Seeing Ben again is an unfortunate side effect of meeting with Thirty-Seven. Despite his absence in the months Forty has occupied the gray floor, he has apparently been very active with the other specimen. "Behavior training and all that," he says nonchalantly when Dr. Zapata walks Forty down to the blue floor to see him. He sits in his office, one cubicle among many in a locked part of the blue floor. Forty has been in a room like this before, though Jane's office was decidedly more barren and unsentimental than Ben's, who found a great hobby in tacking up random posters and drawings on the blue cork walls corralling him. "We've made a small breakthrough," he declares proudly, sliding a small black pocketbook out of a metal drawer. "I was able to stand next to him for five seconds without being scratched."

"That's... excellent news," Dr. Zapata quavers, concerned eyes glancing between Forty, who stands with a sentry-like silence, and the notebook.

"Oh, it definitely is. Maybe one day, he'll let me feed him, and then I'll get to talk to him more than screaming at him to please not bite me," Ben laughs, all smiles and democratic pleasantries.

Besides being downright disgusted of the man, Forty has always been slightly impressed by his resilience when dealing with Thirty-Seven. Well, it was either resilience or stupidity, but either way the man was stalwart in bothering Thirty-Seven. Perhaps that's why the other specimen is so ornery. If Ben was Forty's monitor, she thinks she would have bitten someone much sooner, and it definitely would have been him. She'll take Jane's flip flopping attitude and cold demeanor any day over the heavy-handed manner with which Ben lorded over his specimen.

"So, Joey, why are you asking me about Thirty-Seven?" Ben asks, and Forty notices an evil twinkle in his eye. She's come to realize in her time on the gray floor that Dr. Zapata is an important man, though his fatherly mannerisms and kind nature say otherwise.

"I believe it would be beneficial for Thirty-Seven and Forty to meet in controlled circumstances," Dr. Zapata says, his voice level. It does nothing to stop the ensuing laugh that spurts out of Ben's chest.

"You want them to court? Oh my god!" he guffaws, nearly falling out of his rolling chair. "He's so fucking crazy and she's so boring that they might just become normal!"

Forty feels a flush rise to her face, both angry and embarrassed. Why does everyone think she wants to court Thirty-Seven? This is a purely scientific endeavor! Sure, he's objectively pretty, and in nature he would be a good companion as he was strong and fast and ferocious, but this is not the wilds and Forty has no interest in partnership!

"Oh my god! Ew! Look at her face!" Ben laughs, and astonishingly, Forty feels her fangs slip out. "Her crockpot is boiling for him!"

"That's enough Ben!" Dr. Zapata yells, though it's barely louder or meaner than his usual calm voice. He places a soothing hand on Forty's shoulder blade, presses into a space between the vertebrae of her spine. Shockingly, her fangs recede immediately, as if a string had pulled them back into their sockets.

"Fine, fine," Ben says, trying to shake off his last chuckles. "But if you want them to court, you better put a muzzle on Thirty-Seven."

"That's not why we're here," Zapata says, frustration shining through. He pinches the bridge of his nose, rubs his eyes with his knuckles. "You know of the incident between Thirty-Seven and Forty, right?"

"Of course. Thanks for that, by the way," Ben says, turning towards Forty. "While he was under, we were able to conduct a physical exam. He hasn't had one in years."

A small stab of guilt spears Forty's chest, sending her guts on edge. She hopes by physical exam they mean the cursory ones Jane used to perform on Forty every quarter of the year, not the violating one Dr. Daas did recently. "You're welcome," Forty says, voice small.

"We have a special opportunity presented to us here," Dr. Zapata says. "We can study how two specimens interact after a territorial dispute. Before, it was impossible to get two in the same area together again, but Forty is entirely capable of making her own decisions."

Ben taps his chin, pondering for a moment. "I hope you don't mean to put them in the same room together," he says. "If you want to keep your special girl alive."

When Forty looks up, she catches the tail end of Dr. Zapata rolling his eyes. "It will be in a divided room, much like how the windows separate the domiciles."

"And you'll sedate Thirty-Seven?" Ben asks, looking between Zapata and Forty. Dr. Zapata looks down at her, his eyes questioning, and Forty shakes her head.

"No. No confinements or muzzles either when he gets in the room. The wall should be enough."

Distantly, Forty thinks how that wasn't enough last time, but she remains unafraid. Above all else, she wants to see Thirty-Seven, wants to understand him like Forty-Five understands her.

