The first scientist let the silence linger as his eyes swept across the rows of untouched chocolates.
Finally, he glanced sideways at his colleague,
"...The majority refused the instruction."
The second scientist looked up from his tablet.
"So...what would be an appropriate disciplinary measure?"
The second scientist tapped the edge of his tablet thoughtfully, "There are several options."
He scrolled through a list.
"Loss of meal privileges. Extended physical conditioning. Isolation."
He paused.
"...Though none of those are particularly memorable."
The first scientist nodded once,"I agree."
His gaze drifted across the silent rows before stopping on Maya, "...Subject Seventeen."
The second scientist followed his gaze.
He studied Maya for a moment.
"If I'm not mistaken...She's the youngest subject in this chamber."
"The youngest?"
"Correct."
He looked around the room,
"So the others have all spent considerably more time here."
A faint smile appeared at the corner of his face, "Interesting."
The second scientist raised an eyebrow,
"You have an idea."
The first scientist looked back at the silent children,
"Subject Seventeen obeyed immediately.
The others refused."
He folded his hands behind his back,
"Children learn remarkably well through observation."
The second scientist's expression remained unreadable.
".....You're suggesting we use Subject Seventeen as an example.The compliant subject should become today's lesson."
The first scientist looked across the silent rows before his gaze settled on Maya.
"Very well."
He folded his hands behind his back,
"If the others have chosen disobedience..
then Subject Seventeen will receive their punishment."
A ripple of shock passed through the room.
It was almost silent—
A small boy near the middle instinctively reached for the girl sitting beside him before catching himself and slowly pulling his hand back into his lap.
One of the oldest boys lowered his gaze to
the floor, his jaw tightening until the muscles stood out beneath his skin.
A younger girl stared at Maya with wide, frightened eyes. Her lips trembled as though she wanted to speak, but no sound came.
Near the back, another teenager slowly shook his head once, barely enough for anyone to notice. Guilt settled heavily across his face.
He had refused the instruction only moments earlier, now someone else would bear the consequences.
No one stood.
Not because they believed the decision was fair, but because experience had taught them a cruel lesson:
every protest became another reason for punishment, and every plea simply gave
the scientists something else to measure.
Shame spread through the rows more quickly than fear.
The second scientist glanced at Maya, then gave a small, indifferent nod, "...Agreed."
He made a brief note on his tablet, "Collective disciplinary procedure approved."
A boy near the back slowly lowered his head until his chin almost touched his chest.
A girl in the front row squeezed her eyes shut, her fingers trembling around the edge of the bench.
Several of the older children looked toward Maya for only an instant before quickly looking away again.
Guilt settled across their faces.
One teenager bit down so hard on his lip that a thin line of blood appeared.
Another clenched both fists beneath the bench, his knuckles turning white.
The look in their eyes said what their voices could not, ' I'm sorry. '
The first scientist raised a hand, "Subject Seventeen,Front."
For the briefest moment, Maya didn't move.
The words seemed to hang in the air.
Then, she slid down from the bench.
Her shoes met the cold concrete with a soft sound that somehow echoed through the enormous chamber.
Every pair of eyes followed her.
She could feel them without looking.
Some were frightened, some were filled
with regret.
The silence was so complete that Maya became aware of sounds she had never noticed before.
Even her own breathing sounded too loud.
She took one hesitant step.
Then another.
The distance to the front of the room was not far, yet it seemed to stretch endlessly before her.
With every step, she searched the scientists' faces for some hint. There was none, their expressions remained calm.
As she walked, she caught brief glimpses of the children in the rows beside her.
A boy stared fixedly at the floor. A girl clasped her own hands tightly together until her knuckles turned pale.
Someone silently mouthed a single word she couldn't quite make out before lowering their head.
At the front stood a steel table.
Its polished surface reflected the lights overhead with almost mirror-like clarity, making it seem strangely unreal.
