#7

The nights were spent in short stretches of gray, sickly, fitful sleep, alternating with longer stretches of shallow wheezing and struggling against the metal restraints around his wrists and ankles that kept him shackled to the bed. In both states, Floyd could feel Jules’ silent sobbing drifting in from the next room.
The days were spent in the training room, similarly shackled to the chair, his head forced back and pointed at the video screen as it scrolled through thousands of roughly identical aerial images of the moon. Despite his frenzied attempts to think of something else, and his constant growling to block out the droning narration (and weakly threaten the doctors and guard Sparrows), he had to begrudgingly admit that the training seemed to be working: he found it difficult to shake the images, and could feel himself sweeping lightly over the moon’s surface in his increasingly detailed dreams. The moon was mapping itself onto his brain, and it took special effort on his part not to let it completely force out his real thoughts and memories.
The doctors had given up trying to train Floyd and Jules together – they had spent most of their earliest sessions relaying messages to each other, Jules usually expressing his fear, Floyd answering back that he would protect him, that he would harm their captors in vividly violent ways, that he would reduce this place to rubble, that they would return to their father. Jules was taken away, and though Floyd had not seen him in many days, he could feel his presence everywhere, still calling out to him, letting him know, in Jules’ usual disjointed, panicked way, that he spent his days in a roughly identical training room, watching roughly identical images – and that furthermore, while he was not quite as scared as before, he now feared the moon.
Floyd slowly felt himself resisting less, accepting more, and though it frightened him he could not muster much energy to stop it. In addition to the meager slices of meat they fed him in the mornings and evenings, he was usually given a plate of vile-looking squishy red eggs, which he at first refused to eat – but the meat was not enough, and he was forced to eat the eggs just to beat back the now constant cringing hunger.
He was visited occasionally by a fat, grim-looking Rat who would eye him up and down, confer gruffly with the doctors, and then disappear; usually, though, there was a different Rat, a much younger one who would watch Floyd uncomfortably and apologetically, as if he was as confused and disgusted by this as Floyd was. But Floyd, in his increasingly lethargic state, could say nothing to them other than a few desultory barks that did not seem to threaten them at all. The fat Rat, he did notice with fleeting interest, radiated the same unpleasant smell as the eggs.

He felt others, as well – at least two other minds, too garbled to really make out, coming through the walls. Other creatures in other training rooms, undoubtedly. He could feel one that felt like a wall of hate and anger, with an undercurrent of fear, as much fear as Jules if not more. The other was more vague, a shadowy kind of fear, more accepting, almost curious. There were even more, Floyd could tell – faint whispers that faded in and out once in a while, though he could hear nothing in them. He tried calling out to them all, but never got any answers. In a sense he wanted to know they were all right, but mostly he needed to know they were there, that they were real, that others were trapped as he and Jules were. Even weakened by hunger and pain, he needed to know; it was the one thing that kept him alive.

One morning he was not taken to the training room as usual, but was seized roughly from his metal bed, led down a different corridor, and thrust into another room, this one larger than his usual training room. There were seven computer terminals arranged along one wall, with a metal chair in front of each. Three of the chairs were swiveled to face the door, and were occupied with motionless forms that stared at Floyd as he stood blinking away the harsh white light of the room.
One of the forms was Jules, who immediately began barking and howling in disbelief, clearly so relieved and thrilled to see his twin brother that he had no idea how to react. Dimly, Floyd realized that he had no idea how many days had passed – only that it was the longest time that he and his brother, who had spent their childhood nights curled against each other in the same bed, had ever been apart. Floyd growled comfortingly at him, urging him to quiet down, and Jules stopped struggling against the restraints around his arms and sat back, whimpering to himself and gazing up at Floyd in awe.
The other two forms were Rats – and they were, Floyd understood, the minds that he had been feeling in the air during his sleep. The vague mind belonged to a thin, sickly-looking Rat with huge black eyes, who twitched his head as he gazed at Floyd curiously. The other Rat was undoubtedly the angry, hateful mind, but this Rat did not look all that angry, but stared calmly back at Floyd, his eyes never wavering, his mouth frowning intensely, almost in a smirk. Unlike Floyd, Jules, and the thin Rat, this Rat did not look painfully hungry or give off an air of confusion and fear. He wore a bored look, as if he was free to leave at any time, but could not muster up the necessary energy and had not yet thought of anywhere more interesting to be.
Floyd eyed the restraints around both Rats’ wrists and ankles, feeling oddly amazed that the Rats in charge of this place would have captured and imprisoned their own kind.
Two low level Rats directed Floyd into one of the empty chairs and fastened his restraints. They shrank back into a corner of the room, allowing the fat Rat, Mr. Venables, to step forward. He eyed the four captives with disgust and disdain, his look changing to a kind of sick, greedy hunger as he briefly glanced at the three empty chairs.
“Your,” Mr. Venables started incongruously, as if he had been in the middle of a lengthy speech. He paused to consider what the next word should be. “Colleagues should be here eventually. Not many more days now. We wanted to give you a taste of the room first.” With no warning or explanation he seemed to suddenly lose interest in them, and started toward the door. “You may want to try getting used to it now.”