I hated nights. Nights were long, and we were never allowed to leave our cells back in Ireland. Here though, every nocturnal prone person got an hour outside. I was sitting on a bench in the yard, enjoying the late summer breeze. Well, as one can in Scotland.

Only 10 people were allowed out at the same time, and C59 and I weren't on the same team. I didn't know any of these guys, and they kept their distance.

That was until this one guy sat down on the bench next to me. He looked maybe a couple of years older than me. Long hair tied up in a ponytail and almost black eyes. They were probably brown. Olive skin. Very fit. As in... Very. He was very fit... Broad shoulders, big arms, such narrow hips... He was looking at me like he knew me when he turned his head. 

"So, who're you?" he said with a hoarse voice. I looked at him without really turning my head and looked back at the fence.

"No one," I muttered.

"Well, I'm Che. I hear we play on the same team." 

I turned my head towards him and narrowed my eyes at him. 

"Cal or C59 told me about you," he explained. I eased up a bit. "So... I guess we're both on the twelve o'clock playtime outside."

Cal? C59's real name was Cal?

"I guess."

"I'm an owl. So nights are a bitch." 

I nodded. 

"What're you?"

I didn't answer. I was not really interested in being friendly right now. I just wanted to enjoy the outside. Alone. 

"You're not a big talker are you?" 

"What gave me away?" 

He laughed a little. "At least you're funny." He leaned back and crossed his legs at his ankles. "So, I'm not here to make friends. We need you to do something for us. There's this bird guy snooping around. Your supervisor. We need to know a bit more about him. Like, why the prison would pull in a very well-known soldier from America to be a supervisor for some feral kid. Don't you find that odd?" 

"I didn't know he was famous." 

"Oh, he is. He has over twenty confirmed kills on wild ferals. He's a machine. And now he's here. How could you not know about him?"

"We didn't get a lot of news from the outside in Ireland."

"Aye, I've heard," he sighed. "I guess you stop caring about the outside world after a while, huh?"

I got on my feet. We were threading into a subject, I was not going into. I had in my mind written off on the real world outside. It no longer existed. The fact that my own world had grown from being one place to two places now was more than enough. And our time was up anyways.

Back in my cell, I paced the floor. Why would an American soldier be my supervisor? Sure I was the youngest feral kid to be incarcerated on records, but it wasn't like there wouldn't be someone even younger down the line. I wasn't special.

My thoughts were interrupted when it started.

It starts as a tingling in my fingertips. I start to shake my hands to get the tingling out, but it just spreads to my arms.

I sat down and buried my hands in my hair.

I hate it here. I want to go home. I don't want a supervisor, I don't want to figure out who he is, I never want to see him again.

I stood up again and started pacing the floor again. The cell was dark, except for a streak of pale moonlight from the tiny window. It was helping. I wasn't very fond of the dark. I lied down on the bed and felt the tingling turn into stinging, and then searing pain. And then I didn't remember what happened. I knew I shifted because the bed sheets were ripped, but I could never remember what happened.

A lot of people can't completely shift. They can get some traits of whatever animal they are, like claws, extreme senses, being able to breathe underwater. Stuff like that. I knew I could shift completely because I was caught on camera once. I shifted in the middle of the day during yard time. It was not a very good day. Seeing myself as that freakishly large, black panther resembling monster...

Since then I had shifted every night. Sometimes it went on for hours, and sometimes it was just a couple of minutes. My first night it, of course, went on all night, until the sun came up. I was pretty lucky I had been transferred during the summer when the nights were short. Otherwise, they would have opened the doors, and I would have jumped out and probably hunted down a ball of yarn or something.

Breakfast was... Interesting. It didn't look remotely like food. And it didn't taste like food either. It was some kind of weird porridge that resembled wallpaper glue more than something edible. I poked at it with my spoon and looked up at C59.

"It's gourmet," he said with his thickest Irish accent and barked out a laugh. "Just don't think about it and eat it."

I thought back to the burger in the airport and imagined I was eating that, instead of this weird grey substance. I almost fooled myself. 

"So did you meet Che?" C59 asked with a low voice. I nodded. "There's a good boy!" I shot him a bland look. "You up for it?"

"Sure. It's not like I have a choice. I have to see the American three times a week," I said and shrugged. He smiled at me and shoved a spoonful of goo in his mouth.

Sitting in front of Birdie again made me anxious. I couldn't just start blabbering or asking all kinds of weird questions out of the blue.

He was studying my face with his blue eyes, and I was trying to not look at him. 

"Can you tell me what happened in the yard yesterday?" he asked after several minutes of silence. Well, what really happened was this one guy not willing to pay one of C59's guys, so we talked to him. And he was freaking out. And then C59 punched him in the face. He then went for C59, while C59 had his back turned, and I stomped his face in. I no longer had any yard time, except for the heavily controlled one at midnight. I would have lost a lot more if one of C59's guys didn't take most of the fall for me. C59 had ordered him to do it. He wasn't very happy.

"Miscommunication," I replied and pulled on a loose thread in my jumper. 

"Does that happen to you often?" 

"No." 

Birdie narrowed his eyes a bit, which made it even harder for me to stay focused on the loose thread. He was basically burning holes in my forehead with his eyes. 

