You dreamed that you were in that room again, the concrete one with the cot and the drain, but the walls stretched up and away into infinity. The door loomed over you like a predator, roaring and screaming in a hundred tortured voices that came down as multicolored lights filtering through a stained glass window.
The Nameless Nightmare Thing was there too, slithering out of the gathering dark and coiling around you ever tighter, until you couldn't breathe.
Its teeth were syringes armed with deadly needles, serrated scalpels, bone saws, and unfathomable instruments of torture that only existed in your fever-addled child mind. They sank into your plating as easily as if it were just skin, pumping you full of venom and Wrongness.
For a second you saw the Truth of that place and the things being done to you.
For a second you saw the Truth and Shape of the World outlined in red squiggles that made no sense.
For a second you might have died, but you had no real way of knowing.
You woke up screaming your awful metallic scream, the sound reverberating off of the claustrophobic walls of your little holding cell until it was all you could perceive. Indistinct shapes in hazmat suits waded through the early morning gloom to collect and inspect you.
You did not cry or bite, instead clinging to the nearest warm body until the Nightmare faded from memory and you were OK again. They sent you back to bed once they were sure nothing serious was wrong with you and you just sat there staring at the drain in the floor until it was time for roll call.
They were going to send you home.
Not your real home, back to Mara and the apartment, and your bear.
They scanned you with a strange box that whistled and clicked and whined when exposed to radiation and other dangerous things, but you didn't register above what was considered normal for a cyborg child so Mara got to come and collect you.
You hugged her when you saw her, you'd only been gone for a couple of days but you'd missed her and her soft blue voice.
She hugged you back and ran her fingers through your hair, because you had some now, a lot in fact. Given your makeup, the serum hadn't had much to target in terms of regeneration so it had rebooted your fried nervous system and grown out your hair.
It was down your back at that point if you pulled on it, otherwise it kinda stuck up in a big golden cloud that made you look like a dandelion before they went to seed.
Mara clucked her tongue and sat you between her knees once you were home and set to work making you presentable. She parted your hair with the tip of a comb, and divided it into sections before carefully detangling it in a practiced and methodical way. She loaded a fingertip with some greasy, fragrant hair product and deposited it in a smooth line along the parts before twisting everything into a complicated set of braids. She decorated them with pretty plastic beads and sealed the ends with brightly colored rubber bands.
It was a long process. You sat there quietly, legs and rump going numb while Mara turned your head this way and that and occasionally popped you with the back of a hairbrush if you didn't behave. She used the brush to sweep and sculpt the hair into glossy smoothness, the very tip coaxing the fine baby hairs on your forehead into elegant spirals and curls.
By the end your head hurt from the tension, the braids were most certainly too tight but you kept your mouth shut about it. The smell of the gels and greases and sprays made you dizzy and just added to your headache. It was a horrible, terrible, oily feeling that stuck to your face and scalp and made you want to claw your skin off but you looked pretty and Mara was happy so you behaved.
The last thing Mara did before leaving you alone was to help you put on your bonnet. A shiny satin thing with holes in the top for your ears that made it look kind of like a pair of underpants. She slipped it on and tied the sash tight around your head so that it wouldn't slip off while you slept.
You did not like the bonnet but it kept your hair off of your face and neck, so you tolerated its existence.
Mara enjoyed doing your hair about as much as she loved doing her own, it was done up in a set of vibrant rainbow dreadlocks decorated with beads like yours. Mara's hair always reminded you of the colorful yarn she knit with and that made you giggle. She often changed the color of it to match her moods for the day and at one point you wondered if she'd been modded to have mood-hair but then you watched her dye it in the bathroom one evening after dinner.
You liked Mara. She treated you like a person and not a thing, and even Nala had treated you like a thing sometimes. You knew that Mara was being paid to be nice to you and you understood that this wouldn't be forever, but you liked her and decided that if you ever tried to run away again that you had to take her with you.
The mess hall was almost deserted at breakfast that day, with scattered clumps of pale and sweaty children huddled at tables, picking at the food on their plates. Where there should have been rowdy chatter was an uneasy silence fed by the distrustful glances that the kids periodically shot their Keepers.
