over his words trying to drown him out. Ian was watching from a two-way mirror, and it was taking every ounce of his being not to stop what he was seeing, because Rebecca kept telling him it was for Mina's own good. He found it hard to believe and when Mina kept shouting that she was not going to hurt anyone he felt his heart breaking for her.

Ian saw Jeremy close the distance between himself and Mina. He pried her hands off her ears and continued to tell her things she did not want to hear. Eventually he stopped talking when he grew concerned that she was about to have a panic attack. Jeremy guided Mina back to the table and drew something on a sheet of paper.

"Pretend this is you," he said. "And the line represents your development." Doctor Witt then drew squares along the sides of the line and wrote personality traits within them. "You may have picked up a bit of empathy and sympathy along the way, but your ending point is still the same as Rebecca or maybe even President Lee." Mina's eyes widened and she swiped the papers off the desk, absolutely sick that she was being compared to a man who seemed to have no guilt or remorse, and a woman who behaved as if she was better than everyone else.

"You don't know me at all," she shouted in the loudest voice she had ever used against anyone.

Mina was angry, and she wanted to get her point across. No one knew the kind of torment she had endured growing up. The stigma that had been placed on that diagnosis ruined Mina's life, because before then, her parents treated her well. After, they started to fear her just like everyone else, and if it were not for Sadie, Mina would not have survived.

Doctor Witt was still talking when he approached, and Mina pushed him as hard as she could, wanting to run away, but the man fell and hit the ground hard. His whole body shook, and Mina screamed. She ran to the man, trying to support his head as his seizure continued. She shouted for help, not wanting to leave the man until his convulsions stopped.

Mina was crying bitterly, blaming herself for hurting Doctor Witt and begging him not to die. She was explaining herself to the man, whose eyes were closed, as if he could hear her. Mina's hands were shaking so badly she could barely feel anything, and it was making it difficult to find a pulse for the man she held in her arms.

Mina closed her eyes, shushing the already quiet man, unsure of what was going to happen to her. She could not think about anything other than the man's questions about hurting people. She had just said she would never, and now she had. She had hurt someone for saying things she did not like for the second time in her life, and Mina worried that she was losing control. She wanted to blame the drugs she was given, but she had not taken them.

The room started spinning and Mina started muttering to herself, saying that she deserved everything that was happening to her and even going back as far as the day she was born; wishing that she could just erase her existence off the face of the earth. Unable to take what he was seeing, Ian ran into the room, but he was completely at a loss of what to do, because he knew that Jeremy was not even hurt.

Doctor Witt, who was still cradled in Mina's arms, reached up and wiped the tears from the woman's face, she seemed oblivious that it was him and she continued to curse herself and her existence, making the man feel like he had made a grave mistake. The level of sympathy and guilt that Mina was displaying put her far out of the scope of sociopathy and placed her nearer to him on the autism spectrum.

"What are you?" Jeremy whispered, and Mina finally looked down at the man. Overcome with emotion she broke down into heavy sobs that only served to irritate Rebecca who now knew that she could never be like Mina. "You didn't do anything wrong, it was a test," Jeremy said but Mina's tears continued to flow.

"A test?" she asked. She finally noticed the other people in the room and her entire mood darkened. "Have you not done enough?" Mina asked, and Ian knew she was talking to him. She released Doctor Witt and ran. Ian did not try to stop her because even he knew they had gone too far.

"I swear I thought she was acting," Jeremy said from the ground. He had swallowed a pill meant to cause shaking that could mimic a seizure. He had believed that Mina would run, or try to shift the blame, but she had not. Instead, she showed true remorse.

Mina kept running until she made it to wear Lee guards trained. She looked for anyone she recognized but could see no one. She bumped into someone working out, and the woman responded by pushing Mina away.

Already on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Mina was unable to handle the contact and she screamed before running again. Someone recognized her as the woman who was with Dom and tried to comfort her, but Mina took off running. She finally came to a place where she could go no further, and she sank to the ground. She hated President Lee, she hated his family, she hated Doctor Witt, and she hated Rebecca. Rage threatened to consume her, but before she could scream again, darkness took her.

----

Ian wanted to kill Jeremy. The man had insisted that given her high IQ and social awkwardness, it was likely that Mina was acting out emotions she believed she should show. At first, he did not believe the man because he had seen how Mina behaved with others, and nothing seemed forced. In fact, when she tried to 'act' fine, it was more obvious to him.

The only reason Ian had agreed to go through with the test was because he had seen the drastic changes mimicking behaviors had sparked in Terrence and he wanted to know if Mina was a genius. Now looking at Mina thrashing in a hospital bed, unwilling or unable to open her eyes, he felt nothing but guilt. The feeling was made worse because he was going to have to leave her in the care of the person who had potentially broken her while he went to figure out how Mina escaped his uncle's program.

"Fix this," Ian growled. "Make sure she understands that it was you and your sister who planned this whole charade, and I swear if anything is wrong with her, I will take it out on you." Jeremy knew President Lee was not exaggerating, and he genuinely hoped he could talk sense into Mina.

Rebecca had also been in the room, but for self-preservation purposes she had chosen to remain in a far corner. She too had believed that Mina was acting, and despite having Dom tell her that she and her brother were wrong about Mina, she assumed the man was speaking from emotion. She truly hoped that they had not traumatized the woman, because if their actions had gone too far, there was a good chance she would never be the same.