She Was Just A Child (PART 2)

CHAPTER 45: THE SNAP BENEATH HER SKIN

It started with the sound of leather on flesh.

A sharp crack. Then silence.

Dian didn't look up at first. She didn't need to. She knew what was happening. She had heard it before-lived it before. It was the kind of sound that got burned into your bones, so even years later you still heard it in your sleep.

She stood with the others behind the glass panel of the upper observation deck. Below, in the drill chamber, three children no older than eight stood shoulder to shoulder-barefoot, thin, faces pale with fear.

One of them, a boy with dark curls and trembling hands, had stumbled during his assigned routine. He had dropped his weapon. It was enough to sentence him to reconditioning.

A uniformed handler stood beside him now, holding a long leather strap, his face like stone.

"Strike four," he said flatly. "Reinforcement begins."

The whip cracked again. The boy let out a stifled cry, flinching as the strap bit into his back. He didn't fall. He didn't scream. Just whimpered.

The other children didn't move.

They weren't allowed to.

---

Dian gripped the edge of the metal railing in front of her. Her knuckles had turned white. Her nails dug into her palms.

Don't react. That voice-old and familiar-echoed through her. The one they'd trained into her. The one that kept her alive.

Beside her, her siblings stood like statues.

Ten, arms folded, jaw tense. Watching. Analyzing.
Twelve, calm, quiet. Hands behind her back.
Zero Nine, eyes locked on the handler, tracking each movement, as if mentally scoring the punishment.
Zero Eight, standing a little behind the others, fingers twitching at his side. He always flinched, even when he didn't show it.

None of them said a word.

Dian stared down at the boy. She remembered standing there once. Not metaphorically-literally. That corner of the drill floor, that cracked tile, that puddle of her own blood. She had been that child.

You should be used to this, her mind told her. This was your life.

But that didn't help.

Something about it now-seeing it from up here, as if she were part of the machine doing it-made her skin crawl.

"He's weak," Ten muttered beside her. "Won't last another week. They'll cycle him out."

Dian said nothing. Her jaw clenched tighter.

Twelve added, "We were stronger at that age."

"Because we didn't hesitate," Zero Nine murmured.

And that's when something inside her shifted.

She felt it. Like a click in her brain. Like a door opening where there shouldn't be one.

Her fingers curled tighter against the railing. Blood welled beneath her nails. Her breath started to come faster.

"I..."

She didn't finish.

They didn't notice.

They kept watching, talking, and analyzing like this was another routine test. Like those weren't children down there, breaking under a whip.

Like they hadn't once been those same children.

"Subject Fifteen," a voice said through the speaker above. Cold. Flat. "Stabilize your breathing. Emotional fluctuation detected."