I was sitting outside on the bench, watching a pair of birds in an argument. One had apparently taken some toothpaste or whatever from the other. It was clear to everybody, they weren't really talking about toothpaste. Che dropped down next to me and sent me another one of his trademark smirks.

"So how long do you think it'll be before they start brawling?" he asked and leaned back against the backrest, his arm resting on it. I just glanced at him and didn't answer. "I bet the big one is going to win."

I snorted. "He has a limp. Probably an old injury. The smaller ones are faster. He has large leg muscles and spends most of his time on the running track. The smaller one is going to win."

"Fine, it's a bet then," Che said and chuckled.

The bigger one towered over the smaller one and growled something I didn't bother to catch. They were so going to fight in a second. But then two guards came walking through the yard and broke them apart before the fighting even started. Che sighed and snorted.

"Well, let's call it a tie then," he said, his dark eyes glistening in the spotlights illuminating the yard.

"Sure," I said and rested my elbows on my thighs.

"So you favour speed over brute force?" Che asked and mimicked my position.

"No. Both are necessary for a fight," I said after thinking it over a bit.

"Did Cal tell you that?"

"Why?" I frowned and turned my head towards him.

"Oh, just curious. You seem close."

"We were at the prison in Ireland together."

Che raised his eyebrows at me. "Wait... He has been here for like 10 years. How long have you been in prison?"

"Since I was 5."

"Wait what?" He rose to his feet, his back turned to me. He whirled around and looked at me in a weird way. "So that's actually real? We all thought it was just a rumour."

I shrugged. "It's not."

"Holy shit... They locked up a 5-year-old kid? Bloody bastards." He ran his hand through his dark hair, looking like he had a hard time fathoming this new information. I was surprised to see anybody react this way. Why did he care?

"For what?"

"I bit a bug girl," I replied, not seeing any reason not to tell the truth.

"They locked up you for that? I allegedly killed a fish." Allegedly meaning he had done it, but he still denied it.

Killing a fish is almost a certain way to get a bullet in the head, so I was curious as to why Che wasn't just executed. It must really have been allegedly, as in nobody was actually sure.

"I mean, we've all done something horrible, and you bit a kid... When you yourself were a kid?"

I shrugged and looked away.

"Are you not angry?"

I rose to my feet.

"Anger is a feral feeling and something that should be subdued," I muttered and followed the guards back to my cell.

"How have you been sleeping?" Birdie asked and tapped his pen on the table.

I was staring at that weird hole in the wall again, trying to remember the story I had made up about it last week. For some reason, I couldn't remember a single detail, so I had an hour to make up a new one.

I wasn't speaking to Birdie after he had stopped my shift. People who had certain powers over me scared me.

One guard back in Ireland had been able to provoke an anxiety attack from me so many times, I had been in the sickbay for a week. I kept passing out and hitting my head. He did it for sports. And like that guard, Birdie was now in a position of power.

One would think I was used to people having power over me, but this was different than not showing feral behaviour and obeying stupid rules. I had very few things that were only mine, and my mental health was one of those few things. People taking the control away from me scared me to my core. Not that I had a lot of control over any of my uh... mental health things. But they were mine. And Birdie had taken that away from me.

"Have you slept at all? You don't look like you sleep a lot," he said and started twirling the pen around his fingers. It was a pretty impressive act, really. How he could swing it from one finger to another without dropping it.

"You remind me a lot of one of my friends back in the US."

Oh, this was new.

"He rarely says anything. He says he doesn't have a lot to say, which I believe. But I think you're deliberately being silent, not because you lack words, but because you think you know better than to speak to me. I'm just trying to help you, Nathan." He was using the name those two people from the past had given me before I became feral, as another method of getting me to talk. It wasn't working by the way. "Will you speak to me, if I tell you why I'm here?"

I flicked my eyes over at him and met his gaze. "Because I will if it will get you talking."

I just blinked at him. It was pretty obvious, I wasn't talking until he was.

"How about I tell you something about me, and then you tell something? Would that interest you?" Why yes Birdie, it would actually.

"I'll start then. I am the first to graduate from the American Academy at 16." Normally people graduated at 20, making Birdie very young to be out in the field. I was impressed.

I decided to play along.

"I am the youngest to be imprisoned. Ever," I said, finally breaking my silence.

"Come on, I knew that from your file."

"You never said it had to be new information."

The corner of his mouth twitched. "Alright. New information from now on. I was asked by your government to oversee you."

This was... surprising. Why? The British and the American government hadn't been on good terms for years, everybody knew that. And he, an American, had been asked to come here. For me?

"I don't remember biting Ashley Hale." I don't even know why I told him that. It just spilt out of my mouth.

"You don't?" Birdie wrote something down in my file. "When is your earliest memory from?"

