Nobody wakes me today, just the same as yesterday--a hard task to do since that would requiring caring that I made it to classes on time which neither my 52 roommates or guardians didn't--checking the clock I figure that within the time it takes me to get dressed and to the training camp it would only leave a minute for showering. That didn't include breakfast too, I thought to myself shrugging it off. I would go hungry. Who cares? I didn't.

I throw on yesterday's clothing which I would smell but didn't. Of course, that could be because I stood in the girl dorm's room which has a mixture of odors such as blood, pee and rotting dead things. It is easily the worst smelling room they have but nobody has been sent to clean it out in all of the fifteen years I have lived here. Our guardian, Lily, stands by waving a disappointed finger at me, "Late yet again, Scar." Lily is programmed to fake emotions even if she can't feel them, all of the guardians are, and her sole purpose is to take watch over us Numbs. Even Lily's voice is dripping with disappoint she doesn't feel, but her dull hazel eyes remain dead and lifeless as if she is staring far beyond me. She writes something by my name waving me in a dismissive manor and I ran down the hall to get to my first class.

In fact, I am still late despite missing breakfast and a shower and I can smell a certain odor on me. My first class takes place in a large square of hard packed dirt that is surround by thick white mabel walls with no roof to let the sunshine in. We train here no matter what--rain, snow, fog, and even illness--mostly training with person to person combat. Every day from eight to lunch we have training class, taught by Troy (who isn't so in love with Sara anymore) and after that the boys take the Area, as we call it. I open the gate stepping through where already more than sixty girls standing listening to Troy's morning speech. He locks in on me the moment I join the group, walking briskly across through the crowd of girls until my nose is almost flatten by his arm. Troy has mud brown hair that is tied tightly in a pony tail and, like all teachers are programmed to have, he has dark green eyes. Since Troy is a teacher he has been programmed to feel a limited amount of emotions. Mostly angry. "Oh, why, hello Sleeping Beauty, do you think you can manage not to snore through the class? We fighting a war here while you sleep peacefully in your bed like a spoiled brat. I can't fathom why they even waste the money,"--that's what the higher ups hate the most wasting money on food, clothes or us. There isn't a day that goes by that find some new Numb to kill because the Numb is more than their worth--"with your useless food intake and wasting all our time. They have given you everything, a place to sleep, food, clothes to cover that ugly body of yours, and you can't even make to class on time. Turn around." I turn feeling a slight push on the back of my neck then an explosion of pain. I know that this is an unnaturally caused emotion therefore my glassy heart never cracks or scars when I'm punished this way. Deep down, I understand that this is someone else's pain that has been rewired to my body via the chip. The chip is a one inch by one inch square, or so I'm told, that is put into our necks and with a touch can control what we do. Not what we think, there's a difference. Although there is no passion or emotions to cause us to chase after things such as dreams or curious thoughts. I stand with somebody else's tears streaming down my face. We share this pain but I am not truly feeling since it isn't the pain I created in the first place.

After a minute, it shuts off but I don't doubt for a second that for the other person its still going. I look around at the other girls who are now doing drill 43--in other words, person on person combat with small knives so it's up close and personal. All the drills through the forties had only to do with weapons and how to fight with them.

I pick up a gleaming sliver blade from a long line of other knives. It's short with a thick base that has raze teeth lining the edges of the blade and the handle is short than most. Troy is carefully watching me as I get into position with my partner. The girl across from me is only a year younger, but much better with fighting skills than I. There is only one way to tell the age difference and that's because she's exactly an inch short than me, as she was programmed to be, telling me she is one year younger. Had it not been for that tiny difference we could've been twins. All Numbs have the same color of hair and eyes: a dull, mud brown. She is built with more muscle than I and that isn't something they control or at least they pretend they can't.

She waits for me while I fix my hair into a bun then attacks before I have the chance to lower my hand from my head. She swipes her blade across my mid-section tearing open my black tank top. Blood begins to leak forth from the wound but it isn't fetal, and even if it was neither of us would stop this fight. I easily dance around her next attack but nearly get my spine cut in two from the next group over. An image of my dead body lying on ground flashes through my mind with Troy and the girls standing, admiring the clean, deadly, cut before continuing on with their bloody duel. It's happened to some poor girl before a few years back. It doesn't instill fear or start my fight-or-flight reaction, to me it's only another thought drifting through.


Fearlessly, I dodge around her attacks as she keeps them coming one right after another. I stand on the balls of my feet never letting them rest back for moment. Never let your guard down that's when people go in for the kill, was something that is written in every drop of blood and shouted to the full of the moon among the people here. People don't just live by it, they survive by it. Even me, who has never felt before, on some primal level understands the need to survive. She faints left seeming as if she'll attack without the knife but raises her knife above her head in a risky move, I have no misgivings that she has already thought through the risks and found it worth that I wouldn't be able to block her blade for long. This is the move for the kill.