The adults lingered at the edges of the room, their duty outweighing the discomfort they felt. Many of them looked sick and scared, eyes sunken and bruised from lack of sleep or an excess of worry.
Your eyes drifted to all the empty spaces, you knew that you should have felt sad or upset at the loss of life but you were used to disappearances and had learned a long time ago not to get attached to anything.
To people, to treatments, to scraps of comfort.
You let that familiar numbness settle over you like skin and ate your oatmeal without a word.
When Roady showed up sometime later, plate loaded with slimy scrambled eggs and soggy bits of toast, something squirmed in your chest but in a good way. It squirmed the way little animals do when they're happy and excited, like their bodies were too small to hold in all their big feelings so they had to shake some loose just to make room.
Roady nearly tackled you to the ground when she saw you, coating your face in slobbery morning breath kisses until her Keeper could pull her off of you. She pressed herself against you and wagged her tail so hard you were afraid it might fly off.
When the others eventually appeared, that excited squirmy feeling doubled until you were quietly vibrating in your seat. Everybody's reaction was mostly the same, they'd shuffle out of the breakfast line looking haggard and depressed and then they'd see you and their faces would light up and they'd hurry over to sit.
V did not do this, he saw your group, made such an obvious effort to look cool and detached that it made him seem sort of ridiculous, and sat in his usual spot at the furthest edge of the pack. Everyone was still very happy to see him alive.
His eyes looked irritated, the whites an unhealthy pink like he'd walked face first into a wall of solid pollen. When this was brought to his attention he gave you all a very blank look and said, "Have you guys seen yourselves lately?"
Between your inability to see faces and Roady's colorblindness, you really hadn't. According to Edwin, everybody's eyes were a weird color. The sclera, the part that was supposed to be white, was faintly tinted a different, concerning, and unnatural hue for each of you.
V's were red, Akira's were vaguely purple, Roady's were green, and yours were blue.
Edwin couldn't see his own eyes so he couldn't really tell without help, but apparently his looked almost normal except that the tiny veins in them had seemingly disappeared.
It was eerie.
The other children in the cafeteria were apparently in the same boat and it quickly became a contest to see who's eyes were the coolest looking. Nettie lost immediately and loudly sulked about it for the rest of breakfast because her eyes were just kinda gray, as opposed to 4242 whose eyes were cartoonishly pink and made her look a bit like an albino lab animal.
Under Anza's regime, the Facility had given the children a number of classes and activities to complete throughout the day, because you can't have that many kids around and not give them something to do.
Sometimes it was poorly disguised cognitive testing and similar things, or in the case of art class; just something to keep little hands busy for a few hours.
As you and the other children were shuffled off to the first class of the day, two things became very clear.
One: the other children, the ones who had not been given the serum, were now group A and they got to do everything first which made you and everyone else group B.
Group A was a little bit smug about their position and that made you hate them in ways you couldn't really describe.
Two: you could feel the floor beneath your feet and that distressed you greatly. You'd been used to feeling general vibrations and the like through your metal but now you could feel every crumb, every loose hair, every ball of lint and speck of dust on the floor and it was quickly driving you insane.
You told Mara this in your own way. "I can feel the floor and it's gross and I wanna eat my feet off."
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She washed your feet and found you some shoes that were only marginally better than feeling the bare floor. You tolerated this for obvious reasons.
You could also feel the warp and weft of your clothing rubbing against your plating but Mara wouldn't let you be naked about it, so you sulked and went to art class without any further complaints.
You liked art class, it was held in one of the older rooms in the Facility with a low ceiling and dark wood panels on the walls that made the room look cozy and ancient.
Kind of like the art teacher who was a woman with wild gray hair and chunky jewelry that clacked and clattered whenever she walked. The rumor was that she wasn't a researcher or a scientist or anything, just somebody's grandma that had wandered into the Facility and decided to stay.
A bit like a stray cat, which fit because she had long whiskers, slit pupils, and pads on her bony fingers.
