THE NEW BIRDIE

The word 'odd' wouldn't even begin to describe his day. He had woken up completely alone in a large grey room with nothing more than a dozen mattresses left about on the floor and supplies stacked in piles of sacks. Had he known where he was, perhaps he wouldn't have scrapped a great part of his elbows and arms trying to fit into the vents to flee. There was something about that place that was begging him to run away. Not having any memories in the slightest wasn't much of an edge to stay, either.

Hours had surely passed by the time he lay back down on the ragged mattress where he had woken up on. He had dropped onto it like a corpse, defeated and itching. The small wounds throughout his arms had begun to bleed, tainting parts of his shirt to a crimson red. Then it came to him the horrible idea of cleaning the sleeves. There were many things he could risk, but blood poisoning wasn't one of them.

In the vast room, there was a small bathroom at the end of it, near the mattresses. He hadn't had the thought of going there before. However, when he opened the door and turned on the lights, there was something he deemed far more important than his fleeing disaster. At the opposite end of the small bathroom, there was a boy with clear blue eyes—so clear and cold that one would think they weren't real. A strong headache struck him right then and there, leaving him unable to recognise that it was, in fact, his own reflection. Minutes later, calmer and with the lights turned off, it almost seemed odd. How could someone not recognise themselves in a mirror?

Without giving it too much thought, he shook his head and left the sink running. He splashed his face and pulled his hair back, though it outright ignored him. If his curly mass of hair could evaporate water, he would believe it. Not one curl stayed where he left them. They turned back to his face, grazing too close to his eyes. He gulped down a sigh and moved on to clean his shirt, which left him wearing only a tank top and trousers with more pockets than necessary. His boots had been left forgotten by the mattress, and he it wasn't in his plans to go back for them.

Before the shirt could be completely pushed under the running water, the lights turned on by themselves, forcing his eyes to close. Despite spending hours under the intense light, he still found it difficult to adapt. At that moment, however, he took considerably less, allowing him to resume his prior task and scrub the blood off the shirt's sleeves.

Like many of his brilliant ideas so far, he got to regret it soon enough. At the clearest part of his forearm, bright white letters shimmered under the bathroom's lights. It wasn't some fancy bracelet or a glittery piece of cloth, though. He wished it had merely been that. The words were nothing other than a tattoo inked into his dark skin. It wasn't a very pleasant one either. "Soldier Five, property of WICKED. Current status—DEFECTIVE."

"I'll be damned," he mumbled to himself, pulling his arm close to his chest while the shirt slumped to the bottom of the sink, wet and tainted in a watery red colour. "What the fuck is even going on...?"

To his damaged skin's dismay, he used the damp shirt to scrub the area until it was red and irritated. The ink would simply not come off, no matter how many times he tried to brush it gone. It was a tattoo through and through, which was in no way reassuring. He was stuck with those words in his arm for life, deeming him not only 'DEFECTIVE'—whatever that could mean for him—but also a soldier and 'property' of whoever or whatever was WICKED.

He needed time to assimilate the newfound information about himself, even if it led nowhere. The make-shift of a bed urged him to lie down and let the hours pass. He took no time to comply, though his first stop was, in fact, at other mattresses nearby to steal a few bed sheets. Once covered and prepared to rest in the eerie silence of the wide grey room, a noise forced him to get back up.

A metallic sound, similar to gears pulling themselves apart with a horrendous screech, pushed the main door open. With how badly he had lashed at it upon getting up from his not-so-peaceful awakening, it was clear it wouldn't budge just for anything. Someone had opened it, someone who was familiar or even worked in whatever place he found himself in.

"Hello, Five." A man wearing a flashy suit appeared behind it, tall and mighty, much too different from the attempt at a gentle approach that his face had contorted into. "I'll assume I have to take that as your name for now, won't I? It was written on your arm."

He doubted, but he had to reply, nonetheless. The man had the upper hand in the situation, and being anywhere besides his good graces could mean a variety of agonising scenarios that he didn't wish to live through. "I guess. I can't remember anything."