"Do you ever talk to anybody?" he asked, getting frustrated with me. I pulled on the loose thread, and it snapped. I looked up at him, finally. 

"What's your name?" I asked. 

"Aidan. Do you remember yours?" 

Did I? I hadn't thought about it. When people asked, C41 was the first that came to mind. When we got to prison, we were to forget our old feral lives and take on the number. Forget we're people.

C is for Cat, putting us all into one category. D is for Dog, B for Bird. F is for Fish, but I've never met any fish here. The fish were usually the ones in power. The prime minister of the UK had been a fish for the last 50 years. Bugs took the next best jobs. None of those was very prone to be feral. They were purer than the rest of us. Birds were rare in prison, but they happened. Dogs and Cats made up the majority of ferals. The bugs didn't even get a letter. 

And here they used names apparently. 

Being feral means being a criminal. Out of control, according to the government. They show horrible infomercials about how we are extremely aggressive all the time, how we have stooped to our basic animal instincts, given up on humanity, etc. etc. Obviously, it's not true, but we have all done something illegal enough to land us in prison. No more names. Only a letter and a number.

"I don't have one," I replied. 

"You do actually. It's in your file. Would you like to hear it?" He opened the file and pulled out one of the pages.

I didn't know if I wanted it. The world outside didn't exist, just like the two people who once upon a time gave me that name. 

"No," I finally said. 

"Why not?"

"It's not mine anymore."

Something crossed his face. An emotion I hadn't seen on him before, and I didn't know what it was. Usually, he was neutral, almost cold, but I had seen something for a few seconds. And I now knew my way in. 

"Are my parents alive?" 

"I can't tell you that." There it was again! He was feeling something. Sorry? Pity? Something was there. 

"Are yours?" 

"They are." 

"In the States?" 

"Yes. But enough of about me. Do you remember your parents?"

No. "Yes, small memories." 

"Of what?"

"I remember my father. He... I don't know. It's just one memory. More like a picture or whatever. He's just standing by the sea." I had no idea where this was coming from. I was usually a very bad liar. "And he has his trousers rolled up so they won't get wet."

Birdie... Or Aidan I guess, leaned forward, closing the file and looked coolly at me. "Do you think I'm stupid?" 

Shit, I was still a bad liar, I guess. 

"You were raised by a single mother." He rose from the chair and opened the door. I rose too and went out in the hall. I stopped outside the door and looked up at him. 

"I was raised by thieves, murderers and frauds," I growled and started down the hall before he could say anything. I waited by the barred door, leading back to the cells. Aidan joined me at the door and put the key into the lock. 

"I think that's the most honest thing you've said so far," he murmured and opened the door for me. I didn't answer but went directly for my cell, wishing I could slam the door in his face. Or my fist.

I sat down on the bed and buried my face in my hands. How was I supposed to get anything out of that guy? 

"Hey, C41." 

I looked up. A guy I didn't know was standing in the door, arms folded across his chest. 

"Do I know you?" 

"No, but you know my friend in the sickbay." 

I slowly rose to my feet. Well, this was inevitable and not unexpected. More guys appeared behind the first. I centred myself and went to a happy place in my head. Getting beat up was something I had no problems with. I was used to it.

He cracked his knuckles and stepped into my cell. 

"You don't have anything to say?" He was very close to me now. Not hitting him would probably result in getting this over with so much faster. "Kitty?" 

I cracked my jaw, and the bottom of my hand slammed into his nose, effectively breaking it. He staggered back, holding his nose with the blood pouring out of it. Another guy came into my cell, and I straightened my back and spread my legs a bit.

Nobody calls me fucking 'kitty.'

I wasn't going down that easy, and the anger from my meeting with Birdie was pumping me up.

The guy was fast, but I was faster. He swung his fist at my head, but I ducked down, kicking his legs from out under him. I jumped up, connecting my head with his chin before he hit the floor. He cursed and swung at me again. It was supposed to hit me in the head, but he hit my shoulder, making me lose balance. He grabbed my arm and slammed my body against the wall. My vision blurred and I tried to rip my arm out of his grip, but he twisted it on my back and showed me something shiny and metal. It was scary close to my eye. I stopped fighting immediately. 

"I didn't think so, you little bitch," he growled in my ear, his breath hitting my cheek. "Time for you to know your place." The dull blade dug into the skin on my cheekbone, still too close to my eye for my own comfort. I felt something hot run down my face, indicating the blade was not as dull as I had thought. I kept staring back at him, while he carved the metal into my cheek. He stopped when he realised I wasn't reacting to his handiwork. 

"What's my place again?" I asked calmly. Confusion fled across his face. "Is this your first time threatening somebody?"

He kept twisting my arm, but adrenalin had taken over. There was no pain anymore. C59 had taught me well.

With my free arm, I pushed hard off the wall, grabbed the hand holding the knife and twisted it around, so it dug deep into his thigh. He screamed when his wrist broke. Seems like the guards finally caught a scent of what was happening, considering the alarm that was now blaring. I let go of the guy and dropped down on my knees when the guards told me to and folded my hands behind my head. Second fight in five days. It must've been a record or something.