Forty's life was dictated by finalities. Every morning at 8 a.m. the fluorescent LEDs would flood her room with artificial sunlight, stopping her REM sleep and indicating it was time for her to wake up. As sure as she had gone to sleep in it, Forty would wake up to the clinical white and light blue sheets of her bed, the mattress that was neither soft enough nor hard enough, and her pillow which was blissfully always cold. She'd look down and see her warm weather pajamas, made of the same soft but breathable cotton in a similar shade of blue to her bed. When she got up, the floor would always be cold and unforgiving on her feet, and the air conditioner which ran chilly at night would shut off the moment her toes touched the concrete. If she looked around, her room would be the same— three gray walls and a singular long, two-way glass mirror, no pictures or shelves or trinkets, just a bed and a toilet in the corner, all of which Forty kept immaculately clean.

Like all days, Forty would be hungry when she woke up. However, also like all days, Forty would have to be completely ready before she was allowed to eat. She'd have to slide the pallet drawer from under her bed and retrieve a hairbrush, comb her dark yellow locks with a total of twenty-five strokes. She'd pull on her summer day clothes: a waterproof pair of pants and a shirt which were not unlike the garb belonging to her monitors. Finally, she'd brush her teeth using the toothpaste tablet and rickety reusable brush, two minutes on each level, and spit the paste into her toilet before wiping the toothbrush down with an antibacterial towel. Only after all this would the two-way mirror part, and the face of her monitor Jane would be looking back at her, standing stalwart with the same neutral expression she always wore.

"Are you ready for breakfast?" Jane would ask, a formality she gritted out daily, and in turn Forty would nod back, let out a quiet "yes ma'am".

They would go the same route they always took, and the halls they traveled never looked any different. Cubicles like Forty's room would slowly be opening, monitor and specimen pairs retreating from the inside. The lights would always be blindingly white, the rooms vaguely smelling of antiseptic even as they neared the cafeteria. As usual, Forty was the first one there, and also as usual her tray was already waiting for her.

Jane would pull the light blue chair back, letting Forty sit before taking her place in the only other chair at the table. She'd fix her big black rimmed glasses on her nose, push back the finicky strands of her blue dyed bangs and adjust the name tag on her coat, then she'd clasp her hands on the table and look at Forty expectantly.

This was where finalities ended for Forty, as she looked down into the little glass goblet on the gray-blue tray. Breakfast was always different in some way. Sometimes, she'd get a full meal from the usual food groups. Eggs, bacon, sausage patties, biscuits, toast, fruit, French toast. Other times it was a little bowl of pills, each a different size or shape, sometimes varying shades of blue and white. Most of the time, like today, she'd be presented with this clear goblet, sitting like a chess piece on the empty tray.

And inside this goblet, there was always blood.

"I want you to try this one today, and tell me how you like it," Jane says, glancing between the thick substance in the goblet and Forty's pinched face. The smell emanating from the cup makes Forty's lip curl.

"It's human," Forty replies, and it takes all her schooling to keep her expression mostly flat.

"Yes, but it's a different type than you've had before. A different blood type," Jane explains, though she does not tell Forty what type it is.

Reluctantly, Forty lifts the goblet to her mouth, trying not to smell the liquid before sipping at it delicately. The blood coagulates in the divots of the glass, stains the rim of it. The taste hits Forty like a punch to the face, too bitter and confusing. Her nostrils flair, and she catches the scent of it, like grease and smoke and plastic. The blood sits on her tongue, and though she tries, Forty cannot force herself to swallow it.

Jane notices the still-puffed look of Forty's face, her rapidly reddening cheeks, and digs out the small plastic collapsible receptacle she stored in her pocket in preparation for this event. "Spit," she says, offering the glorified barf bag to Forty, who with little fanfare upchucks all the crimson substance into the opening.

Reeling back, Forty holds her tongue out in the open air, panting like a dog. There's nothing on it but the lingering taste, and upon closer inspection of her mouth Jane notices that her fangs have not even slipped out, nor have her salivary glands started working.

"That was O negative," Jane supplies, knowing that means nothing to Forty.

"Ith thwas thuman," Forty slurs out, tongue still exposed to the open air.

Jane leans back and digs two rough thumbs into her own temples, mussing up the dyed strands. "I know it was human, but it's very rare. You've never had it before. You've had all the other ones BUT this one."

Forty does not supply a response, just stares through Jane. "So no human blood appeals to you," Jane sighs out, deflated.

It's not a question, but Forty answers anyways. Sucking her tongue back in, she shakes her head. "It tastes gross, like rotten, or like bad medicine."

