"It's true! He says that I get to go outside." L033 could not help but brag about his sudden improvement in circumstances.

"That's nothing," one of the other boys said. "When you get transferred they march you through the wilderness all day and all night. By the end you just want back inside."

"Yeah, you get diseases and stuff out there," an older girl put in. "I know, because when I came from the Palmacosta ranch, my friend died of some sorta sickness. She didn't have it in the ranch. She must've caught something."

"Yeah, well, when I get to the new ranch, I'll get to go wherever I want," L033 said desperately. The other children laughed at his obvious lie.

In the few minutes of free time they had after work and before the lights went off and a night guard came by to check on them, the children liked to sit and talk. They had little time to speak to one another in the evenings, so these moments were especially precious. It provided them an opportunity to discuss the events of the day—who misbehaved and got punished, who died, who graduated. It was important for them to talk about things while the memories were fresh in their minds, since by the following evening, exhaustion would've wiped their heads clean of any gossip.

L033 took the window of free talking time as an opportunity to convince others (and himself) that he was off to a better place. Most of the other children on the cots surrounding his didn't buy his story about how Kvar himself gave him an apple, and commanded him to eat the whole thing.

"You just didn't want to share any with us," a girl said.

"He didn't give you an apple at all!"

"You're such a liar."

"Am not!" L033 was getting tired of having to convince others of what was so obviously the truth. "Why do you think I got brought to Forcystus' office and came back alive? They didn't do anything to me. They liked me."

"Yeah, they liked the way you looked," commented an older boy from halfway across the room. He had certainly not been invited to the conversation. "Did Kvar touch you, you know, down there? I heard he does that to little boys."

"No," L033 answered. "Why would he?"

"Oh," the boy smirked evilly, "you'll find out once you get to his ranch." A burst of obscene laughter came from the older kids' cots. It was loud enough to catch the attention of the night guard, who slipped open the viewing window on the steel door to the sleeping chamber.

"You bastards get to bed, or I'll beat your asses," he commanded, before sliding the narrow window shut and turning off the lights.

The children knew not to get up and move around after they'd been put to bed. Throughout the night, Desian guards came and checked in on them, and if they found any kids up and about they were in for a thorough beating. So L033 lay down in his cot, pulled the itchy sheets over him, and tried to go to sleep.

Every night, a few hours after they were put to bed, a guard would come by and take attendance. He or she always walked by lamplight, carrying a checklist attached to a clipboard, so that each and every individual sleeping in the chamber could be accounted for. L033 figured this was to make sure that nobody escaped in the night, or decided to wander the halls. Some kids, especially the ones in their early teens, had a habit of trying to find different ways to sneak about and frustrate their supervisors. Sometimes they would simply visit each other's cots, jump under the covers, and whisper all night. Once or twice, L033 heard them make noises that were not possibly conversations.

When that happened, L033 felt bitterness rise in him. An older girl had told him that these undercover visits were how babies were born in the ranch. When a new baby arrived, grew for a while and joined the ranks of children in Block C, they had another mouth to feed and there were fewer leftovers for the rest of them. Not to mention another human being was forced to live his or her entire childhood inside the facility, slaving away—but it seemed that L033 was the only one who delved that deep into the moral situation of it all. Most were concerned about the limited supply of food, and in truth he couldn't blame them.

That particular night, none of the children seemed to have the urge to visit one another or whisper softly across the small spaces separating their cots. It may have been that they had already been yelled at once that night, so the officer in charge of coming in and checking on them would likely have no patience for misbehavior.

Usually L033 was asleep by the time the night guards came around to check up on them. Each child had his or her number tattooed on the skin of the foot's tender arch, so that the supervisor could account for all of them without having to take the time to wake them up and wrestle their numbers from them. The guard could lift up the sheet, briefly glance at a twitching foot, and check the individual as present. Sometimes, if the child slept curled up, the guard would have to drag his or her foot out into the dim light to read it, but for the most part, the children slept on undisturbed.

That particular night, L033 was still awake by the time the night guard came by. He just lay still as the man moved the sheet, noted his number, and moved on. He tried to make himself go to sleep, but he couldn't. He ran through scenarios over and over in his head—he would exit the walls of the facility, and look straight up to the sky. He would remember how far away it was, how big it was. He would not look away for days, and see if there was a difference between the skies of night and daylight. He would have an apple every day. He wouldn't have to crawl in the walls like some sort of rodent, splicing wires and cutting cords, changing fuses and carrying out the debris that obstructed the electrical conduits of the facility. He would get to go outside… he would feel the ground, the real ground, under his feet, and he would take off his shoes…

He would run… he would look up at the sky…

He was still furiously thinking of his future when sleep overtook him.

