The outside world amazed her. Number One emerged from the tunnel to find herself on an island surrounded by water. Still leaving a trail of blood, she jumped over a fence and saw a multicolored sea of lights on the other side of the water. Orange, green, red, blue, purple… Too many colors to name! The night was dark, but the never-ending, sprawling mountains of steel cast enough light to dispel the darkness. The tops of the tallest towers pierced the clouds, illuminating the sky itself and casting their own multicolored aura around them.

Her jaw dropped in astonishment as she moved down the slope to the water. So… beautiful. And there were strange things floating in the air, weaving around the mountains of steel. Her sharp ears caught words—human words—about some “special proposition just for tonight”, “best prosthetics in the city”, and so much more. Honking horns, the humming of flying metal crates, and people’s laughter assaulted her, threatening to deafen her, and she put her hands over her ears, begging the Spirits for deliverance. There must be hundreds… No, the word doesn’t even begin to describe how many people lived on the other side of the water. Countless. Yes, that’s about right. Surely someone, somewhere, can give the vat borns normal lives!

The girl fell to her knees, desperately gulping down the strange-tasting water. Her nostrils caught the smell of something pungent, but she didn’t care. She drank greedily, feeling itchy in her legs and sides as her body healed. Compared to the other products, she healed a bit slower, but these wounds won’t kill her. Nothing will kill her! She escaped, and now she will save her family!

“So this is me,” Number One mused. A child covered by a fur coat reflected in the dirty waters. The fur did a poor job of hiding the dirty, unwashed, alabaster-white skin. Pale scars lined every inch of her body. A crude collar held her neck in prison. She will need to find a way to get rid of it. What if it had a tracker? She touched her face, curious at the blend of wolfish and human features. Her eyes were amber, glowing a little. The nose undeniably belonged to a human, but the mouth was protruding and the lips hid fangs. She even had what looked like whiskers! But... she had touched her face before. There were no whiskers, and her nose didn’t stick out as much as it did now.

It was as if her creators had an idea to mold her into a wolf, and then they stopped, scrapped the idea, and tried to create a human while the clay hadn’t set, but failed. The end result wasn’t pretty. Not because of the scars. She lacked muscles or the chitin armor plates covering the combat models. Soft. Exposed. Vulnerable.

Her belly rumbled, and Number One looked around. Sustenance. She needs just a little bit before crossing the water. Her nostrils caught the scent of rotting meat coming from a nearby dumpster, and she leapt at it. Food. Any food to supply her body and…

She stumbled back, experiencing the entire world spin around her. Her forehead was on fire, spearing her body with fresh waves of pain. She looked up, seeing a blonde girl dressed in a black leather biker suit, a baseball bat marred by something red resting on the girl’s shoulder. The vat born touched her own forehead, understanding that the stuff on the bat was her own blood. The wound on her head hurt like Abyss, but Number One was more curious about how the assailant had sneaked up on her. She was still full of adrenaline from the shock of playing a part in the death of a living being. The vat born should’ve heard this biker from a kilometer away!

“You?” the blonde asked mockingly. “You’re the reason they woke us up? Piss off, at least last time it was an alligator mutie.”

The vat born did as the girl inadvertently advised and sprinted away on all fours, ignoring the pain in her legs. Us. This means more than one. Dangerous, she can’t take them… No, she didn’t want to take them on, even if she could. She’ll have a new life, one where she’ll never hurt anyone again. There was always an option to escape a fight, right?

Number One almost reached the edge of the island when a surge of electricity caught her in the back. Tongues of energy rose from the stone ground, hissing and dancing in the wind, forming the figure of a young man whose cheeks bore a gruesome scar stretching from ear to ear. The youth slammed a brass knuckle into the girl’s breast, knocking her back onto her unsteady legs.

“Eugenia, watch out! The bitch is fast,” the boy said.

“Yeah, yeah…” The grimacing, pain-stricken Number One heard a voice to her left. The space itself cracked, rearranging itself, and the blonde stepped out of an oval portal, raising her baseball bat.