"Then, I'll keep on calling you Five until you remember, if that's alright with you," replied the man, his lips pulling upwards into what was supposed to be a gentle smile. "Are you doing alright? Sorry for leaving you here. We had quite a bit of a swarm outside and we had to make sure you weren't infected. Tough times, I hope you understand."

"Who are you?" was the sole question he could think of.

"I'm part of the reason for you to still be alive. It's my intention to keep it that way," said the man. "Now, come with me. We'll get you squared away. The others are waiting for you."

"Wait, hold on." The man had turned to guide him out, however nobody was following him. "Others?"

"Yes, unfortunately, you're not the only one who's been left to their luck out there." The man smiled, though this time it didn't appear as forced as before. "My name is Janson. It would be a pleasure if you would call me Mr Janson, but I'm guessing that, if you're like the others, you won't." Just when he was about to ask something else, Janson interrupted him. "You'll get to hear more about it from them. I think it will be better if they help you rather than me. Besides, we're on a tight schedule. Dinner will start soon enough, and my guess is that you won't want to miss it."

As if on cue, his insides contorted with a great roar, turning his cheeks a deep red colour. "Good that."

Janson's face fell for a moment, but soon recovered. "Good what? That's such a weird expression. Better not use it around here."

He seemed to never run out of questions. "Why?"

"Well," Janson doubted, "those who work for WICKED say it sometimes. I understand it might have rubbed off on you since you clearly had some relation to them, but other people might think you still work for them. Trust me, being the newbie and sticking out is not good. We wouldn't want to give off the wrong message, now, would we?"

He glanced down at his arm, the words soldier and defective practically glowing as he took in what they could mean—the kind of place he could have run off from. No, he definitely didn't want to be mistaken by one of those cruel people who went as far as marking a child like a farmer would to their livestock.

"I'll try to hold my tongue," he assured and folded his arms over his chest, the only way he had left to not have the minimal glance at his tattoo. "So, what's on the schedule for now? I'm starving."

"Nothing much," Janson replied. "First, let's get rid of that smell."

The warm water danced through his body as it fell, ever so quickly, to the tiled floor. He watched it pass, damping his skin and tearing the crimson-red blood away from his wounds. If only it could do the same with his tattoo, he thought, rather disappointed, despite knowing perfectly well that the ink would remain on his arm forever.

It didn't take long for him to stand directly in front of the mirror wall at the far end of the showers, just next to the door to the dressing room. He stood there for a minute, studying his own features as if a stranger were in front of him. There was no helping it. Without any memories, the term 'self' was rather hazy. His eyes, however, that pair of ice blue circles hanging like the sky over the brown earth of his skin, were the strangest of them all. Each glance at them was like seeing somebody else in the mirror, only for a second, a fleeting feeling that left as soon as he concentrated, as soon as his eyes found themselves along with the rest of his poorly kept features. He wouldn't call himself ugly, but handsome didn't seem a word fitting of a teenager with scars covering a great part of their body, mostly their face.

"Attention to all soldiers. Please proceed to the cafeteria in an orderly manner."

A distant voice glitched its way through the phrase two times in a row, so calm and devoid of sentiment that one would think it was manufactured by the own tannoy. A mix of panic and eagerness fled his stomach to strangle his lungs, slowly and painfully driving him through the door to the dressing room, where he got changed in less than it had taken him to shower. There wasn't much to entertain himself with, either. The clothes awaiting there could vary in size, but never in colour. They were, at most, different shades of blue or green. No yellow, orange, or any other colour whatsoever. Once dressed, it seemed irrelevant. Contrary to the ragged and dirtied clothes he had woken up in, the simplistic outfit let him resemble a proper human being, though the scars could threaten to tell another story.

He was welcomed back into the grey and lifeless hallways by no other than a guard dressed from head to toe in protective gear. It was suspicious, to say the least, but he forced himself back into his prior neutral state. He had to, or rather, he needed to give his 'rescuers' some benefit of the doubt. After all, if he didn't give even that, what was he supposed to do? Run off to the outside? The horrendous place that not even Janson would speak a word of; where he had appeared, dirty, ragged, and passed out? He only knew one thing; WICKED—either looking for him or not—was not something he wanted to phase. And for that, he had to keep himself as far away from them as possible. He had to stay in the 'Sanctuary', the absurd name that Janson had called the large grey and dull building. As far as he could rationalise his stay, it was only a means to survive.

