Holding her hand up to the pale fluorescent light that trickled in through the iron bars, the anomaly could see the blood caked around her cut cuticles. She had been chewing at her nails for some time now and occasionally, her sharp teeth would miss the nail and bite into her flesh. Her nails were now jagged and torn, wet with saliva and blood. It wasn't that she cared about how she looked for vanity reasons because the anomaly had no concept of a thing called vanity or being beautiful to another. She bit her nails simply because they became too long. After all, she was only taken out of her rancid cell once a month or less. And even then, all it that happened was more experimental work. If she were lucky, they would look at her nails and trim they so that she didn't cut herself. But, most of the time she wasn't so lucky and her nails would just grow. Therefore, she resorted to biting them off herself.

She had lived in the tiny cell for most of her life. When she had been about ten or eleven,-she could no longer remember the age due to her brain cell depletion from the strenuous experiments-they had put her behind the bars. Tossed her like just another thing in the wretched world she lived in.

Thing. That was what they called her. "Yes sir, we took the thing out today." "No, the thing wasn't feeling well…"

But, she supposed, they had a right to call her Thing. After all, she knew no other name besides that. One of the older men called her some numbers and letters, but it was difficult to remember. The anomaly could only remember the first part. X3. X3. But what did it mean? Surely, it was some kind of code for who she really was.

Yet, since she was unable to understand what X3 meant, the anomaly stuck to calling herself Thing.

Pulling her hand away from the parched light, she began to mechanically chew at her fingers again. Her saliva covered her hand as it intertwined with the blood and dribbled down the back of her arm.

The arm itself was clothed, covered in a cheap, starched uniform that was never bothered to be changed. In fact, the material was stained from blood and sweat, with jagged rips around the hems. The only reason the anomaly wore it was because her cell was cold. Coldness was one of the few things she could understand.

As she tucked her knees up to her chest, she heard the sound of an elevator. Although she didn't know that an elevator was called "elevator", she had learned to recognize the sound of the faint, distant whirring of it. After all, whenever the sound was heard, she would be sedated and taken out of her cell for more experiments.

Thing rose slowly to her feet, unsure of whether or not to step out to the front door of her cell where the light shone the brightest. In fact, the only light she saw was that coming from the bland fluorescent bulbs in the glassy tiled hallway. It hurt her eyes just to look at it.

That's when she heard voices. Voices. No one had ever talked on the way to see her. They just came and took her; that was all there was to it.

Her concept of the English language was limited to few words. She could communicate if she had to, but understanding others was a different matter altogether. They spoke quickly and in such large words, it made her head hurt to try and decipher their speaking.

But, upon hearing the voice of the man who had put her in the cell, she immediately began to listen. Perhaps, this was the day he would free her from her prison either by removing her or killing her.

"Yes," he was saying to another. Thing could see shadows in the hallway and was confused. One of the people was short with wheels attached to his legs. How odd.

But, the man with a name she could not pronounce continued, "Yes, Mr. Cale, this is the thing that Max could become if we're not careful."

Thing. They were talking about her.