She could not see the door slide open, but she heard its familiar hiss. She was no stranger to the usual sights and sounds of human ranches. She knew the make of the doors, knew their every squeak. She could differentiate the smell of an approaching prisoner from that of a guard. She could hum the exact note of the buzzing electric fences in her sleep. She knew the materials of the walls, she knew the inner workings of the elevators, and thanks to the noble efforts of her husband, knew the general layout of each ranch. He had taken precautions. He had prepared her for this eventuality. It was almost as if he knew she would end up back here…

She put him out of her mind and focused instead on the footsteps that approached her. She tried to turn her head, her neck sending pangs of pain down her back. She managed to twist it enough that she could peer through the glass at the man standing on the other side. She was afraid, for a moment, that she recognized him as a man she never wanted to see again.

The man's blurry arm extended and touched an electrical box on the side of the glass, and it slid away. As she took in the man's face, she realized with a wave of relief that he was not Kvar.

"You're awake," he said.

"I noticed," she replied. Her voice was hoarse and weak, since any strength in her vocal cords had been wasted on the surprised cry she released when the discovered her missing limb.

The man smiled at her, but not in the cruel way she would expect from a Desian. Obviously, he was high up in their ranks. She wondered if he was a Cardinal, and went through her head of the ones she hadn't met, of the ones that her husband had told her about… Magnius of Palmacosta, Rodyle from the remote island ranch, Lady Pronyma… this man was obviously none of them. He must be Forcystus—yes, the eyepatch told her as much. He was without his famous arm cannon, but she figured he was smart enough to leave the explosive weaponry outside.

"You may notice some weakness, and some difficulty moving about. The medical staff will assist you with that for the first few weeks."

She did not know what to say. She certainly couldn't thank him. She wanted to ask him about how she ended up in this mysterious chamber, where her traitor of a husband had run off to after he cut her down and abandoned her to the Desians, what happened to her child…

"Where is my son?" She tried to sound strong. Her voice, usually so deep and smooth, had a way of sounding uncompromising. Her questions were demands, her words were always bold, intentional, and never unsure. Now that her voice was out of practice, she just sounded sick, old, weak.

"He's fine. He's alive."

She relaxed a little. "When can I see him?"

A look crossed Forcystus' face that she could not interpret. "That's not possible. At least not anytime soon."

To her great discomfort, he sat down beside her, at the edge of the cushioned apparatus in which she lay. She did not want to be so close to a Desian, especially a Cardinal, but she could not move, she couldn't withdraw any limbs… he was sitting exactly where her arm would've been had it still been attached to her. She briefly wondered if it was still out there, its exsphere glowing blue, bleeding in the dirt where her husband had left it.

"How long… how long have I…"

"Five years."

She closed her eyes and sighed. Five years. Gone. Her son must be about eight by now, and she had missed him grow into a boy. She had missed everything, slept through everything. All because of that man…

"Look, Anna. May I call you that?"

She reluctantly nodded.

"Kvar, whom I'm sure you remember, even after all your trauma, is here at my ranch. He's a pest, an invasive parasite I cannot get out of my hair. And he's here for you, and your son."

Anna let out a stifled sob. That was the last thing on earth she wanted to hear.

"As soon as you recover, he will take you to his ranch, where he will try to recreate the Angelus Project. I assume he'll use your other arm. I also assume that when your son comes of age, he too will become an integral part of that project."

"Why… why are you telling me this?" Anna croaked.

"Because, I want to prevent that happening as much as you do. Don't get me wrong, it's not out of consideration for your life or your son's. Do not give me that much credit. You are both invaluable. I'm not going to give you up so easily. Besides, Kvar has had his day of glory. It's time for mine."

Anna swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded slowly. "I see."

"He knows you're waking up. It would help me greatly if you could lose a few faculties. Go insane, recover slowly, regress—I don't care. Just until I find a way to counteract your transfer to his ranch. This is mutually beneficial, so if you want to keep your son away from that madman, you'll do as I say."

"I understand." She craned her neck as he stood up and made for the door. "What do I do?" she asked after him. "How do I convince Kvar I'm not fit?"

He turned. "I'm sure you'll figure something out. You were an actress before this whole mess, weren't you?"

"How did you know that?"

She could barely make out his white-toothed smile in the shadowy room. "I know everything." With that, he left her alone, with only the sounds of hissing machines to keep her company.

L033 regretted having stayed awake the night before. When he was handed his tools and gloves and shoved through the trapdoor into the darkness of the halls-between-halls, he considered curling up on the dusty floor and sleeping the whole day. Unfortunately, he had to report back with a collection of spent wires and blown fuses, of burn marks and dust in his hair, or else he would be accused of slacking, or worse, attempted escape. Then he would be tied to the wall and whipped. He had only seen one other child go through it—for trying to climb out a window—and she couldn't move for days afterward. No, he would sleep well that night. For now, he had to work.

He fastened his goggles to his face and crept through the dusty dark, searching for the spark of a broken wire or the smell of a melted fuse. There were plenty of things that could damage or destroy the electrical equipment in the depths of the ranch—hungry rats chewing through insulation, overheating or overuse (the key card readers in particular had a bad history of breaking, but they could often be fixed with a smack or two from the inside of the wall), dust clogging the gears, corrosion, bug infestations. Just last week L033 had found a wasp's nest of all things nestled between a broken cog and a bundle of wires. That was not a fun day.

