No matter how often 661 was sent to solitary confinement, he never got used to it. He knew 659 hated it just as much. Yet somehow, they both kept ending up there, trapped with no way of escaping.

It was a relief to finally be let out of the padded room, though to his chagrin the nurse letting him out refused to take off the straight jacket. Well, it’d be taken off soon enough. The staff at the lab got tired of having to take care of their experiments as closely as someone wearing a straight jacket required eventually.

659’s face lit up at the sight of him, the relief on his face clear as day. “Anchan! I missed ya!”

With no way to push his brother away, 661 could only accept the arms wrapping around him in a tight hug. He would never admit it, but maybe this once he didn’t mind being able to use the straight jacket as an excuse to not end it sooner. He hated being locked up in that nightmare of a room.

He couldn’t let 659 get any dumb ideas however, so he soon started to try to wiggle out of the vice grip 659 had on him. “Let go already,” 661 grumbled, making 659 whine.

“But ya missed our birthday! I was really sad when they didn’t let ya out for it, ya know.”

He had completely forgotten about that. He wasn’t even sure if June 5th was really the day they had been born. How could he, when he already knew the scientists were lying about him being 659’s older brother? He wasn’t stupid; he’d known which one of their numbers came first even when they’d first been introduced to each other at age four. Now, three years later, he was finally getting used to thinking of himself as having a brother, even though he didn’t know how they decided who would play the part of the older or the younger sibling. They looked enough like each other to be twins, who came first didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

It didn’t change the fact that right here, right now, 659’s eyes were tearing up where he stood, arms still stubbornly wrapped around him. Without him noticing, they had turned 7 years old.

“‘S not like our birthday’s any different from any other day,” 661 said, rolling his eyes. “Now back off.” He kept his voice flat, his tail pressing against 659’s side. It was a useless threat, really, the tail’s sharp edges padded and covered just as well as the walls of the room he’d just left.

“I know that! I still wanna spend it with ya. But they took ya away again.” Reluctantly, 659 finally let go of him, sitting back down on the floor in front of his crayons. He grabbed a red crayon in a tight fist. They’d run out of pink ages ago, so now he coloured in 661’s hair in his drawings with the next best thing. For being dubbed the ‘enrichment room’, when a thing inside it ran out, the time it took to restock it was far too long, leaving the room almost barren. Maybe if 659’d had a less childish hobby, one that the scientists and nurses didn’t think of as quite as pointless, they would buy more of it. Though considering the times 661 had been rebuffed when asking for more books, he hadn’t suggested 659 do something else either. Instead, 661 kept reading the same books over and over, and 659 would draw until only crumbs remained and the paper had run out.

661 watched as 659 enthusiastically coloured in his hair, the only sound the scraping of the crayon against the floor.

“They’re gonna take yer crayons away again when they see that.” 661 leaned his back against the wall, right next to the bookshelf. He tilted his head to the side, taking in the sensation of the cool wood of the shelf against his ear. Finally, something other than the padded floor and walls around him. He closed his eyes, listening to the sound of 659 drawing.

“I ran outta paper.” He could hear 659’s pout in his voice, the stubborn petulance still far from beaten out of him. Maybe after today they’d send 659 into the very room 661 had just spent the last few days in. He opened his eyes again, staring at his brother. 

“Maybe if ya stopped bitin’ people they’d give ya more paper.”

Though he doubted it.

659 let go of the crayon, hooking his fingers between the metal rods covering the lower half of his face. “But every time I see the doctors my teeth start itchin’.” 661 could see the angry claw marks where the muzzle met the soft skin of 659’s cheeks. “I hate ‘em.”

661 hated them too. To them, they were nothing but things to be examined; no matter what was done to them, they didn’t bat an eye.

Except for one doctor. One man who had treated them as people, as the children they were, who would walk them through every procedure in an attempt to assuage their fears about the often painful experiments. Someone who had even given them food that wasn’t the regular canned rations they always ate. Someone whose name they had never learned, as he was quickly gotten rid of once he was found out not to be ‘impartial’ enough. They could only hope he’d been fired rather than anything more sinister. Maybe one day they’d find him, and they could eat oden together again.

Still tugging at the muzzle with one hand, 659 picked up another crayon in his other. This time it was orange.

661’s eyebrows knitted together as he watched 659 draw something between the figures representing the two of them. “What’s that?” he asked, leaning forward despite himself.

“It’s called a cake. #499 told me about it. Ya get it on yer birthday. She only told me it’s on fire though so I didn’t know what to draw besides that.”

661 watched 659 draw wild flames around a green blob of… something. Red was dripping off it like the blood off his wrists barely a week ago. He felt like he could understand what 659 meant when he said his teeth itched; now, he could feel his fingertips itch to bury into the stitched-together skin.

He knew this was why the staff hadn’t taken off his straight jacket. That didn’t mean he didn’t hate every extra second he spent in it though.

He had been too caught up in his thoughts to notice 659 coming up to sit next to him. He didn’t notice his pr esence (reminding him just how much he let his guard down around him) until he felt 659 lean heavily against his side, a hand resting close to his wrist. “Anchan, do ya wanna get outta here so bad ya’d die?”

661’s eyes locked on where 659 had guessed his wrist was. He was only a little off, his hand on top of his lower arm, right next to where he’d aimed. Right above the long cuts hidden underneath jackets and gauze.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. 659 already knew the answer.

“The guy I bit wasn’t a doctor,” 659 finally said, making 661’s eyes snap back to him. “You know the clones, right? I don’t know which one, one of the ones after ten, didn’t get that good a look, but there was something about him that made my teeth itch just as bad as with the doctors. So I bit him. When the nurses left after putting the muzzle on me, you know what he said?”

Frowning, 661 shook his head. He could see the excitement on 659’s face as he cupped his hands around his ears to whisper; “He said, I was gonna dye the world black with him. He said,” 659 paused to glance around, even though they were alone in the room. The security cameras had terrible audio, and would undoubtedly miss even a child’s attempt at a whisper. “He’s gonna tear this whole place to the ground.”

661 understood the light in 659’s eyes when he met them. They’d talked about wanting to get out of here before, but it had always been nothing but a pipe dream. But this, if they could have people who would help them… The clones especially were different to the rest of them; he didn’t know in detail in what way yet, he just knew they were different. Stronger, somehow, in a way the doctors were wary of. He’d seen it in their eyes when they thought no one was looking.

659’s smile was so wide he had to be in pain from the way the muzzle was digging into his cheeks. 

“We’ll get out of here,” 659 whispered, pressing his forehead against 661’s. Cold metal brushed against the tip of his nose. “I’m gonna kill every single doctor and nurse, and then no one is ever going to be able to hurt us again.”

It was too much to call it hope, not yet. For all he knew the clone was messing with 659, and had no intention of helping him get out of there. But maybe it’d be worth living a little longer just to find out.

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