**Language Warning: This chapter contains some profanity. Just one word!**

I spend the rest of the night staring up at the skylight in the ceiling of the barn and listening to Fell pace behind me.

There are very few clear memories of my life before the operation, like the color of my mother's hair or the sound of her calling me across the house using my nickname—Little Fish. I remember the taste of Moose Tracks ice cream and the feeling of wet sand between my toes. An image of black and white game pieces scattered across a square board sticks out in my mind, but the name of the game escapes me.

The little things that my brain clings to are lighthouses dotting a shoreline. I'm a sailor deserted in the middle of the tumultuous ocean, desperately clinging to anything I can find. Every now and again, I'll catch a new beam of light, something I think I've forgotten, and it renews my hope of survival a little more. Maybe I can eventually reach the shoreline if I just hold on a little longer. Then the storm comes back, and I'm lost again in the waves and torrent of rain.

Staring up at that white square and the pinpricks of blue-white lights, a lighthouse beam crosses my path. Like any other memory, it's blurry and almost indecipherable, pieces of a puzzle that don't match or fit together. A red and white, fuzzy blanket and short, pokey grass. A tripod topped with... a telescope! And a man, tall like me with small hands. I don't catch his face, and I can't hear his voice. It's the sound of my own canine rasp that speaks in my head.

Keep one eye on the stars, Little Fish, and you'll always be able to find your way home.

Are these the same stars I looked at that day with my dad? Why don't I remember him as much as my mother?

More importantly, though, is he out there somewhere, looking for me, and wondering if I'm keeping one eye on the stars like I'm supposed to?

I glance down at my hands folded in my lap and clench my eyes closed. A knot grows in my throat; I bite it back. Tears are a sign of weakness. Home isn't something I'm allowed to mourn anymore. Tired of listening to Fell pacing and purring and jumping, I lay my head down on the straw mattress and close my eyes.

I can't sleep, but at least I can pretend for a moment that I'm anywhere but here.

##

When morning comes, washing down through the skylight like an orange waterfall, I'm still sitting on the mattress, but I've shifted to my back.

A harsh knock on my gate brings me to attention.

"Up and at it, seven-seventy-two," a handler says, hitting the top of the gate. "Hole time."

With a yawn, I stand and stretch my limbs. My ankles and knees pop, causing me to sigh in blissful release. I walk to the gate still popping my shoulders.

The handler holds up a metal cuff with a chain attached to the other end. "Wrist."

I extend my arm, and he clasps the metal shut. Sometimes, I swear the handcuffs are made for each of us specifically. There isn't even a centimeter of room between my skin and the metal, allowing no space for maneuvering.

As I'm led out of my pen, the handlers chain Fell. He yawns lazily and gives me a tiny half-smile and a nod.

I look at the ground.

I can't stop thinking about his comments the night before—how Wayler would get what's coming to him. Fell isn't dumb enough to try and attack Wayler; he'd be dead before he could scratch the human. Yet, the cat is smart, and he's sneaky in a way that most mammals are not. His stealth surpasses mine immensely.

If anyone could successfully hurt Wayler, it would be Fell.

"Where am I going today?" he asks the handlers. The one closest to him slams the chain into the side of Fell's head.

"Don't speak to me, filthy abomination." The handler turns her nose up at him and looks at him out of the corner of her eye. If he wasn't taller than her, the handler would be looking down her nose at him, the same way I would sneer at a beetle crawling through the slats in my pen. "You have extra training. Like everyone else."

Fell sighs and mutters something that sounds a lot like "but I wanted to take a nap." His words slip into the hay under our feet and are lost eternally. I meet his eyes once more as the handler leads him out, shutting the door carefully behind them.

Instead of being led out the front door, we go through the back of the barn. From this side, one cannot see Wayler's house or the long road that stretches through the pine trees to it. Instead, you exit out into a small area surrounded by concrete. Everything is painted black with tar, and it runs down in thick droplets.

