Alex woke up with a shout.
He lay still for a moment, staring at the slats of the top bunk above him.
’Wait.’
He sat up slowly. His neck was stiff, and there was a crease across his cheek from where the textbook had slid. The book itself lay on the floor beside the bed, open and face down.
’That wasn’t a nap.’
He had closed his eyes for a second. Just a second. He remembered the warmth and the page swimming, and then the dark. But the light outside was wrong. It was not the pale evening glow he had last seen. It was the light of morning.
He swung his legs off the bunk and stood. Above him, Jerry lay on his side with one arm hanging over the edge, breathing slow and even. His mouth was slightly open. He was completely out.
’Ok. What time is it?’
On the small desk between the wall and the closet sat a plain square clock with a white face. Alex crossed the room in three steps and squinted at it.
Six in the morning.
He stared at it.
’Six.’
He had slept the whole night. Not a few hours, not a nap. Through the evening, through the dark, all the way to dawn. His stomach dropped as the math caught up with him.
’I wasted a whole day.’
He put both hands over his face and let out a low groan.
’Yesterday I barely covered anything. Six pages in half an hour. Then I lost the rest of it walking in circles and worrying about a kid who’s probably never hurt anyone on purpose. He has his own problems.
Now it’s gone. A whole day. Twenty nine days left. Twenty nine.’
He lowered his hands and looked at the ceiling.
’This is stupid. I’m stupid.’
He would have kept lamenting, but there was no point. He turned, bent down, and picked the textbook up off the floor. He smoothed the wrinkled page and looked at the cover.
Beast Classification and Threat Response, Volume One.
’Fine.’
He sat on the edge of the bed, opened the book on his knees, and started to read.
He groaned as he did it. He muttered under his breath about the tiny print and the dry sentences and the way each paragraph seemed built to punish him. But he kept going. He slowed down when he needed to. He read the same sentence twice when it slipped past him. He said the hard words silently to himself until they stuck.
The window brightened from blue to gold. A bird landed outside, looked in at him, and flew away. Alex turned a page. Then another.
By the time he looked up again, he had finished the second Chapter and most of the third. The classification tables were beginning to feel familiar. Dexterity, strength, speed, stamina, beast trait. The five categories the Beasts were measured on. Levels one through five were the common ones. Anything above that was a different animal entirely.
’Ok,’ he thought. ’This is actually getting somewhere.’
A creak came from the top bunk.
He glanced up. Jerry had shifted, one leg sliding out from under the blanket. There was a long, drawn out yawn, and then a pair of bleary eyes peered over the edge of the mattress.
"Alex?"
"Morning."
"You’re already up?"
"For a while."
Jerry blinked down at him. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand, then paused, and a puzzled look crossed his face.
"How did you sleep with this on?"
He touched the collar at his throat.
"I mean, seriously. It sucked. I felt it the whole night. Every time I rolled over it dug into my neck. And I kept thinking about the light. It just kept blinking."
Alex opened his mouth to answer, and then he stopped.
The collar.
He raised a hand slowly and touched his own. The band was cool and smooth under his fingers. The little light blinked against his skin, as steady as it had been on the bus.
’I didn’t even notice it,’ he realized. ’Not once.’
He had gone under so fast and so deeply that the collar had never crossed his mind. The whole night, and it had never bothered him. He thought back to how heavy his eyelids had felt, how the fog had settled over his head before he could even walk it off. He had been much more tired than he understood.
’Maybe I really was that drained. From everything. From dying and waking up in here.’
"I guess I was just tired," he said.
"Lucky," Jerry muttered.
He rolled over and started climbing down the ladder, one rung at a time, his hair sticking out in every direction. He landed on the floor with a soft thud and stretched with a groan.
"We should probably start getting ready for class," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I could barely sleep. I was just turning and turning. This sucks."
"You were reading late?"
"Not really. I just couldn’t switch off." Jerry shook his head. "This whole place. It’s weird, you know? It’s cleaner than the cell. It’s quieter. But I keep waiting for someone to come bang on the door."
"Yeah," Alex said quietly. "Same here."
Jerry gave him a small, tired smile.
The bathroom was a narrow room at the end of the hall, shared by the whole floor. There were four sinks along one wall, a row of toilet stalls, and a set of shower cubicles with plastic curtains. It was empty at that hour, and the tile was cold under bare feet.
Alex went first. He stood at the sink with a toothbrush from the thin supply they had been given and scrubbed until his gums tingled. The face in the mirror was strange to him still, heavy jawed with dark eyes that did not look like his. He did not linger on it.
Jerry brushed next. He hummed something under his breath as he did, a tune Alex almost recognized and then lost.
Then the showers. Alex went in first, and the water came out lukewarm and thin, but it felt like heaven after weeks of nothing. He scrubbed until the stiffness left his shoulders and did not rush it.
He toweled off with a rough gray towel and dressed in his undershirt and shorts again while Jerry took his turn.
When they were both done, they walked back down the hall in silence, hair still damp.
Back in the dorm, Alex went to the closet and pulled open the door.
There were two sections. In his was a row of folded clothes, all identical. Orange trousers. An orange jacket. A plain undershirt in gray. A pair of black canvas shoes, side by side on the floor.
’Same as before.’
He looked over at Jerry. The boy had opened his half of the closet, and his face had gone flat.
"Same old uniform," Jerry murmured. "Did you think they’d give us something new?"
"I guess I hoped."
They dressed slowly. The fabric was rough and faintly stale. It fit the same way it always had, and every time Alex fastened a button he felt the weight of what it meant. Orange in a building full of gray. A color to mark who they were.
Jerry pulled his jacket straight and glanced at the door.
"Ready?"
"Yeah."
Alex took the keycard from the desk and picked up his textbook. Jerry took his, tucked it under one arm, and let Alex go first. They stepped into the corridor, and Alex pulled the door shut behind them until the lock clicked.
They started down the hall toward the stairs. Their footsteps echoed on the polished floor, two sets, slightly out of time with each other.
Halfway to the stairwell, Jerry spoke again, in the offhand way of someone who had been carrying a thought around and finally decided to set it down.
"I noticed you were actually reading?"
"So how was it going?"
"I mean you seemed somewhat immersed"