For a fleeting second, Maya saw her own small reflection staring back at her.
She barely recognised the frightened child looking back.
The first scientist made a small, patient gesture toward the table, "Stand here."
Maya obeyed.
She came to a stop only a few inches from the steel edge, drawing a slow, careful breath.
The second scientist stepped beside her.
Without asking permission, he guided both
of Maya's hands onto the cold surface.
The metal stole the warmth from her skin instantly.
"Keep your hand still."
Maya swallowed and did as she was told.
Behind her, rows of children watched in complete silence.
Several stared without blinking, their faces drained of colour.
The another scientists turned and walked toward a heavy steel door at the side of the chamber.
The door opened with a muted metallic click before closing again behind him.
When he returned, he was carrying a long stainless-steel pipe.
Its polished surface caught the harsh white light overhead, reflecting it in cold, silver streaks.
He approached the front of the room and came to a quiet stop beside the stainless-steel table.
Suddenly—
A sickening crack shattered the silence.
Maya's entire body went rigid.
Before she could understand what had happened, another crack followed, then another.
All ten of her small fingers met a force
that showed no regard for how fragile
they were.
Pain exploded through her hands. It came so suddenly that her breath caught in her throat before she could even cry out.
A sharp, searing ache raced from the tips of her fingers through her palms and up into her wrists, stealing every coherent thought for a single, blinding instant.
Her entire body jerked on instinct.
Every muscle tightened at once.
She tried to pull away but fear and surprise left her frozen where she stood.Tears sprang to her eyes before she even realised they were there.
The cold steel beneath her hands offered no comfort, only an unyielding surface that seemed to magnify every pulse of pain.
Her fingers trembled uncontrollably.
She bit down on her lip, desperately trying
to stop herself from making a sound.
The effort only made her chest ache more violently.
Her heartbeat hammered wildly against her ribs, loud enough that it almost drowned out the quiet hum of the room.
The world narrowed to a single point of overwhelming sensation—
Her hands, trembling against the unforgiving metal and the desperate wish for the pain to stop.
One by one, several children lowered their eyes.
A little girl pressed both hands over her mouth, her shoulders trembling as she
fought to keep perfectly still.
An older boy stared fixedly at the floor, his jaw clenched so tightly that the muscles beneath his skin quivered.
He didn't trust himself to look up again.
Near the back, another child slowly turned away because he couldn't bear to witness another moment.
Across the rows, breathing became shallow.
Only the scientists continued as though nothing unusual had occurred.
The second scientist watched with calm concentration, his expression revealing neither satisfaction nor anger.
Maya stared at her hands in disbelief, her mind refusing to accept what she was seeing.
Her fingers no longer responded the way they should. Every attempt to move them sent another wave of agony through her arms.
Her knees buckled beneath her.
The weight of what had happened pressed against them more heavily than fear alone.
They knew why Subject Seventeen had been called to the front. She had obeyed, they had not.
Now, the consequences of their choice had fallen upon someone who had done nothing to deserve them.
A boy near the back closed his eyes, his shoulders sinking.
Another child stared at the floor, unable to lift their gaze toward Maya.
The shame was unbearable.
A girl quietly pressed her lips together, fighting back tears.
If only she had listened...If only she hadn't refused, Perhaps Subject Seventeen would still be standing safely among them.
No one dared speak those thoughts aloud.
They could not change what had already
been decided.
All they could do was stand witness to the cost of their own defiance.
~~
The sharp crack split through the mansion.
For one impossible heartbeat, no one understood what they had just seen.
Then Maya's entire body jerked.
Pain flashed across her face.
Farhan reacted first, "MAYA!"
He lunged toward the projection instinctively, his hand already reaching out as though he could pull her away from the steel table.
"Stop! Leave her alone!"
Nahi stumbled after him, tears already spilling from his eyes, "Maya!"
He reached desperately toward the image
"We're here! We're here!"
