𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐅𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐈𝐄𝐑 || ℝ𝔼𝕎ℝ𝕀𝕋𝕋𝔼ℕ

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝟏

𝕋𝕙𝕖 ℕ𝕖𝕨 𝔹𝕚𝕣𝕕𝕚𝕖

✃✃✃✃✃✃✃✃✃

The word 'odd' wouldn't even begin to describe his day. He had woken up completely alone in a large grey room with nothing more than a dozen mattresses left about on the floor and supplies stacked in piles of sacks. Had he known where he was, perhaps he wouldn't have scrapped a great part of his elbows and arms trying to fit into the vents to flee. There was something about that place that was begging him to run away. Not having any memories in the slightest wasn't much of an edge to stay, either.

Hours had surely passed by the time he lay back down on the ragged mattress where he had woken up on. He had dropped onto it like a corpse, defeated and itching. The small wounds throughout his arms had begun to bleed, tainting parts of his shirt to a crimson red. Then it came to him the horrible idea of cleaning the sleeves. There were many things he could risk, but blood poisoning wasn't one of them.

In the vast room, there was a small bathroom at the end of it, near the mattresses. He hadn't had the thought of going there before. However, when he opened the door and turned on the lights, there was something he deemed far more important than his fleeing disaster. At the opposite end of the small bathroom, there was a boy with clear blue eyes—so clear and cold that one would think they weren't real. A strong headache struck him right then and there, leaving him unable to recognise that it was, in fact, his own reflection. Minutes later, calmer and with the lights turned off, it almost seemed odd. How could someone not recognise themselves in a mirror?

Without giving it too much thought, he shook his head and left the sink running. He splashed his face and pulled his hair back, though it outright ignored him. If his curly mass of hair could evaporate water, he would believe it. Not one curl stayed where he left them. They turned back to his face, grazing too close to his eyes. He gulped down a sigh and moved on to clean his shirt, which left him wearing only a tank top and trousers with more pockets than necessary. His boots had been left forgotten by the mattress, and he it wasn't in his plans to go back for them.

Before the shirt could be completely pushed under the running water, the lights turned on by themselves, forcing his eyes to close. Despite spending hours under the intense light, he still found it difficult to adapt. At that moment, however, he took considerably less, allowing him to resume his prior task and scrub the blood off the shirt's sleeves.

Like many of his brilliant ideas so far, he got to regret it soon enough. At the clearest part of his forearm, bright white letters shimmered under the bathroom's lights. It wasn't some fancy bracelet or a glittery piece of cloth, though. He wished it had merely been that. The words were nothing other than a tattoo inked into his dark skin. It wasn't a very pleasant one either. "Soldier Five, property of WICKED. Current status—DEFECTIVE."

"I'll be damned," he mumbled to himself, pulling his arm close to his chest while the shirt slumped to the bottom of the sink, wet and tainted in a watery red colour. "What the fuck is even going on...?"

To his damaged skin's dismay, he used the damp shirt to scrub the area until it was red and irritated. The ink would simply not come off, no matter how many times he tried to brush it gone. It was a tattoo through and through, which was in no way reassuring. He was stuck with those words in his arm for life, deeming him not only 'DEFECTIVE'—whatever that could mean for him—but also a soldier and 'property' of whoever or whatever was WICKED.

He needed time to assimilate the newfound information about himself, even if it led nowhere. The make-shift of a bed urged him to lie down and let the hours pass. He took no time to comply, though his first stop was, in fact, at other mattresses nearby to steal a few bed sheets. Once covered and prepared to rest in the eerie silence of the wide grey room, a noise forced him to get back up.