The art room always smelled like paint and clay and all the other supplies you were allowed to use during the day and you found a specific kind of comfort in that smell like the comfort you found in industrial cleaners and sterile surfaces even though the two couldn't be more different.
At one end of the room was a set of wooden cubbies that held your smock and your binder. The smock had been white when you got it, but on the very first day you all got to tie-dye them different colors and write your names on them after they'd dried.
Your smock was a whirling riot of bright hues that sounded the best and coated the back of your tongue with something almost sour like a slightly under ripe strawberry.
The binder was your art book, a collection of all the paper works that you had made thus far arranged in chronological order so that you could see how you'd grown as an artist. You were allowed to take it home on the weekends and show Mara who convinced you to stash your bandage collection in there instead of on the wall.
The art teacher had seen your bandage art and had called it 'self reflective', you didn't know what that meant but hoped it was a compliment.
That day, you were learning how to make paper out of recycled scraps. The teacher showed you all how to soak the shredded paper, blend it into a pulp, and then scoop it up into thin sheets using a screen.
"After it dries we'll use it to make collages of our self portraits, how does that sound?" The teacher had purred.
It sounded nice.
The paper making station was small and drying the paper took time so everyone was allowed to work on whatever they liked while they waited. You were playing with clay, enjoying the way it felt as you squeezed it through your fingers and pressed different stamps into it to give it texture. You weren't making anything specific or special, just a tile with plenty of cups and crevices for paint or glaze later on after it had been fired.
The art room was full of fascinating things that made your wires hum with delight. A hundred colors that you had never seen before, soft brushes that kissed your metal skin, creamy paints that glided with ease, fragrant glue that made your mouth water.
The art room's shelves and closets made 37's collection of jars look like a joke and you made a note to yourself, saying that you would bring her down here someday and tell her all the sounds that the rainbow made.
"I heard that the shots we got turned Lyler into a big fish, one so big that they had to cut him up into little pieces to get him out of his room and that's why he's not here today." Said a kid named Jeremy as he plunged his screen deep into the paper pulp, the sleeves of his smock rolled up to his elbows.
"Nuh-uh! I live across the hall from Lyler and I woulda seent it!" Called another child from across the room, hands sticky with finger paint.
"No you wouldn't have cuz they did it while everybody was at breakfast so nobody would freak out," replied Jeremy matter-of-factly.
"If they did it at breakfast then how do you know about it?" said a girl with star shaped pupils and twitching antennae.
"Charlie told me," Jeremy said, arms crossed.
"Which Charlie? There's four of them," Roady piped up from her place on the floor.
"The one that lives with Lyler, duh! He was there when it happened and it traumatized him so bad that the White Coats came and got him and that's why he's not here either."
"...why would they cut Lyler up though, why not just cut a bigger door?" said someone else.
"Cuz fish can't breathe on land stupid, Lyler couldn't breathe neither so he died and they was gonna cut him up anyway to see what was wrong so two birds 'n all that." Jeremy shrugged and everyone nodded like that made the most sense in the world.
The art teacher said nothing and shakily sipped strong coffee from a mug with the words 'NOT PAINT WATER' written on it in big red letters for the rest of the class, periodically refilling the paper making station when necessary.
She was happy when class was over and she could rest her head on her cluttered desk as she rethought the life choices that had brought her to that exact moment.
The rest of the day was largely uneventful, nobody died or exploded or turned into a giant fish, much to everyone's mutual disappointment. Children were periodically pulled from their activities for individual testing by the scientists, and returned soon after as if nothing happened.
Everything was fine until gym class.
It was dodgeball day and you weren't looking forward to feeling any new sensations associated with that game any time soon.
To make matters worse, Nettie was captain of the other team and she fucking hated you.
She hated you with every fiber of her being, with every strand of hair, with every breath and heartbeat.
She hated you because you got attention and she didn't, never mind that you hated being perceived in any capacity. You were new and strange and that made people look at you and that was a crime in and of itself.
It was phenomenally stupid.
There you were, both your teams down to the dregs. Your captain paced the sidelines uneasily, hands pulling desperately at their hair.
