The outside world amazed her. Number One emerged from the tuo find herself on an isnd surrounded by water. Still leaving a trail of blood, she jumped over a fend saw a multicolored sea of lights oher side of the water. e, green, red, blue, purple… Too many colors to he night was dark, but the never-ending, sprawling mountains of steel cast enough light to dispel the darkness. The tops of the tallest towers pierced the clouds, illuminating the sky itself and casting their own multicolored aura around them.

  Her jaw dropped in astonishment as she moved down the slope to the water. So… beautiful. And there were strahings floating in the air, weaving around the mountains of steel. Her sharp ears caught words—human words—about some “special proposition just for tonight”, “best prostheti the city”, and so much more. Honking horns, the humming of flyial crates, and people’s ughter assaulted her, threatening to deafen her, and she put her hands over her ears, begging the Spirits for deliverahere must be hundreds… No, the word doesn’t even begin to describe hoeople lived oher side of the water. tless. Yes, that’s abht. Surely someone, somewhere, give the vat borns normal lives!

  The girl fell to her knees, desperately gulping dowraasting water. Her nostrils caught the smell of something pu, but she didn’t care. She drank greedily, feeling itchy in her legs and sides as her body healed. pared to the other products, she healed a bit slower, but these wounds won’t kill her. Nothing will kill her! She escaped, and now she will save her family!

  “So this is me,” Number One mused. A child covered by a fur coat reflected in the dirty waters. The fur did a poor job of hiding the dirty, unwashed, abaster-white skin. Pale scars lined every inch of her body. A crude colr held her ne prison. She will o find a way to get rid of it. What if it had a tracker? She touched her face, curious at the blend of wolfish and humaures. Her eyes were amber, glowing a little. The nose undeniably beloo a human, but the mouth rotruding and the lips hid fangs. She even had what looked like whiskers! But... she had touched her face before. There were no whiskers, and her nose didn’t stick out as much as it did now.

  It was as if her creators had ao mold her into a wolf, and theopped, scrapped the idea, and tried to create a human while the cy hadn’t set, but failed. The e wasn’t pretty. Not because of the scars. She cked muscles or the chitin armor ptes c the bat models. Soft. Exposed. Vulnerable.

  Her belly rumbled, and Number One looked around. Sustenance. She needs just a little bit before crossing the water. Her nostrils caught the st of rotti ing from a nearby dumpster, and she leapt at it. Food. Any food to supply her body and…

  She stumbled back, experieng the entire world spin around her. Her forehead was on fire, spearing her body with fresh waves of pain. She looked up, seeing a blonde girl dressed in a bck leather biker suit, a baseball bat marred by something red resting on the girl’s shoulder. The vat born touched her own forehead, uanding that the stuff o was her own blood. The wound on her head hurt like Abyss, but Number One was more curious about how the assaint had sneaked up on her. She was still full of adrenaline from the shock of pying a part in the death of a living being. The vat born should’ve heard this biker from a kilometer away!

  “You?” the blonde asked mogly. “You’re the reason they woke us up? Piss off, at least st time it was an alligator mutie.”

  The vat born did as the girl iently advised and sprinted away on all fours, ign the pain in her legs. Us. This means more than one. Dangerous, she ’t take them… No, she didn’t want to take them on, even if she could. She’ll have a new life, one where she’ll never hurt anyone again. There was always an option to escape a fight, right?

  Number One almost reached the edge of the isnd when a surge of electricity caught her in the back. Tongues of energy rose from the stone ground, hissing and dang in the wind, f the figure of a young man whose cheeks bore a gruesome scar stretg from ear to ear. The youth smmed a brass knuckle into the girl’s breast, knog her bato her unsteady legs.

  “Eugenia, watch out! The bitch is fast,” the boy said.

  “Yeah, yeah…” The grimag, pain-stri Number One heard a voice to her left. The space itself cracked, rearranging itself, and the bloepped out of an oval portal, raising her baseball bat.

