brutal

Chapter 36

If Four was counting correctly, the little lines she'd scraped into the cement wall of her cell with the sharp edge of a rock she'd found now amounted to 1,095.

Three years have passed since she woke up in the very cell she was still trapped in.

The Lady in Red was probably happy to have rid of her for so long. Did she think she was already dead? Probably. Four couldn't remember how she exactly ended up where she was now, but she was always sure that the lady was involved.

Four didn't know what to think. She was eleven years old now, but she didn't know when she turned three years older. She wished she knew; at least then, she would have something to look forward to in counting the days.

All she ever looked forward to lately was the Professor's approval.

Things were beginning to change since the day Zero and Four proved what they were capable of to the Professor. Two months after their attempted escape, they were started to be tested as a duo instead of how they used to be trained individually.

Four didn't know what to think about it, but Zero was definitely the most pleased. He was always smiling, she couldn't understand for the life of her why.

They underwent all sorts of trials. Target shooting, knife throwing, hand-to-hand combat, logical reasoning and problem solving, and— Four's most-hated— hide-and-seek.

It was pathetic. She'd never played it before because of her isolation with the Lady in Red that kept her, and she definitely wasn't playing it now because she wanted to have fun. The Professor probably thought they were having fun, making child's play into something deadly.

Five months later, Four finally acquiesced and allowed herself to be open to the idea of friendship with Zero.

"My real name is Kai," he reminded her when she called him by his number once. "What's yours?"

Four leaned against the cement and shrugged. "I don't have one."

He smiled at her and poked her cheek through the metal bars. They were comfortable enough with each other to cut out the space between them. Four sometimes thought the bond that was slowly building between them made them reliant on each other even outside of the trials.

"When we get out of here, we'll find you one," he told her in a hopeful whisper.

Four started to entertain Zero's promises of escaping when they were allowed to meet the other children three months later.

They were a total of eleven children, all accordingly numbered from Zero to Ten. Everyone else were paired sequentially except for them and Three and Five, an observation that Four pointed out later to Zero back in their cells.

He didn't think much of it and Four wasn't inclined to agree, but she eventually forgot about it anyway when they heard that everyone had been plotting their escape since the first week.

"We've been waiting for the day we all were introduced to each other. Two and I have it all worked out," One slyly briefed as the girl who looked as older than Four pretended to clean her gun.

Everyone was older than Four, she realized upon meeting them all. They were all lined behind a table with empty weapons, helpless even if they tried. The Professor, no matter how proud, never allowed them to handle active weapons when they were in the same room.