The doors to the cafeteria swiftly broke down that belief to pieces. At the centre of the largest and yet lifeless room he had seen to date, enclosed by a sea of metallic tables and chairs to match, stood a small group of seven people—the oldest of them being twenty at most. He was appalled. Of course, he hadn't expected much since he didn't appear to be older than sixteen or seventeen himself, but, at least he expected part of the so-called soldiers to be adults, not teenagers that surely had to be as lost as he was.

A girl with straight black hair and sharp eyes, piercing through his neutral face, turned to him before anybody else. She had a smile that carried no compassion or happiness, only pure mockery. "Morning sunshine. Had a nice nap?" Without being given the time to respond, she carried on. "Let me guess. You can't remember anything."

Before he could realise it, a frown had already taken over his face. "Do you seriously think I would be here otherwise?"

A soft-looking mass of bright yellow hair bounced his way. The girl hardly struggled to walk past her comrades as they stepped away from her path. There he had it. That was the leader, a young and frail girl no older than seventeen or eighteen. He braced himself for whatever could happen, but the girl simply halted in front of him, her hand reaching out to take his. Before he could contemplate whether to accept or deny what he thought to be a handshake, the blonde's hand gripped onto his right wrist, pulling his entire arm forward.

Soon enough she had found his tattoo and was reading it out loud for the rest of the soldiers to hear, "Soldier Five, property of WICKED. Current status—DEFECTIVE."

The tallest boy in the group shoved his light brown hair away from his forehead while laughing to himself. "Defective? I wonder if that means we should get rid of him." Much like the others, his mocking smirk died down for a split second, enough to have a good look at the 'newbie'. "What's wrong, Soldier Five? WICKED got your tongue?"

He clicked his tongue, rather tired of the general mockery he was being submitted to. Nobody had really given him the chance to speak. He had so many questions, so much he wanted to know about the outside as well as himself, and yet he was being looked down upon without a valid reason.

"Well, what do you bloody expect?" He directed himself to the tall boy, his lips contorting into a smirk as he folded his arms. "It ain't pretty to hear people you don't know joke about getting rid of you, mate."

The blonde forced herself between them, raising a hand in his direction as if his temper had started the slight bickering. "It's OK, birdie, we don't kill people for no reason." She pointed at his right arm—still uncovered—the words that had been embedded into his skin sticking out like a full moon in the night sky. "And we ain't trying to pick a fight either, alright? Like it or not, you're with us from now on, 'cause you don't wanna be out there, so do whatever helps you to calm down and let's be good little friends."

"You lot started this." His smirk turned into a scowl. He could hardly believe that he was being blamed for starting a fight when he had done nothing but defend himself. "I barely even spoke, and you're blaming me. Keep your people under control, boss."

A smile played across her face, but this time it wasn't mockery, just amusement. "We got an interesting birdie... Alright, I apologise. Will that suffice, Mr ...?"

He widened his eyes at the odd pause. The blonde was waiting for him to say his name, but he didn't have one, or at least, as far as he could remember, which was nothing. "I can't—I can't remember my name."

She nodded, satisfied. "Don't worry, it will come to you. It took me two days to remember mine."

"Yeah, and you were lucky," scoffed a boy about his own height, though much darker of skin, the only other boy apart from the mockery-inclined one. "It took me four damned days. I'd like to meet WICKED just once to ask—very nicely, of course—just what the hell they did to us." The boy stopped for a second, holding his stare before grinning widely. "Name's Henry, birdie. Hope you enjoy your stay in the 'Sanctuary' while you still can."

"What the hell does that mean?" he asked, rather irritated at the piles of unanswered questions that the soldiers were clearly deeming unimportant to answer.

"Nothing you should worry about right now. Give it a few minutes, birdie," said the boss. "Name's Mae, by the way."

"Good... Alright." He brought his hands to his hips, sighing to himself as if he had just learned that he spoke a completely different language from the people who were staring at him up and down. "Look, I'm not trying to be mean here. I woke up not knowing who am I, where I am, where I come from, or why am I even described as a soldier, property and 'DEFECTIVE', so, for the love of whatever the fuck you hold dearest, answer me at least one question."