"That's odd, considering we've had success with O even with others like yourself who are adverse to human blood."

"I can't swallow it," Forty supplies, pushing the tray towards Jane. The still full goblet vibrates precariously with the movement.

"Fine, but I do want you to have blood today. It's been what, a week since your last serving?" Jane pulls out the tiny calendar notepad she keeps in her coat pocket, verifying that it had indeed been seven days since Forty had any kind of blood or raw meat. "You don't feel sick, dizzy, tired?"

Forty shakes her head, and Jane finds no physical signs she is lying. She looks as she normally does, the same ashy paleness all the others had, the same barely there dark circles which never went away no matter the nutrition nor care dedicated to their removal. Her eyes look bright, her expression alert, her hair and skin and nails healthy. "All normal bowel movements, no vomiting? You've had a lot of regular food lately."

Again, Forty shakes her head, looking a little bashful for her lack of incriminating evidence. Jane sighs and beckons for an attendant dressed in white to come to the table. He looks warily at Forty, and she can smell the smoky scent of fear on his person. She doesn't miss the way he glances down at her hands, her cuticles, and relaxes only when he finds blunted fingernails.

"Bring me some deer blood, warmed please," Jane says, and the attendant scurries off without so much as a nod. Turning back to Forty, who is now noticeably perkier, she asks, "You like deer blood a lot, right?"

Forty nods eagerly. The deer blood she had been given in the past tasted clean and fresh, like her bed sheets after they'd just been washed and the cool air at the vents in the recreation room after exercise. In fact, most animal blood was like this for Forty, though she preferred that of herbivores who usually tasted the cleanest. Only with nonhuman blood could Forty experience the rush the others felt when feeding.

The attendant comes back a little later, a clone of the goblet in his hand, though the scent of the blood in this one makes Forty's mouth water. She takes it from him eagerly, spooking him when her fingers brush his, and when the liquid hits her tongue bliss floods her mind. She can feel the change in her eyes like a physical pressure behind her pupils, can hear the schlllikk sound of her secondary set of fangs dropping from their sockets, winces as her claws split her cuticles and burst forward, blackened at the tips with disuse.

"Ah, there we go. I knew you needed it," Jane says, though it does not come off as comforting but rather as a testimony to her own intelligence. She fishes out the notepad in her other pocket, making a few quick notes on Forty's reaction. "You haven't had a full transformation in a month," she adds, reaching across to pick up Forty's hand and twisting it this way and that to observe her nails. "We'll have to file those tips off, otherwise they'll break in the sheath."

Forty ignores her poking and prodding in favor of finishing her goblet. Satisfaction courses through her veins from the feed. She stretches her lips and jaw around her extended teeth, testing the dormant muscles. Her fangs do not extend past her mouth like the others, but their size is still enough to worry against her lips. She knows what she looks like to Jane right now, has seen a full transformation on the others and even herself once. Her normally black-brown eyes would turn an icy blue, her sclera bright red. The veins in them would turn almost black, and her teeth would poke just slightly past her lip to where they protruded the skin around her mouth. The veins around her face and neck would bulge out, her cheeks would color, and blush would gather in all her extremities. On her hands, keratin claws extended two inches past her fingertips, usually a healthy pink but now a crackled, pale champagne with blackened ends, necroded.

Forty recalls Jane's colleague's words, the short man with brown skin and dark hair and eyes, and a scraggly beard, who was in charge of Eighty-One. Jane had asked, "why do their eyes turn red?" and he said it was because all the blood in their bodies was rushing to their heads, their brains, their eyes. "To better see their prey with."

Forty can feel those predatory senses working through her, can briefly understand why the others behaved the way they did in the presence of blood. "Much better," Forty slurs to Jane around her teeth, and Jane gives her a tiny smile.

"Just because you don't present as many symptoms does not mean you can ignore your body's instincts," Jane tuts, calling the attendant for another glass. Forty ignores the minor lecture in favor of gulping her second meal down.

"Oh please," a voice calls from the doorway, just on the side of mocking. "She's basically human, she doesn't even really need the blood."

Opening her mouth to catch the scent of the speaker better, Forty identifies the tell-tale leather and cologne smell of Ben, Thirty-Seven's monitor. The man leans against the large doorway, absolutely dwarfed by it in both width and height, hip cocked to rest against the frame. Forty isn't his biggest fan, nor are any of the others particularly fond of him. Despite having half the strength or ferociousness of the specimens, he makes up for it with a sharp mouth and sharper slap. Forty can sense discomfort on Jane, and sure enough her monitor looks ready to smash the goblet and use it as a makeshift shank to do away with the chirpy man.