If I could feel, I might have actually been smiling with the joy a victory in sight. Much to my partner's surprise I drop my knife and while her brown eyes follow it to the ground where it lands with a loud thud glittering proudly in the morning sun. With my other hand I reach up grabbing and pinching a pressure point of her body and she drops her own knife doubling over with a gasp. She glares up at me, or at least I think she is programmed to, but it came off as being just a normal icy cold glance that will be found any where you look. She jumps up in nothing flat leaving her weapon the on ground sending a pouch my way.

I step back letting it slice through the air only a mere inches from my face blinking. She doesn't pause or stop to wonder why we fight but, then again, neither to I. She faints right and lands a hard punch in my left lung taking my breath away. Putting her leg behind mine she manages to bring to me the ground where I stay, gasping for air and staring at the dirt. Right about then the heavens let lose with big wet drops of rain soaking me to the bone within seconds. Again, I don't care. I feel no pain, perhaps noted a lack of oxygen, but the pain from blows is never created.

The girl brings her foot into her earlier created wound causing it to bleed again. She pulls her shoe back sending it flying into my rip cage. Repeat. Surely, by now my skin is black and blue if not worse--a rain drop lands on my check running down as a tear I'd never produce. Repeat. Crack, rolls the thunder in the distant drowning out the sound of ribs cracking. Repeat. The air has a thick copper smell of my own blood. Repeat. Find the need to go on, Scar, because I'll be watching, his words ring true through my body as my ribs break. I look up, pass the girl, into the window and I see him with snow white hair staring down at us. At me. If I could feel, he would haunt my nightmares and every waking moment. He is the man who created the chip. I have only met him once when he spoke in a meeting, “I have discovered that there is a mere difference between wanting and needing. I have found that needing is purely primal and no emotions involve unlike wanting. Such a pure state,” he had told us.

Reality came crashing back down, my eyes snapping opening, and only one need pulses through my veins: survive. I push myself off the ground--without effort, of course, because no pain means no struggle--meeting the girl eye-to-eye who did a fake smirk. My face stays cold and expressionless but my mind is five steps ahead thinking through all every possible scenario?


My mind is zipping through each possibility when a defending bell rang warning us it is time to switch drills. Troy looks up from the knife he was sharpening with diamond dust leading us out of the dirt training ground while group of boys files in. "We're doing drill 46," Troy snaps over his shoulder as if we asked. But none of did or ever have or ever will, that would require emotions. He mumbles about how picky girls are wanting their men to be all emotional, that if even our very bitter sour lunch this afternoon would be better and that the whole world was messed up. It's his anger...issues...with only that one emotion to feel.

The boys push past us into the Area like mutes, they also have brown hair and eyes but a straighter longer face to our heart-shaped ones. Some of their noses is off center from a break or a cracked tooth from a well-placed punch.

Drill 46 as it turns is fighting in a swimming pool, and if I could feel I think that would be my favorite drill, but I miss it because Troy informs that I need to see our doctor for my cut. Half way there, I feel the knives pressing up against me, I shrug if anybody notices it isn't like they could care enough to find them again and the fact that you can never, never, sleep with to many weapons.
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I store the knives in the bottom of my bed, not caring if that gets me into to trouble later, or the fact that I just stole knives, or that nobody else really cares either. I mean, I am definitely not the first person to do so and not the last. Taking a long shower along with twelve other girls since there are no walls between them, I feel over the ten new stitches I got today. Another scar. There are many over my body, almost everywhere expecting for places like the face or neck. My ribs are a dark blue/purple color that stands out harshly against my pasty white skin, the water beats on them and, if I felt, it would like stabs of pain pulsing through me.

I slip into a gray tank top for sleeping in when I step out letting my wet hair dry slowly in the setting sun and prepare to practice craving a bow out of wood. Every girl in the place is milling around doing their own thing some talking or practicing weapons making. The door bangs open slamming loudly against the wall, a higher up fills the door. His name is Sam with a big build, naturally (meaning non-programmed) red hair, and green eyes. He is also one of the only I've seen who is allowed to feel (besides him) but he is a ruthless, cruel man with a love for pain. Even his own.

At his side is my drill partner from this morning looking lifeless as always. Sam throws his big arm around her shoulders, "Gaze upon the new warrior we have created, recruits. Not more than an hour ago, she killed for the first time cutting open a poor chap's guts." He laughs, it reminds me of the rolling thunder as it fills the room. I have never killed person--something that neither bothers me nor fills me with eagerness to do so.

His voice takes on a childishly eager tone, "But you know what they say 'No guts, no glory'."

I wonder, not for the first time, if it'll be me next week in her place having killed a victim who may sleep only few feet away. I wonder, not for the first time, what type of person I would be if I felt. When I sleep, I dream of a place where somebody cares if I live or die.