It's later.

One of the men in white comes to me again. He says nothing, and neither do I, but my stomach growls in contempt. He opens my cell and I walk out calmly, eyes bloodshot and blank, head hung. He leads me to another blank white room like everyone's blank white faces and my own, wild and cracked at the edges.

He shoves me in the empty room sort of like the one I fought the man with the sword in, but there was nothing. He hands me a weapon like a scythe. I stare at the emptiness, waiting for each molecule of air to attack me, and I will destroy them until I can't even breathe.

"Fight," the voice says, echoing the world in its fatigued and heavy voice.

I open my eyes, alert and ready. From the other end of the room a door is opened and out from the darkness comes two glowing red dots. A monster enters, walking out of the shadows as if it was once part of it.

A drop of sweat rolls down my cheek. A chiropteran. I'm supposed to fight a chiropteran. But aren't I one..? Yet I look nothing like it, I have no claws and I can speak and I look human.

"Terminate," the voice says again, and I lunge at it without another thought.

It growls at me with a viciousness in its low and eerie moan. I strike, but I only hit it in the shoulder. It howls wildly in pain and shakes itself, drool and blood flying everywhere. It comes at me with its claws and fangs ready to sink into flesh, and its wound healed.

The red overpowers me and I dodge, but its claws scrapes against my cheek like the razor edge of a glacier. I wince.

Karma. Gets me every time.

I touch my cheek where I was hurt, but the wound instantly heals. I knew this would happen after reading The Book of Humans but it still feels so strange to me, so new. I've never bled before. ..

The Chiropteran charges at me again, but its movements are predictable at this point.

I dodge its attack again and I begin to circle it at high speed to confuse it. I jump on its back and thrust my scythe down on it, something strange and wild coming over me, as if I'm possessed by some strange ghost of a person I may have once been in a past life.

The beast howls in pain and stumbles to the ground. I tear at the creature again, mutilating it beyond recognition, the once white walls painted a bright and scorching red, on my face and in my eyes and staining my hands and clothes.

I rip its heart open and then its stomach, its intestines spilling, and at this point it's dead, but I slice off its head too just to make sure. The blood spews everywhere, a violent fountain reflecting all the sins I committed in the few pulsing seconds.

I suddenly stop, drained of energy, and fall over to the ground, panting. I open my eyes wide, realizing what I just did.

I look up at my hands, covered with grime and blood.

I... I ended a life...

I trembled at the thought as I glance over at the Chiropteran, a strange, sad feeling filling me. The beast's eyes became hollow, hopeless. When it was alive it was a monster, but once dead it looks... It looks almost human.

I swallow hard, and my stomach rumbles. Hungry. So, so hungry.

I don't like it but my instinct drives me forward, and I lap up the blood I spilled, drinking it all in. I absorb the emptiness of the cold blood, sour against my lips and tearing at my esophagus as I swallow hard.

When I'm full I stand, legs shaking, and I'm escorted away, people rushing in to clean up the mess I created.

I'm led to a few more rooms to repeat the same process over and over again, killing the Chiropteran, feeding off its blood, letting the staff clean up and going to another room to do the same thing all over again.

I don't know why they're making me do this. All they do is tell me "fight," and I do, without a choice in it. Without a choice in anything. And when it's finally all over, I'm thrown in a bathroom to clean myself up.

I step in the shower, the water like ice. I stand under there for a moment and shake, watching the blood fall down the drain with the water, washing everything away.

"D-damn it..." I mutter, trembling, and I can't tell if it's because I'm cold or because of that sick feeling in my heart.

When I'm done a towel is thrown at me and I dry myself. I'm given a clean set of clothes to wear, more like rags compared to the uniforms they wore or whatever it was humans tended to wear.

The person escorting me approaches and says, "Follow me."

His voice is dull and empty, like the dead eyes of a Chiropteran. I shudder in my post-traumatic remorse.

He leaves. I follow.

For a little bit it was the usual path, which I'm used to, expecting to just go back to my cell where I'll sit for a while and then I'll have to fight again.

But, without warning, he turns sharply to the right instead of the usual left. We're going somewhere else, somewhere unfamiliar.

"Where are we going?" I say in curiosity, catching up a bit.

"Shut up," he hisses harshly.

We continue in silence, and he takes his keys out of his pocket and opens a door, which leads to a strange hallway, much less bright than the usual parts of the building. It was eerie, as if it was the soul of those I killed just moments before, already haunting me, already tainting my head with images of their vengeance. Looking all around me, I follow him closer, and he finally stopped at two large, towering double doors. He pulls out his keys again, unlocking them, and opens the doors, which creak in unwelcome.

He enters, and I pause hesitantly, watching as some workers walk by. Always watching.

"Come on," my escort says to me in annoyance, and I gingerly step in.

As we proceed, some men in white rush out of some other doors, with someone in a bed. Were they injured...? They rushed by too quickly for me to tell. I blink a few times, staring after them, trying to make out what was going on.

