She first gets a feeling when she closes her eyes and concentrates, picturing her brother's image in her head. She pictures each feature as distinctly as she can, reconstructing each hair on his head, although she is young and barely knows about cells and the makeup of humans, and - suddenly her image is interrupted and she hears men laughing.
"I'll bet you 30 grand that one dies."
It takes her by surprise and she nearly falls over, it's only when another girl grabs her arm that she avoids a harsh collision between her butt and the cold floor of the bathroom she's standing in.
No, try again. She scrunches her eyes closed and presses her hands to her head as if that'll help her concentrate, and she pictures her brother's face as best she can.
"50 grand the fat one explodes."
She clutches at her stomach, suddenly, her mental image utterly disrupted, and she looks around frantically, eyes darting from corner to corner; where are these voices she hears coming from? There's only two of them in this room, the other girl's investigating across the hallway with the other kid. She finds her small hands gripping the bracelet on her left wrist, her fingers finding the buttons on the side of the face almost instantly. Her hand is nearly too small to wrap around the full face of the watch-like contraption, but the stretching of her skin is almost calming to her; it reminds her that she's alive, it reminds her that there's something she needs to do.
A third time, she tries to picture her brother, tries to connect to the morphometic-whatever (she never learned the name) fields, she pictures a grassy field and she sees her brother standing in the middle of it and she wants to run up and hug him but she needs to tell him the answer to the puzzle, it's the third tile from the right, fifth from the top and she hears the voices again.
She covers her ears, but it's no use. It echoes across her head, but she is young and she has learned that if she doesn't like what she is hearing, she can cover her ears, she can shut it out. But she can't and it almost makes the words echo when she covers her ears.
"40 grand the red-head lives."
"Really? 45 she dies."
Green eyes widen, and she realizes the voices are talking about her, now; she feels a chill run through her arms and up her back and take hold of her head.
"The blind one doesn't even have a chance."
"Not even worth betting. Especially not with that shrimp of a girl."
She feels weak in the knees and she grips the shower curtain for support (although it's naught but cloth - what support could it offer a terrified nine-year-old girl? She thinks she might be sick, eyes dart around and she lays eyes on the worried appearance of the other girl - Ennea, was that her name? She can't remember, she's scared, don't cry, don't cry), and she leans against the wall, trying her best to shut out the voices.