Today he was on the lookout. He wanted to find a few marks left behind by the dead boy. Today he would crawl to the upper levels—he never went up there much, but the other boy had. He'd probably find a treasure trove of circles and squares and arrows, maybe even something a little artsier. He pulled his tool belt tighter to his waist and climbed up a narrow ladder, creaking with rust, to the second floor. He slipped off the ladder and crept into the dark. A few yards down the passageway he found a dead rat, so he picked it up by the tail and carried it back to the ladder. He would pick it back up on the way down.

Near the rat, a few exposed wires hung broken and twisted. He took some time splicing them back together, measuring the likelihood that these wires were what had killed the rat. As he wrapped electrical tape around the repaired bundle, he recognized that this kind of conduit went to a key-card reader. Probably not enough voltage to kill a boy, but enough to kill a rat. He felt sorry for the ugly little rodent.

He moved on, repairing equipment wherever it was needed, all the while looking for the signs that his deceased comrade may have left behind. Just his luck, he came across an arrow. Sometimes the arrows meant an interesting piece of equipment to see, sometimes they meant nothing. He followed it anyway, hoping to come across the corpse of a particularly fascinating machine, but he only found another arrow, burnt into an unused pipe. Curious, he followed that one too, and came across a strange symbol. It seemed to be some sort of crude stick figure, facing sideways, tendrils of something coming from its head. He couldn't make it out, but he thought maybe the kid had found something interesting and wanted his friend to know about it. So he followed arrow after arrow—he counted five in all, to a tiny sliver of a vent. Thin light came trickling in from its narrow cross-section, so he knelt, pressing his eye to it.

He saw a room, a comfortable size, with some sort of apparatus sitting in the center, clicking and whirring with the usual language of Desian machinery. That was not odd—what caught his eye and kept him looking through the little vent for at least twenty more minutes was not the strange device; it was a human woman, longhaired and terribly thin, wearing the ratty uniform of an inmate, struggling to walk across the room. She stumbled one way, reaching her hand out to the wall for support—she only had one, the other arm was missing from the elbow down. Her legs trembled, and she panted with the effort of merely making it from one wall to the other, but each time she made the trip she turned around and did it again. She placed one shaky foot in front of the other, stumbling her way back and forth and back again.

L033 could not fathom why. She didn't seem to be getting anything done, she only seemed to be wasting energy. But he found her struggle captivating, and her face even more so. She had large brown eyes, sunken with starvation, high cheekbones, and thick lips, curled in a grimace. She had an earnestness about her that L033 immediately liked, and a determination in her gaze that attracted him. And her hair—he had never seen a woman with such long hair. The girls at the ranch kept it short because long hair was not permitted. Many of the girls, especially those from outside, were eager to keep it short because they did not want to see it thin with malnourishment. But this woman had wavy hair down to her waist, brown so dark it was almost black. He watched it swish back and forth through the air. It was hypnotizing.

Her spell over him broke when she heard a noise and whipped her head around. For a moment L033 was afraid she caught him spying on her, but instead of walking to his hiding place and confronting him, she stumbled weakly back into the apparatus and went limp just as the automatic door opened and two men walked in.

L033 recognized the first one as Kvar, the second, Forcystus. He did not want to stick around and see what they were going to do to that poor woman, but he couldn't tear himself away from the little vent. He watched them saunter over to her limp figure, chatting away.

"Oh, dear, she does look terrible." Kvar leaned over the woman and quietly spoke: "Anna, dear. Wake up."

She only groaned weakly.

"I told you, Kvar. She's not ready for transfer."

Transfer, L033 thought. She'll be coming with me. He smiled at the thought, but didn't know why. Maybe she'd get to eat fruit, too. Maybe they could eat it together.

"Well, keep a close eye on her, she's bound to recover soon. You have her eating solid foods yet?"

"No. She's not strong enough for that."

"Pity. Well, until she is ready, I shall be around. I have left the care of my ranch in very capable hands, so I am in no hurry at all."

"Stay as long as you like." The vitriol in Forcystus' voice was nearly tangible.

After the two men had made their way to the exit and closed the door behind them, the woman sat up. She stared after the door for a few seconds, then glanced up to the window in the high wall, just to make sure no one was watching her. L033 followed her gaze, and recognized that window as the same one in Forcystus' chamber. So… she had been the one who had cried out, she had been the one to yell with such agony that L033 could not help tearing up at the sound. He was glad to see that she was still alive.

When she was sure she was not being watched, she slipped off the machine's cushioned bed, and stumbled her way across the room. She began to pace again, back and forth, back and forth…

L033 could easily have watched her for hours. But he knew he had to get back to check in with his overseer, and deliver the dead rat as proof of his work. So he slipped away from the vent and crawled back into the darkness, toward the lower levels.