Zero Zero

1: quiet.

the room was white. pure sterile emotionless white.

another day, another pill, another droning on of nothing. training to go out into the real world.

training to go out and kill. that's what we were, children born and raised to be free of guilt because we felt nothing.

at least, that's how it was supposed to me.

I crushed the pill into a bitter powder between my teeth, bringing a glass to my lips as I spat out the white paste into the milk, pretending to take a sip. 

the room was sterile white and I was deadset on painting the walls bright red because I did feel. I felt every ounce of guilt of everything I knew I would have to do. I felt every ounce of dread of what awaited once I crashed through the threshold of my nineteenth birthday.

nineteen years, I figured, wasn't so bad. I didn't have to die with anyone's blood on my hands but my own, right?

nineteen years of keeping secrets and being tortured and slowly feeling my sanity slip away, but never to the place it was supposed to.

if anything, they just made me feel more emotions.

but the pills took that away. they loved their fucking pills. their fucking pills they'd shove down our throats to make us nothing more than human puppets. 

I had become an expert at not taking those pills.

as much as I dreaded what could lie past nineteen, there was comfort in knowing that I didn't have to stay to see the bloodshed. I had never found comfort in knowing that if I took the pills, I wouldn't care. at least as long as the chemicals were in my bloodstream. at least until I built up a tolerance and they'd shift to another concoction.

I always wondered what it was like for those who did take the pills. all I remember about the pills is from when I took them, which was when they physically shoved them down my throat, which was whenever I got caught not taking the pills.

I had gotten smarter since then.

the cool-toned lights bounced off the steel cafeteria tables, getting absorbed into the blank white walls. I was seven days away from nineteen and I honestly couldn't've cared less. O knew the day was coming and I was just happy I wouldn't have to kill.

its not like I had a reason to stick around anyway. after 001 and I got separated, I never found another reason. that is, outside of hope someone would come free us from here.

but, of course, no one ever did. no one probably knew that we were here. we didn't even know if there were people besides them and whoever they wanted us to kill in the world outside nineteen.

there was no hope in sight, and I had made my peace with that. 

that is, until he came along.

I sat alone at a table, poking at a piece of boiled cabbage. it was an unwritten rule that no one would sit with one another. personal relationships were frowned upon by them. they created more room for uncontrolled thought, something which they were terrified of. at least, in us. 

that's why they used to take my drawings away, before I got the wits to hide them better.

but he slammed his tray down on the table. it forced me, and everyone else in the room, to look up in surprise. he looked new. it must have been rotation day. they just scowled at him. the other residents looked at him blankly, as they were supposed to. I tried to give him the same blank look, but my nerves shone straight through my skin. 

maybe it was the scabbed-over puncture mark on the left side of his lip, maybe it was the audacious smirk on his face, maybe it was the pure gall it took to pull off the move that he just had, but something about him just intrigued me.

it terrified me, but what did I have left to ruin?

it's not like I had enough time to have us grow close enough where they would physically separate us. I was going to die soon enough anyway. and besides, if he didn't want to start something, why would he have done any of this? the piercing, the noise, the expression. 

I didn't ask him to leave. I motioned for him to sit, not daring to speak a word in the silence of the cafeteria. 

even he didn't have the gall to break it with so much as a wrong breath.

we ate in silence. or more poked at the food in silence. he ate around the boiled chicken and I just poked at the food. I hated the taste of food, and it wasn't like I was going to starve to death this time around.

they wouldn't stop me anyway. its not like they cared. I wasn't a risk yet.

the buzzer rang, telling us meal three had ended and we were to return to our rooms. we got up to clear our trays, and over the scratching of dishes, he whispered words that would begin everything.

"lights-off buzzer. meet me at the bathroom."

seven days before I would die, the endless cycle was shattering.