The next question he asked me was, "are you a boy or a girl?"

He eyes were still as bright, skin still needing exposure to one of our seven suns, and clothes too similar in shade to the phantoms that orbited him. Yet now his voice was no longer warm, it pierced through me like a jagged piece of ice.

I felt hollowed out by his gaze. He could see beneath my skin. He was aware of the secret flowing through my veins.

Impossible! I took a step back, trying and failing to break away from his stare. He didn't know. He couldn't know.

I didn't know.

The thought wrapped around me like a chain to the anchor, keeping me hanging along the massive ship that thrived on my lost footing, The Syndicate.

I regained my bearings and banished my thoughts for a third time, making a promise to myself that there would be no forth time in front of this mind-reader.

I felt that that previous me would have thought Dominus' question quite an outrage. The answer should have been obvious but I didn't blame my Overseer. Who expected him to remember the gender of all his captives? And even if he did, how could he recognize anyone when in the end they were smattered head to toe in blood?

I had been so dehumanized in the dungeon that the answer to his question didn't even come readily to me. I had spent what could have been a year being brainwashed into thinking I was only an object, forced to fight against other captives for the simple things I still considered treasures - food, water and life.

My lips must have twitched into something sardonic because Dominus immediately turned on his heel and left without sparing me another word. The hall was a little brighter in his absence.

I didn't call out for him. I didn't beg. Maybe he was just tired of waiting for an answer that wouldn't come. An answer I couldn't give.

I balled my hands into fists with a vision of swinging them at the spot Dominus has once occupied. In reality, I made the return journey to my seat, now aware of the thousands of gazes burning into me.

My seniors had awakened from their trances at long last and it was time for my day to begin.