“Please,” the vat born whimpered, looking into the face of this Eugenia. She was around her age. Why was she chasing her? Shouldn’t people from the outside supposed to be better than those from the lab? “It must be a mistake. I didn’t mean to do anything bad. I just want to li…”

The baseball bat came down, shattering her nose and cartwheeling her through the air. Hurt. Her head hurt so much. Eugenia wasn’t a normal human. Her strength exceeded everything Number One had learned of humans. She landed on the head, screaming in agony, frustration, and disappointment. Nothing was right. Why are people she never hurt tormenting her? What was wrong with this fucking world?

Fight. Her other self said. Number One kicked; her bleeding feet landed on the girl’s ankle. Eugenia’s face turned to surprise, and she fell face down, right into the rising uppercut. Taste the pain, bitch! The vat born thought, releasing her claws. She adjusted the blow, aiming to scar rather than maim. There were a lot of questions she had about the world, and if she had to beat Eugenia into being a better person, then she would!

Her hand disappeared. Number One barely even registered this before a scream of pain left her lungs. The claws—her claws!—were buried in her side. Her arm was still in front of her, disappearing into a portal at the elbow, and another similar portal hovered beneath the vat born’s ribs. The blonde must have opened a portal in midair, redirecting the blow. Another portal opened, swallowing the falling girl in the biker suit whole, and the hit from behind sent the vat born reeling. Eugenia teleported behind Number One and was already standing upright.

“Crafty bitch. But I’m better.” The blonde raised her bat. “Boys, girls! Break the bitch!”

What?! The vat born pulled her claws free and reached for her nose, fixing the exposed bone. Thank the Spirits. Her arm was still with her. There weren’t two hunters. Nine teenagers surrounded her, some floating, some floating, one wielding a flaming whip coming from the palm of his hand. So many. She could see glimmers of fear, glee, anger, and mockery in their eyes. But no pity or remorse. A pack of hunters.

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“Why are you doing this?” Number One squeaked. They surrounded her, cutting her off from the ventilation shaft and the wall, making it impossible to cover her back by standing against a wall. “I have done nothing wrong!”

“What are you doing?!” a voice boomed from above. The vat born glanced up. A vehicle hovered above the group; its roof retracted, and the driver, an elderly woman, stood at full height. The woman raised a wrinkled fist. “Leave the poor girl alone this instant! She needs an immediate medical atte…” A tossed knife struck the car door, and the woman ducked.

“Shut it, Granny.” Eugenia advised the woman, arrogantly throwing bubble gum into her mouth. “We’re just doing a little monster hunting. Not like this thing is a human or anything. Now stop buzzing and fly off, or I’ll shove your dentures down your throat. Your choice.”

“You…” Something in Eugenia’s eyes made the woman sit and turn on the engine, leaving Number One alone.

But it was enough. This time, there was no betrayal. The vat born was sure of it, following the car with her eyes. There are good people. This was one of them, just weak. And until she finds help—someone whom she can call her pack—she will survive. Number One will find the police, she will find this lady later and thank her; and most of all, she will save her family.

“Come at me, freaks,” she spat. “Let’s see your tears.”

The vat born raised her arms, screaming in pain as the flaming whip hit her forearms. But she bore it. There was a reason not to dodge. The flame was insubstantial. They expected her to back away from it, escaping the fire. Instead, she pushed through the flaming whip, closing in on the surprised boy and elbowed his nose in. The vat born spun around, sweeping the boy off his feet. Another elbow hit sent him into a girl who formed stone gloves over her hands. The body hit her in the face, knocking them both to the ground.

Not all are vile. There was a purpose to the world beyond fighting. The scarred boy gestured, but the vat born feinted a jump, fooling Eugenia into opening the portal above Number One. She lunged at the scarred boy, ignoring the explosion of lightning at her back. They won’t stop her from finding meaning in her life. No one was this strong. Not anymore. Her hand closed over his wrist, and the boy screamed after a crunching sound of his bones breaking, the brass knuckle falling from his limp hand. She could have knocked him down.

It would be a piece of cake to drive her own elbow into his temple, falling alongside him and cracking his skull. But she didn’t want to kill. She didn’t want to harm anyone, so she pushed him aside, whirling around to meet Eugenia, sensing her approach thanks to the stench of bubble gum coming from her mouth.