Besides, the last time they clashed, she won.

"Okay. You've piqued my interest. When do you want to do it?" Ben asks, leaning back lazily in his chair. He picks up the pocketbook and sets to scribbling something.

"We can do it today, if your schedule is empty."

"Ohhh. Quicky, I see. Alright, I've got the gray squad on speed dial, so let me call them up and see what I can do."

He finishes the frantic penmanship, then rips the paper out with a sound that grates on Forty's ears. He holds the page out to her, a few inches from her face, so close that she can barely make out the ugliest depiction of her face and body she has ever seen. This time, she does growl at him, but he laughs instead of cowers.

"Ugh, yes. Please do that. I'll set her up in the A side of the first dividing room." Dr. Zapata looks glad to close the conversation, leading Forty away from launching herself at Ben with a large hand on her mid back. From the room, Forty hears a hushed "she's gotten feistier" and the sound of a ball of paper hitting a metal trash can.

As they get further away from Ben's cubicle, Forty's annoyance turns to excitement. It worked! She is going to see Thirty-Seven, she is going to be able to ask him so many questions! A bloom of pride unfurls in her breast, pleased with not only succeeding but in getting a monitor to do her bidding. In the past, Jane would have shot this idea down before it even formed in Forty's mind, but Dr. Zapata gave in right away. Not only that, but they formed the plan through a contraband walkie-talkie. Forty has always gotten special treatment, but it was never this pleasant. Like this, she feels heard. Like this, she feels human.

The dividing room is near the infirmary on the gray floor, some three doors down from it. Forty recognizes the seven LED panels lining the ceiling, the whirring vent signaling their end. The door is locked with both a keypad and a card scanner, though Dr. Zapata disables these quickly with his ID. Inside, the room is brightly lit and cramped, perhaps no bigger than a closet, and a gray chair bolted to the floor sits in front of a laminate countertop that spans from wall to wall. A large sheet of plexiglass bisects the room, holes no bigger than dimes dotting it to allow sound and smell to pass through. On the other side, an identical room reflects back at Forty when she stands behind the chair. The whole thing is so brightly lit it's disorienting, and the air is stagnant and musty.

"I'm going to close you in here so I can help get Thirty-Seven. The air purifiers will go off when I lock the door. Do you need anything before I do that?" Dr Zapata asks, looking reluctant to leave. Forty shakes her head and tucks herself in the bolted chair, the curved back preventing her from sitting up straight. "Alright," he says, and closes the door gently with an echoing click.

Sure enough, the air purifiers mist the room with cool, dry air. Forty usually hates these, but after being on the gray floor for so long and constantly dealing with their artificial scentlessness, she's gotten used to them. If anything, they help to clear the old smell of the room. While waiting, Forty picks at the scabbed slits where her remaining nails spring from. They should have scarred over by now, but thankfully they haven't as the keloids surely would have closed off Forty's nail beds for good. She draws blood by accident, and the metallic smell immediately fills the air. Frantically, she sucks the finger into her mouth, trying to disguise the scent so as not to freak Thirty-Seven out or send him into an aggressive frenzy.

Of course, a half hour later, it seems Thirty-Seven is entirely capable of doing that on his own. The room seems to be soundproof, so Forty doesn't hear them tumbling down the hallway, but she does hear the click of the door on the other side being opened. When it swings open violently and crashes into the wall, a cacophony of sound meets her ears.

"Grab him! Grab him!"

"Hold da muzzle tighter!"

"Secure his claws!"

"Do you have the sedative ready just in case?"

"For fuck's sake, just toss him in there!"

The last voice belongs to Ben, Forty is sure. Brief sounds of struggling and grunting meet her ears, then a dark shape whizzes through the air before hitting the back of the chair and thudding to the ground. A violent growling starts up, then the shape is up and Forty sees the top of his head, hair on end like a cat. "Close it! Close it!" Someone screams, then a tan arm reaches into the room and rips the door shut, barely missing an amputation as Thirty-Seven launches himself at it. His face meets the cold metal of the door, and when he stumbles back, his nose is flowing with dark blood.

