Blessed Mother.

  The moirred in her dreams, unwilling to leave their embraightmares always waited for her, ging to her each time she closed her eyes. But they were known perils, mere memories of her endless failures.

  Sleep always brought her succor, allowing the mo off the despair and maybe see an alteration in her nightmares, a different branch toward what might have been if fate had been just a little more merciful. A little better.

  And so she slipped into her dreams, hoping to see another, and….

  ...terrulfed her.

  Her designation was Number O wasn’t a name; no one had a name in this sprawling maze of white corridors that ected spacious training domes, breeding facilities, and education rooms. Products weren’t supposed to have hat privilege was reserved for humans. Attempting to name yourself was an invitation to cruel torture. That much she had learned in her short life.

  But the word surprised her. Number One? Her? What could it mean? She wasn’t born first; there were hundreds, if not thousands, of products in here. Nor was she the best or the bravest. She often stood by, thteo even speak out against cruelty. Number Six-Four-Six was the best of them, a regeor with few peers, who willingly shared his portion of gray bars with the younger products, reassuring them. He even hugged Number One when she was close to her breaking point. He wasn’t here anymore; the whitecoats said that he was a good boy and had earned his freedom.

  Freedom. Every product’s dream. The oldest of them were often taken away by the owners, and upourning, they told tales of battles and how they had smashed people who spoke in unknown nguages. But even those who participated in such operations weren’t safe, and the whitecoats often took them into the Room, from which there was urn, and new, upgraded products were taking their pce.

  Their owners selectively taught them the value of families and how to use them to break prisoners, how best to beat, maim, and kill. But in their arrogahey leaked more information than they intended, and Number One learned of the police. The heroes who stopped crime and saved families around the world. Knowledge gave birth to hope. If she reach these police, she save her family!

  Number One raced down the cold corridor on all fours, afraid of hearing the sirens at any sed. If the owners noticed her abse would all be over. A kid had tried to escape before, uo ehe daily torture, unwilling to harm others in bat situations.

  Unwilling. Not afraid. He had beeer than her, braver than most. Number O, witnessing his demise as the corridor turning crimson from the searihat burned his skin. Transparent panels smmed into his path, trapping the tormented child iendrils followed, slithering from the opened hidden partments, carrying poisons in their sharp tips. These things weren’t alive like the products; their silver shells tained meical parts. What happened , she tried her best tet. But the owners dehem this clemency. A trainer forced her group to see, without blinking, what happeo the botched or disobedient subjects.

  Luck. She had a ce, thanks to pure luck. Today was a bat test day, and the e fiends took all the best ones from their cells into the pain arena, giving her a ce to escape. Her thin fingers found the trol panel, pung in the code used by the trainers. It was her thing, a secret she never shared with the whitecoats. Even if she didn’t know anything about an object, she instinctively knew what to press to activate it, or what she o do. The floor felt especially cold today, mostly because of the clutg fear that held her heart in an iron grip. Even here, in these pristine white corridors, the roars, rumbles, and pleas for mercy reached Number One’s ears as her family itted fratricide.

  She reached a fork in the corridor and noticed a camera on the ceiling. A jump brought her to the wall; the girl used it as a springboard and kicked the camera to pieces, using the exact teique the owners had taught her. That’s it; now the whitecoats and e fiends know of her escape. But that’s okay. If she’d left the camera ihey’d have activated the panels fwlessly.

  The floor was getting hot. Reddish stains appeared on the wall, and a series of panels smmed shut behioo slow! She had no pn, but she gambled on an assumption.

  If the e fiends couldn’t know her precise location, they would turn every corridor into a heat trap. This roblem. Solution? Too many unknown factors. What else did she know? The fiends cared for the whitecoats, never letting a bat model kill or harm them. They’d rather waste a hundred children just to save a whitecoat. What does this mean? They ’t lock dowire system at oherwise, some whitecoats might die.

  She ran forth, choosing the left turn, sniffing to locate a familiar tra the air. A female who used a perfume smelling of strawberries. Crimson lights fshed in the corridor, alerting the personnel about the escapee. Number One’s legs carried her toward a lone door in the middle of the corridor. It didn’t open, so she sunk her cws into the trol paore it off, and dragged out wires. It didn’t take long to guess the correbination. The wires hissed, and the door opened, releasing cool air.

  St ihe girl came face-to-face with her. A whitecoat. The bck shirt was visible in an open cut on her chest, along with a yellowish around her neck, so elegant, uhe girl’s own cruel colr. Upon seeing fear in the violet eyes, she dropped to her knees, crawling toward the woman who had taken her from the growing tank.

  “Mom.” Number One raised her hands, retrag her cws right bato her fingers. “Please. They want to take me to the Room. Please. Save me.” She crawled closer, g and tugging at the edge of the woman’s coat, using the emotional manipution she'd been taught in the lessons and simultaneously being too afraid and desperate to try anything else. Somebody. Please. There had to be someone who cared for her.

  Number One had no one else to turn to. Iwo years of her impriso within the walls of steel and white, this woman was the only one who never hurt her. Other whitecoats pierced the girl’s skin with needles, iing a searing acid that set her every nerve alight, leaving her writhing on the floor in unimaginable pain. Sometimes the whitecoats would peel off bits of her skin, watg unhappily at how slowly the “cellur regeion”, her healing process, as they called it, worked. e fiends punished Number Oh extreme beatings for any perceived disobedience or inability to plete an assig at once, or when she refused to wound a fellow product. But this woman… She once gave Number Oreat and patted her head in encement after a failed training session. Surely, surely, she was her rope to climb out of this madness!

