Food at the Center was the same. One blob of brown beans in gravy, four carrot sticks, one slice of bread, one cup of water, and one cup of soup. The same meal three times a day, every day. In our small Cell was a steel toilet, one faucet, one bed with a thin mattress and a thin blanket, and a wooden chair. Life in the Center was the same, like the food. Wake up. Eat. Make a mark on the concrete wall with fat piece of wood that had fallen off the chair for that day. Do small exercises in the Cell. Eat. Nap. Draw and write aimlessly with the piece of wood. Eat. Clean face and teeth. Sleep. The only thing that changed there were the Experiments. I still remember my first Experiment, four days after I was taken. Two men wearing gas masks and a baggy, full body orange suit pulled me roughly to my feet and dragged me to a blue room with a bed, with many people wearing the same mask and suit the others were wearing. Several machines were in the room too, I recognized a monitor for heart rate and blood pressure, but I couldn't identify the other machines.
"So this is the kid Valencia called a genius?" One man asked.
"Yeah," another responded. "She's pretty quiet. The Committee told us that she's replacing Katherine, Subject E-1."
"Oh, yeah, I heard they had a hard time finding a replacement for her. Lucas, the director of this Experiment, told me that Katherine died during this."
"Surgeons, staff! Enough chitchat!" another person boomed.
"Right, right, Cindy," the man said hastily. "Put her out," he told a nearby woman quickly. The two men holding me put me down onto the bed, strapping my limbs down. The woman told to "put me out" inserted a needle, an IV, I hear someone call it, into my arm. Immediately, I felt groggy, and the only thing I was aware of, then, was the strangest sensation of my stomach being sliced open.

When the grogginess died away, I was at a pristine white room that resembled that I learned was called the Recovery Room. Moments later, the same two men in the same protective outfit came and escorted me to another room with another child the same age as me, bound and gagged to a chair. Gasping, I hurried over to him, horrified. Strangely enough, the two men did not stop me but left the room. I tugged helplessly at one of the children's gags, but suddenly, the child stopped moving. His breath came in strained heaves, and he jerked in his chair. Then, with a final shuddering breath, he fell limp and still, his eyes blank and glassy. He was dead. Crying out in terror, I backed up, terrified, but the sudden movement made me aware of a strange stiffness in my joints. Feeling my elbow, I felt hard, peculiar, hexagon-like objects on m joint. Intrigued, I felt my other joints. The hexagons were on all of my joints.

Then, I realized it. My bones had screws in them.