Number One looked back at the body of the one she wao be her mother. The woman had expired, either from the wound or from the gas.

  “I would’ve given my own life to save yours had you accepted me as family. And if not, I would’ve left you in peace had you let me leave,” the vat born said holy. “As, that was not the case. You wanted a monster, and a monster caught you.” Her gaze shifted to the sbs where her vat-born siblings y. Dismahrown away like garbage. The rage boiled anew. “I am sorry. I am so, so sorry. Had I been braver, had I transformed sooner, I could’ve saved you.” She kneeled, not g about the poison or the otion in the facility. No matter how far they run, they’ll all die soon. “Joihe people here have treated us worse than tools. Let us briribution together. I’ll carry your souls out of this tomb. Let the light outside bring you to the lives.”

  She picked up their remains and swallowed them. The flesh of her nameless brothers and sisters burned iomach, immediately going into building her body even further. The transformation was far from done. She stood on four limbs, finding it easier to walk in such a manner. Her paws emptied each sb of metal one by one. She ed the burn marks the ser had left on Six-Four-Six’s body, hoping that by some miracle his regeion would work and bring the boy back to life. It didn’t work. His wounds healed up to his neck, growing new bones and a fresh set ans, and then stopped. Six-Four-Six was dead, and Number Oe his remains. The hiss of the door interrupted the monster feast, fog her full attention on the group e fiends rushing inside.

  “Don’t move!” their leader anded.

  “You soon won’t,” the monster agreed, surveying them.

  There was no fear. There was ne to submit or run; pure, unadulterated fury drove away such emotions. The adrenaline kicked in, taking the monster into the world of superspeed, where her oppos were children wading through thick, sticky mud. Most carried long rifles; their leader kept in the ter of the group, gesturing for two soldiers wielding heavy ordio take aim. Each soldier carried a sheathed bde, and it fused the monster. What use would such toys be against the reinforced alloy of the power armor?

  Number One’s paw caught a rocket as it flew toward her. A sed followed, and the monster flicked her wrist, returning the first rocket to its sender and leaping gracefully aside to avoid the impossibly slow attack. Both rockets exploded almost simultaneously, shaking the room and creating thick clouds of smoke pierced by crimson beams as the soldiers fired blindly. It fused her at first, but then she uood. This wasn’t a show of unprofessionalism; their ander had reized her sheer speed from just two movements alone and ordered the wide e of fire, seeking first to wound, then to finish.

  She admired the strategy but stayed wary of the fact that the bst had failed to wound her oppos them to their khe rocket tossed by her exploded at their legs, and kiic absorbers dispersed the brunt of the impact across the smooth surface of their armors, while servomifted enough strength to ehe rest. But why was there not a sirace of dust on the e fiends?

  The monster’s paws grabbed the arg meical arms on the ceiling and threw them, sending a torrent of sharpened pieces at the fiends. Their armor was good. Several smaller pieces shattered at taot even leaving a bulge or a dent. But the speed with which she had sent the projectiles defied imagination. Suffit velocity was a on in and of itself. The rger pieces passed the fiends in a blur, slig through limbs and leaving torn wounds.

  Smaller pieetal flew high off the armored soldiers, answering the question of why her cws were iive against them before the assion. These e lines on them served more than decoration. They projected a weak gravitational field that pushed particles in different dires. It was an ingenious decision against the threat of weightless discharges of energy ons. Soldiers could fire their energy ons anywhere without w about friendly fire. Against solid projectiles, however, this teology was not very effective.

  They tried to use their funny, useless sers against Number One. She was already among them, moving too fast for their eyes and optics to follow. Cws cleaved through eight bodies in a single sweep, dismembering four more with the swipe. The bodies hadn’t even hit the ground before her fangs closed in oill-living enemies. Hatred. She hated them, ign cries of pain and offers of surrender. What goes around es around. Her jaws closed, biting the fiends down to their waists, spilling pools of gore on the ground.

  Their battle suits hissed oongue, sparks flying from the exposed wires. She paid it no mind, swallowing food. At some instinctive level, she khat her stomach could digest most alloys and chemicals. Even the damaged energy geors posed no threat to her health. Unknown to themselves, the whitecoats created something otherworldly in this hellish pce.

  Several of the e fiends died, choking on the gas in the room as the air slipped through the open cracks in their armor. Three transformed into hissing snake creatures. Ign the poison, they drew knives from their sheaths. They charged at her, moving childishly slowly to her eyes. She drove cws through the heads of the two of them, but the st one closed in, trying to pierce her skin.