Forty doesn't say anything as he begins assaulting the door, throwing his whole body at it and attempting to kick dents into the bottom. His bones creak with each wave of savagery, but he shows no signs of pain. Gore from his nose splatters the wall, sends a spray on the plexiglass, but he screams and curses through it all. When he steps backward to catch his breath, Forty can see his claws are fully extended, those needle-like fangs piercing through his lip. As his shoulders shake with the effort to draw oxygen in, his predatory eyes transfer to her, still curled up in the chair with her arms wrapped around her knees.

"You," he growls, panting as he points a sharp finger at her. "Why are you in my territory again? Are you stupid?"

Forty doesn't reply at first, too overwhelmed from taking in the violent scene and the bloody smells to formulate words. It takes him throwing one of his shoes at the plexiglass to snap her out of it, and she forces her voice to come out clearly. "I'm not in your territory. We're not in anyone's territory," she says.

Thirty-Seven lets out an angry snarl, but as he looks around the small room he realizes her words are true. "Fuck you," he spits, actually shooting a glob of foamy pink saliva out of his mouth.

Forty lets the curse roll off her shoulders, too excited to actually get to talk to him to be offended. However, there hasn't been much talking yet, even as she rattles off a stream of questions. He decides to grumble and pace the small room instead, head twisting this way and that, looking for an exit.

"I don't like it here," Thirty-Seven grumbles. "Too small. Smells weird."

"Sorry," Forty says, though it comes out flatter than she means. He continues prowling around the closet, and Forty thinks that he's surely explored every centimeter of the room by now. "Can you sit down?" She points a clawless finger at the chair matching her own.

"Sit down? What?" Thirty-Seven says, sounding genuinely disoriented. Forty wonders if he's given himself a concussion. "You want me to sit down? I need to get out of here!"

"No, you don't. Nothing bad will happen. I just want to talk." She tries her best to sound placating, but again it comes out thin, a little anxious.

"I don't want to talk to you." He whirls on her, transformed eyes blazing. When he opens his mouth to bare his teeth at her, she sees his nosebleed has dyed his teeth carmine. "You bit me! You scratched me up!"

At this, Forty feels a little guilty. She did do that, sure, but what was it Forty-Five told her? Don't be a pushover. That's right, Forty was attacked first, she had every right to defend herself. Thirty-Seven is delusional if he thinks she's to blame for that situation. "You attacked me first. You came into my room and attacked me."

Thirty-Seven pauses in his pacing, looking momentarily sheepish. "I thought you were in my territory."

"It was my room," Forty says frustratedly. "It smelt like me."

"You don't have much of a smell, to be fair," Thirty-Seven grumbles. He's fully turned towards Forty now, clawed hands piercing through the plastic of the gray chair. "I got lost when I ran from those assholes, and that room still smelt like me."

No it didn't, Forty wants to say, but she realizes that it probably did, faintly, and her weak senses couldn't pick it up. Instead she says, "why were you running?"

Thirty-Seven looks at her like she's grown two heads. "Why wouldn't I? I don't want them touching me, telling me what to do."

"Were they hurting you?" Surely he had to have a reason to run away. Specimens didn't try to book it without a reason, as doing so would likely result in punishment. Forty has never once tried to run away before, even when she knew seeing Dr. Daas would be unpleasant.

"They were touching me," he says simply. "That's enough. I hate when they touch me. They got grubby fucking hands, and they smell awful. It lingers on me for days."

Again, Forty has never experienced this. Sure, Jane would smell around her, but just the touch of her hand didn't leave a lasting odor. Forty never liked being touched, but she can tolerate it and often did. "But was it worth running? What did they do to you?"

"Well," he says, grinning a bloody, predatory smirk. "They didn't get a chance to do anything, 'cause you kinda already did." He tugs the collar of his stained scrubs down, showing the raised pink areas where Forty's claws had dug in and pulled. They send a shiver through Forty, and she remembers the squishy texture of flesh under her nails, the acrid scent of fear.

"I'm sorry," Forty says again, this time firmly. Many specimens don't understand the concept of forgiveness. They are more a fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me type of creature. Forty-Five is unique in that if Forty wants to apologize to her, she will consider forgiveness. She still grumbles to no end about it, but is much more lax in holding grudges.

"Yeah well. Who cares," Thirty-Seven spits. "You gave me one hell of a nap. I was pretty pissed when I woke up and couldn't move." His voice quavers a bit, and he flexes his hands, sending the claws further into the chair. By now he's seemed to calm down, the redness of his eyes receding and his irises turning back to dark brown. He still looks otherworldly, a little beastly, as what's left is eyes so dark they look black and bottomless. "I wanted to find you again and bite you so you'd have to deal with the same shit," he snarls.

