I woke up to the sound of something clanging against the hard floor and I looked around. My room was filled with darkness, but since I had been in it for so long, my eyes adjusted quickly. My emptied food tray had been replaced with a new one. I tried to push myself up from the corner I had been sleeping in, but my hands started to ache with pain and I crashed to the floor. A week before today the Digits had taken me out of my cell and brought me to another room. I thought I was being released finally after two years in my highly secured facility. Instead, I sat through 4 hours of excruciating pain while a Digit Doctor ripped my fingernails out of my skin so that I couldn't pick the locks or open windows. I could tell he belonged to the Ones and Digits because of the tattooed number sign on the corner of his right wrist. I bled for two days straight after that and my still raw open skin was wrapped in bloody gauze. I half rolled half dragged myself towards the tray and picked it up difficulty with my mouth. It was the usual green beans and rice, uncooked, bland tasting meal. As I attempted to eat with my mouth instead of my bandaged, clawless hands someone banged on my door and I jumped up in fright. My tray spilled all over the stone cold floor of my cell and I desperately tried to pick it all up with my injured hands. If the Digits found out I would have more than just ripped out fingernails. As I struggled to clean the mess up before they came in, the door flew open and a handsome, blonde-haired One stepped cautiously into my cell. He flicked on the one light I had, which I wasn't aloud to turn on, with a pad of buttons. "You have a visitor" he said with a quivering voice, obviously not wanting to come retrieve me. A visitor? I wondered. No one had ever visited me ever since I had come to the asylum other than the nurse to check on my hand and the food tray guy, but they didn't count. As I was about to ask who it was, a slender but short man in his mid 20's walked through the door frame. He looked around, examining where I was held and as he jerked his head towards me, his eyes locked on mine. They were blue, like the ocean, wide and alert. They were my eyes. Despite the pain, I got up from the ground and slowly walked toward him, apprehensive with every step. As I drew near he backed up a bit trying to avoid me but I was quick and and embraced him with my numb arms. I hugged him for a minute and took in his smell, but it wasn't the familiar lavender soap scent that I knew. He smelled of blood, sweat and dirt and felt much more stiff than I remembered, but then again I hadn't seen him in two years. I pulled back from him and saw his confused and angry face, he didn't remember me. Either he didn't remember or he didn't want to and, even though I knew this would happen when they took him away, I couldn't help but feel hurt. As he started to turn around to leave I grasped his right hand, longing him to help me or say something. A tear ran down my cheek but he looked even more bewildered than before and I knew he was gone. He had been changed, destroyed and completely brainwashed, and as I looked down at his arm my thought was confirmed. A small barely visible number sign had been inked on the corner of his wrist. I knew right then that I had lost him, he was no longer the same. My brother was a One.
