The next few days were tense and cold.

People moved strangely, heads down like dogs expecting to be kicked.

Tarps turned equipment into mournful, silent specters that haunted the suddenly empty rooms, boxes and bins huddled in darkened corners like frightened children.

Things and people went missing, entire departments shut down overnight and nobody acknowledged it.

Not with words.

But you could feel it, that sick and sour feeling that soaked into every surface.

It got so bad that you took to hiding in your room whenever you weren't needed for an experiment, curled up tight in the shadows beneath your cot.

Hiding didn't make the sick feeling go away, but it kept you out of Specimen 37's line of sight so a win was a win in your books. Apparently she was going to live there, in the lab with you, forever.

The slightest thought of having to deal with that girl possibly all day, every day, made you want to do something drastic.

You still hadn't forgiven Nala for what she'd done, handing you off to Dr. Downfall (a complete stranger) without your permission like that.

You let out a groan and ran your hands down your face in desperation, making the engineer examining you jump in surprise. You signed an apology and went still again, the engineer stared at you for a long time but didn't say anything. He just opened the panel in the back of your skull and tinkered with whatever was in there.

You sat like that for what felt like hours, unmoving, barely breathing. Periodically the engineer would have you move something or test your hearing or motor functions, and then he'd make a sound in his throat and go back to tinkering.

That day had been a good day, as far as experiments went. Nothing got cut off or grafted on, nobody opened your torso hatch, or stuck you with needles.

As much as you liked good days, you always had the superstition that you were not allowed to have more than one at a time and that they'd immediately be followed by something horrible.

This time, you were right.

The engineer left you to charge on his work table, and went to go get himself a coffee. Sometimes he'd come back with chocolate milk from the break room if you behaved well enough, so you were hoping he'd hurry back soon.

His tinkering had left you raw and oversensitive, synthetic nerves struggling to cope with all the new information. Your ears were the worst by far, you could hear the pipes in the walls gurgling like empty stomachs, the overhead lights humming like deranged bees.

And voices.

So many voices.

Conversations barely muffled by concrete and steel walls thicker than your arm. Words rattling through the metal throats of air vents.

Every voice had a color and a shape that floated around you, drowning you in a multicolored miasma of noise that had your skull in a choke hold.

"--a purge is kinda drastic, dontcha think? I mean they're just kids."

"Why can't Ramirez get her own facility? Why scrub ours on such short notice?"

"Removing specimens to make space for new ones seems so wasteful, just use what's already here."

"Yeah mom, I'll be home in a few days, brass wants everybody to help with the uh… cleanup before we finally clock out--"

Your heartbeat suddenly became the only sound that you could hear, wisps of yellow-green panic blotting out all else as you slapped your hands over your ears and trembled.

Purge.

You knew that word.

You wouldn't survive that word.

By the time the engineer returned with your treat, you were gone. Stalking through the hallways like a prey animal on its last legs.

You refused to go for your containment cell, that's the first place they'd look for you, instead you wandered for awhile.

Aimless and agitated.

Specimen 37 found you first, squeezed behind a bulk box of kitchen sponges under the sink in the Phlebotomy Department breakroom. You didn't jump this time when she spoke, you just glared at her from your hidey-hole with your ears back.

"You really like hidin' huh?" She sat there on her knees, head tilted. Her arms were littered with adhesive bandages of every shape, size, and color imaginable. Her eyes looked bruised too, like she hadn't slept in ages.

You stared at the bandages, she stared at you, nobody moved.

"Why ARE you hiding?" She whispered.

You… shrugged, unsure of what to say and how to say it. You didn't know if this girl even understood sign language and you couldn't trust anybody who did to interpret for you right now. So you sat there, hunched and miserable, listening to the rats scuttling along the rattling highways the pipes made.

They were humming, the rats not the pipes, squeaky traveling songs. Eulogies for the lives they had here. Their sadness poured into you like water and made your sadness overflow until the only way out was through your eyes and your nose.

The initial sobs that shook you felt like the first harbingers of vomit, sharp and painful lurches that pulled at every organ. You gritted your teeth and hid your face behind your knees, in a desperate refusal.