"She is NOT human," Jane grumbles, not even bothering to turn to meet Ben's eyes. "You've seen her withdrawal test."

"Yeah, and she lasted three times longer than the average. That's not exactly normal," Ben counters, pushing off the door and walking over. He slides one of the other chairs to the table, the metal on metal sound of the legs of it scraping across the floor making Forty's pupils constrict. Forty tries to meet his eyes and look as scary as possible, but Ben just reaches over and ruffles her hair. "See. She won't even bite me, even though I'm touching her. You can't do that with any of the others," Ben continues, clapping a hard hand on Forty's back. A low growl begins in her throat, and Jane looks between the other monitor and her specimen with a concerned but curious eye.

"It's not in their nature," Ben accentuates, "to not want to eat anything with a pulse that gets near them."

If Forty knew better, she would probably be offended by the conversation happening about her, but she has no such inclinations now and rather wants Ben to go away simply because he's annoying.

"The Chupa protein doesn't express very much in her. I've been doing some research into her genome," Jane offers. Forty's predatory eyes slide to hers, but her initial blood high is wearing off. Her sclera glow a bright pink. "I think it comes down to that. The protein sequence from the virus is somewhat dormant compared to the others."

"That's why," Ben says, finally detaching from Forty and turning towards Jane instead. "I recommend you submit her to the grays."

Jane outright laughs at that, the sound making Forty flinch. She slaps a hand across her forehead, accidentally leaving fingerprints on her glasses. Frowning at her outburst, Ben huffs. "I'm serious, Jane. We aren't getting much from her here."

Wiping a stray tear away, Jane brings herself back together. "Exactly. She's a dead end, and I'm just her babysitter. Passing her off to the testing unit isn't going to do shit for you, me, or the project."

Forty likes to think of her inner voice as the pocketbook Jane carries around. Where Jane files notes away to remember, Forty catalogs every single thing the monitors say into her head. She has no purpose for it, has done so subconsciously since she got a head voice, and finds the data gathering a good passage of time. Of the headings in her pocketbook, talk of the testing unit takes up the most space, simply because none of the monitors can keep quiet about it. A lot of things seem to happen there. Forty knows at least twelve monitors have been killed in correlation to whatever is going on. However, she knows it is about herself and the others, as everything around here is dictated by them.

Forty's interest perks up a little at the mention of the mysterious testing unit. In her presence, many of the other monitors have talked to Jane about moving her there. Forty is aware that she is a rarity, but Jane always turns down any request to send her upstairs to the centralized room where the testing unit is. The answer Jane gives is always the same. "She's a dead end." Forty can smell frustration on Jane all the time, knows that the human emotion Jane shows most to Forty is either annoyance or tolerance. It comes down to this: Forty, despite the numerous samples taken from her or questions pressed, is remarkable in her unremarkableness, which often leaves Jane with little to study or report.

"But that's why she needs to go upstairs. She's a controlled specimen," Ben presses, and Jane sighs and rubs her eyes angrily. Forty thinks that if Jane was like her, her claws would be shooting out right now, ready to leap across the table and maul Ben. "They only have the aggressive ones up there, and we– they can't learn anything deeper than feeding habits and behavior without a calmer spec. And Forty's the calmest of them all."

They both turn to Forty, who has already deshifted from her hunting form. With newly flushed cheeks, Forty looks between the two, attempting to garner some information from their gazes. She finds Jane's to be full of questions. Ben looks hopeful and a little satisfied with himself. Finally, Jane grits out, "what would they do with her?"

A large grin spreads across Ben's face, so toothy Forty can't help but liken it to fangs. "They want to see if she has the capacity to function as a human. She'll get a basic education, learn how to socialize and read behavioral cues." Ben glances over at Forty, who tries not to look interested in the conversation. "They'll test her memory, her communication skills. They want to see just how deep this gene alteration goes."

A finality seems to hang over Jane's eyes, and she crosses her arms frustratedly. "What would happen to me?" she murmurs, and Ben claps her shoulder much like he did to Forty earlier.

"You'd get reassigned to Seventy-Eight. Priscilla is retiring, so she needs a new monitor."

Seventy-Eight is a very middle of the road specimen, from what Forty can gather. She is young, or at least younger than Forty, and just temperamental enough to pose a challenge but not so much that she is dangerous. Jane's interest seems to peak at this promotion, and satisfaction oozes off Ben in waves. Forty's nose wrinkles.

