Forward
9 couldn't remember being human. As far as he knew, none of them did. 6 had seemed closest, with his visions that he drew, but even he had always been vague. He didn't seem to remember either, but rather he just knew things somehow.
And so 9 never really considered himself an altered human as much as something new. Though he could somehow tell the way he felt the world around him was different than it was at some time before his awakening, he grew used to how it was now, like an adult vaguely able to remember when they crawled. Sometimes it left a gap that he refused to acknowledge.
But when he looked at 7, he swore he could still feel his ninth of a human heart beating under the burlap.
Maybe that was enough right now.