Subject Me To Life [Book One] ✔️ *EDITING*

Chapter Twenty-Six

*Not edited* Not proofread*

Chapter 26— Are you still with me?:

The chains swung back and forth as they bore my weight, groaning softly with each faint sway. The tips of my toes barely grazed the ground as I rocked to and fro, my head hanging down as my neck lacked the strength for support. My shoulders ached at the uncomfortable angle I was chained at, my chest squeezing painfully with every laboured breath.

"You still with me?"

Her voice sounded as weak and as drained as I felt, the slight tremor unmistakable as she tried to portray herself more fierce than she actually was.

"Desafortunadamente," I grunted in response, my throat dry and scratchy. I didn't want to talk, I was too exhausted for that, but Nine didn't seem to take the hint as she continued to pry, asking me if I was okay and demanding the details of what had happened.

"Pruebas," I told her vaguely, ignoring the pain running down my spine as I gritted my teeth. "Más experimentos." She didn't need the gruesome details, didn't need to know that I had been drowned numerous times just to be brought back to life and sliced open again and again, all in the small space of a few hours. Bones had been broken, bolts of electricity had been shocked through my body, scars had been reopened, along with new ones being made, and I had been trapped inside a sealed, tall, glass cabinet of water more times than I could remember. She didn't need to know that, though, she was scared enough as it was. So I simply told her, "no te preocupés," in hopes that she wouldn't.

The room went quiet after that, her silence causing me to me look up at her through my soaked eyelashes, using the minimal amount of energy I had left. Nine bit her bottom lip, her head turning to the side as she looked away from me and the bleeding mess that was my bruised, dirty body. "I'm scared," she sniffled, her gaze trailing back to me. "I'm so scared. I just want to go home."

If I had had the strength to do it, I would have laughed. She was so hopeful, so naive, so... weak. This was her home now.

Nine —which was her tag number— was one of the newbies that had been dragged in the week prior, her eyes a sparkling hazel and her hair a fiery orange. They had named her already, the others— Red, I think it was. I hadn't cared for the new identity that she would now be known as for the rest of her presumably short stay. I never had. I referred to people by their tag numbers, the small tattoo burned or carved into the skin of their wrist, matching miserably with the barcode on the back of their neck.

Our groups were spaced out into separate areas of the lab. My group was band A, made up of fifty members including myself, residing in base seven, wing four, building twelve, on the North side. Every time a member died, they were replaced. There could never be less than fifty prisoners, and certainly no more. Always fifty.

We were all treated the same— mostly— however there were the odd few who had gotten on our Leaders bad side and were treated far worse. We were all dressed in the same wear, locked in similar cells or imprisoned in matching shackles. We lived equal lives, confined by the same people, abiding the same rules.

Our only differences were our tag numbers and barcodes.

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