Nemo's eyes opened slowly at first, the lull of sleep tugging at him. Through the slit of his half-opened eyes was nothing but white.

His eyes popped open. This was not his bedroom. Jerking into a sitting position, he whipped his head back and forth, then remembered.

Trespassing on the bridge. Touching the van. His dad screaming for him come back. Hands grabbing him and tossing him into the van. Sliding to the back of the vehicle when they suddenly hit the gas, passing out when his head slammed against the door.

Suddenly feeling very, very small, Nemo tucked his knees up and squeezed them until they were numb. He was sitting on a narrow bed with a flat mattress and thin sheets. There was absolutely nothing else in the room. Just the pure white bed, the bright white walls, the blinding tile. A door with a small window was straight ahead of him, about two feet from his bed. 42 was printed backwards on the window.

He squeezed shut his eyes, attempting to block out the searing florescent lights above. White spots blinked behind his closed eyelids. Opening his eyes again, he thought he saw movement through the window. The sheets made no sound as he swung his legs down and walked carefully across the cold tile. He noticed he wasn't dressed in his old clothes anymore, but a spotless undershirt and colorless cotton shorts. He'd been made to match the rest of his tiny white world. He ran a hand through his bright orange hair like he was clinging to the last ounce of color that ever existed.

He had to stand on tiptoe to peer out of the window, and was met with a long, brightly lit hallway. Other doors lined the corridor, all marked with random numbers.

Nemo backed away, feeling sick. The world had become white, blinding, blank, and completely silent.

Just as he sat back on the foot of the bed, his door swung open. All the oter doors had swung open too, seemingly on their own. An unseen loudspeaker blared clearly and loudly, "All subjects please exit your pods. Doors will close again in approximately ten seconds."

Nemo didn't waste time. Springing up, he raced through the open door and down the hall. Running past people of all ages, shapes, genders, and colors, all dressed in identical white clothes. Most of them didn't pay any attention to him, but a few called out. One man stood in front of him and shouted at him to slow down. He must have said something, but Nemo was too far now to hear anything.

A big, iron door was at the end of the hall, with a glowing neon exit sign over it. Stopping too late, he slammed into it and yanked on the handle. It wouldn't budge. He kept yanking on it, pushing and pulling and twisting. Hyperventilating, he spun around, bumping into another white t-shirt.

"Hey! Hey kid," It was a girl's voice, maybe in her late teens. She grabbed his shoulders and leaned down to look at him.

Nemo panicked, attempting to squirm out of her hands.

"Hey, simmer down, kid." She said, gentler this time. Something in her voice calmed him down, made him feel slightly less scared.

He stopped struggling long enough to look her in the eyes. She had long black hair, almost blue in the light. Her eyes were a gentle blue and were looking him up and down.

"Oh, yes. They do pick well, don't they, Flo?" She turned and said to the wall.

Her grip on him had loosened, and he ducked beneath her arms. Who had she been talking to?

He kept running, then suddenly tripped over something on the floor. He crashed onto the white tile, tangled in a body.

"Watch it, will you?" The body was a man, lying eagle-spread on his stomach. His meaty head was completely shaved and waxed, a shiny pink. When saw Nemo, his face softened.

"You must be the new kid." He sighed and lifted himself up. "I'm Peach."

Nemo said nothing, just scrambled up and took off again. At this end of the hall was a circular room, various white clothed people scattered about. They all looked so carefree. So... relaxed. Just like anywhere else. They lounged on sofas, chatting and laughing. Some of them flipped through plain white magazines printed in black letters. They all had titles like, The Science of Your Mind or Sink Your Teeth into THIS Theory! The only thing out place was the walls.

All the walls were made entirely out of glass. People in white lab coats scurried back and forth behind this glass, some peering through microscopes and some simply observing, notepad and pen in hand.

Nemo froze, like a deer on a road. He was ready to take off again until a few people started grouping around him.

The girl with the black hair and the bald man had followed him back, and were joining them.

 A lanky blonde man in his late twenties put an arm around his shoulder.   "My name's Grant but I'm obsessed with mouthwash so they call me Gurgle. What's your illness? They didn't actually diagnose me with anything, just germaphobia," He suddenly whipped his arm back. "Oh, wait! Were you decontaminated?"

Nemo shook his head, trying to clear his muddled brain. "I—I don't know. I just woke up..."

A man with a bright red mustache and French accent leaned forward and sniffed him. "All clean," He said shortly.

Nemo stepped back nervously, then knocked into somebody. A sticky liquid spilled on his shirt.

"My bubbles!" A skinny Asian man cried, shoving a bubble wand into a bottle.

"Busby's illness causes him to get obsessed with random things every week. This week it's bubbles." A man twice as tall and three times as heavy as Nemo said. "What's your illness? Have they diagnosed you yet?"