"Fine. You can send her to the grays. I haven't been able to do shit with her here, might as well pass her off to someone else," Jane says, acting as if Forty isn't there. She often does that if not immediately occupied with something Forty is doing or saying. However, she pauses for a second, casts a glance warily at Forty. There's a strange emotion in her eyes, something like fear but duller, and Forty has no name for it. "Just– you can guarantee she'll be safe, right?"

Ben nods vehemently. "The unit is equipped to deal with extremely violent specimens, but that also makes it good for protecting dormant ones like Forty." He places a hand overtop Jane's, but the woman doesn't bristle at it. If anything, Forty can sense her muscles relaxing, her mood improving. "This will be the best thing for you and for her."

"Alright. Fine, fine. We just have to clear it with the director, right?" Jane says, and Forty doesn't miss the way her tone sounds softer.

"The reassignment is already cleared," a new voice speaks up. Forty opens her mouth in an attempt to catch the scent of the new person, though nothing but the smell of lingering blood and the stale air of the cafeteria enters. Neat, clipped footsteps signal the trio to the prim figure walking through the doors on the opposite side of the room. The man cuts a strong figure, not large but broad-shouldered and refined, his back perfectly straight. Unlike most of the people and things on this floor, he wears a gray suit, the tie a blood red. Forty's mind whirls at the color. She can feel her left fang start to slip out. The man pays her no mind, pulling right up next to her and laying a possessive hand on her shoulder, fingers tight. Forty bites back the growl the contact elicits. "Mr. Janski's little chat with you was a formality."

Immediately, Jane straightens her back, and Ben even minutely pushes his shoulders up. "Ah! Dr. Fredabauer! How good to see you on this floor," Jane greets, her voice wavering slightly.

"Yes, Ms. Garcia. I assume you have no final issue with Specimen Four-Zero coming upstairs, no?" The imposing man talks as if speaking to a child, but his voice holds a threat of violence and repercussion. "After all, Dr. Taft is the one who requested her."

Forty can smell the salt from Jane's hands, the collection of sweat on the back of her neck. She watches her jugular bob. "Dr. Taft, really?" she says, but there is no hint of an actual question, just fearful surprise. "Dr. Taft wants to see For– Four-Zero?"

"Yes," is all Dr. Fredabauer supplies. "We'll need her ready to go by tomorrow morning. There will be a small security force sent to you after breakfast to help move her to the testing floor. Is that understood? Tomorrow morning."

"Yes sir," Jane says, nodding so fast it makes Forty dizzy.

"Good. I will speak with you more about this later, away from Mr. Janski and Four-Zero," he sends pointed glances to the two of them, his slicked salt and pepper hair reflecting the same light his blue eyes do, the LEDs turning them electric.

"Yes sir," Jane blurts again, and with that Dr. Fredabauer turns on a polished heel and walks away, his gray suit dull but jarring amidst the sea of blues in the cafeteria.

☠☠☠

That morning, Jane gives Forty eggs. They are scrambled with red sauce and little chips caught in between, cheddar cheese caking the top. "It's chilaquiles" Jane supplies, pushing the plate towards Forty, who looks between her and the red sauce.

"It's not human, right?" Forty asks, dropping her head to sniff the blood but finding no plastic smell.

"No. Salsa. From my house," Jane says, and reaches over with the knife and fork to section the plate into manageable bites. Forty usually isn't allowed to use utensils, but today Jane hands them to her anyways. She holds them straight like the pencils Jane makes her grasp to write her name, and the prongs scrape against the plate angrily every time Forty retrieves a morsel.

The salsa Jane mentioned sits pleasantly warm on Forty's tongue, a little painful, a little itchy, but overwhelmingly fresh and satisfying. It tastes smoky, not like human blood but like cooked meat, and peppers make the roof of her mouth tingle. "It's good," Forty exclaims around a mouthful.

"I made it, not the cafeteria." Jane reaches over and cups Forty's face, her hands dry from all the antibacterial she uses. Though food is near and she isn't a big fan of touch, Forty does not feel violent at the contact. Jane feels the tooth poking out of her lip, and a smile breaks across her face. "You really are odd, huh?"

Forty doesn't know what she's expected to say. Instead, she just continues eating when Jane takes her hands away, but the warmth of her human skin nestles into Forty's cold cheeks like a tinge of fire. "I'm done," she says when the plate is cleared, dropping the fork and knife unceremoniously onto the plate with a loud clink. Jane nods and reaches down by her ankles to retrieve Forty's bag, which contains her toiletries and extra scrubs.