His fingers passed straight through the projection.
Nothing.
His breathing caught, "No..."
Realisation struck all at once, "It...it's just the memory..."
Farhan stood rigid, his outstretched hand still hanging in empty air, his jaw clenched so tightly it trembled.
"NO!"
Mahi took a step forward, "I has to stop them!"
Fahad grabbed her arm before she could run into the projection, "You can't! It's already happened!"
"But they're hurting her!"
"I know!"
Mahim had taken several steps forward without even noticing.
His hand lifted instinctively toward Maya..
Only to stop halfway, his shoulders slowly dropped, "Please...Please stop..."
Fahan slammed his fist against the nearby wall, "Damn you! She's just a child!"
Around the room, no one could remain seated anymore. Every instinct screamed at them
to run to Maya, every instinct told them to protect her.
But there was nowhere to run, nothing to stop.
All they could do....was watch.
Naya flinched violently at the impact,"No..."
She stared at Maya's trembling hands on the steel table, her entire body shaking.
"They used a child...They wanted the others to blame themselves."
Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.
Anik lowered his head.
"The other children...Those monster's turned guilt into another experiment."
Ohi wiped helplessly at his eyes.
"She kept looking at her own hands...Like she couldn't understand why they did that to her."
Fahad let out a slow, unsteady breath,
"I thought the arena was the worst thing we'd seen. I was wrong, the arena was violence, This.....was education."
Silence settled over the room again.
His eyes remained fixed on Maya's small trembling figure standing beside the steel table.
~~
Maya swayed where she stood. The sounds around her began to blur together.
The quiet tapping of the tablet, the harsh fluorescent lights above.....Everything seemed to drift farther and farther away.
She tried to draw a steady breath, but her chest felt impossibly heavy.The white walls lost their sharp edges dissolving into a haze
of pale light.
The faces before her became indistinct silhouettes, their features swallowed by
the brightness overhead.
She wanted to stay on her feet but her body no longer seemed willing to obey.
Her knees gave way beneath her.
For a fleeting instant, it felt as though the ground disappeared entirely. Her vision narrowed until only a small circle of light remained. It too, slowly faded.
Darkness gave way slowly. At first, Maya wasn't certain whether her eyes were open
or still closed.
Everything around her was quiet.
A faint scent of clean linen drifted through the air, mixed with the familiar smell of soap and antiseptic.
She became aware of the softness beneath her, not the cold concrete floor.
A bed.
Her breathing remained slow as fragments of memory surfaced only to sink away again before she could grasp them.
She blinked.
The ceiling above her gradually came into focus. It was the plain ceiling of her small room.
The corners of the room were washed in the muted glow of an overhead lamp that had been left on.
For several long moments, she simply stared upward.She didn't move, wasn't sure she wanted to.
The room felt strangely unfamiliar as though she had been away from it for much longer than a single day.
Only after another slow breath did she carefully turn her head.
The small bedside table stood where it always had. A cup of water rested beside a neatly folded cloth.
So peaceful that it seemed impossible to believe the laboratory had existed only
hours before.
She slowly tried to push herself upright.
A dull ache of exhaustion spread through her body, and instinctively her gaze fell toward her hands.
They were wrapped in clean white bandages.
The careful layers of gauze covered her fingers and palms, secured neatly as though someone had dressed them with practiced precision.
Maya lowered her eyes, she remembered standing at the front of the chamber.
She remembered the scientists.... she remembered dozens of children watching
in complete silence.
After that.....Only fragments remained.
A strange emptiness settled inside her.
She drew her knees toward herself and sat quietly on the bed, listening.
Beyond the closed door came only the faint hum of the building's ventilation system.
She looked once more at the white bandages around her hands, they were a quiet reminder that what had happened had not been a dream.
She lowered her gaze absentmindedly, her eyes tracing the white bandages wrapped neatly around her hands.
Then, almost without thinking, her eyes travelled upward until they reached her
neck.
