A profound quiet settled over our white room after those charged moments—a quiet that bore no resemblance to tranquility; rather, it felt like a muffled, restless noise humming beneath the skin. Dan moved from his bed and sat beside me on the edge of the corner mattress. His features were sharp, and his eyes held a strange, feral glint I had never seen back in the palace.
"Skyro..." Dan whispered, staring intently at my hands. "How did it feel when you paralyzed that boy today? Killing... or destroying your opponent... isn't it exhilarating? Don't you feel that you finally hold the reins of your own fate?"
I looked at him in sheer disbelief, struggling to maintain my composure. "You still enjoy this filth, Dan?"
Dan smiled a cold, calculating smile—the smile of someone who had found his true calling amidst the rubble. "It's not just pleasure; it's certainty. Here, you will never be weak again. You won't need anyone to protect you or dictate what you must do. It's just you and your weapon... This is the real world."
Our discussion was cut short by Hugh's calm voice from the opposite bed. His tone carried a weight entirely unsuited for his age. "The factory has truly warped your thinking, guys. They have successfully turned you into mere extensions of your own knives."
Dan turned to him with suppressed fury. "Warped our thinking? What about you, green-hair? Didn't you slaughter the child in front of you by the neck in cold blood? Don't play the preacher here."
Hugh maintained his heavy smile, though his eyes remained dead. "I was forced to do it, nothing more, nothing less... Survival has a price, and I paid it."
Dan narrowed his eyes and asked sharply: "So... if tomorrow's final test demands that you kill us in order to pass... will you do it?"
A sudden, suffocating silence gripped the room. The space went entirely mute; even our breaths seemed to halt. Dan and Hugh exchanged piercing glares—glares devoid of any old camaraderie, calculating instead the exact distance for the next fatal thrust. Hugh stared back at Dan with absolute, unblinking coldness.
Ellie waltzed into this thick tension as if she relished the burning atmosphere. She crawled toward the center of the circle and said in a disturbingly cheerful voice: "Calm down a little... How about we drop this boring argument and talk about something useful? Like the prime spots where a human dies from a single stab? Below the ear, between the vertebrae, or perhaps the femoral artery? Fun, right?"
The three of us glared at her in silent, furious disgust. This girl was the very embodiment of everything sick and twisted in this place. Ellie smiled with a fake, cloying innocence and said: "Alright, alright... I'm sorry." She then retreated to her spot.
Hugh looked at Dan once more and stated with chilling finality: "There are no friends here, Dan... only someone you help, and who helps you, for a temporary, mutual benefit. Beyond that... we are all just specimens in a massive laboratory."
I asked them in a deep voice, born from the fears that had been gnawing at me for days: "What if the Second Section separates us? What if they send us to different cities, and we are torn apart for years? If we cross paths again after a long time, and one of us is missing limbs or murdered... what will become of your memories of us?"
No one answered. The heavy silence returned, and the lights automatically shut off, announcing sleep. Everyone retreated to their beds, but I am certain no one slept deeply. In this oppressive whiteness, even dreams are gray and desolate.
The next day, we woke to the heavy thud of guards' boots as they delivered breakfast. Silence was the absolute master of the room—a silence so dense it made the clink of a spoon against a plate sound like an explosion. Number 21 sat as he always did, staring at the wall while eating mechanically, never turning or paying the slightest mind to anyone around him. Number 23 (Ellie) examined all of us with a scrutinizing gaze, as if she were reading our genetic blueprints. Dan ate while staring intensely at his plate, as if plotting his next battle against the food itself. As for Hugh, he ate with a visible heaviness, as though every bite were an additional burden on his shoulders.
Minutes later, Number 29 moved to drink from a cup of water situated slightly away from him. In that exact moment, driven by a terrifying, primal instinct, every single one of our heads snapped up to look at him simultaneously. We were like killing machines whose sensors had detected a suspicious movement within range. Even 21 stared at him with an unnerving steadiness, his eyes locking dead onto the boy's exposed throat as he drank. I realized then the bitter truth: We do not look at each other for reassurance... we look for the weak points Ellie mentioned yesterday.