  Vibration. She smiled, uanding the idea behind this on. The bde itself was a dull pieetal, but a pact geor i created a field of vibration around its edge. By geing a strong enough disruption field, such toys could break the very molecur bonds in a lesser material. The density of Number One’s skin, evolved by this unknown glow, no longer allowed such trifles to threaten the monster.

  The snake man’s eyes widened in shock as the bde lodged harmlessly in her fur, and she kicked, knog him to the ground. Her cw stopped just short of his heart, revealing his ruined chest. The ribcage’s bones had fused together, providing additional prote. His muscles enrged, and her nose caught the st of narcoti the bloodstream. Medical drugs to increase rea time. Maybe also to further aggression. Irrelevant. She hesitated. Should she leave him to suffer? In his adapted state, with the way his ans pensated for blood loss and immunity to poison, it will take the e fiend several hours to die.

  Nah. She decided, pierg his heart. Death was the e. Too much of an honor for them to suffer torture at her paws. She has things to do, people to kill, and a world to explore. They made her into a murderer; they will not turn her into a sadist. Her mind was still clear. She turn away from the age. Number One owed her surviving family this much. The bastards mentioned a gover, whatever it was. Si all humans were evil and this gover was after the necks of those bastards, could she find allies by joining the hunt? At the very least, her kin o be hugged by a familiar face. And Eugenia and her pack deserved a proper spanking for their deeds.

  Does Eugenia deserve to die? The monster dismissed the idea, disgusted by the very suggestion. She had already killed the girl’s father; how much more suffering would a person need? A spanking and strict supervision will be enough. Every time this vile girl will try to hurt another person, Number One will be there to punish her, until Eugenia finally grows up and uands that hurting others was bad. The monster will pledge her loyalty to the gover and use her newfound strength to ehat no other child ever suffered the way her retives did.

  And this prototype that Academi had mentioned. Could there be more of me? Number One pondered. If so, they must be saved and given prote. The corpse turned into a bloody smear under her feet as she left the room. Unafraid.

  The corridor outside turned red, but the heat that burher products to the bone was a mere lukewarm temperature for her. In fact, she es hotness while strolling down the corridor. A heartbeat alerted her to a whitecoat hiding in a room oher side of the wall, and she punched, grabbing the woman by the head and dragging her out and then tossing the shrieking bitch at the superheated floor. The white suit offered no prote. Body and fabric fused, turning the body into a pile of scorched bck faster than the whitecoat could attempt to stand.

  Paried to stop her, ignited by the dang coils of electricity. She rammed through them, uprooting them from their foundation in the ceiling, and the impact sent cracks stretg through the corridor. The lights went out, and the hellish heating on the flan to cool. The geors were overloaded or broken. Unusual. Number One’s mind ran a calcution, proving to her that this facility could not have had such sensitive defensive measures. There were other factors at py. She didn’t care, advang on fs to the sound of hundreds of heartbeats. Hastened heartbeats. This time, the lesser monsters were afraid of a creature of their own making.

  She shifted to the left, hearing he wall crumbled at a tap, and Number One dodged a red beam, seeing its birth in the on's barrel. Fast. To her eyes, the stones fell in slow motion, but this beam crossed the room in an instant, toug her fur. A sed ter, she uood that there was nothing to worry about. Not a sirand of hair was burned.

  “Please!” a whitecoat cried from the back of an e fiend. The fiend pushed the man into a space between two shelves, preventing him from reag the monster. “She is not at fault! Mary… This guard was just transferred here today! She hasn’t hurt anyone, I swear! I was the one leading the sessions here; if you want to punish someoake me! Mercy, I beg you!”

  “Shut it, Kia,” the soldier advised him, her voice muffled by the helmet. She fired her rifle again, nding a shot between the amber eyes. It didn’t do anything.

  The request humored the monster. How many of her kind died here, begging for mercy? This e fiend here… Mayhap she didn’t know of the horror festering in this facility? If so, she was guilty heless. The e fiend chose to serve as a guard, readily firing at a first product who sought to break free from the shackles of oppression. This could be fiven, as Number One was rather terrifying, and perhaps the guard was unaware about specifics of her work prior to the employment. The guard didn’t leave, nor did she use her on to protect the weak and dying products. That could never be fiven.

