Number 4A72

Chapter 1

Someone once told me that amnesia was like a fog. Thick, and gray, but always penetrable. This is different. It's like a black wall reaching all the way to space. Impossible to get over or around no matter how hard I try.

The wall isn't the real problem, however. The real problem is the isolation. Cold and terrifying, eating away at what little sanity remains in my worn body. I know I'm not the only one who faces these things. Despite Their efforts, I hear her every night.  Just before the single, flickering light shuts off, she throws herself against the heavy metal doors eight times. Each time is more violent than the last. I hear her cries of pain, muffled by the numerous metal walls that separate us. I can imagine the blood running down the heavy metal door that stops her from escaping, and the anguish written across her face.

The days following the nights are what used to scare me. They come for her for disturbing the peace every night. As if there ever was peace anyway. Shortly after I wake up every day, They open the heavy metal door that traps her and whip her sixteen times. Two for every time she tried to escape the night before. Her screams echo through the walls shattering the thick clouds of silence like a bullet through glass. They don't worry about her.

***

The turnkey comes to deliver my food, just like usual, only today it opens the door. My first thought is of her, and what happens to her every day at noon. The turnkey looks at me with emotionless red eyes. It beckons to me with a shiny metal hand, not saying a word. I stand to follow it, my unused legs nearly collapsing under my weight.

For the first time I get to see the world outside of my cell. The long, white hallway outside of my door stretches forever in both directions. Heavy metal doors line the walls of the hallway, some of which are barricaded shut by locks and chains. One of them, I assume, is hers, though now isn't the time to think of her.

About six hundred feet down the hall, the turnkey stops abruptly and I run into it. It whips around, its red eyes flashing dangerously. I throw my arms up in apology, unable to vocalize my regret. The turnkey returns to its work and enters a code into a panel on the wall. As it works, I rub the sore spots on my head and shoulder where I ran into the turnkey's metal armor. Suddenly, my escort turns to face me again as one of the less guarded doors opens silently in front of me, revealing a large white room. The turnkey prods my back, ushering me inside like a cattle herder would as the door clicks shut behind us.

The room, like the hallway, is white. The windowless walls are lit by large lights hanging from the ceiling. On one end of the room is a wall of white painted furnaces, some of which emit a soft light through the stone doors. The turnkey sits me down on a hard metal chair, and before I can protest, it shackles my wrists to the cold, metal arms. The turnkey then moves to the door before looking into my eyes with its emotionless ones, and leaving. I am alone again.

I spent several hours shackled to the chair, examining the room around me. Something deep down inside of me told me to escape, but on the outside, my hands didn't know how. After what seemed like an eternity, the door slid open again. Another robot entered the room and made a beeline for the wall with the furnaces. The robot held a metal rod with numbers I can't see written on it. The end of the gray rod was white and red with heat. Red. I hate it. Red is a disgusting color. One that screams death and injustice.

The robot walked to my side and it dawned on me what it was going to do. My eyes widened and I fought with the shackles holding my wrists down to the chair as the robot pressed the hot metal onto my upper arm. White-hot pain seared through my arm and the smell of burning flesh flooded my nose, overpowering everything else. Almost as quickly as it started, the robot pulled the metal off of my arm. Part of me was horrified and in pain and the other part of me was disgusted. They branded me... Just like a horse or a work animal. I wasn't a person, I was number 4A72.