This chapter is really choppy and broken so I am sorry trying to go with a certain feel I do not know if I succeeded.

TW: Abuse, blood, conditioning/training

Within These Walls

Chapter 11

This place was always meant to be my prison. I was a fool for ever thinking otherwise when it served as the end for so many others like me. What did I think would happen when this was all over-this war on EVOs? After all in the end I was an EVO too wasn't I? I distracted myself with the present to stop myself from think about the what if's and the what nexts. The present was all I ever had.

The boy without a past who never had a future.

This place was my prison, my cage, my home.

So the collar around my neck upon waking should not have been as much of a surprise as it was, but I was naive. I was a boy forced to become a man forced to become a monster and now forced to become a weapon. I was naive to think I would ever escape this place.

Why would you this is all you have?

I was forced to learn fast.

But sometimes I need a couple tries to get things right.

So when claws seeks to find purchase on smooth metal wrapped securely around my neck the voice that cuts through my sterile environment, with the warning in its words goes unheeded.

"I wouldn't do that," a voice drawls as if bored. Instead I choose to snarl my disobedience and my displeasure at the too white walls.

I learn my first lesson: his voice must always be followed when all my muscles clench at once and I'm choking on my own screams of pain. As soon as the waves wash over me they receded leaving me to try to find traction on the too white floors. The aftershocks leave my trembling and a cold sweat has broken out all over. I'm gasping in lungfuls of air half drowned on my own suffering.

"I gave you a command so you will obey them or this will be your punishment," once again the voice emerges lofty and indifferent. When I bare my teeth fire ignites in my veins.

The man is just as needlessly cruel with the wolf. The blows come with every incursion every misstep and received after so much as looking him in the eye. I do not learn his name nor do I care. I only know him as my ever looming sovereign of pain and the object of my unbridled hate. The conditioning was designed for animals and that is how he saw me when we first came face to face. It was after they had not fed me for what felt like days.

There is no passage of time in the white room the lights never dim and there is no hope for rest. I noticed the absence of meals just as I noticed the absence of a way to measure the passing of days. The hunger ate away at everything I was until for a time I don't think there was anything left to be defined as Rex. The wolf raged and raged until it began to naw at my sanity to ebb the ravenous pit of our stomach. I was too weak to stop it and soon I began to forget even my waking moments as Rex. All there was was the never ending hunger that demanded all of my attention. When he finally stepped into the room with the wolf we were delirious and frothing with anger and the all consuming hunger. There was no thought of reason or intelligence just a delirious animal. The wolf sought to fill its belly with his warm flesh but with every lunge to sink teeth into anything to find relief from the hunger was met with an electrified club. Again and again we lunged until our blood was smeared across every surface and we could no longer stand. Then he approached the animal we had become. When we were broken that is when he began to build us into his desired creation.

They took to sedating me during my waking hours until eventually the fight inside left me as well. There was no use trying to measure the passage of days any longer. This white room was my home that was certain.

I found the line between the wolf and myself becoming less and less defined first memories began to filter through then so did their training. We could not eat unless given permission to. We could not move unless directed to. They trained us to sniff and track down EVOs. To attack relentlessly until the threat was eliminated, until we were called off, or until we were killed. The beating never ceased on the frequency in which they were dealt lessened. They tested our obedience to the limit. When we were broken they would shock us to standing once more and have us push on. There was no curing the EVOs as the wolf only ripped them to shreds if we could not see mercy then why should they?

White was beyond thrilled.

How could he not be?

He finally got his perfect weapon all it took was destroying one teenager.

I guess our training was a success our every action only comes in response to an order or a command without one we stand stoic and unmoving. When I was finally allowed to see Six and Holiday I thought I had finally found the end to this living hell but also I knew better than to hope for so much. The collar always stayed as an oppressive weight to remind me that Providence owned me like the dog I was. The stare from my new overseer was easy to decipher an unspoken rule that I would not speak of my treatment under his command I downturn my eyes in submission and nod. We were too broken to give anything more than silent obedience.

But Six wasn't stupid. I could see his anger when he argued with White to remove my collar. I could see his pity in the way we took up our training once more. He was appalled the first time I neutralized an EVO I could not cure. The switch was flipped easy from savior to executioner how easy it was to stab the EVO between the eyes. I turn to him seeking validation and approval but my hopes are dashed and instead I shrink in on myself waiting for the blows to come. Six is rigid face pale and mouth a firm line.

'You've failed,' the wolf speaks a sad murmur of its original confidence.

We shrink further eyes glancing towards his dress shoes before averting to the floor. When he shifts we flinch and he understands.

"That is enough training for today" he says distantly. We're already shrinking towards the door still not meeting his eyes hoping to escape the beating we expect to come. We hide in the closet of our room curled against the wall waiting for the shaking to stop.

He sees our training in the way we stare expectantly at our food in the mess hall when we sit for dinner. Everyone has already begun to eat but we cannot and the food sits tauntingly in front of us untouched. Others glance over unsure as to why we neglect our food. Questions passed overhead still we sit waiting for those we recognize to hold authority to give permission. When Six sits down the questions fade to quiet murmurs.

"Rex why aren't you eating?" we can't see his expression eyes skirting around his shirt collar but never higher we remain silent eyes turning to our food once more hungry. When was the last time we have eaten? Still we see the subtle shift in Six the way his shoulders sag just a little more his eyebrows tilt a little more towards sorrow than his stern neutral expression. Still we flinch.

"You can eat your food, Rex," and we do digging in wholeheartedly. Faster than we probably should if we do want to throw up or upset or stomach. But these opportunities come few and far between so we take advantage of them. Who know when our food will be taken from us once again. Six isn't an idiot and we understand there is nothing we can do to ease the pain of seeing the hurt on the ones you love.

Holiday isn't an idiot.

The bruises and broken bones heal with the change but the soreness, the lethargy, and the bags under my eyes do not disappear. White assigned a different physician to me when we were removed from Six's care. Hours strapped to a gurney as the tried to reverse my lycanthropy.

Or so I was told.

I would not be surprised if they were trying to do just the opposite. Seeking to erase all there was of me that made me Rex only leaving behind a vicious but obedient animal at White's disposal. The thought sits heavy in mind that if just one day I never changed back to Rex what scares me though is that the idea has become so much less appalling from the initial moment it was birthed in my mind. Would it really be so bad if I just ceased to exist if I just faded away. Would my existence be any different than what it is now? My suffering would no longer be of any consequence only the mistreatment of an animal. I guess when I began to welcome this I ceased to care. I ceased to have any sort of emotional investment in my life simply living one dawn to the next.

This was what Holiday noticed the most. My once bright personality was snuffed to out so easily. Indifferent to everything that occurred around me awaiting my next command. She never thought she would see her once happy teenager become a soldier before her very eyes.

It was what Six noticed the most he trained me to become a soldier but it was all a ruse he just wanted to give me the skills needed to protect myself in a world that only wanted to hurt me. And if this was the result than he would take back all of his days of training in a heartbeat. He never wanted me to become like him.