"Nothing to see there," my escort growls to me in his deep voice, and I swallow, a bad feeling looming over me.

He continues to guide me again and we step on some sort of platform. He presses a button and it starts to lower. Frightened, I step towards the side, but my escort remains calm, a statue. Quickly my panic subsides as we reach solid ground again. In wonder, I look up at where we came from.

"H-huh...?" I whisper under my breath.

"This is where you will be contained from now on," my escort interrupts my thoughts, and I turn to look at him. It was then when I realized we were looking at cages... Several cages. And there were... people... in the cages..? I wasn't the only one? Are these people like me?

He walks to one of the cells and opens it.

"Get in," he growls, and I shamefully obey.

He slams it shut, locking it, and walks away. I watch him go in bewilderment.

I frown.

I slide against the wall, slowly dropping to the floor, my hands still gripping the bars of my new prison. I close my eyes to think.

"Hey, you," a voice from behind me sounds, and echoes across the room, as if it could fly.

I turn, letting go of the bars. Another person, wearing the same clothes as I, stood before me.

He was tall, looking awkward in the rags he wore, and had a stern expression. He seemed anti-social and it made me feel weary of him, and I didn't want to talk to him. He didn't look like he wanted to talk either, but he was seemed forced to. His eyes were narrow, burning like his hair, orange in color.

"Uh... Hi," I mutter, not used to conversation.

"You're new, huh?" he says in his deep voice, arms folded, more like a statement than a question.

"I guess..." I pause, staring at my feet.

I look back up at him with a sudden determined expression. "Can you tell me what's going on?"

He shakes his head and chuckles. "Heh, I wish I knew myself. We've gotta be here for a reason though... That reason must be to fight."

"But why?"

"I don't know."

I pause, looking away. I ask the staff here, they tell me to shut up. I ask my fellow prisoners and they just shrug. What is our purpose here?

"Hi there," another one says with a smile.

I look over, startled. She's leaning on the side of her cell, peering into the one I now share with the other guy.

"Don't be afraid, we're all in this together," she says and laughs lightly, her voice carefree. "I'm Marco. Nice to meet you."

"Um... You too.."

"Everyone here was new once, we were all kind of shaky for a while. It just takes a while to get used to it, hm?" she smiles, tosses her red hair. "Over there is Darth, that's Gudrif, Jan, Dimas, Lulu, Gestas, Ace, and the asshole you share your cell with, Karmen."

"Hey!" Karmen says, folding his arms angrily.

She only laughs at him, and a few of the others chuckle as well.

She turns back to me. "What's your name?"

I pause, blinking, looking all around me at everyone looking back.

"Um..." I begin to say as I finish studying my surroundings. "I'm Moses..."

"Well, welcome, Moses," Marco grins.

"O-okay..." I say with a shy and uncertain smile.

I guess not everyone here is so bad.

Most of the time, though, we just keep to ourselves, sitting in awkward silence, waiting for the moment of freedom and yet we remain slaves still, fighting, fighting, nothing but fighting.

After my own round of fights I'm thrown back in my cell with Karmen, falling over to the ground.

I pick myself up, coughing a little.

"Damn humans..." Karmen curses under his breath, watching the man in white leave.

"Are all humans really so bad?" Lulu pipes up, pouting.

Karmen hisses angrily. "If these ones aren't, why the hell should I think any of the rest of them are? It's not like I care about them anyway."

Lulu looks down at the floor, falling silent. The whole room is quiet.

There's something about this hopeless silence that makes me sick.

It's a couple days later and I'm told to fight again. I lunge for the Chiroptera over and over, every day feeling like de-ja-vu, and all of them looking the same, vicious, brutal, and so out of touch with reality.

The way I feel sometimes.

I swing my scythe at it and blood flies in every direction. I swallow but swallow only the dry anxiety in my mouth. I hate blood, how sweet it tastes, how bitter it feels, a poisoned wine, and I can't stand it anymore.

After I kill I begin to lose my appetite.

After I kill instead of the hunger that boils in my stomach there is an empty, sick feeling, empty like the Chiropteran's eyes before that last desperate human life flashes across its contracting pupils, and then it all washes out, lost forever in a world it will never live in again.

When I first came here I fought because I was told to. Then I fought for food. But now I have no reason, no reason at all.

There is only one thing I know: whatever it is I'm fighting for, it isn't freedom.

Whenever I go over to feed off of the carcass of the monster I just killed, my taste buds freeze up and shudder, and I know deep down that this blood is human, red and burning, now decaying and cold before me.

No amount of blood could quench my thirst or drown my sorrows, and no matter how much blood I downed nothing could fill the emptiness I felt.

The days continue on like this. I realize I have become like the rest of them: dead inside yet our hearts somehow beating, waiting, waiting for something to come by and spare us all.

Darth and Gudrif came back from their fightings and we could only wait for our next turn. Karmen and I were throwing a pebble back and forth to each other, a sort of game we picked up, the only interaction he can stand having with me. Lulu suddenly breaks the silence.

"Guys! Look! Look up there!" she shouts eagerly, pointing.