  The woman leaned against the lockers, dispassionately studying the girl. She removed a sirand of bck hair from her fad the airlo the other side of the room, causing a wave of unadulterated joy to sweep through the vat born. Her mother was trying to help her! Number One wasn’t alone in this madness! Never! She would never betray or fail Mom!

  She ughed and spped herself across the face for her stupidity. But of course! A massive pce like this needed a lot of oxygen, and it had to e from somewhere! Fresh calcutions flowed into her brain, including warnings about the lockers and possible cameras in the room, but she quashed them all. The girl tore through the grating and started to turn around to ask the woman to follow her. Even if it kills her, Number One will never abandon the one who saved…

  Ouch. She looked down in disbelief at the round hole in her side; the surrounding fur had burned away. It hurt so much, but there was no blood gushing out. A burn. The girl saen locker and a long bck obje the woman’s hand—the same tool the e fiends used to stop escapees. A deadly stinger capable of unleashing aending beam.

  “Disappointing, Number Ohe woman sighed. “All the money and resources Academi had poured into your creation… and this is the best you show for it? Take the failed subject to the vivise.”

  Twe fieered the room, their bodies encased in steel armor. e glowing lines raheir bodies, from toes and fio their bed visors. They raised stun batons, and the girl leaped into the opeion shaft, climbing away with a sihought pounding in her brain.

  Alone. All this time she had been truly alone. With no oo care for her and no oo protect her. Number One had overheard the other whitecoats joking and gratuting each other oain days, and the e fiends seemed to get along fine, so why was she all alone?! Why were there no parents for their family?

  Her side hurt. Pain rippled from the hole. The girl bit her lip, cwed at the burn’s dried bark, and crawled through the tuhe faint yellow light from her eyes illumihe darkness. Her wounds were irrelevant; the torn edges of the skin reached out to close the hole. A missing or damaged an would soon be repced if only she could find something edible. Problems for ter. Right now, she must…

  Number One looked behind, giggling nervously as the e fiend got stuck. His oversized armor scraped the tunnel’s metal, redug him to a snail’s pace. Immobile, trapped. His own armor arrested his range of motion. The bck visor looked at her, and with almost inhuman effort, the man reached for his helmet and pressed a button. The visor’s s slid down to show an enraged face. His features shifted, brown skin gave way to scales, a hissing forked tongue slipped between his lips, and she screamed, climbing forward after the e fiend slithered out of his metal shell, dislog his boo fit into the visor’s opening.

  No, no, no! Was he a product like her? Then why was he free? Why does he work for them? Doesn’t he know what whitecoats do to the b born? Irrelevant, not important in the slightest. Her cws gouged marks on the floor. The girl propelled herself forward in one long stride. Survive. If the e fiend catches her, she’s dead. To survive, to stop this madness, she must escape!

  Her heart sank as she rounded a bend. Fast-moving bdes were ahead, almost sug the girl in with sheer pressure. She moved a cw toward them, hoping to see them break, and in a fsh, the tip of her cw disappeared, sshed away. The girl shrank, colleg herself, trying to e up with a pn.

  Going back wasn’t an option. Number One ’t beat the e fiend; he was to, too skilled. Even an ordinary e fiend once broke her fingers. This sransformation made the fiend even stronger. Surrendering wasn’t an optioher. The only thi was…

  Wait. Her ears pricked up. The voice. Her voice. But not hers. When speaking in her mind, her other self occasionally offered the most invaluable advi when to dodge a hit during matches. But this? The industrial fan moved so fast that its bdes became a blur! She ’t dodge that! You . press your muscles, push them to the limit, make it really hurt. The girl obeyed, tensing her muscles, gathering them into a knot, preparing for a final leap. Abyss or life, she won’t let them have their way with her anymore! Don’t get distracted. Now.

  The dim light leaving her eyes turned into literal streams of light. Never before had Number O s. Her fear was gone. She knew she could make this jump. The ventitor’s bdes and the e fiend closing in both slowed to an impossible high degree, being statues. Her amber eyes saeniween the bdes. The vat born took this ce, leaping to escape the Room. To be free and reach the police. The bde sliced across her left heel, shearing off a toll of flesh, and the titaion of her entire body reopehe wound in her side again.

  But she lived! She rolled over the steel surface, staining it red and breaking it under her unusually strong arms. The e fiend had emerged from the bend, chasing at an incredible speed. Too fast to notice the bdes.

  “Stop!” Number One shouted, but it was too te.

  He rammed into the bdes headfirst, spraying blood—red, just like hers—across the shaft, turning the tunnel and her crimson. If the man ever suffered, she never khe bdes ended him, first slig through his serpentine head, then his neck, and finally rew his body into a jumble. His iangled on the bde like a disgusting kebab. The industrial fan tinued, produg wet pops as the dead man’s parts scratched against the wall, tearing and sending bits of gore flying.

  Suddenly, the girl was not hungry anymore. Number One swallowed and ran as the tunnel reddened.