"I wanted to bite you again," Forty admits, guilt sending her stomach roiling. "It felt good to bite you, like it was what I was supposed to do from the start."

"Do you still want to?"

"Yeah," she says, eyes traveling to where some of his hair parts and the curve of his neck stands out against the black strands.

"Well don't. I'll kill you if you do it again," he threatens, but takes a seat in the chair anyways. Holes remain where he pulls his claws from the backing. His broadness seems to take up the whole room, and Forty momentarily feels bad that she's put him in such a cramped space.

Forty very much wants to drop the topic of the attack. Thankfully, Thirty-Seven seems in the mood to monologue. "You should stop smelling so upset. It's really gross." He looks confused for a second, glancing between her worried face and clenched hands. He scratches his cheek absently, not meeting her eyes. "You know, besides making me pass out, your bite was okay. It made everything less loud and annoying, made me feel less angry." He looks mad at himself for saying it, but Forty ignores that in favor of the words

"You want to feel less angry?" Forty asks, surprised.

"It... can get in the way of things," Thirty-Seven admits, looking off to his right. He folds the sleeve of his scrub over his fist and wipes the remaining blood from his nose, now completely untransformed. "And it makes me really tired. And always hungry. They never feed me enough. So annoying."

"How much food do you get?"

"Six servings of blood," he says ruefully, chewing at his lip like he's hungry now.

"Six servings!" Forty exclaims, nearly falling out of her chair. Forty will burst like an over fed mosquito if she has that much. "Do you not eat people food?"

"Ew. Why? That stuff is gross, and it makes me puke." He sticks his tongue out like a lizard, hacking at the very memory of a human meal.

"It's all I can eat right now. Three meals a day, sometimes one of them is blood."

"Fuck, you eat that much people food? You're pretty gross." He lets out a manic laugh, the sound springing from his body as if someone has punched it from his gut.

"Nobody drinks that much blood!" Forty snaps, a little embarrassed.

"Well I do. But it's still not enough. I damn near killed them when I did my withdrawal test. Worst day of my life." He snorts, crosses his arms and leans back in the chair. The plastic creaks under his weight.

A day? He'd only gone without blood for a day? Forty went three months with no blood, and even then it was just because her vitals were showing worrying signs. She definitely could have gone longer, though it would have been dangerous, but her mind has no craving for blood. It seems Thirty-Seven needs it to exist, not just to keep his body running and sate his hunger, but as a precursor to his personhood. At this, Forty feels the differences between them like a vast chasm, with her on one side and him on the other.

"Anyways. What does that matter? Did you call me in here for some fucking question and answer session or do you have a purpose?" His dark eyes seem to look through her, down to the very marrow of her bones. She wonders if he'll think she's lying when she tells him that she just wanted to meet him formally. Anxiously, she picks at the scabs on her nail beds and mulls over an answer. It has to be somewhere in between reality and fiction, just made up enough that Thirty-Seven thinks she's cool. She's halfway through a sentence when her nail slips and she peels the scab of her thumb cuticle off, wincing at the sharp sting. Blood slowly beads up along it, each pool no larger than a needle point.

Thirty-Seven stills in his chair, back going ramrod straight. His head turns slowly from staring at the opposite wall to the plexiglass, where slowly reddening eyes land on Forty. He looks her up and down, each movement of his eyes calculated and precise. "You're bleeding?" he mumbles, a flash of pink tongue laving over his lips and revealing the points of his fangs, still halfway in their sockets.

"Oh, yes. Sorry," Forty apologizes, bringing her thumb up to lick the scratch closed. Before she does, Thirty-Seven lets out a long, low growl, eyes stuck to her finger. She pauses, tip of her tongue against her thumbprint.

"You're bleeding," he says again, this time all trace of a question out of his voice. His nostrils flare and Forty can hear the schlikkk of his fangs fully descending. Her heart stills in her chest, eyes locked on his which have turned completely red. She forces her wrist to bring her hand down, but when she does he launches at the glass, making the frame rattle and the thud of his bones against the divider echo. Forty almost tumbles out of the back of her chair, scrambling back against it even though she knows he can't get to her.

When he speaks, his hot breath fogs the glass, eyes wide and claws poking through the sound holes. "God, your blood smells absolutely revolting, but I really, really want it." His shoulders shake with a full body shudder, lip quivering where his fangs rest against it.