As Dr. Fredabauer said, the security team arrives a few minutes later. They wear dark navy scrubs followed by plates of even darker blue armor, their bootsteps heavy in comparison to the quiet of every other inhabitant's slippered feet. On one hip a long metal rod sits, black in color and shiny, and next to it an opaque canteen. On the other, a small handgun. Forty has only seen these types of humans a handful of times, when blood was accidentally drawn or a test went wrong. They would seem to fall from the ceiling, crawling out of every nook and cranny in the building to flood and topple the offender.

"Ms. Garcia?" a woman asks, her dark auburn hair tucked tightly into her cap. Forty bristles though she's only able to see the strands if she peers close to her face. "We're here ta take Four-Zero to da testin' floor."

"Dr. Garcia, but yes," Jane says, and moves Forty's tray to the closed off slot in the wall where a little hand shoots out and snatches it. Jane pulls Forty's chair out and helps her up, though Forty doesn't feel scared or in need of support. In fact, since yesterday, an overwhelming curiosity has overtaken her senses. It makes her limbs shake and veins tingle, her pupils dilate.

Jane and the three security personnel lead Forty out the back door of the cafeteria. Forty has never been this way, always ushered out the other door, but this side is as unremarkable as the usual one. That was until the group took a few lefts and the narrow hallway opened into a bright white chamber where a metallic door stood imposingly, twice as tall as anyone present. "Now, we ain't gonna come in contact wi' da other chupas for'a bit," the female officer says, walking forward to swipe a card through the large centralized lock. "But when we do, she's gonna stay in the middle of us all. They'll be callin' for 'er."

They being other specimens, Forty thinks. She has limited contact with her kind, none unsupervised, but she knows that dozens of them populate the many floors of the compound. Jane talks about the other specimens sometimes, or Forty may catch the edge of a picture in a Manila folder and yank it out, gobbling up the image of another specimen staring back at her. "Chupas are like dem T'smanian devils in a way, huh? Always tryin' ta kill each other, 'cept when they want to fuck."

"It's mostly in feeding or territorial displays that they fight," Jane replies, and the female officer lets out a long belly laugh.

"You haven't seen da ones up'ere," she says, a knowing smile plastered on her face.

The hulking doors shudder and hiss, splitting open in a puzzle shape and retreating into the floor and ceiling. The hall behind it is long and narrow, only a few sparse LED lights illuminating the passage. When the group steps across the gap in the floor where the door rests, a stream of air puffs out from all sides, covering them in cold and a smell neither clean nor stale. Forty jumps at the contact, but the broad hand of one of the other officers on her back keeps her moving forward. She gnashes her teeth at him, but his eyes remain forward. "There are scarier things than you in here," he whispers to her, and Forty just stares menacingly at him in turn.

"Scent blockers," Jane supplies, though Forty ignores her. The cold air sticks to her skin like perspiration, and she suddenly feels a little cotton-headed when she realizes she can't smell any of the humans. In fact, she can't smell much of anything at all besides the odd warmth and dullness of the air bath.

"Yeh, they don't like our smell too much," the female officer says. She pats the canteen on her hip, and Forty feels her breath still in her chest when she hears sloshing. "They especially don't like this," the officer laughs, though she sends a worried glance at Forty, whose extended claws are now poking into the meat of her palms. As Jane said, the blackened tips fly off from the pressure, making a silent clack when they hit the floor.

After the other officer makes his way through the air bath, he turns to a keypad and punches in a sequence of numbers. With a great metal groan, the large doors shift and begin closing behind them again, cutting off the main source of light. Completely closed, the hallway is only illuminated by the small white LEDs, turning everyone and everything sickly gray. Caught between the air bath and the narrow winding hall, Forty's lungs feel heavy, and her heart rate elevates.

The female officer begins walking forward, her footsteps echoing off the walls of the hallway. She unlatches the top of the canteen and the button on her gun holster, then turns to the remaining group. "We gotta few hundred yards 'fore we get ta another door, and when we open that there'll be a changin' area. Everyone there will move inta the gray uniforms. "

"Yes ma'am," the other officers say, and Jane lets out a hum of acknowledgement.