As I step out into the hole, the handler pushes a button and the ceiling starts to close over us. It too is black—inside and out. As the last of the natural sunlight is blocked off, the air in the Hole shifts. It becomes heavier and thicker, as if millions of water droplets hang suspended in the air. It chokes you, makes you pant and sweat.

"Here's your bottle of water," the handler says as he attaches my leash to the black wall to my left. I take it from him and clutch it against my chest. It's room temperature to ensure that there's no condensation on the sides or any extra cooling agent. Like cold water droplets or a minute cold breeze off the bottle would be enough relief from the nightmare approaching.

As the handler takes one more look around the room to ensure it's truly empty, the reality slams into me like a tidal wave. My normally calm and go-with-the-flow personality hinders me from truly feeling stress until it's standing right in front of my face. I have the faintest memory of passing out right before a science test in third grade that I did not study for, and the worst part was the wave of emotions that hit when I faced just how screwed I was.

Staring at the three black walls, a bottle of water clutched in my hand, every nightmare, every hallucination, every self-deprecating thought, and every muffled scream comes rushing back. I start to pant, and my feet turn themselves around. Nearly tripping, I reach the door just in time to watch it slam shut into my open palms.

The darkness immerses me.

There are many different shades of darkness. There's standing outside on a night where the moon is full and illuminated the world with unearthly silver light—a calm and serene darkness. There's laying in bed, watching the car's headlights flash by your window and seeing the slants of multicolored lights dance across your carpet—a sleepy and thick darkness. There's also walking through a haunted house, hands sweaty and back itching, stomach in knots with heightened adrenaline and fear—a scary and tense darkness.

But then there's this. It's caught in a cave with no light for miles darkness. It's stuck in a car as you're being drowned alive darkness. It's drive you mad and blind, intense darkness.

I couldn't see my hands directly in front of me if I wanted to, considering I can't even see my nose. I blink a few times—to make sure my eyes aren't really closed—and back up a few steps. Slamming into the wall, my body goes limp. It finds the ground after a few seconds of slowly dragging down the black tar wall. Still clutching the water bottle, I lay my head back and stare at the nothing stretching out for what seems like a thousand miles.

In some desperate effort to pass the time, I grab a handful of my hair and start counting the strands. Out loud. The darkness isn't the worst part of the Hole; it's the silence. Whatever they insulated the walls with does it's job, because I can't even head the normal noises of the barn five feet away from me. My own voice echoes back to me, over and over and over, like I'm standing on the edge of an eternal precipice and screaming.

Except I'm not screaming. I'm barely whispering.

Eventually, I finish counting strands of hair and everything goes silent. There's nothing else to do, and so I chew on my sharpened nails and tap my barefoot. The cold wall bleeds into my back, through the rough polyester fibers of the Estate uniform and the soft down that lines my spine. The trail of white fur that snakes up my back stands on end. My skin clams from the thick, hot hair around me.

An eternity passes with me chewing on my nails. My mouth is filled with hot, metallic blood and the shards of my ruined claws. I pick at the skin of my lips and feel the thundering of my erratic heartbeat in my neck. That along with the soft click, click, click of my teeth breaking through thin nails keeps my brain busy. I pinch my eyes closed and clench my jaw, waiting for it to start. Waiting for something to change.

When I open my eyes again, everything seems smaller. The walls have inched inward and now press into my shoulders. I sit up, away from the tar, but they just move with me. Hands sprout out of the midnight darkness. Like the hands of the handlers, they grip my shoulders and arms, jerking me into the wall. I slam into it over and over; my skull bangs into the hard concrete until I see explosions of white. Then, they shove me forward. I turn my face to the side, but fire still spreads through my cheek as it slaps into the wall. A spark of heat ignites in my lip, and I know I've busted it open.

No, not me. The hands.

Everything stops, and suddenly, I can see myself. My skin is covered in the thick, black tar from the walls. It runs down my forearms like molasses, like cold honey down a tree trunk, like a slug coating the sidewalk. It glues my fingers together; my arms adhere to my sides. I blink furiously, but that doesn't stop it from running down my forehead.

Panic hits me as I realize the tar will soon cover my eyes. I'll be in darkness again.

