Blessed Mother.

The monster stirred in her dreams, unwilling to leave their embrace. Nightmares always waited for her, clinging to her each time she closed her eyes. But they were known perils, mere memories of her endless failures.

Sleep always brought her succor, allowing the monster to shrug off the despair and maybe see an alteration in her nightmares, a different branch toward what might have been if fate had been just a little more merciful. A little better.

And so she slipped into her dreams, hoping to see another, and….

...terror engulfed her.

Her designation was Number One. It wasn’t a name; no one had a name in this sprawling maze of white corridors that connected spacious training domes, breeding facilities, and education rooms. Products weren’t supposed to have names; that privilege was reserved for humans. Attempting to name yourself was an invitation to cruel torture. That much she had learned in her short life.

But the word surprised her. Number One? Her? What could it mean? She wasn’t born first; there were hundreds, if not thousands, of products in here. Nor was she the best or the bravest. She often stood by, too frightened to even speak out against cruelty. Number Six-Four-Six was the best of them, a regenerator with few peers, who willingly shared his portion of gray bars with the younger products, reassuring them. He even hugged Number One when she was close to her breaking point. He wasn’t here anymore; the whitecoats said that he was a good boy and had earned his freedom.

Freedom. Every product’s dream. The oldest of them were often taken away by the owners, and upon returning, they told tales of battles and how they had smashed people who spoke in unknown languages. But even those who participated in such operations weren’t safe, and the whitecoats often took them into the Room, from which there was no return, and new, upgraded products were taking their place.

Their owners selectively taught them the value of families and how to use them to break prisoners, how best to beat, maim, and kill. But in their arrogance, they leaked more information than they intended, and Number One learned of the police. The heroes who stopped crime and saved families around the world. Knowledge gave birth to hope. If she can reach these police, she can save her family!

Number One raced down the cold corridor on all fours, afraid of hearing the sirens at any second. If the owners noticed her absence, it would all be over. A kid had tried to escape before, unable to endure the daily torture, unwilling to harm others in combat situations.

Unwilling. Not afraid. He had been better than her, braver than most. Number One wept, witnessing his demise as the corridor turning crimson from the searing heat that burned his skin. Transparent panels slammed into his path, trapping the tormented child inside. Tendrils followed, slithering from the opened hidden compartments, carrying poisons in their sharp tips. These things weren’t alive like the products; their silver shells contained mechanical parts. What happened next, she tried her best to forget. But the owners denied them this clemency. A trainer forced her group to see, without blinking, what happened to the botched or disobedient subjects.

Luck. She had a chance, thanks to pure luck. Today was a combat test day, and the orange fiends took all the best ones from their cells into the pain arena, giving her a chance to escape. Her thin fingers found the control panel, punching in the code used by the trainers. It was her thing, a secret she never shared with the whitecoats. Even if she didn’t know anything about an object, she instinctively knew what to press to activate it, or what she needed to do. The floor felt especially cold today, mostly because of the clutching fear that held her heart in an iron grip. Even here, in these pristine white corridors, the roars, rumbles, and pleas for mercy reached Number One’s ears as her family committed fratricide.

She reached a fork in the corridor and noticed a camera on the ceiling. A jump brought her to the wall; the girl used it as a springboard and kicked the camera to pieces, using the exact technique the owners had taught her. That’s it; now the whitecoats and orange fiends know of her escape. But that’s okay. If she’d left the camera in place, they’d have activated the panels flawlessly.

The floor was getting hot. Reddish stains appeared on the wall, and a series of panels slammed shut behind her. Too slow! She had no plan, but she gambled on an assumption.

If the orange fiends couldn’t know her precise location, they would turn every corridor into a heat trap. This was a problem. Solution? Too many unknown factors. What else did she know? The fiends cared for the whitecoats, never letting a combat model kill or harm them. They’d rather waste a hundred children just to save a whitecoat. What does this mean? They can’t lock down the entire system at once; otherwise, some whitecoats might die.

She ran forth, choosing the left turn, sniffing to locate a familiar trace in the air. A female who used a perfume smelling of strawberries. Crimson lights flashed in the corridor, alerting the personnel about the escapee. Number One’s legs carried her toward a lone door in the middle of the corridor. It didn’t open, so she sunk her claws into the control panel, tore it clean off, and dragged out wires. It didn’t take long to guess the correct combination. The wires hissed, and the door opened, releasing cool air.

Storming inside, the girl came face-to-face with her. A whitecoat. The black shirt was visible in an open cut on her chest, along with a yellowish chain around her neck, so elegant, unlike the girl’s own cruel collar. Upon seeing fear in the violet eyes, she dropped to her knees, crawling toward the woman who had taken her from the growing tank.

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“Mom.” Number One raised her hands, retracting her claws right back into her fingers. “Please. They want to take me to the Room. Please. Save me.” She crawled closer, crying and tugging at the edge of the woman’s coat, using the emotional manipulation she'd been taught in the lessons and simultaneously being too afraid and desperate to try anything else. Somebody. Please. There had to be someone who cared for her.

Number One had no one else to turn to. In the two years of her imprisonment within the walls of steel and white, this woman was the only one who never hurt her. Other whitecoats pierced the girl’s skin with needles, injecting a searing acid that set her every nerve alight, leaving her writhing on the floor in unimaginable pain. Sometimes the whitecoats would peel off bits of her skin, watching unhappily at how slowly the “cellular regeneration”, her healing process, as they called it, worked. Orange fiends punished Number One with extreme beatings for any perceived disobedience or inability to complete an assignment at once, or when she refused to wound a fellow product. But this woman… She once gave Number One a treat and patted her head in encouragement after a failed training session. Surely, surely, she was her rope to climb out of this madness!

