The waitress's words still rang in my ears.
Her smile. Her certainty. Her disgust.
Don't they know? I thought. Don't they know they take our organs away? That we're strapped down like livestock, drained until we can't move? Don't they know most of us never even committed the crimes we're marked for?
My throat tightened. I bit down on it, hard, to stop the burn in my eyes. Tears here would be as deadly as blood.
Captain Thorne ordered for us all, his voice steady, almost bored, like the waitress hadn't just spit venom into our faces. She smiled and left.
Silence lingered like a blade at our table until 08/85 spoke. His eyes were hollow, his voice trembling.
"I always wondered," he said, "why no one ever came to our aid. They think it's normal… to be fed scraps, locked in a cell, drained—every godda—"
A sharp crack cut him off.
Thorne's boot crushed down on his foot beneath the table. Hard. 08/85 bit back a cry, sweat beading instantly at his temple.
Thorne didn't even glance at him as he muttered under his breath, calm but merciless:
"They'll kill you on the spot if you finish that word."
And he was right.
Already the tables near us stirred—whispers rising, people turning, trying to decide if they'd just heard blasphemy. Trying to weigh whether a Warden at this table had dared slander God.
I held my breath.
The murmur swelled, then faded again, like a wave pulling back. No one had proof. No one wanted to accuse wrongly.
But 08/85 didn't touch his food after that. His face stayed pale, his lips pressed shut.
I leaned closer, my voice a whisper, more to myself than to them:
"I wonder if their God would be happy… that His children are having body parts ripped out. That their bodies are shoved into furnaces."
Thorne finally sighed, long and heavy, as though my words had been waiting in him too. He set down his fork and spoke quietly.
"When we get home," he said, "I'll explain everything. Why they hate you. Why they look at you like filth. Why no one ever questions what's happening behind those walls. You think it's ignorance. It isn't."
His eyes flicked toward the laughing tables, the clinking glasses, the easy smiles that came with full stomachs.
"It's normal here."