  They were iudy room, as those bastards called this pce of torture. A series of terminals rose from the floor, one for each ‘student’. The kids had to absorb the information ing in the form of video lessons on the s, which taihe best methods for t and incapacitating people. Where to strike to maximize suffering without pletely turning a prisoner into a wordless, screaming doll. How to looseongues of a group of trained soldiers by identifying the weakest links among them aly chiseling away the will to keep their mouths shut from them by mutiting the stro ohose who would alk, while clemency to the weak. Biology lessons to find a vulnerable point, a spine, for example, and bisect it, eliminating the opposition in an instant.

  Those who failed to learn the lessons or who were simply too tired to find the correswer among the dozens of fshing buttons iext after hours of study served as training dummies for the rest. Most groups had no choice but to obey, and they tried to heir beaten friends back to health afterwards. But after the cruel torture, most would fail the est. And the damage piled until the iable happened.

  If Number One really was in another facility, as the whitecoats had implied before, theastrophe was far greater than she had imagihis pce looked identical to her own study pce. How many lives have perished here? How many sites were still creating and training the products?

  “Mercy? Fieacher,” the monster promised them.

  “Run!” Kia wailed in paniderstanding the hidden meaning of her words. He tried to throw himself at Number One.

  “I love you, Kia,” the soldier said, reag for a belt from which several round shapes dangled. “You won’t torture us, creature.”

  “radeship flourishes even among the vilest scum. How nice. Was it so impossible to treat us with kindness?” Number One asked icily.

  She didn’t let them go oerms. A cw impaled the heads of both humans, sending them together into the Great Beyond. The cw retracted, and she licked their remains off it, w about her choice.

  Was it the right one? What if she could befriend the duo, turn enemies into allies, open their eyes to the sin their hands had itted? The monster uood that none of it would satisfy the rage burning in her heart. It throbbed in her chest, akin to a sed heart, demanding a way out, an immediate vengeance, and it bothered her. Number One spoke of kindness, but did she show it to aer she became strong? Already she was deg Eugenia’s fate, as if she were her sve and not a misguided girl. Was that how it had begun? Could she, too, turn into a whitecoat?

  I have to hold myself to a standard so I don’t bee a monster. No t, no killing children. N them either, if possible.

  She picked up the ser rifle, bang it on a cw. As big as she had bee, there was no way to pull the trigger. Too bad. She disassembled the rifle, pg each element on the ground, curious about its inner ws. A beam of energy was moving from a small portable geor. Theoretically, it should have e out in a burst of light, dissipating the heat over a longer range and losing its lethality. A series s around the inner side of the barrel had caught their attention. The same gravity teology as the one used in the e fiends’ armor. It squeezed the particles together, holding the bean in a tight line, ensuring a greater strike potential at cle and the ability to deliver death at a distance of han forty kilometers, if a scope rovided. The ck of recoil would allow for a series of pinpoint shots, each hot enough to melt a round hole in an armor pte.

  How did she know? Number One dug into her own memories but found no ao the products, all ser rifles were existing-ending ons. Their masters weren’t ined to share more useful secrets with vat borns. The knowledge about the on came from mere observation alone, creating a perfect schematic. A ge in brain had occurred. She stormed off, returning to the hunt.

  “Do you taste it, my kin?” she asked. Metallidrils appeared from above. Needles and ser beams hit her afterimage; she herself had already jumped to the ceiling. The monster grabbed her, pulled out the entire trol device, and colpsed the corridor in an avanetal and stoheir horror. I wonder, if they are afraid of dying, why did they cultivate hatred?”

  There was no answer. But she imagihousands of small hands, cwed paws, bded limbs, tentacles, and other appeoug her shoulders. The souls of those who had perished in pain and despair demanded retribution. No vindication, no justification would suffice. Hatred was ing, sown by years of agony. A storm of pure fury will e its creators. Only then her siblings pass on to happier lives. She hoped to see them all again and apologize in person for being a coward who had tried to escape and failed t help.

  They could see her now. The e fiends have special lenses in their visors, ht vision, as her mind told her. She wasn’t sure how she k; things just sort of came clear to her now. The whitecoats witwe orbs nearing, dang in the darkness, heard the thunder of her footsteps, and saw white steam leaving her snout.

  Hatred, rage, and hope stepped into the enormous hall, densed into a tall figure covered by the fur of the darkest void. A paw, lohan a man, smmed into the flrowing in mass still. The reverberatioed in pleas for merd offers of bargain; the tremors sent several piss-stained fools to the floor. Her eyes shone like stars, illuminating the screaming crowd and judging the assembled ranks e fiends preparing to face her.

  Let them fear. Let them rethink all the as that have led up to this point. Perhaps some of them will eve treating the products so badly. Maybe they will be better people in the life. Who cares? Their current lives beloo her. For she was revenge inate.