district 9 || stray kids

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The boys are ushered into their usual line. Everyone wears the same clothing: collared white uniforms; everyone has the same design of room: a blue dimly lit room with green light spilling in from the outside with a single hospital bed in the middle. Everyone is the same, with tensed shoulders and hollow eyes.

"Head count," the doctor says in a stern voice, hand over a large switch connected to the scanner. A nurse walks with a hand scanner and a cart, scanning the boys' wrist tags. "Don't move. Hold your tag out and stand straight."

The two hundred and forty boys of the facility are lined up, nurses in white masks and suits locking their arms to the metal wall with leather straps. A bright cyan light flashes and a boy jerks his arm in attempt to raise his arm and shield his eyes.

It is a mistake. A man in a black rubber full-body suit approaches him menacingly, and he struggles to move from the straps that lock his arms against the wall. The light continues to scan over the line of boys, checking their uniforms for metal or anything inappropriate to the facility.

The man in the suit presses the boy's head to the wall as he undoes the arm straps. He whines in pain and pleads for mercy to no avail. Moving during head count meant you were hiding something.

The man grabs his pant leg with one hand, his collar with the other, and pitches him over the railing. The doctor and nurses watch him fall fifty storeys.

The boys hear a thump and a dull crack after a few seconds, and some try to hide their distress by grinding their teeth and swallowing their fear.

Two hundred and thirty nine boys return to their rooms after their arms are freed from the leather straps.