Her breath caught, "No..."
The whisper escaped her lips before she even realised she had spoken.
Her hand instinctively rose toward her throat, stopping just short of touching it.
Her eyes remained fixed on the familiar mark encircling her neck.
Except...It wasn't familiar anymore.
The colour had changed.
The soft green was gone. In its place was a deep, unmistakable shade of orange.
For a heartbeat, her mind refused to understand what her eyes were telling her.
She blinked, the colour didn't change.
It remained exactly the same.
Orange.
A cold wave swept through her body.
It began somewhere deep inside her chest before spreading outward, draining every trace of warmth from her limbs.
It felt as though every muscle in her body had suddenly forgotten how to move.
Her heartbeat, which only moments before had been slow and steady, began to pound inside her ears.
"No...No...This wasn't possible."
She slowly shook her head, as though denying what she saw might somehow
undo it.
The orange band encircled her throat with quiet certainty.It wasn't a trick of the light.
It was real, her breathing became shallow.
Questions flooded her mind all at once.
Why had it changed?
When had it changed?
Had the scientists done something while she was unconscious?
Each question arrived before the last had been answered piling one upon another until they became impossible to separate.
She pressed a hand lightly against her throat, as though hoping the colour would disappear beneath her fingertips.
It didn't, she slowly lowered her hand again. unable to tear her eyes away from the collar, she felt as though the ground beneath her
life had quietly shifted.
Her lips parted, for several long seconds, no words came.
Then she let out a small, shaky laugh that held no trace of amusement, "...I'm in trouble."
A pause.
"I... I'm done for."
The words escaped almost involuntarily as though saying them aloud made the reality impossible to deny.
A cold knot tightened in her chest.
For the first time since waking, genuine panic began to creep into her voice, "What have they done to me...?"
Almost suddenly, she pushed herself off the bed.
The movement pulled painfully at the bandages around her hands, but she
barely noticed.
And crossed the small room with hurried, uneven steps until she reached the wall separating her from the unseen girl.
Knock...Knock.....Knock.
Silence.
She knocked again, Knock. Knock. Knock.
Still nothing.
Maya frowned and struck the wall a little harder. Knock! Knock! Knock!
A long, irritated groan finally answered from the other side, "Ugh...Ugh..."
Several seconds passed.
Then a sleepy, thoroughly annoyed voice drifted through the concrete, "What now?"
Another pause.
"...Did somebody die or something?
Seriously... what's with all the banging?
Can't a person be miserable in peace?"
Maya blinked, "...Sorry."
Another tired sigh echoed through the wall.
"So?
What emergency is important enough to interrupt my incredibly depressing existence?"
Maya hesitated, "...My collar..."
"What about it?"
"It.....It turned orange."
Silence.
Complete silence.
For several long seconds, Maya wondered if the girl had walked away.
Then—
"Well....You're screwed."
Maya stared at the wall, "...What?"
The girl let out a short laugh that sounded completely devoid of joy.
"I believe the scientific term is...You're absolutely, spectacularly screwed."
Maya's heart sank, ".... is that bad?"
The girl barked out another dry laugh,"Bad?"
She snorted,
"Kid....You've just been promoted from 'this place wants to kill you' to 'this place wants to keep you alive just long enough to regret it.'"
Maya felt a chill crawl up her spine,
"...I don't understand."
"Of course you don't."
A pause.
Then, in a voice full of exhausted sympathy—
"Damn...I was actually starting to like you."
Maya frowned, "Why are you saying it like that? ...Is this the beginning of Nirvana A?"
"...Yeah."
The girl muttered under her breath,
"Well...Life just handed you a shovel and told you to dig your own grave."
Maya blinked, "That's... oddly specific."
"I've had years to improve my metaphors.
Welcome to Orange ,Subject Seventeen.
May your suffering be slightly less inconvenient than everyone else's."
Silence.