Forty remembers asking Jane about the gray floor some years back. As far as Forty is aware, the whole world is blue. She's never seen the outside unless in books, the red areas carefully blackened with a sharpie, but she was aware that other colors existed. They just didn't exist here unless the monitors allowed them to, such as the tints and tones of aqua and navy and robin's egg. Natural hair color is allowed, but it is very odd to see a redhead. In fact, this officer is only the second one Forty has ever seen. The floor below Forty's domicile is color coded by greens, and to Forty's awareness there isn't any other floor of another color besides the gray floor. This stuck in her mind the first time she saw a security detail of gray and black tones when she was a young child, the colors jarring among the sky of the blue unit. "Some colors keep Chupas calm," Jane told her, and when Forty pressed, she continued, "The blue unit reminds the Chupas of water, keeps them just uneasy enough that they don't want to hurt anyone. But up there, on the gray floor... even blue is enough to trigger them."

Sure enough, walking through the gray unit hallway feels otherworldly. In the dim lights, even the baby blue scrubs she wears look washed out and colorless. The difference weighs like a heavy blanket on her mind, making her heart race while simultaneously drooping her eyes. Finally, at the end of the hall, the female officer takes a sharp turn and comes to a smaller albeit thick door where she presses her card to a scanner. The doors open with a hiss into a small square chamber filled with partitions jutting out of the wall, racks of small, medium, and large unisex scrubs hanging from hooks on the outward facing shelves. On the other side, black and gray gear of the same fashion the officers currently wore are folded on a low metal bench. The whole room, despite being covered in cloth, feels uncomfortably cold and impartial.

"Those are hers," the female officer says, her voice hushed compared to earlier. Her long freckled finger points to a pair of light gray scrubs hanging off the side of one of the partitions, the same as her blue ones except long sleeved.

"Go change," Jane orders, and Forty walks over carefully to the shelf, eyeing the broad backs of the officers as they change into the hueless tactical gear. She flinches when she hears a gun click.

Peeling off her blue scrubs, Forty carefully folds them as she is accustomed to and places them in the alcove where a pair of gray slippers waits. She takes off her under layer next and replaces it with the dark gray of the same fashion, a compression cami and a pair of boxer shorts. Her stomach pooches out slightly from the bottom of the tank, unused to the tightness of the thermal layer, and her skin itches uncontrollably with the discomfort of it. Forty pulls on the scrub top and bottoms quickly, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from scratching at her arms. Lastly, she takes the shoes down and puts them on, surprised to find them lined with soft fabric. Though alarmed with the newness and discomfort of her clothing, she feels warmer.

Jane pokes her head around the partition, wearing an identical pair of scrubs and dark gray lab coat. She tucks the blue strands of her hair behind her ears, disguising them amongst a sea of black. "You ready?" she asks Forty, who nods with wide eyes.

Distantly, Forty feels an odd fear. She isn't worried about the predators who wait behind the changing room door, nor the canteens or guns on the hips of the officers, but still a longing burns in her chest. It feels like the truth, that despite Jane's obvious distaste for her, Forty will miss her monitor. After all, she is the closest thing she has to family, or friends, or really of anything. But, this decision is ultimately out of Forty's hands, and she never really had a choice, did she?

"O–kay," the female officer drawls, loading a sleeve of ammo into her handgun. She slams it against the hilt of her palm, and the sound bounces around the changing room menacingly. "Y'all stay behind me, Gonzales 'n Brown at Four-Zero's flank, Dr. Garcia in da back."

The two male officers separate from the wall to fall in at Forty's side, their thick arms locking her in between them. Jane sidles up behind her, thumb and forefingers curled into the back of Forty's scrub top. The female officer places her card against another scanner, and once again the scent blockers fill the room. When the air settles, the opposite door opens and the female officer backs up against Forty, gun in hand. "Let's move."

Shuffling as one, the group moves through the short blackened hallway. Forty suddenly becomes aware of a noise. It's a low hum, like machines constantly working, and as they travel further the hum becomes a full body vibration. One last door stops the group, this one almost built entirely into the wall as if to hide it, and the female officer raps her knuckles sharply three times against it. A slot bursts open, eye level with Forty, and mustached lips appear in its emptiness.

"Yes?" a tremulous voice sounds, heavy breathing catching on the rim of the slot.

"We have Four-Zero," the female officer says, and the slot shuts harshly before a great groaning sound starts up and the door begins to part. It's narrower than the others, but no less heavy. The first thing Forty sees when it opens is a positively immense bearded man, his dark brown whiskers tangling around his parted mouth. He wears the same scrubbery as Jane but engineered for a giant.

"Dr. Zapata," the large man greets, holding out a meaty hand which the female officer shakes. He makes a shuffle back from the door, his shoulders too broad to go through it, and gestures for the group to follow. "Watch your step, there's a subtle stair. Ah! Yes, Four-Zero, waaaaatch your step!"