There was an art to wielding any weapon. By far, the most dangerous part of the bat was its tip, as the swing added speed and strength to the impact. But by closing on to her opponent, Number One received a hit over her ear with the lower part of the bat, which hadn’t had the space to accumulate speed yet. Number One closed her fangs on the girl’s ear, grabbing her. Eugenia. The pack leader. Now there was someone she would maim. But not kill. It was a path she refused to tread. The vat born remembered her siblings in the complex. Kind souls turned merciless after the first murder. It was a foul experience, a corruption-warping personality. And she was her own person. Her soul wasn’t about to be sold for the life of the cheap, ignorant, stupid, stubborn blonde bitch, dammit!

The vat born did not know how Eugenia’s ability worked. She made a bet that the girl wouldn’t be able to portal her away with another person holding her. And as Number One’s jaws ripped off the blonde’s ear, she understood her bet had paid off. The human girl wailed in pain, struggling to break free, blood gushing from her missing ear. The vat born gulped the ear, tasting human flesh, and a shiver of anticipation ran through her body, electrifying every hair.

Something was changing. As the ear dissolved for nutrients, she felt herself energized. Hunger gripped her, demanding that she close her fangs on the pale neck, bite through the windpipe, and drink blood until her belly was full. Then she would feast, devouring every last scrap of this bitch who dared to hurt her for fun.

There were tears in the blonde’s eyes. Tears and fear. An unpleasant odor of piss and sweat was coming from the pinned body, and suddenly Eugenia turned into a scared girl, hurt, weak, alone, helpless. No different from Number One. The vat born stopped the ravenous urge, struggling to speak an offer of peace.

Then the rest of the pack descended upon her, pummeling the vat born into unconsciousness.

****

The orange fiends arrived later, dragging Number One by the collar and giving Eugenia medicine that stopped her bleeding. The vat born thrashed and kicked, clawing desperately at their impregnable armor, flailing in maddening fear as they took her down to the basement and knocked her out.

She awoke on a slab of steel, her arms and legs secured by the metal rings. The vat born tried to break free, but the damn thing refused to budge. A similar ring had closed over her neck, pinning the girl’s head to the cold metal. A piercing white light shone from above. Her eyes moved, taking in a scene of horror around her.

The Room. The orange fiend had brought her to a place of no return, no escape. A place spoken in hushed voices among the products. Metal slabs, identical to the one she was bound to, lined the room in equal rows, each containing bloody limbs or bodies in the process of vivisection. Whitecoats observed the thrashing vat borns, utterly merciless to their pleas. They held tablet terminals in their hands, remotely operating the craning arms coming from the ceiling.

A host of artificial limbs nimbly brought an array of saws and drills to the screaming bodies, opening them up. Metal fingers widened the incisions, prying away sawed bones and pulling out pulsing organs, carefully placing them in canisters filled with pale liquid. Another set of arms carried these canisters across the ceiling. The whitecoats didn’t say anything to the people they’d killed, and sometimes they made a note when their patients’ bodies tried to regenerate.

Her eyes widened as she recognized a body on a slab to her left. Number Six-Four-Six. Among their group, he was the most reliable and loyal friend. He often gave his rations to the lesser products, claiming he could gather all the resources he needed out of thin air. He... hugged Number One more than once, spoke to her in a low voice, tried to help her. Why was he here? The whitecoats praised him, promising him freedom for his obedience when they took him. They promised!

Six-Four-Six had no more chitin plates on his sternum; the machines removed his head. A laser moved down his neck, stopping the regeneration. The exposed insides throbbed, still performing their functions despite the lack of brain. And two whitecoats recorded it, quietly congratulating themselves on achieving such a level of survivability.

“Do you know if we’ll get a bonus for the overtime?” A whitecoat wondered, extracting Six-Four-Six’s heart.

Bonus? We are living creatures, you sick fucks! Rage boiled inside her. Not anger, but pure rage, an urge to break free. Vengeance! Vengeance for the lives taken! She wanted to slaughter them as painfully as possible; she no longer cared for the idiotic notions of morality. They never showed any; why should she be any better? Kill, destroy, and maim until there was nothing left. Until this factory of horror, operating without a trace of compassion, is wiped out of existence. Until these bored whitecoats know despair. Nothing less than absolute extermination can possibly placate the lives lost in this place.