He awoke to darkness.
His head was foggy, his thoughts sluggish and heavy, like trying to think through water. He tried moving his arms, but only one obeyed. The other screamed with pain the moment he tried. A sharp bolt tore through his elbow, hot and stabbing, forcing him to gasp.
The pain cleared the haze just a little.
Before he could look down to check his arm, another pain bloomed, his stomach. It twisted and clawed at itself, a deep, hollow agony that made his whole body curl inward. It wasn't the ache of missing a meal. It was the kind that came when the body began to feed on itself, gnawing at empty space.
He turned to his side, clutching his stomach. Tears spilled freely, blurring his sight, not just from the pain, but from the weight of it all. His throat tightened, a broken, trembling sound slipping out against his will. He bit down hard to stop it, but it only made the ache worse.
He didn't even know what he was crying for. Hunger? Pain? Fear? It all blended together until it became one endless, choking sob. His shoulders shook, his chest stung, and the sound echoed faintly against the walls, small, pathetic, human.
Why?
Why him?
He hadn't done anything. At least, he didn't think he had. He couldn't remember. He had no name, no memory, no food, no one. Just the cold, lonely darkness.
And that, somehow, hurt more than the broken arm or the starving gut.
For a long time, he didn't dare move. He didn't want to know how bad it was. But hesitation brought no comfort. Eventually, with a deep breath, he forced himself to look.
He slowly brought his gaze to his arm but saw nothing but darkness.
He turned onto his back and raised his good arm, reaching across to touch the other. His fingers brushed over sticks and cloth, something rough and uneven, tied tight around the joint. A brace. Crude, but enough to hold it still.
He tried to move his arm to the side and felt something close brush against his elbow. A wall. He pressed his palm against it, cold, brick, damp.
He stretched his arm across his chest and found another wall, just as close.
He wasn't lying in a room. He was trapped in a box.
Gritting his teeth, he tried to stand. Pain pulsed through his ribs, but he pushed himself up, using the wall to balance. His hand traced the bricks upward, then sideways, following the narrow space.
Three steps forward, another wall.
He turned and tried again.
Five steps this time, metal. His hand met cold iron. A door.
His eyes, still blind to the dark, told him nothing, so he listened. Nothing. Not a sound. Only his own shallow breathing.
He thought about hitting the door, yelling for help. But he didn't. He didn't have the strength to shout, and even if he did, what then? What would come through that door?
He slid down the wall until he was sitting. The space was too small to stretch out his legs, so he drew his knees to his chest and rested his head against the bricks.
He didn't want to move. He didn't want to do anything. His mind spun circles around the same hollow truth, he was alone.
Maybe it was better this way.
Ever since he woke up, the world had only shown him cruelty. He'd been bitten by a rat, slammed his head against a wall, nearly suffocated, forced to eat whatever filth had almost drowned him, denied food, humiliated, threatened, beaten, and now locked away like trash waiting to rot.
It was too much.
He was tired of struggling against a world that didn't care if he breathed or not.
Maybe it would be easier to stop.
He leaned his head against the wall, breath trembling. The thought came again, quiet this time, gentle, almost kind. Maybe it was better this way.
His breathing slowed. His tears dried into cold streaks on his cheeks. His eyes felt heavy. Numbness began to set in, the kind that came before surrender.
He tilted his head to the side, ready to end it, when
A metallic groan cut through the silence.
Light spilled into the dark, so bright it burned. Even with his eyes shut tight, he saw the veins in his eyelids glow red.
"Rise and shine, Number Seventeen," a gruff voice said, mocking and bored.
Something heavy clattered onto the floor beside him. The smell hit him before the sound faded, something oily, metallic, vaguely edible.
"Eat up," the voice said. "Your glory awaits you."
The door slammed shut.
And he was left alone again, with the light still stinging his eyes, and the words echoing in his skull.