Forty's pulse skyrockets, and she immediately wipes the blood off on her scrubs. This proves to be the wrong move, however, when he just hyper focuses on the stain, knocking violently against the plexiglass as if he can phase through it. Forty gets out of the chair and backs up into the opposite corner, pressing into it and trying to stay small. This isn't what she wanted at all! This is not how this was supposed to go!

"Three-Seven, step back from da plexiglass please," a female voice says over the intercom, her voice stiff and warning. Thirty-Seven doesn't even seem to hear it and begins throwing his whole body at the divider, broad shoulders making it rattle dangerously.

"Three-Seven, this's yer last warning. Step. Back." It's the gray squad leader, the lady with the cropped haircut. Forty tries to melt into the corner, both terrified of what will happen to her if the divider falls and what will happen to Thirty-Seven if he doesn't comply.

After a few beats filled by the sounds of dripping drool and escape attempts, Thirty-Seven throws himself against the plexiglass one more time. When he connects, his body locks, eyes wide and tongue hanging out of his mouth, and Forty hears the tell tale crackle of electricity. Thirty-Seven drops to the chair, folded over it in a backbend. Forty can't see his face, but she knows he isn't dead because she can hear his heartbeat. When he stops growling, a flood of monitors fill the room, each carrying a different tool. Ben secures a metal jaw muzzle over Thirty-Seven's fanged mouth, then a few others come around and manipulate his limbs to where his arms are cuffed behind his back, legs bound at the thighs and ankles. As the last cuff gets set into place, Forty can hear a rapid increase in Thirty-Seven's pulse rate. Sure enough, the man begins thrashing, tossing his head back to try and dislodge the monitors who attempt to get him standing. If the situation weren't so disturbing, the way Thirty-Seven fights back would probably be funny, as he looks like an inchworm on a warpath. With a tremendous body roll and a sickening crack of his shoulder, Thirty-Seven rakes his one free claw across the face of the red headed gray squad leader. The woman grunts and stumbles backwards, holding a gloved hand over her eye. The other two officers slam Thirty-Seven to the floor, chest-first, and finally get the last handcuff locked. Blood seeps from between the woman's fingers, and she stumbles out of the room quickly.

Forty meets Dr. Zapata's eyes from where he stands at the exit door, watching the carnage unfold. Thirty-Seven screams into the muzzle, and even though he's trying desperately to get away from the monitors, some of his movements indicate he's still trying to reach for Forty.

By now the blood is dried on her scrubs, but it still feels incriminating as Thirty-Seven is dragged out from the combined efforts of six monitors. Ben comes by and sticks a needle in his thigh, and the sweet smell tells Forty it's a sedative. The kicking legs fall flat, which is perhaps most disturbing of all.

A few minutes later, Dr. Zapata opens up her side of the divider, a grave look on his face. "I'm sorry, Forty," he says. "But I have a feeling there will be no more visits after this."

Forty's heart sinks, and she thuds her head back against the wall. How could she blow her chance of building a relationship with Thirty-Seven? Surely from now on she won't even get to entertain the thought of him, too absorbed in not angering the monitors around her.

However, the way Dr. Zapata looks at the divider is unsettling. Forty looks between him and the space where the corner has shifted. "Something is wrong," Zapata observes, taking in the splatters of blood on the glass and the brown stain on Forty's collar. "He's never reacted that strongly before. And no specimen has ever been strong enough to move that."

"I didn't bite him," Forty says, voice coming out smaller than she intended.

"I know," Dr. Zapata says. "That makes it so much worse."

☠☠☠

They think it could be a symptom of withdrawal.

The walkie-talkie's static is deafening in Forty's ears even though the device is relatively quiet to humans. Like this, she can understand why the noise infuriates Forty-Five. The girl herself leans against the window, knees tucked against her chest and head tilted so her left ear is listening in on the conversation. Forty sits cross legged in the corner under the camera, the walkie-talkie lax in her hands. Her stomach has been in a constant roil since last week when she'd spoken to Thirty-Seven, though up until this point she's had little time to think about him. The last couple of days included more tests and interviews, some shared with the red headed officer who now wears a gray patch. "Don't worry, I ain't blind or nothin', it's just a little hard ta look at righ' now," she'd said, placating, when she noticed Forty's gaze fall on the patch during one of these interviews. The stiff monitor who questioned them both hadn't worn the colors of any of the specimen floors, just a simple white lab coat. He looked bored, a little miffed, to rifle through papers and ask a plethora of specific but pointless questions. The fact of the matter remained that Thirty-Seven went into a blood frenzy, and the officer had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Such things come in this line of work, she'd admitted, and true to her word she didn't seem mad at Thirty-Seven.

