Inside the facility, people were no longer people.

  They were bodies that moved.

  Hands that worked.

  Eyes that stayed down.

  Living corpses—waiting.

  Waiting for exhaustion to finish what fear had started. Waiting for pain to become permanent. Waiting for something beyond this hell, even if that something was death itself.

  Hope didn’t vanish loudly here.

  It faded.

  Dreams dissolved slowly until no one remembered what they once wanted. The future of humanity felt like a concept that belonged to another world—one that no longer existed.

  At night, screams rose from the darkness like clockwork.

  Samye stayed awake through most of them.

  He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, reflecting on how far he had fallen—from a home filled with memories to a cage filled with suffering.

  Is there really a future where people are happy?

  Or was that always just a lie we told ourselves?

  The questions followed him even into his dreams.

  In those dreams, he was always chasing something.

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  A feeling.

  A truth.

  A future he couldn’t see clearly.

  He never reached it.

  Morning came without mercy.

  Samye was sent to the factory.

  Aren was sent to the fields.

  As always.

  The work began. The machines roared. The guards watched.

  In the fields, Aren worked harder than usual. His body ached, his hands blistered—but his eyes kept drifting toward the far edge of the land.

  There.

  Between two collapsed fences.

  A narrow stretch where the guards’ patrol paths didn’t overlap perfectly.

  It wasn’t freedom.

  But it was a possibility.

  For the first time in months, something stirred inside him.

  Aren’s heart raced.

  There’s a way out…

  Then his thoughts stopped.

  Not without him.

  Samye.

  Aren lowered his head and kept working.

  Hope, once again, was swallowed.

  That evening, as the prisoners were being marched back to the facility, guards slowed near Aren.

  They laughed.

  Not loudly—just enough.

  “Look at this one,” one guard sneered.

  “Still standing.”

  Another guard leaned closer, his voice cruel and casual.

  “We should cut his brother instead,” he said.

  “See how long he keeps working then.”

  They laughed.

  Something inside Aren snapped.

  “Don’t talk about him,” Aren said, his voice shaking.

  The guards stopped walking.

  “What did you say?”

  Aren lowered his eyes immediately. “I—I didn’t mean—”

  The first blow came fast.

  A fist to the ribs.

  Aren gasped but didn’t fall.

  The second blow knocked him to the ground.

  Samye saw it from a distance.

  His body tensed, but he didn’t move.

  He knew better.

  The guards dragged Aren up roughly.

  “He tried to run,” one of them announced loudly.

  “Caught him scouting an escape route.”

  Aren’s eyes widened in terror.

  “That’s not true!” he cried. “I didn’t—”

  A guard struck him across the face.

  “Silence.”

  The lie was already accepted.

  No one questioned it.

  No one ever did.

  As Aren was pulled away, his eyes searched the crowd desperately.

  They found Samye.

  Just for a second.

  Samye didn’t shout.

  Didn’t move.

  But something deep inside him cracked.

  This wasn’t random cruelty.

  This was deliberate.

  The guards hadn’t punished Aren for what he did.

  They punished him for who he cared about.

  And Samye knew—with terrifying clarity—

  This was only the beginning.