Forty can barely see the room they enter over the shoulders of the officers, but she knows it is dark and only illuminated by the same white LEDs from earlier. The hum she heard earlier seems to emanate from the immense wall of screens on her far right, whose glow casts the room in arcing shadows. Forty sees a handful of monitors with their heads buried in books or laptops and separated from each other by walled cubicles. She's stunned to realize she still can't smell anything despite the close quarters of the dwelling, but thankfully her eyes adjust enough to the dark to offer her some relief. "This is our monitor room," Dr. Zapata supplies. "We keep an eye on them all here, examine results."

Dr. Zapata stops about fifty feet into the room, his figure illuminated by the ambient light coming out of an arched entrance. "And this," he breathes, taking a few careful steps forward, "is the specimen room."

When the group first walks through the entrance together, Forty cannot feel a shift in the atmosphere besides the light level changing. Then, as if she had suddenly stepped out of a fog, sensations attack her. The LEDs in this room are piercing, making sure no view goes unnoticed, and the beams seem to wash everyone who enters under the light in a pale yellow glow. Irritatingly, one of the panels flicker, just noticeable enough to tick Forty off, but the humans pass it by with no issue. She still can't smell the natural scents of the people in the room, but there's an overwhelming odor permeating this area, one that not even the scent blockers can hide. The air feels still and foggy here, almost humid. Forty gets the idea that quarters are probably close from the way the officers shuffle closer to her, but this only further prevents her from seeing the other specimens. She knows they must be in here, can sense them, hear them, but all she can see over the officers is glass revealing the same ceilings as the rest of the room, gray and smooth.

That is, until the hulking shoulders of officer Brown shift to the side, and Forty sees her.

Suddenly, she's transported back to a handful of years ago, when the gray security team came down to the exercise room.

"Forty, stay by the track. Stay behind the mats," Jane breathed, though Forty could not hear her over her clawed hands clamped tightly around her ears. Furious growling rumbled from Thirty-One's chest, her lengthened teeth clamped in the neck of her monitor, blood staining her face and her monitor's baby blue coat. Her predatory eyes bore through Forty's from across the room, her hair sweaty and matted to her face. The shrill alarm echoed off the long, high ceilings, then a monotone female voice joined the cacophony. Activating exercise room sprinkler system in five...four...three... "Forty! Cover your head with the mat!" Jane screamed, making to sprint to Forty. Just in time, Forty clenched tightly to the blue mats next to her head and dived underneath them before streams of water began flowing from the ceiling. Forty closed her eyes tightly against the torrent, the liquid falling from the ceiling causing a fear so deep in her she was frozen to the spot, heart running like a motor in her chest. Across the room, Thirty-One let out a gut wrenching scream, dropping her monitor before falling to the floor and curling her hands around her head and body, claws cutting divots into her clothes and skin. When Forty opens her eyes, Thirty-One is still looking at her. However, her blood-red gaze does not reflect territorial aggression, but an evolutionary terror.

Those same eyes peer at Forty now, still shifted, though a vacant curiosity occupies their depths instead of fear. Her secondary fangs have always been abnormally large, with the added oddity of one being bent upwards like a tusk. She looks healthy and— from what Forty can tell from the brief glance— well-fed.

Thirty-One watches Forty pass by, but her gaze remains somewhat empty and cross-eyed. Forty realizes the other specimen must be in a room with a two-way mirror. She was not seeing Forty, but rather smelling her.

Forty opens her mouth. Scent still escapes her. Officer Brown falls back in line, and either the mirrors are sound proof too or the female officer was wrong about the specimens trying to call for her, because the group's trip through the specimen areas is uneventful and deathly quiet sans Dr. Zapata's quick anecdotes.

"It's high light time right now," he says, gesturing to the bright LEDs on the ceiling. "We try and keep them on a light schedule similar to outdoor conditions."

At what seems to be the end of the well-lit room, Dr. Zapata pulls up next to a cubicle identical to Thirty-One's. "This is Four-Zero's stop," the large man announces, opening up a sliding computer pad and tapping his ID to it. The two-way mirror splits and reveals a room very similar to Forty's in the blue unit, though this one somehow seems to have even less privacy. The group surrounding Forty fans out behind her when they enter the room. "Her immediate sleeping area," Dr. Zapata continues, gesturing to the twin bed tucked against a wall in the corner, "toilet," pointing to the partition wall in the opposite corner. Next he draws their attention to a rack of soft shelving made of malleable black foam. This was to be Forty's storage area. She would have no under the bed pallet, and in fact the portion of space under her bed was closed off.