All your escape attempts had made you fast, made you good at ducking and dodging any obstacle that didn't have teeth. They had also made you cocky.
Coronet stood there, gripping a dodgeball so tightly you worried it might just pop, somehow knowing that she wished it was your skull in her grubby hand instead.
There were no projectiles within reach on your side of the field but you theorized that you could dive-roll for one when the whistle blew.
The gym teacher swallowed thickly, beads of sweat racing down his face and neck as he raised the whistle to his trembling lips and blew a single clear note.
Nettie mimed a throw, but you were too clever to fall for her tricks. Her lips twisted into a snarl and she chucked the ball at you full force, you dived and she missed. You fired back a double barreled shot and she deflected it with one of her own.
All you had to do was survive and you would win this. There were no prizes of course but winning a game was everything to a kid that small, and the losing team would have to live with their failure forever!
Or until the next dodgeball day.
Same thing really.
Nettie scooped up another projectile.
Your muscles tensed, your ears flicked back.
Something was wrong.
The skin on Nettie's throwing arm started to bubble and blacken like burning sugar. The muscles beneath it bulged and writhed as the bones slid and snapped like firewood. The blackness spread up her shoulder, to her neck, and finally to her face where all the blood vessels in her eye on that side burst simultaneously and turned her sclera pitch dark in an instant.
Nettie's arm grew sharp overlapping scales and wicked claws that popped the dodgeball. Her arm hung off of her body, misshapen and huge like a club wrought from flesh.
The other children screamed in horror, the gym teacher stumbling back in surprise as Nettie wound up to throw again.
You couldn't dodge in time.
The deflated ball left her hand like a rubbery missile so fast that the air around it seemed to collapse. It hit you harder than the hand of God and sent you flying across the gym at horrible speeds.
You crashed into one of the protective mats covering the exposed brick walls and went partially through it.
You couldn't breathe.
Blood welled up in your throat as you coughed and came out in neon blue streams, like a mangled glow stick.
The deflated ball was embedded in your chest, crumpling the plating inwards like a soda can.
The world started to go black around the edges, pain radiating from the wound with each heartbeat like hammer blows on hot metal, filling your mouth with the sickly sweet taste of butterscotch.
Nettie took an unsteady step forward, dragging her mutated limb behind her like a cape. She was smiling, lips curling into spirals at the corners in ways that shouldn't have been possible.
The other kids were gone, running, screaming.
Chaos.
The gym teacher wasn't with them, he called for help and activated an alarm that tinted everything scarlet and angry.
It was getting hard to keep your eyes open.
Your blood gathered into a starlight pool beneath your feet.
It was beautiful and terrible all at once.
Nettie came closer.
The gym teacher stepped in front of her, to protect you maybe, or to calm her down.
She swatted him aside like a fly and you watched him splatter just like you had, only he had no metal to save him.
Your blood slithered towards Nettie in timid strands, like serpents approaching their tamer. She didn't seem to notice.
Nettie raised her scaly claw above her head and you saw them glint with a wickedness not found outside of your nightmares. For a second, they were the teeth of the Nameless Thing and you found a strange peace in that image.
You let your eyes flutter closed, the fight draining out of you as quickly as your blood.
You were going to die there after all then?
After all that big talk.
Pathetic.
POP POP!
Your eyes pried themselves sluggishly open in time to see a squadron of people in body armor crouching down behind riot shields. They aimed rifles at Nettie that fired tranquilizers, each one bounced off of her scales and fell harmlessly to the bloody floor. She turned with a hiss and lumbered towards her attackers like a sick animal, they fired again and again, wasting ammunition until she was upon them.
Ripping, tearing.
Screaming.
They held her down and found a soft place to stick the sedatives, refusing to let her go until she stopped moving.
They dragged her unconscious bulk out of the room shortly after and one of them came hesitantly up to you to inspect the damage Nettie had caused.
He screamed like a startled bird when you coughed and tried to raise your head, before waving his arms at his comrades like a madman, "He's alive! Holy shit he's ALIVE! Somebody get medical down here now."