"What is it now, Lulu?" Gestas says with an agitated sigh, but quickly realizes what she meant.

"Is that..?"

"New people! Two of them! Yaay, we have more friends!"

I frown. More? It only saddens me.

All of this fighting and being cooped up in here like animals is a miserable, meaningless existence. Every last one of us couldn't tell the difference between life and death anymore, if we ever understood the difference. Perhaps that was something only a human could feel.

A man in white escorts two young looking people--Chiropterans--whatever we all are--down to our cells, throws them in, the girl with Marco, the other with Ace. Everyone was dead silent, eyes wide open, waiting for the man to leave. When he vanished Marco instantly turned to the girl thrown in with her and smiled, said hello.

"Hi there! Don't be afraid, we're all in the same boat as you. I'm Marco, that's Moses and Karmen, that's.." she ran through the list, the same introduction she gave me, without losing her ingenuity.

"So what's your name?"

The new girl looks frightened, overwhelmed, pathetic. Is that what I looked like when I first came here?

"I'm Irene..." she says in her small voice.

"Such a pretty name!" Marco says loudly, her voice full of color and enthusiasm. "And what about you over there?"

"Guy..."

"Guy and Irene, huh? Well, even though everyone here is more anti-social than anything, everyone's really nice folks deep down, so don't feel intimidated or anything, okay? See, me and Lulu over there are the oddballs, no one else will break the ice. Isn't that right, Lu?"

"Yup!"

Irene gave a hesitant smile.

A while after Irene and Guy entered our lives, the atmosphere somehow became a lot less intimidating for all of us, and we tended to open up a bit more.

Irene herself was very shy but she was so nice and gentle it seemed to rub off on the rest of us. Guy was polite and considerate but very introverted and kind of strange, but he too effected us somehow.

Those who were extroverted now aren't afraid of being extroverted. Especially Ace, our little butterfly.

I remember recently Ace came back from fighting, but the person who escorted him looked like a higher-up, who scolded him and slapped him, but Ace took it, he didn't even flinch.

I can still see his face, hard and determined, like rock.

Then he was grabbed by the arm and dragged over to us, thrown into his cell with Guy, who cowered in a corner.

The man walked away and Ace sat there, staring after him with the same expression still.

"Ace! What happened?" Marco blurts the instant the man leaves.

Irene gasps but remains in silence, as we all did at the moment.

"Nothing," he says.

"What does that mean?! It has to be something if--"

"I did nothing. I refused to fight."

"Why?"

"Don't you see it? The moment just before you kill one of those beasts, you see a faint bit of life in their eye, the life they used to have and never will have again. The life we never had and can't even imagine. We're being used as slaves and we don't even care."

We all fall silent, for we know what he means exactly.

"If this strength of ours is supernatural, I want to use it to protect, not kill," Ace says in his deep, calm voice, like ice.

"I agree," someone suddenly speaks up, and to my shock, I realize it's me. "I don't want to be anyone's slave anymore. I hate it. Those humans are doing this for a reason, but I don't know what. Our lives are their toys and I don't like it. I can't stand any of it any more. These glaring artificial lights, this white fake building with painted white fake faces, and all the fighting, and all the damned blood!"

I finish, amazed at my own words. I breathe in, not realizing until now how worked up I was.

"M-moses..." Lulu whispers.

I glance around anxiously, and swallow.

"So that's why..." I turn my head back. Karmen... "...You're so thin and sickly looking now..."

I look away, and shut my eyes for a minute, and then open them.

"Yes..." I whisper in admittance.

An awkward silence falls again on us all, like the plague, everyone biting their lower lip in agitated thought.

"You have to eat," Karmen suddenly snaps. "Or else you'll... You'll... You could die!" his voice is marked with desperation.

I study his face carefully, his eyebrows tightened, his teeth gritted, fists clenched, his whole expression fit the determined, stubborn man he was.

"Die...?" I ask with a sad smile. "A relief that would surely be."

Karmen looks shocked. "You can't just say that--!"

"Settle down," Ace interrupts him. "Let's not get too worked up here..."

"But..."

"Karmen," Ace's face was strong, knowing; he filled us all with awe. Then he turns to me.

"Moses," he said. "Eat."

I stared at him, bewildered. "I-I can't... They..."

"I know. I know. Chiroptera... They probably were once human... But then something happened to them, something that turned them into a vicious and blood thirsty beast, without a mind or soul. When I chose not to fight it wasn't because I felt sorry for the beast. No, not at all. I just hated being treated like an object, a machine, like an experiment to be tested and then thrown away, and I hated that the Chiroptera were being used in the exact same way. But then after I slay a Chiropteran... That look in their eyes... It is sad, yes, but something in them also seems to say 'thank you,' as if we're freeing them from their prison... Giving them peace."

I clench my fist and tremble all over.

"But... don't we deserve our peace too?!"

Ace sighed, and only said dreamily, "I wonder... if there's a world outside of this place..."

After that we were all silent for a very, very long time.