About two days after the incident, Forty was taken to Dr. Daas again for a dental examination. The one thing she had not checked when conducting the previous exam was Forty's teeth, which were admittedly standard fare for a specimen and didn't seem to require any special attention. However, one day not long after the divided room attack she decided they did, so Dr. Zapata walked Forty down the hall with the seven LED panels, a hand on her back so she couldn't turn tail and run. Forty schooled the grimace off her face, tried to swallow down the bile in her throat at seeing the exam table again. Ultimately she retched into a nearby bedpan right before Dr. Daas could fit an expander in her mouth.

She'd poked and prodded at her gums for a while, then paid closer attention to the empty sockets above Forty's human canines. She took swabs of the area, nabbed some cheek cells, bottled up some saliva, but the most important task for Dr. Daas was to figure out the mystery of Forty's predator canines. She reached under Forty and pressed in between two cervical vertebrae, and with disgusted surprise Forty felt the schlikkk of her canines as they descended in the socket. Dr. Daas looked closely, and to her shock and Forty's horror, found two pinprick holes in the points of her fangs.

"It's got to be a receptacle for venom," Dr. Daas said to the intercom overhead. Dr. Zapata came into the room not too long after, a camera in his hands. He snapped pictures of Forty's teeth and of the holes under a microscope. They were barely larger than a pore. "We'll do an MRI of her skull, see if we can find any fluid."

The MRI machine was loud and claustrophobic, and had Forty not been strapped in she probably would have destroyed the machine with her bare hands. The whole process took about twenty grating minutes. In the end Forty's jaw was sore from the expander and drool dripped like a fountain from her lips. It wasn't all for nought, though, as the black and white images Dr. Daas displayed on the computer screen in the corner revealed two fluid-filled sacs right below Forty's nasal cavity, each no larger than a penny.

"Incredible," Dr. Daas whispered, sounding truly flabbergasted for the first time in her life. "The answer was here all this time, and we never knew."

Thus the goal began to collect a sample of the fluid. A few silly but harmless methods were used first, like having Forty bite into a foam ball and collecting the fluid on it afterwards. This proved fruitless, as the venom seemed to be selective in its secretion, so they tried more organic methods. Dr. Daas brought in a slab of steak, and Forty, having no blood for some time at this point, swallowed down her aversion to meat in compliance with her hunger. The samples taken from the initial bite of the meat came up empty as well.

"Maybe it's a hunting tool, like how a snake paralyzes its prey," Dr. Zapata suggested, leaning back against the cot next to Forty. They'd been bouncing ideas around for some time, though it seemed Jane had not been informed as she was yet to come to the room.

"But if that's true, we should see it when she bites into food," Dr. Daas countered, chewing furiously at the end of a pen.

"Then like a horny toad?" Dr. Zapata tossed out lazily, throwing his hands up in the air.

Dr. Daas' chewing stops immediately. "A defense weapon! It's a defense weapon!"

Dr. Zapata told Forty about how horned toads shoot blood from their eyes to scare off predators. Maybe Forty's venom showed up in the same situations. It seemed plausible, as the only time Forty had been attacked was by Thirty-Seven, who received her first ever bite. "So it should be voluntary, right?" Dr. Zapata asked, but Dr. Daas shook her head.

"It's either the venom recognizes it's biting into something alive, or she has to be under a very high stress situation."

Forty felt Dr. Zapata look at her, eyebrows knitted. "So either way, she has to bite something again." To Forty's horror, Dr. Daas nodded her head.

Now, sitting here with Forty-Five and the walkie-talkie, Dr. Zapata gives Forty more insight into how the venom and Thirty-Seven connect. In the silence left by the walkie-talkie, the two girls look to one another. "Withdrawal?" Forty-Five whispers to Forty, face especially irritated and red today after her teeth scuffed her up during a feeding.

"It means his body thinks it needs it," Forty tells her, barely believing the words herself. If the monitors are right and what she had in those little facial pouches is venom, why would Thirty-Seven's body actually want it? Shouldn't he have an allergic reaction, or at least show signs of fear for the venom?

