Surrendering Isn't an Option

-Part 1-

"Ho, ho. No. I like to get to know my test subjects." He said,laughing again.

Coldness crept into me. This was just a game to him, wasn't it? A sick, twisted game for the entertainment of creatures who were safe inside their power. My hair stood up on end and I stared intently at him, trying to pry him open. He would not look at me, but the pufferfish did. I looked at him instead. He turned the same pale our guard was. He began to sweat as i pried him open in the most painful way. He whimpered and looked away terrified. I was a little surprised.

Daeshim had once told me that I was able to break people easily with just a stare. I was able to tell what they really were if i continued for long enough. He told me I gave him this same stare when we first met and i wasn't polished and kept restrained.

When a human is born, the neuros keep you in slightly larger cells than the ones we have now until we're nine. Then they move us up. Daeshim is a little older than me, and we hadn't become friends until i was moved up as well. There he had polished me with Jane and made sure that didn't go completely crazy.

He kept saying that he wanted to open me up and let me have friends, but he was too afraid at first because of my cold stare.

I didn't quite understand what he meant when he said that, but I learned not to care too much and not to use it. By now i was angry, i had a reason to break people.

We went through a large high tech building and more jungle like areas until at last we had stopped at a crumbling building, much like the prison i had stayed at. The door to the building were iron bars, rather different from my own. Maybe the neuros had decided not to use valuable material on this one.

The Neuros Lord opened the side of the vehicle.

"Wait here." He commanded, and walked away. I had just noticed the neuros were armed. There was no way I'd be able to escape.

I looked around at the plains around me of grass like plants of blue and purple that would go up to my waist if I was standing. It looked pretty, which made me sad. I had spent my entire life in a crumbling, dead zone of 4 by 4 feet cells of people slowly going insane. And outside was a beautiful world, taken over by cruel, inhumane beings.

I spent my time looking at the butterfly looking insects, who were the size of my fingernail and white. They made me think of tiny floating balls of light, drifting from dew covered petal to dew covered petal. The pufferfish Neuros regained his natural blue color, scales becoming steadily more opaque. I would tear him apart again but I let it go, just this once, to admire the scenery again. The sky burned gold and red and the sun sunk low into the never ending field. Was this what my home planet would have looked like? The rosy colors of the sky reflected onto the ocean colored grasses, turning the field into a blood soaked sea.

This prison. The Neuros king, or whatever he was, must be picking up another candidate for the Attachment. I understood now. The Attachment was hard because you were made to become passionate about your comrades, being set up to meet the other contestants days before you were introduced to the slaughterhouse.

My lips curled into a thin smile. I probably wouldn't need to worry about that. I had the disability to become attached to people quickly. After all, it did take a year or two for Daeshim to become my friend.

Daeshim...would I ever see him again? Would I run afraid and clutching my fears to my heart forever without him? He was the only person I trusted, but I was never able to share my feelings and fears with him, there were always other prisoners awake, listening, eager to see my moments of weakness. You'd think humans would grow compassionate and kinder towards one another, and there is a subtle bias to each other, but we became colder. Our lives were consumed in hate and fear. I wouldn't be around to see it, but I knew this hate and fear would eventually chase us into extinction.

A butterfly fluttered softly towards me and landed on one of my fingers that was resting motionless on the edge of the vehicle. I lifted my other hand a caged it. I could feel the light and soft touch of the butterfly's panicked wings.

"Don't want to touch it, never know what's gonna kill you!" laughed the puffership stupidly, his voice gruff and barely understandable. He seemed to think he had made a clever joke, trying to get back at me for causing his minute of despair.

I let the butterfly go.

"You don't really think I believe that can kill me, or are you that stupid?" I asked, glaring at him, but not in a prying fashion.

"It is a glimmer of light to you, is it not?" he inquired, losing the idiot air about him.

"What do you mean?"

"Light; a piece of hope. A sign of freedom." the pufferfish expanded.

I looked at him questioningly. There was nothing stupid about him, he definitely knew what I thought of the land around here.

"Many a victim are too busy fretting about the Attachment to enjoy the lands here. But one from the late year felt a sense of freedom and sadness in the environment about them." he frowned, "they were an odd one; an anomaly. Much like yourself." He added, taking his eyes from the blood field and glancing at me.

I paused for a second. I wasn't sure what to say to that. Was I really that weird? I felt pretty normal compared to the other humans. Upset, bored, tired, fierce, and solemn. What was the standard of weird?

"They were more exuberant than you, at least when walking on the land outside." He droned on, seeming lost in his memory. He jumped up in his seat, in a jolly fat way and said, "So, boy, think you'll have to draw some blood?" in a once again dim witted style.

I wasn't quite sure what I thought of the round pufferfish before me. I still hated him, there was no doubt about it, but he was proving a little more than a useless lump of blue spikes. The cretin.

The Neuros Lord was striding back to use, and a neuros guard opened the barred doors for him, bowing so low his face almost licked the floor. The pufferfish started gurgling in his language as soon as the King stepped into the ride, and the king raised a scaly hand. Pufferfish fell silent. The king spouted some other words in the Neuros tongue, and the pufferfish nodded, and began explaining something to the king. The vehicle started again, and I closed my eyes tight, pulled my legs to my chest, and blocked out the rest of this unforgiving world from me