I jerk wildly at my arms to try and bring them to my face. They're stuck good, so what follows is a lot of me slamming my shoulder into another wall uselessly. Soon, the liquid covers my eyes completely and I'm thrown into darkness so thick that I can't see an inch in front of me.

Panic swells like a balloon in my chest, and I yank one more time at my arms. As a result, my head slams into the wall and sound shatters around me. Ringing and lights and pain. My eyes roll back in my head, and with a slight sway, my body slumps back into the corner of the Hole—unconscious.

##

Some amount of time later, a bright light wakes me up, followed by the icy rush of water being thrown over me. I jump to my feet, reeling in fear and shock. Instinct tells me to attack, so I charge at the door, teeth bared.

The slick metal hilt of a gun greets me as it slams into my head. A sharp electric hiss follows, coupled with me yelping in pain. My rage-fueled vision clears, and I clutch my head in shock.

The dark outline of Wayler stares at me, holstering the gun once more. I blink blindly in an effort to try and make my eyes adjust to the light. I only know its him because of the hint of citrus that trails after him like a shadow and the curl of white hair on his head.

"Hands," he barks, putting his own out. I growl deep in my throat, but now that I see his face, the spark of fear in my stomach swells into a full blown forest fire. I lower my chin into my chest and extend my hands. Maybe one day I'll have a little bit of courage. It's building behind a brick wall, just waiting until the day it finds a crack to seep through.

Wayler slams the cuffs around my wrist and gives the chain a sharp jerk. My arms move forward faster than my body does; my head rockets backwards. I recover quickly and pull back against the chain.

"Out, 772."

I dig my heel into the dirt and hold my wrists against my chest. Fighting against him is useless; it will get me nowhere. But what else can he do? Starve me? Beat me? Kill me? Only one of those is something he hasn't already done, and he can't kill me.

I'm worth too much.

"Don't make me get the spray, bitch," he hissed, pulling the chains again. His slur only makes me angrier, and I hold my ground. The word used to mean something else before I became a Dreck, something much more offensive. Now, it's a simple fact of what I am, giving him an excuse to call me names. Still, though, it ticks me off.

I have a name.

I'm not just a Homo Lupis.

"Fine." Wayler reaches into his pocket and pulls out a round canister about the size of his palm. "You asked for this."

Time slows to a inch worm's crawl as his finger moves over the trigger. For a millisecond, I consider giving in, walking out of the Hole, putting my head down, and surrendering to his will. Those thoughts leave as quickly as they appear, though, and I swallow back the dread building up in my mouth.

He presses the switch, and a sticky clear liquid sprays out. I taste it before it hits my skin—citrus. It clogs my senses and blocks everything else out. I close my eyes and try to cover them, but the cuffs prevent me from doing so. I hold my breath and clench my eyes closed as tight as I can instead. Still, though, the liquid bleeds through my eyelids and every other orifice.

It is everything all at once, overwhelming me, until I finally reach the brink of screaming.

"Stop!" I snap, desperation in the single word. I'm on my knees by now, lip quivering and hands trembling above me. The assault comes to a sudden halt, and I suck in a huge breath. I open my eyes and fall forward as Wayler yields on the chains. The scent clumps up in my lungs, forcing me to cough it up. I'm still sucking in citrus-infused air when Wayler jerks at the chains.

"I said out," he growls. "There's someone here who wants to see you."

I blink up at him in confusion. A guest? No, surely not. No one has ever came for me, not in the five years I've been here. My parents gave up a long time ago, and so did I.

So why is there a lightning bug of hope in my chest?

I pick myself up awkwardly, fumbling with the chain that links my hands together. Wayler clicks his tongue, and learned behaviors kick into gear. I follow faithfully and curiously behind him through the barn and out the front door.

Who could possibly be here to see me? None of the Drecks at the Estate have ever had visitors. It's unheard of, and probably not even allowed. Occasionally, Wayler will mention that people are watching me fight, but that's never affected my position here at all. Does this have something to do with my recent tournament win? My top ten position?

What in the world is going on?