"How is what he is showing pointing towards withdrawal?" Forty asks, now a pro at holding the correct button to speak to Dr. Zapata.

It's a little hard to explain, and to be honest, we don't understand it much either. All we know is that Thirty-Seven has never been so reckless and aggressive before, which is saying a lot. It reminds us of how desperate some humans can get when withheld from an addictive drug.

"But why would the venom not scare him away?" Forty wonders, mostly to herself though she does hold the walkie-talkie button down just in case.

We don't know that. We need a control specimen, one with no behavioral issues like Thirty-Seven, to figure out if this is just a him thing.

Close to Forty's head, a series of taps sound. Forty looks up to see Forty-Five gesturing for her to hold the button down. Without putting much thought into it, she does.

"I'll do it," Forty-Five says nonchalantly when the static signals Dr. Zapata is listening.

Forty whirls on her, eyebrows shooting up to her hairline. She shakes her head quickly, but Forty-Five smiles and nods just as fast.

...You'd be willing to do that, Forty-Five?

Forty quickly holds the button down. "No, she won't." Near her skull, Forty-Five pounds a fist against the glass.

Forty, Forty-Five is offering something that would help us tremendously. If you bite her, we can see if the venom is triggered by living organisms or fear, how she reacts, and we might even be able to collect some. This would answer so many questions.

When Forty turns her body to look at Forty-Five, the woman looks smug, lips pulled back in a shit-eating grin. She looks completely reasonable and aware besides that, so Forty can't understand why she would ever volunteer to get bitten by her, who may or may not have an addictive drug in her teeth. "Why?" she asks, voice small and anxious.

Forty-Five just smiles. "Like he thaid, it would anther thome quethionth, and your curiothity hath tharted to rub off on me."

Forty wants to hug her then probably kill her for saying something so stupid and sweet. Never in a million years would Jane have volunteered to take a bite for Forty, and even if Forty-Five tries to pretend she's doing this for wholly selfish reasons, Forty can tell from the way she looks at her with a true, sisterly love that the woman is also doing it for her. That alone makes the idea of biting her so much worse. "What if they're right, and the venom is addictive?" she cautions, and Forty-Five waves her hand.

"Do you think you're tho thpecial you're thome kind of drug? Pfft." She pulls back the edge of her lip, revealing her rows of serrated teeth. "Pluth, if it really doeth affect me like Thirty-Theven, even for a little bit, I might be able to eat thome real food."

Forty thuds her head against the glass, dearly wishing she could wrap her arms around Forty-Five and squeeze, perhaps in a constrictor type of way. She's never felt such an overwhelming affection, such an understanding of a person, a want for that person to always be in her life. She thinks if there is ever a person who will make her wish to never be human, Forty-Five is it.

"You won't hate me, after, if it hurts?"

"I've got pretty thick thkin. I might break your teeth," Forty-Five quips, and Forty rolls her eyes.

Holding down the button, Forty thrusts the walkie-talkie as close to the sound space as she dares, still barely hidden from the camera. "I volunteer to take the bite," Forty-Five says to the static, and it feels final. Honestly, Forty has never been able to convince her otherwise of anything she sets her mind to.

Okay. I'll arrange it.

Forty sets the walkie-talkie to the side, leaning back against the glass. She feels foreign in her body, and she brings a finger up to the portion of skin between her cheek, nose, and mouth. She presses into it. It gives, though not like regular buccal fat. Instead it's like a vein, both soft and pliable, delicate. She can't believe she's never noticed it before.

"Why me?" Forty asks, half to Forty-Five and half to the open air. The woman at her back just shrugs.

"Why do I have jacked up teeth? Why ith Thirty-Theven one loop short of a fruit? Why ith Thixteen tho bitchy? Everyone ith odd, you're no different."

Forty gapes at her like a fish. Huh, she's never thought of it that way. She always assumed those on the gray floor were oddities like her, but in many regards they were just normal specimens with either a physical or behavioral deformity. Each has an explanation for the way they are, so why should Forty be any different? She's spent so much time locked in a repetitive cycle of self-hatred by comparing herself to those she thought were the standard that she forgot to actually look at those she was comparing herself to.

"That's a good way to approach it," she tells Forty-Five, who just gives her a slobbery, toothy grin in return. When she thinks about the impending bite, Forty's heart aches, afraid that Forty-Five will never smile like that at her again.