"Now, and this may surprise you, but this room is actually quite large." Dr. Zapata diverts his attention to an upper corner of the room and waves. Not two seconds later, the expanse of blank wall beside the shelving shifts backwards and to the left, parting to reveal a large open space. An odd smell hits Forty's nose, something like soap and heat. She leans over to gaze past Dr. Zapata to find an expanse of green fuzz illuminated by white light, though not as harsh as the LEDs. Forty steps forward without permission, darting around Dr. Zapata to move into the odd room, but what she sees makes her immediately stumble back.

Damp coolness brushes against her ankles, the odd green spikes sticking to her shoes and scrub bottoms. Even more alarming, when Forty looks up she sees an expanse of blue and white, though these colors are dissimilar to the blue unit in that they aren't unnervingly hued, but rather quite natural. Forty thinks about the picture books Jane reads to her sometimes and realizes the damp spikes are grass, and she's staring up at the sky, the clouds.

She's outside.

Practically throwing herself back onto the cool metal floor of the domicile area, Forty spins on her heels to growl at the scene of nature. Dr. Zapata looks a little alarmed, though not as scared as Jane who looks ready to flee. "Ah... yes," Dr. Zapata says awkwardly. "We do give them a section of natural area, being on ground level and all. It's good for them to exercise, get the stimulation. Of course, it's completely closed off, but they get grass and natural sunlight."

"She's never seen grass before," Jane breathes, astonished at Forty's immediate rejection of it. "She's always been on the level below this one."

"Yes, well. It's sort of protocol, you know," Dr. Zapata says, scratching the back of his neck. "It allows us to see them function almost as they would in nature, but still completely controlled. We even have a section where Four-Zero can see her domicile neighbors through the glass." He points to the far end of the outdoor area where breaks in the concrete reveal two floor to ceiling windows about four feet across. "We study their territorial behavior, courting behavior, communication skills this way."

He makes to move towards the glass, placing a strong but not pushy hand on Forty's bicep. She's tempted to look through the window and see her own kind staring back at her, but she's reluctant to touch the strange grass again. Luckily, a shuddering groan sounds across the room, and an ear-shattering clang like metal on metal follows it. The entire group jumps simultaneously, and Forty bristles when she hears the guns cock. She can smell fear on the humans, rank with its suddenness. Dr. Zapata whips his head to and fro, releasing Forty to dash to the exit of the domicile. As he pokes his head around the mirror, static sounds over the speaker system before a bored sounding voice says, "Don't worry, sir. It's just Three-Seven." That doesn't seem to calm the doctor, but then the voice adds quickly, "He's just pissed, not escaped."

Forty sneaks to the front of the security team to peer over Dr. Zapata's shoulder, nostrils flaring. She doesn't dare open her mouth with the officers on edge, but she finds she doesn't need to. For the first time since coming to the gray room, she smells another specimen. Humans have a distinct smell, usually like sweat, salt, and blood, but specimens do too. It's carnal, something that Forty can only describe in feelings and not words. It smells like sharp fangs and dirt, sun baked bark and violence.

Before she can find the source of the noise, Dr. Zapata shuffles her backwards behind Jane. Frustrated though knowing she shouldn't fight back, Forty deals with the light manhandling. Besides, she can get a good idea of what's happening from the smell and the announcement. The tinge of anger on the edges of the scent tell her the other specimen is extremely territorial and unhappy about Forty's presence nearby. The slightly deeper smell tells her the other specimen is a male.

"Dammit, I told y'all to close Three-Seven's vents!" Dr. Zapata yells up at the speaker in the corner of the room, though he looks more embarrassed than angry. He sighs deeply before spinning on his heel to the group in the domicile, splitting his face with a nervous smile. "Thirty-Seven is very territorial and has a tremendous sense of smell. We usually keep his vents closed when visitors come so he can't pick up on them, but I guess someone didn't listen to me."

A hissing sound makes Forty's ears twitch, and she leans into the noise before hearing a thud. A slight sweet scent makes her nose wrinkle, but even just the whiff has her eyes drooping. Dr. Zapata seems to finally take stock of her on his shoulder as she slides down it, knees suddenly a little weak. He laughs, looping a meaty arm around her back and hoisting her over to Jane, who takes up Forty's increasingly dead weight. "What did you do to her?" Jane whispers, anxiety coloring the edge of her tone.

As her vision fades out, Forty feels a huge hand pat her head. "It's Three-Seven's sedative," Zapata begins, though Forty loses the rest of the explanation in a tunnel of sound.