"That is not how the game works," I pointed out.

"Right. This is my first time as a supervisor. Now answer my question."

"I don't know. I think I'm 5 and sitting with a friend outside in the yard. I'm in prison."

"So you don't remember anything from the outside world?"

"You're bad at this game," I growled and leaned back in my chair. Birdie snorted and took a deep breath.

"I don't think you're feral."

I very slowly frowned and narrowed my eyes at him. My entire life I had always been told I was feral. Probably the most feral of them all. I was nothing but a wild animal. And now he was telling me, he, a super soldier, he didn't think I was feral? He was taking control of another piece of what was mine. My entire body tensed up.

"I want to go back to my cell," I said coolly. I was done with his stupid game.

"Is that all you have to say?"

I started cracking my jaw and bouncing my leg rapidly up and down.

"Nathan, look at me."

I didn't. I refused to even react to him calling me that. It wasn't me.

Birdie leaned forward and clasped his hand down on my leg, stilling it. I looked down at his hand and then up at him.

"Who are you?" He tightened his grip around my knee

"No one. Now take me back." That look I couldn't fully read came back in his eyes. His hand slipped off my knee, he closed the file and walked up to the door. I rose and waited for him to open the door.

"You were someone once," he murmured and opened the door.

I was so over his emotional bullshit! He kept saying shit like this, and it scrambled my brain, and I didn't understand why he kept saying shit like this. I was nothing. No one. I was just another felon. I was fine with being just another felon.

Rule number 1 in prison: don't ever think you're anything. I was fine with that! Why did I have to change that way of thinking?

He opened the barred door for me, and I hurried back to my cell, feeling the tingling starting in my fingers. C59 called my name, but I didn't stop before I was sitting on the floor in my cell, my back against the wall and my knees pressed against my chest. I pressed my eyes shut and buried my fingers in my hair, trying so hard to keep the tingling from evolving into stinging.

"The fuck you ignor..."

I turned my head to C59, who was standing in my door. He paled when he saw the trembling of my hands, knowing it could only mean one thing. I was shifting, and there were about 30 other inmates in this block locked in with me.

"Okay, C41, seriously keep a lid on it now, right?"

My entire body started shaking, and I hit the back of my head against the wall, to have something else to focus on. The pain started, and why was I still conscious? Long claws started growing out of my fingers.

"Jesus fucking Christ," C59 growled.

He walked into my cell, grabbed my arms and pulled me up from the floor. He slammed his fist against my cheek, but it didn't help. I buckled over, holding my arms away from my body as my skin turned darker and darker. I started heaving, struggling to breathe properly. Why was I still conscious?!

My teeth started growing, as loud cracks sounded from my spine. C59 backed out of the cell, making sure nobody was entering. I fell down to my knees, really struggling to breathe now. It felt like I was suffocating.

And then my senses exploded. I tried to cover my ears, but it didn't drown out the noises enough. I let out an eardrum-bursting roar, knowing this would without a doubt get the guards in here. I wondered what would happen to me after this.

"Get the bloody guards!" C59 yelled and pushed the chatter-head out of my cell.

My teeth could no longer fit in my mouth, so my face started changing. Every part of this shift was so incredibly painful like nothing I had ever tried before.

Alarms started shrieking, and I was sure I was going to go deaf. I tried to cover my ears, but my shoulders were relocating, and I couldn't get my hands up to my head. Black fur spread down my bare arms now, and it was my pins and needles all over my skin.

Something stabbed me in my shoulder, making me inhale sharply and loudly. My shaking body jerked, and I slammed myself into the wall. I knew they had tried to drug me, but it wasn't enough. My body felt alien, and my bones kept breaking and healing themselves. There had to be an easier way to shift. Did everybody go through this shit every time?

A loud growl escaped from my mouth, and I looked up to find my door completely unmanned. My instincts took over, and I bolted out, shredding the last piece of humanity.

Why the hell was I still conscious?

I jumped up on benches and sniffed the air. I could smell something very interesting, and I wanted to investigate. I slowly put my paw down on the bench and then down on the floor, my shoulder blades bouncing up and down. My claws click-clacked against the cement floor with every step I took. My paws were much larger than both my hands and feet and even though I was on all fours, I felt much larger. Heavier.

I whipped around when I heard something behind me. Though I was conscious through all this, I had little to no control. The animal controlled all this, which was why I full-on launched my entire body at Birdie. He somehow got his muscular arms wrapped around me and slammed me down on the floor.

"You're more than an animal, C41!" he growled as he struggled to keep me down. My claws slid over the floor, trying to connect with his body, but he had me pinned down. Something stabbed me in the back, and this time the drugs actually worked. Everything started spinning, and I was pulled back to my cell.