STATUS UPDATE CURRENT DATE: 2015-12-20 DATE OF INTAKE: 2014-██-██

Your head pounds. You think it’s a slyly placed Suvorexant, lingering still in your system, edges of consciousness dulled.

SUBJECT NAME: Z-77

Old one: scrapped. Irrelevant.

SUBJECT RANK: LR-P

Freedom is gone. The choice between life and death—irretrievable. Breakout? Even less plausible than the shadow of thought.

The group you were meant to join vanishes behind heavy doors, leaving only the echo of intercom static bouncing against hollow walls.

This is not your fate anymore. You are to become something else entirely.

OBJECTIVE: AN IMPROVED PERFORMANCE OF THE SENSES

Or so you are told. By someone who never lets the taut smile slip. You do not know what it means. Your bound hands are tugged forward. Someone yanks you through corridors of sterile white, past sealed doors, past inmates dressed like yourself, moving as if herded. The whiteness burns your eyes.

The broad guardsman in front carries authority in silence. Cards, a key matching your cuffs, a baton laced with a black substance. Every step measured. No hesitation.

You bump into a high-rank officer, dizzy still from the drug. Too late—you realize he has stopped. The kick comes first, a sharp hammer to the back of your legs. Then a shove. Your frame collides with air and wall. A door slides behind you. Darkness swallows you. Cold, unbroken, lonely.

The floor is dim yellow, pale, flickering like something struggling to remain.

“Are you bait?”

Not alone.

A man sits on one of the murphy beds. Knees to chest. Skin gray, sickly. His head unkempt. Three tired, pale eyes—blind pupils fading into sclera, almost indistinguishable. The light is drawn to an esca on his forehead, revealing him only now, as he watches.

“I will have you know—” His words cut off by a harsh rasp. Caution radiates from him like heat from stone.

Half-way experiment, you realize.

The window above is crooked. Gouged.

“We are not friends.”

You remain still, the sound of your own heartbeat unnervingly loud in the silence, pulse synced with flickering light. You notice the faint odor of antiseptic mingled with something coppery in the air. Your senses, sharpened by nothing but fear, catch every detail—the way the door hinges hum, the slight unevenness of the floor tiles, the subtle tremor in his voice.