Mae's smile grew faintly. "Fine, I'd say we owe you that much."

"You're called soldiers, you know that I don't have any memories, and that I have a tattoo, so I'm assuming you were once in my position." Mae nodded, confirming his every assumption with that simple gesture. "None of you remember a single thing of where we come from? I mean, alright, your names and whatnot, but how come we don't know a single thing about our past selves? Do we have family back in WICKED? Are there people we left behind? I mean, I'm the proof that there are more of us, and they might be lost somewhere out there. We can't have all wondered to the same place."

A tall girl, rather close to compete in height with the mockery-inclined boy, pulled her brown hair back and braided it over her shoulder, her movements short and quick, an interesting contrast to her paused breathing. "Those who aren't here are dead. And those who end up here die sometimes. So what you should really be worrying about, birdie, is your own safety, not the perhaps-others well-being."

"Now, now, Bea, that's not polite." The mockery-inclined boy rested a hand on the tall girl's shoulder, choosing—much like the rest of the soldiers—to keep his nerving attitude. "We promised we would be nice and friendly for 'whatever the fuck we hold dearest', so let's do that."

"George, you're not helping either," warned Mae. Whatever patience she could still hold on to dissipated from her grasp with every complication. "Still, Bea had a point. There's no time for us to worry about anybody out there. We have orders to carry out, none of them pretty."

"Orders?" He asked, appalled at the new information.

"Well, you didn't think you'd stay here for free, did you?" said the girl that had welcomed him to the Cafeteria, right next to a girl that he had yet to hear speak, though that didn't mean she was by any means the least noticeable—her bright red hair wouldn't allow it. "Flor was the same as you when she got here. I swear, kids nowadays."

"Oh, shut up, Rowan. I bet I'm older than you." The redhead turned around, her brow practically knitted together as she glareed at Rowan, who simply stuck out her tongue.

"It was more a hope than anything," he mumbled to himself.

A girl with jet black hair strode over to Bea, who welcomed her with a smile, but that didn't save him from the intense judgement present in her eyes. "Well, too bad. This is reality."

"Leen's right, birdie," added Bea. "Nothing in this life is free. We all do things we don't like just to survive. Let's say, for example, killing people."

He could hardly focus after that. Two guards brought an envelope and passed it to Mae, who didn't doubt to read it while everyone else was serving themselves their meal. It could be the limited options or the overall little understating over his own preferences, but he had to go behind George, listening to his rambles about what was best to pick and what to stay away from, which Henry took offence, since things he enjoyed were being continuously brought up as something one had never to come across on their plate.

The three were the first to finish getting their meals, leaving them alone to chat at the table by the centre of the cafeteria. They didn't wait to dig in, nor did that affect George's and Henry's intense bickering. He sat between them, another of his brilliant ideas, so he got to hear everything even when he didn't want to. George was quick to pick up on that, and despite Henry's continuous remarks, he dropped the subject and focused back on 'the birdie'.

"You alright?" George asked, which only got a shrug for an answer. "Look, birdie, I know it's difficult, OK? It's not any easier for us. We haven't been here as long as you may think. I only got here two months ago."

"You still kill people," he replied simply, no emotion present in his voice.

"Crazy people," said Henry, as if that distinction was meant to make any sense to him.

"They call themselves Cranks," added George, his fork crumbling under his fist the more his eyes got lost in the sea of their grey surroundings. "The best we can explain it is somebody that's lost all humanity. They don't care for anybody, not even themselves, and they will pretty much attack anything that moves. We kill them to protect others, birdie. If we don't, the city at the other end of the hill would be attacked, and more of those Cranks would resurface until we're all part of them." As if George could read minds, he took a hand to the newbie's shoulder and carried on. "If that doesn't convince you, or if you just don't care, think of it like this—it's either you or them, so we have to get rid of them before they get rid of us. It's all a means to an end."

All a means to an end. He had heard that phrase before. He could almost picture it somewhere in the vast haziness of his mind, a voice—a woman's voice. But back then, at that moment, she had said something else, a single word. His name.

"It's all a means to an end, William."