When did you cry last?

How old were you when you stopped?

It felt… unfair.

So. Fucking. Unfair.

You'd been good, you'd done what you were told. You let them hurt you over and over and over with no complaints. When you'd first gotten to the lab, you'd been a feral thing made of teeth and hate, you'd bit and scratched and tried to run away more times than anybody could count.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Then they took your legs, so you couldn't run.

Then they took your arms, so you couldn't scratch.

Then they sat you down and said they'd give you new ones if you behaved, but you would have rather they'd killed you right there.

They told you that they didn't want to do this, that this hurt them too. The people who owned you now, also owned them, owned their homes and their families and if they didn't behave that would all be taken away, like your arms and your legs.

They didn't want to hurt you, they didn't want to hurt anyone. But if the choice was between hurting some kid nobody cared about and keeping their families safe, they'd choose their families every time.

They made you understand that, until you started to behave the way they wanted. Until you could be trusted with your limbs again.

You'd… forgotten that that's what things were like before. Forgotten that the science staff didn't see you as a person. That Nala, despite all her perceived kindness, probably didn't either.

You felt like you were drowning, a cardboard box full of water slowly starting to dissolve into nothing but a soggy mess. Tears poured out of your eyes, snot poured out of your nose. You shook and whimpered and sobbed in the dark place under the sink for what felt like forever.

You weren't sure when or how 37 got under the sink with you, or when she wrapped her wounded arms around you, but she held you in the dark until the shaking stopped and you could breathe again.

Somewhere close, Downfall was looking for her. You could taste the panic in his voice as he stopped everybody he could and asked them one by one if they'd seen 37 anywhere. He found you both faster than you thought he would, eyes wild and worried as he crouched down and tried to coax the pair of you out of hiding.

You didn't want to go but 37 dragged you along like a toy, "He was hiding-- crying too, but he won't tell me why." She said when Hubris finally had her safe and accounted for in his arms.

"That's probably because it's none of your business, Duckie." He scolded lightly, fixing you with his deep brown gaze, emotions inscrutable. He offered you a hand, "Come along now, I'm sure Dr. Phipps is worried sick."

Your ears flattened and Downfall tilted his head much like 37 had just moments earlier, eyebrows knitting. "I'm not going to hurt you, little one. I'm just going to take you back to Nala, ok?" He held his hand up like he was trying to sooth a frightened wild animal, and given your emotional state at the time he wasn't wrong.

You shook your head and backed away, heart hammering against the bars of your ribcage. You couldn't go back to her, she was going to let them kill you and all the other kids here.

You needed to run.

Your escape plan had been short-lived. The second you'd bolted from the breakroom, you could hear Dr. Downfall cursing a blue streak behind you as you barreled down the hallway at top speed.

Then came the sirens, red lights and blinding noise that covered everything in agonizing ripples of sound that made navigation infinitely more difficult.

You started to panic, taking corners way too fast and nearly skidding out of control. All that metal made you heavy, and being heavy meant your momentum was a lot more volatile than other kids your age. But all that metal also made you fast.

The augmentations to your cybernetic legs were meant to be purely aesthetic at first, just cute clumsy paws to match the big bunny ears you had, but it seemed like the engineer on call at the time hadn't gotten the memo. Your speed wasn't superhuman by any means, but good luck to anybody trying to catch you.

"Shit-- WE GOT A RUNNER!" Someone hollered as they dived for a button on a nearby wall. The ceiling shifted and a heavy steel door started to slide slowly down… down… down, yellow hazard lights blazing at its corners.

You threw yourself underneath it before it could close completely, rolled, and hopped back to your feet in no time.

You felt… alive? Not 'alive', no. Excited, or exhilarated perhaps? Like that was what you were made to do. To run and leap, to skirt the jaws of death. There wasn't a word for it, the way it felt to duck under grasping arms and the silver nooses of animal control poles, but it felt right.