  “Please,” the vat born whimpered, looking into the face of this Eugenia. She was around her age. Why was she chasing her? Shouldn’t people from the outside supposed to be better than those from the b? “It must be a mistake. I didn’t mean to do anything bad. I just want to li…”

  The baseball bat came down, shattering her nose and cartwheelihrough the air. Hurt. Her head hurt so much. Eugenia wasn’t a normal humarength exceeded everything Number One had learned of humans. She nded on the head, screaming in agony, frustration, and disappoi. Nothing was right. eople she never hurt tormenting her? What was wrong with this fug world?

  Fight. Her other self said. Number One kicked; her bleedi nded on the girl’s ankle. Eugenia’s face turo surprise, and she fell face down, right into the rising uppercut. Taste the pain, bitch! The vat born thought, releasing her cws. She adjusted the blow, aiming to scar rather than maim. There were a lot of questions she had about the world, and if she had to beat Eugenia into being a better person, then she would!

  Her hand disappeared. Number One barely eveered this before a scream of pai her lungs. The cws—her cws!—were buried in her side. Her arm was still in front of her, disappearing into a portal at the elbow, and another simir portal hovered beh the vat born’s ribs. The blonde must have opened a portal in midair, redireg the blow. Another portal opened, swallowing the falling girl in the biker suit whole, and the hit from behihe vat born reeling. Eugenia teleported behind Number One and was already standing upright.

  “Crafty bitch. But I’m better.” The blonde raised her bat. “Boys, girls! Break the bitch!”

  What?! The vat born pulled her cws free and reached for her nose, fixing the exposed bohank the Spirits. Her arm was still with her. There weren’t two hunters. eenagers surrounded her, some floating, some floating, one wielding a fming whip ing from the palm of his hand. So many. She could see glimmers of fear, glee, anger, and mockery in their eyes. But no pity or remorse. A pack of hunters.

  “Why are you doing this?” Number One squeaked. They surrounded her, cutting her off from the ventition shaft and the wall, making it impossible to cover her back by standing against a wall. “I have dohing wrong!”

  “What are you doing?!” a voied from above. The vat bnced up. A vehicle hovered above the group; its roof retracted, and the driver, an elderly woman, stood at full height. The woman raised a wrinkled fist. “Leave the pirl alohis instant! She needs an immediate medical atte…” A tossed kruck the car door, and the woman ducked.

  “Shut it, Granny.” Eugenia advised the woman, arrogantly throwing bubble gum into her mouth. “We’re just doing a little monster hunting. Not like this thing is a human or anything. Now stop buzzing and fly off, or I’ll shove your dentures down your throat. Your choice.”

  “You…” Something in Eugenia’s eyes made the woman sit and turn on the engine, leaving Number One alone.

  But it was enough. This time, there was rayal. The vat born was sure of it, following the car with her eyes. There are good people. This was one of them, just weak. And until she finds help—someone whom she call her pack—she will survive. Number One will find the police, she will find this dy ter and thank her; and most of all, she will save her family.

  “e at me, freaks,” she spat. “Let’s see your tears.”

  The vat born raised her arms, screaming in pain as the fming whip hit her forearms. But she bore it. There was a reason not to dodge. The fme was insubstantial. They expected her to back away from it, esg the fire. Instead, she pushed through the fming whip, closing in on the surprised boy and elbowed his nose in. The vat born spun around, sweeping the boy off his feet. Another elbow hit sent him into a girl who formed stone gloves over her hands. The body hit her in the face, knog them both to the ground.

  Not all are vile. There urpose to the world beyond fighting. The scarred boy gestured, but the vat bored a jump, fooling Eugenia into opening the portal above Number One. She lu the scarred boy, ign the explosion of lightning at her back. They won’t stop her from finding meaning in her life. No one was this strong. Not anymore. Her hand closed over his wrist, and the boy screamed after a g sound of his bones breaking, the brass knuckle falling from his limp hand. She could have knocked him down.

  It would be a piece of cake to drive her own elbow into his temple, falling alongside him and crag his skull. But she didn’t want to kill. She didn’t want to harm anyone, so she pushed him aside, whirling around to meet Eugenia, sensing her approach thanks to the stench of bubble gum ing from her mouth.