Nemo's heart twisted a bit. "Illness? I'm not... sick."

"We like to call it special." Peach explained, now pressing his face against one of the windowed walls.

"We're all diagnosed with something. And these nice people are here to try and fix us." Gurgle said cheerfully.

"I'm Deb, by the way," The black-haired girl said. "They say I'm schizophrenic, but I don't believe them," She shot a look at the air. "Shut up, Flo! I'm not!"

"It looks like they're operating on Matt." A heavy man said, approaching the window. A couple of scientists were leaning over a man lying on a table. "He has a weird condition they're still trying to figure out."

The man suddenly convulsed, and the doctors pressed his chest down. Nemo did a double-take when a bit of blood sprayed from his head.

"They're going to fix him, you know." Busby said, blowing a few bubbles. "Like they're going to fix all of us."

Nemo felt like running back to his room and hiding under the sheets until all of this was over. The only problem was, something told him that wouldn't be happening soon.

"Will—will they operate on me too?" Nemo asked, suddenly feeling light-headed. They all looked at him for a second, almost sympathetically, but didn't say anything.

Nemo opened his mouth to ask again when suddenly he felt someone touch his shoulder. It was one of the doctors, a mask covering his mouth and nose. "You will be up next, number 42. Please follow me."

"To—to operate on me?" Nemo started panicking. What were these people going to do to him? He wasn't even sick, right?

"Please come with me," The doctor repeated, holding his shoulder a little tighter.

Nemo yanked his shoulder away. "What are you going to do to me?" He said, his voice raising.

"I need backup," The doctor called. Suddenly more doctors were there, grabbing his arms and holding him. Nemo was in a flat-out panic now, thrashing his arms, trying to break their grips.

"We need a syringe, please," A female doctor called out.

"Please calm down." Another said, almost impatiently.

Nemo continued to struggle, screaming when a needle appeared by his neck.

"Let him go," A man walked towards them in a steady pace. Nemo instantly stopped fighting. It was like the man was putting him into a trance. He could also feel the doctors stand up straighter, bring the needle away from his skin. One look at him and you knew he was in charge. The man's jet-black hair was loosely slicked back above dangerous brown eyes.He wasn't dressed in white like every other person in the room, but contrasting sharply in a black suit.

"He isn't ready yet," He said. "He just got here.

The man paced to the other side of Nemo, and he noticed a diagonal scar running from the corner of his hairline, over his eye, nose, and mouth, then disappearing under a gold tie.

He stood in front of Nemo and leaned down to be eye level with him.

"Tell me, son," He said. "Do you want to go with these people?"

Nemo shook his head.

"Do you know why you're here?"

"No," He managed. "I don't even know where I am."

The man looked back at the doctors. "He hasn't told him. Go ahead. Back to work."

Nemo felt reluctant grips loosening, then letting go all together. He heard the doctors' footsteps fading away behind him.

The man nodded at Nemo, then spun around on his heel.

"Wait," Nemo called suddenly. He had to get some answers about this place, and this man seemed like the only person sane enough to give them to him. "I—I really have no idea where I am."

The man faced him again. "Come with me."

The two of them walked down the hall, past more subjects. Nemo felt himself shivering, like he was in shock.

"You are in an industry," The man explained. "For sick people."

"So, an asylum." Nemo wished people would just call it for what it was. Not a home for special people, not anything else.

The corners of the man's mouth turned up slightly. "This isn't any old asylum. This is PSWay."

Nemo frowned, tired of being confused. "What does that even mean?"

The man ignored that question. "Here we take in one person each of every mental illness, then figure out a cure."

"Don't they have pills and stuff for that?"

"We don't give them nice little meds to take before bedtime. We actually study each individual person's brain, fix their physical mind."

"You cut open their heads?" Nemo asked.

The man said nothing, only nodded. Had he imagined it, or was that a flash of shame in his expression?

Nemo searched his mind for the next question. "Okay, then who are you? You don't look like anyone else here."

"My name is Gill Moorish. I... don't have a specific title, but I'm second in command. My brother is the director, and I am here to oversee things, make sure they don't kill anyone."

Kill anyone? Surely it was just an exaggeration. But Nemo had been taken here against his will, and the subjects were kept in a glass cube like lab rats. The image of the man's convulsing, bloody body was still clear in his mind. These didn't seem like necessarily humane people.

"But where are we, really?"

"Sydney, Australia." The man said shortly. "PSWay is the largest industry in the country."

"We're in Sydney..." Nemo's knees felt like paper.

"Yes," The man held Nemo's shoulders, forcing him to look at his bright eyes. "And Sydney is a very dangerous place for a Burn."