They were efficient. He'd give them that.
His clothes came off in under ten seconds. Fabric split at the seams under practiced hands. The shirt he'd worn for months—the one that had been his mother's once, that he'd slept in and bled in and survived in, gone. Just like that. As if it had never been anything.
He stood there.
The air hit his skin all at once. Cold and sharp and wrong. His hands moved without permission, dropping to cover himself. His shoulders pulled inward. Every part of him trying to be smaller, which was impressive given how small he already was.
Nobody looked at him.
That was the worst part. The workers in their pale coats moved around him like he was furniture. The other children stood in their own stripped-down humiliation and nobody looked at anyone else, because looking meant acknowledging, and acknowledging meant this was real, and nobody wanted it to be real.
Perhaps they'd done this so many times that it had stopped being remarkable. The thought wasn't comforting. He filed it away and moved on.
The man in front of him sat on a low wheeled stool, his posture relaxed in the specific way of someone who had done this so many times it had stopped requiring effort. A blue mask covered his mouth and nose. His eyes were pale and washed-out and utterly professional. He reached out and pressed his fingers against Ezra's ribs. Not hard enough to hurt. Not gentle enough to mean anything. Exactly enough to measure.
The touch moved upward. Methodical. Checking for breaks, for injuries, for anything that would need to be documented before whatever came next.
It reached the center of his chest and stopped.
The man's fingers pressed. Rubbed. Pressed again. Back and forth, slow and deliberate, the motion of someone trying to determine if something was a smudge or a scar or something else entirely.
His brow furrowed above the mask.
He leaned closer. The stool rolled forward with a faint squeak. His gloved fingers circled the spot, pressed harder, more focused now.
Right over the sternum.
Ezra exhaled slowly.
He'd forgotten about it.
The birthmark had always been there. So long that he'd stopped seeing it, the way you stopped seeing a wall you'd looked at your whole life. It sat between his ribs, darker than the rest of his skin, and it looked like a sun. Not a simple circle. Something more defined. Rays stretching outward from a darker center, uneven, almost sharp at the edges. Like it had been burned into him rather than grown with him.
He'd never thought much about it. It was just there. It had always been just there.
The man's fingers stopped.
He looked up. One eyebrow lifted slightly above the mask. A small, precise expression. A question without words.
Ezra said nothing. He didn't have an answer. He'd never had an answer. It was a birthmark. It was there. That was the complete extent of what he knew about it.
The man studied his face for a moment. Then looked back at the mark. Then back at his face, like a man who'd found an item in a catalog and was searching for the corresponding entry.
Then he leaned back and made a note on his clipboard. Short decisive strokes. Whatever he'd decided to write, he wrote it quickly.
Ezra stood where he was. Naked. Still. The mark between his ribs felt different now. Heavier than it ever had before. Like being seen had changed something about it. He didn't like the feeling. He put it in the place he kept things he didn't know what to do with and moved on.
---
The examination ended. They gave him clothes. Clean, gray, identical to what every other child in the facility would be wearing. He put them on. They were too big. The sleeves hung past his wrists. The pants bunched at his ankles. Someone had estimated his measurements based on his age rather than his actual body, which meant they'd assumed he was normal. He wasn't.
He'd been a person for twelve years. He'd been a file for considerably less time and was already liking it less.
A guard appeared at the door. No introduction. Just a slight tilt of the head. Follow me.
Ezra followed. He counted the turns. Left. Right. Left. Another left. The corridor was smooth and pale and lit with the same cold artificial light as everything else down here. Doors at regular intervals, all identical, none of them labeled with anything useful.
He counted those too.
The guard stopped at one of them. Pressed a hand to a panel on the wall. The door opened with a soft mechanical sound. The sound of something that worked perfectly and had been built to keep working perfectly. The sound of a place where things were maintained.
Inside, bunks. Two rows, three high, military-neat. Gray blankets. Gray pillows. A small window near the ceiling, too high and too narrow to be useful for anything except confirming that something existed on the other side of the wall. Footlockers at the base of each bunk, labeled with numbers instead of names.
The room had six bunks.
Ezra counted them twice. Not because he'd miscounted the first time. Just because counting things was a habit he'd picked up somewhere in the Pit and hadn't found a reason to put down yet.
Two rows of three. Gray blankets folded tight. Footlockers numbered at the base of each. A window near the ceiling so narrow it was basically decorative.
Four of the bunks were empty. Two had already been claimed. One had a folded uniform on the mattress. The other had a pair of shoes beside it. The shoes were placed exactly parallel to the footlocker. Not dropped. Placed.
Someone had been here before them and left without waiting around.
He took the bunk closest to the door. Asli took the one beside his. Neither of them discussed it.
She was on a lower bunk on the far side, legs stretched out, back against the wall, looking at nothing with the expression of someone who had looked at nothing before and found it perfectly adequate company. The chains were gone. Her wrists were bare. She looked completely at ease, which was irritating.
She glanced over when he entered.
Her eyes moved over him. The too-big clothes. The gaunt face. The hollow cheeks. The corner of her mouth did that thing.
He looked around the room. Located the available bunks. Chose the one closest to the door, because exits mattered, and climbed up to the middle level. His body protested. Every movement felt like it cost something. But he'd learned to ignore that a long time ago.
She went back to looking at nothing. He went back to counting. The bunks. The footlockers. The distance between the door and the window. The distance between the window and the ceiling.
The room was quiet. Outside, somewhere in the facility, the machinery of whatever the Spire actually was continued without them, running processes they hadn't been told about, moving parts they hadn't been shown yet.
He lay back on the bunk and stared at the one above him.
149 centimeters. 40 kilograms. One unusual birthmark. One very annoying ally of uncertain trustworthiness.
He'd worked with less