  There was an art to wielding any on. By far, the most dangerous part of the bat was its tip, as the swing added speed and strength to the impact. But by closing on to her oppo, Number One received a hit over her ear with the lower part of the bat, which hadn’t had the space to accumute speed yet. Number One closed her fangs on the girl’s ear, grabbing her. Eugenia. The pack leader. Now there was someone she would maim. But not kill. It ath she refused to tread. The vat born remembered her siblings in the plex. Kind souls turned merciless after the first murder. It was a foul experience, a corruption-ing personality. And she was her own person. Her soul wasn’t about to be sold for the life of the cheap, ignorant, stupid, stubborn bloch, dammit!

  The vat born did not know how Eugenia’s ability worked. She made a bet that the girl wouldn’t be able to portal her away with another person holding her. And as Number One’s jaws ripped off the blonde’s ear, she uood her bet had paid off. The human girl wailed in pain, struggling to break free, blood gushing from her missing ear. The vat bulped the ear, tasting human flesh, and a shiver of anticipation ran through her body, electrifying every hair.

  Something was ging. As the ear dissolved for nutrients, she felt herself energized. Hunger gripped her, demanding that she close her fangs on the pale neck, bite through the windpipe, and drink blood until her belly was full. Then she would feast, dev every st scrap of this bitch who dared to hurt her for fun.

  There were tears in the blonde’s eyes. Tears and fear. An unpleasant odor of piss and sweat was ing from the pinned body, and suddenly Eugenia turned into a scared girl, hurt, weak, alone, helpless. No different from Number Ohe vat born stopped the ravenous urge, struggling to speak an offer of peace.

  Then the rest of the pack desded upon her, pummeling the vat born into unsciousness.

  ****

  The e fiends arrived ter, dragging Number One by the colr and giving Eugenia medie that stopped her bleeding. The vat born thrashed and kicked, g desperately at their impregnable armor, filing in maddening fear as they took her down to the basement and knocked her out.

  She awoke on a sb of steel, her arms and legs secured by the metal rings. The vat born tried to break free, but the damn thing refused to budge. A simir ring had closed over her neck, pinning the girl’s head to the etal. A pierg white light shone from above. Her eyes moved, taking in a se of horror around her.

  The Room. The e fiend had brought her to a pce of urn, no escape. A pce spoken in hushed voices among the products. Metal sbs, identical to the one she was bound to, lihe room in equal rows, each taining bloody limbs or bodies in the process of vivise. Whitecoats observed the thrashing vat borns, utterly merciless to their pleas. They held tablet terminals in their hands, remotely operating the ing arms ing from the ceiling.

  A host of artificial limbs nimbly brought an array of saws and drills to the screaming bodies, opening them up. Metal fingers widehe incisions, prying away sawed bones and pulling out pulsing ans, carefully pg them in isters filled with pale liquid. Another set of arms carried these isters across the ceiling. The whitecoats didn’t say anything to the people they’d killed, and sometimes they made a note when their patients’ bodies tried tee.

  Her eyes widened as she reized a body on a sb to her left. Number Six-Four-Six. Among their group, he was the most reliable and loyal friend. He often gave his rations to the lesser products, g he could gather all the resources he needed out of thin air. He... hugged Number One more than once, spoke to her in a low voice, tried to help her. Why was he here? The whitecoats praised him, promising him freedom for his obedience wheook him. They promised!

  Six-Four-Six had no more chitin ptes on his sternum; the maes removed his head. A ser moved down his neck, stopping the regeion. The exposed ihrobbed, still perf their funs despite the ck of brain. And two whitecoats recorded it, quietly gratuting themselves on achieving such a level of survivability.

  “Do you know if we’ll get a bonus for the overtime?” A whitecoat wondered, extrag Six-Four-Six’s heart.

  Bonus? We are living creatures, you sick fucks! Rage boiled inside her. Not anger, but pure rage, an urge to break free. Vengeance! Vengeance for the lives taken! She wao sughter them as painfully as possible; she no longer cared for the idiotiotions of morality. They never showed any; why should she be aer? Kill, destroy, and maim until there was nothi. Until this factory of horror, operating without a trace of passion, is wiped out of existence. Until these bored whitecoats know despair. Nothihan absolute extermination possibly pcate the lives lost in this pce.