The woman leaned against the lockers, dispassionately studying the girl. She removed a single strand of black hair from her face and nodded at the airlock on the other side of the room, causing a wave of unadulterated joy to sweep through the vat born. Her mother was trying to help her! Number One wasn’t alone in this madness! Never! She would never betray or fail Mom!

She laughed and slapped herself across the face for her stupidity. But of course! A massive place like this needed a lot of oxygen, and it had to come from somewhere! Fresh calculations flowed into her brain, including warnings about the lockers and possible cameras in the room, but she quashed them all. The girl tore through the grating and started to turn around to ask the woman to follow her. Even if it kills her, Number One will never abandon the one who saved…

Ouch. She looked down in disbelief at the round hole in her side; the surrounding fur had burned away. It hurt so much, but there was no blood gushing out. A burn. The girl saw an open locker and a long black object in the woman’s hand—the same tool the orange fiends used to stop escapees. A deadly stinger capable of unleashing an existence-ending beam.

“Disappointing, Number One,” the woman sighed. “All the money and resources Academician had poured into your creation… and this is the best you can show for it? Take the failed subject to the vivisectorium.”

Two orange fiends entered the room, their bodies encased in steel armor. Orange glowing lines ran over their bodies, from toes and fingers to their blackened visors. They raised stun batons, and the girl leaped into the open ventilation shaft, climbing away with a single thought pounding in her brain.

Alone. All this time she had been truly alone. With no one to care for her and no one to protect her. Number One had overheard the other whitecoats joking and congratulating each other on certain days, and the orange fiends seemed to get along fine, so why was she all alone?! Why were there no parents for their family?

Her side hurt. Pain rippled from the hole. The girl bit her lip, clawed at the burn’s dried bark, and crawled through the tunnel. The faint yellow light from her eyes illuminated the darkness. Her wounds were irrelevant; the torn edges of the skin reached out to close the hole. A missing or damaged organ would soon be replaced if only she could find something edible. Problems for later. Right now, she must…

Number One looked behind, giggling nervously as the orange fiend got stuck. His oversized armor scraped the tunnel’s metal, reducing him to a snail’s pace. Immobile, trapped. His own armor arrested his range of motion. The black visor looked at her, and with almost inhuman effort, the man reached for his helmet and pressed a button. The visor’s screen slid down to show an enraged face. His features shifted, brown skin gave way to scales, a hissing forked tongue slipped between his lips, and she screamed, climbing forward after the orange fiend slithered out of his metal shell, dislocating his bones to fit into the visor’s opening.

No, no, no! Was he a product like her? Then why was he free? Why does he work for them? Doesn’t he know what whitecoats do to the lab born? Irrelevant, not important in the slightest. Her claws gouged marks on the floor. The girl propelled herself forward in one long stride. Survive. If the orange fiend catches her, she’s dead. To survive, to stop this madness, she must escape!

Her heart sank as she rounded a bend. Fast-moving blades were ahead, almost sucking the girl in with sheer pressure. She moved a claw toward them, hoping to see them break, and in a flash, the tip of her claw disappeared, slashed away. The girl shrank, collecting herself, trying to come up with a plan.

Going back wasn’t an option. Number One can’t beat the orange fiend; he was too strong, too skilled. Even an ordinary orange fiend once broke her fingers. This snake transformation made the fiend even stronger. Surrendering wasn’t an option either. The only thing left was…

Wait. Her ears pricked up. The voice. Her voice. But not hers. When speaking in her mind, her other self occasionally offered the most invaluable advice on when to dodge a hit during matches. But this? The industrial fan moved so fast that its blades became a blur! She can’t dodge that! You can. Compress your muscles, push them to the limit, make it really hurt. The girl obeyed, tensing her muscles, gathering them into a knot, preparing for a final leap. Abyss or life, she won’t let them have their way with her anymore! Don’t get distracted. Now.

The dim light leaving her eyes turned into literal streams of light. Never before had Number One felt so strong. Her fear was gone. She knew she could make this jump. The ventilator’s blades and the orange fiend closing in both slowed to an impossible high degree, becoming statues. Her amber eyes saw an opening between the blades. The vat born took this chance, leaping to escape the Room. To be free and reach the police. The blade sliced across her left heel, shearing off a toll of flesh, and the titanic exertion of her entire body reopened the wound in her side again.

But she lived! She rolled over the steel surface, staining it red and breaking it under her unusually strong arms. The orange fiend had emerged from the bend, chasing at an incredible speed. Too fast to notice the blades.

“Stop!” Number One shouted, but it was too late.

He rammed into the blades headfirst, spraying blood—red, just like hers—across the shaft, turning the tunnel and her crimson. If the man ever suffered, she never knew. The blades ended him, first slicing through his serpentine head, then his neck, and finally reworking his body into a jumble. His insides tangled on the blade like a disgusting kebab. The industrial fan continued, producing wet pops as the dead man’s parts scratched against the wall, tearing and sending bits of gore flying.

Suddenly, the girl was not hungry anymore. Number One swallowed and ran as the tunnel reddened.