The Facility's construction was unintentionally labyrinthine, with several iterations of the same building built on top of each other to save space and money, traveling up and up from the Phlebotomy Department felt like running through the striped layers of paleontology diagrams from the books Nala read to you.

The further up you went, the brighter things got. Sunlight, REAL sunlight, peeked shyly through open windows; brand new equipment gleamed ready and clean, still in its plastic.

You followed the light, followed the sun past the ladies gossiping at the front desk, past the startled security guards howling into their walkie-talkies, up and out the front double doors. Outside, there was grass, and flowers, and warm sun that oozed across your skin like oil.

The sky looked like a picture, a drawing rendered by a happy and hopeful child in their best crayons. Fat white clouds, slowly scudding across a brilliantly blue sky.

When was the last time you'd seen the sky, the real sky? Tears pricked the corners of your eyes and you stumbled to a halt in the middle of the wide road that snaked from the mouth of the Facility and out past the huge gate, into a sea of chest high grass that stretched into forever.

Even though the alarms howled and screamed in the Facility, outside there was only silence and wind. No birds, no cars, just the subtle hum of machinery beneath your feet and the whisper of the wind blowing through the grass.

It made you careless.

Behind you, came a sound that shattered the world and all its softness. Barking, snarling, the rattle of dragging chains slithering behind their wearers.

Dogs.

Dogs the size of cows, with cybernetic eyes and titanium jaws meant to crush metal. Twin walls of brown fur and red eyes charged after you, mouths wreathed in slobber and foam. You could smell the paralytic in their saliva, even from several dozen feet away.

They quickly cornered you, your back inches away from an impossibly high electrified fence. You could hear the wires humming with enough charge to put you down like a rabid animal.

Slowly, the dogs advanced. Bodies low and sleek as they stalked forward. There was nowhere left to run.

Foam flecked your own lips as you growled and hissed like a little beast. You had no claws to scratch with, but your hands were solid and heavy enough that you didn't need them. Didn't matter if you didn't know how to throw a proper punch, you were dense enough to do damage no matter what.

Every muscle, every synthetic mechanism in your body, was coiled tight with anticipation.

"Sit!" Called a voice over the wind and whining alarms. The dogs sat, panting, tongues lolling, eyes glued to you regardless. Their tails thumped excitedly, like normal dogs, chains jingling as one paused to scratch an itch. But every time they seemed like regular dogs, their eyes would meet yours and you'd know that they'd tear you apart in a heartbeat, just to hear someone call them a 'good boy'.

When Doug appeared, you pitied the animals almost. They were sort of like you, just things to be used and discarded, more metal than flesh, nameless and empty.

Doug pat the nearest monster dog on the head and it almost lovingly leaned its entire weight against his side, nearly knocking him over. He looked at you with his neon green eyes and crouched until you were at eye level.

"C'mon kiddo, I'm not gonna hurt yah…" He beckoned towards you, gently attempting to coax you closer. You took a step forward, the dogs tensed, you took a step back.

Doug made them lie down and tried again. Little by little, you came closer, until Doug could grab you.

Big mistake.

Your teeth sank into his shoulder with practiced ease, and when he cried out in pain you rammed your little metal fist into the hollow of his throat, then he could only whimper and wheeze.

With the gate and fence electrified, there was nowhere for you to go, but you refused to die without making a fuss first.

The dogs were on you in an instant, maws nothing but black holes ringed in titanium teeth. You punched one in the snout, the metal beneath its skin clashed with yours and sent painful vibrations up your arm. The other dog dove for you, mouth clamping shut around your ankle.

It pulled you off balance and shook you around like a ragdoll. You kicked it in the face and neck but it just locked its jaws with a mechanical whirr and dragged you across the ground like a piece of rope.

The first dog, nose now bleeding, sat on you and refused to move even when the security staff arrived and tried to take over the situation. Between the dog slobber paralytic, a shot of tranquilizers (unnecessary), and several anxious zaps with a stun wand (very unnecessary), you were unconscious within seconds.

The world melted away, running from your eyes like syrup, like yolk, as the blackness took you and the outside once again knew true silence.