Ellie shattered this silent horror by standing up abruptly. "So... what do you say we share our pasts with each other? Let's find out why we all ended up in this slaughterhouse."
Everyone looked at her with profound coldness. No one wanted to dig up their personal graves. But she didn't wait for our permission. "Alright, I'll start."
"I was born into a destitute family. My father was a professional thief," she said, letting out a mocking laugh at her father's expense. "We lived off garbage and the spare change people threw at us. When I was four years old, my father was killed trying to rob a wealthy man. After that, I spent the years until I was twelve begging on the streets with my mother. Then, one day, a car pulled up, and a beautiful man stepped out... It was Lord Hairo."
I froze in my place at the mention of that name. Hairo. "He gave us money every day for months," Ellie continued with a bizarre, feverish enthusiasm. "And on a day he didn't show up, two massive men attacked us. One of them grabbed my mother by the throat. Without thinking, I picked up a rock from the ground and smashed it against his head, and he fell. The other tried to attack, but I slipped past him, grabbed a jagged piece of glass, and stabbed him in the leg... He screamed. He screamed in such an entertaining way! Then Lord Hairo's car pulled up. He stepped out, ran toward us, grabbed the first man, and broke every single bone in his body. Then he drew a blade and slit his throat!"
Ellie described the scene with a chilling, euphoric smile, her eyes sparkling at the memory of the blood. "Then he stabbed the second man in the neck over and over again until the filthy blood splattered onto his clothes. He took out a handkerchief, wiped his suit coldly, and asked me: 'What is your name?' I told him: 'Ellie.' He said: 'Did you do this?' I said: 'Yes.' He asked me: 'Do you want to become stronger, Ellie? A fighter who needs no one?' And I told him yes, absolutely."
Ellie laughed, looking up at the ceiling. "My mother was crying and begging him not to take me, but Lord Hairo doesn't care about the weak. I went with him to the factory, and there I found excitement, and I found you... people exactly like me."
Silence fell. I was thinking to myself: To her, Hairo is a savior and a master... and to me, he is the filthy murderer who destroyed my family. But I also wondered, Is this the whole story... or just the version Ellie wants us to see?
The others began to speak. Number 26 recounted his tale of extreme poverty, and others spoke of their orphanages and life on the unforgiving streets. The room filled with filthy, tragic tales—tales crafted by fate to lead us all to this very factory.
It was Hugh's turn. Ellie asked him enthusiastically: "What's your story, Hugh?"
Hugh looked at her with a venomous hatred I had never seen in him before. He said in a razor-sharp tone: "I don't want to say anything."
"Oh... why not?"
"If you repeat the question one more time... I will slit your throat with this spoon."
Ellie smiled as if she had just received a compliment, but I was shocked. Why did Hugh refuse to speak with such outright hostility? All our pasts were filthy; why did he hide his as if it were the ultimate sin?
She moved on to Dan, but Dan had already lain down and closed his eyes, pretending to sleep to escape this loathsome storytelling. Then she turned to me. "What's your past, Skyro? We all want to know."
I told her: "Not much different from yours... just another version of the same filth."
Ellie smiled and said: "A sufficient answer."
Then, with an audacity matched by no one else, she directed her gaze toward Number 21 and said: "So... what's your past, Han?"
I was utterly stunned. Han? How did she know his name? He hadn't uttered a single syllable in a month! Dan woke up instantly upon hearing the name, and the tension in the room spiked. Han (21) looked at her with an indescribably cold, emotionless stare, then calmly returned his gaze to the wall.
"Well... it seems Han doesn't want to talk either," Ellie said as she retreated to her bed.
The rest of the day passed in an oppressive silence. Each of us sat on our beds, analyzing the others' pasts, trying to find a loophole or a weakness in their stories. We were ten monsters, now intimately aware of each other's scars, waiting for the thirtieth test to see which of us would turn those very scars into fatal, lethal thrusts.