[I wrote this for a writing class, but I didn’t really feel like making up a whole new story, so you guys get this depressing slop instead.]

The Ark is a mere colony of confines and restrictions. The tube, in which they hold him in stasis, echoes and repeats every thought — it’s a space of endless loneliness and alone. It’s a hopeless thought to think he’ll ever come for anything more than experiments and prodding. For anything more than the sole purpose of the greater good for human kind.

He spends hours on end in white, padded rooms, being tortured by the false promises of freedom and a home on Earth. They say it’s for the benefit of all, all except him. All except the mere lab - grown animal they’ve grown to despise. All except for the mere lab - grown animal who yearns for a chance at life.

What will it cost him to finally gain his freedom? What will that chance at life take?

Will it be the sweet blond girl in blue who stands outside his cage? The one who smiles warmly at him every morning and greets him each night despite his desperate attempt to escape — who brings him the strangest comfort, even when her presence feels mocking and shameful. She’s free, and spends all her time next to him. He can only wish he had that luck. She’s outside — she can let him out, yet she doesn’t.

“But why?”

He thinks.

“Why won’t she let me out?”

He wants to know.

But what he perhaps doesn’t realize is that she, too, is under the same restrictions. Under the same suffocating conditions and pressures — even if she walks “free”, unlike him. The men watch her, keeping tabs on her every move. They stalk her like predators to prey.