My head is in a whirl. I can't think about anything. Days pass, and I resume a regular schedule. I haven't been to the CD since the first Day when Elle showed me. I haven't had the head to manage the reality of it. Electra has kept her distance at times, knowing that I need space.

Another teacher replaces Ms Rathe, and the class barely blinks an eye. Reality of it is, the world has moved on. I wasn't all that attached to my teacher. The thing that I'm hung up on is why, why would they kill her just for speaking her opinion? Why is it such a big deal if she tells us a conspiracy?

But mainly, the question is just that. Why? There was no need. If what she said was right, it means that everything we have ever learnt is incorrect. Everything we've ever known is wrong.

I feel empty inside. Crushed. There are moments I can barely breathe, caught up in nightmares and conspiracy theories.

The nightmares. They make me wish I was the one who was dead. Continuous pictures, all different, worse the longer they drag on.

One night I wake from one screaming, and the pictures in my head are so fresh, so vivid, I can't fall back to sleep. No one else seems troubles by my screams. They all sleep peacefully. Then again, I'm not really in a room with people who care about me.

When it is clear I am not about to fall asleep, I get out of bed and tiptoe out of the room. The hallway outside is eerily quiet as I rub my bare feet against the white carpet and make my way to the door that matron was supposed to be guarding. She was currently not there, but echoes of laughter comes from the kitchen at the other end of the long hallway. She was probably off talking to Don, the chef.

I slip out the girls dorms so I am standing in the large high room that the girls dorms and boys dorms lead into. It, like everything else in the complex, is completely white. It's walls are adorned with black and white portraits of important people and underneath are white benches that are often accommodating the groups of gossipers (including Drew and her 'posse' of followers). There is one window in the room that looks out upon the nursery grounds below. Underneath this widow is a seat, and this is exactly where I find Electra.

I shuffle over to the bench and sit next to her. She doesn't acknowledge my presence, just continues staring out the window.

"Hi." I say. She briefly looks at me, then turns back to the window.

"What are you doing here?" Electra asks, her voice filled with venom.

"I couldn't sleep." I reply, taken aback by the anger in her tone.

"So you decided to stop ignoring me?" Electra snaps back.

I am silent for a few seconds, figuring out a way to answer this.

"And so you finally felt sorry for me and decided that you might come along and be my best friend again? Hey?

I shake my head. "I'm sorry Elle, I didn't mean to-"

She throws me an evil glare. "Whatever. I don't care."

I bite my lip. "I'm really sorry Electra, I didn't realise that I was ignoring you. I just wanted space because of-"

She cuts me off. "Because of what? A teacher dying? Big whoop. People die all the time." Her voice cracks on this last sentence and she starts to cry.

Confused, I wrap an arm around her shoulder, awkwardly trying to comfort her. She stops crying and we sit in silence.

"He was my father." Electra says suddenly.

"Who?" I reply, surprised. You never knew your parents in the complex. You were taught that parents didn't matter. When you were born, your mother gave you straight to the nursery. Your guardians were the Advisors. The nursery was divided into age groups, then those age groups were divided into two groups, and then those two groups became the A and B units, then from the A and B units you were divided into groups known as classes. I was in class 8B3, my age, then my division, and my class.

"Phyre. The guy who was killed from the CD? Remember?" Elle looks at me and I nod. "Well, he was my dad."

"How did you find out?" I ask.

Elle sighs and looks out the window. "Does it matter? He's gone anyways. He wasn't much, but he was nice and cared the slightest about me. Now he is gone, and I have nothing. He was all I have." I see a tear fall down her pale cheek and I place a hand over one of hers. I gently squeeze it.

"Hey. You have one thing." I tell her and she looks at me. "You have a friend."

She nods and wipes her cheek. "Right now," she pauses and smiles at me. "Right now, that's all I really need."

-*-*-

My body is heavy, like a lead weight, pinning me down. I can't move. The only thing I can manage is opening and closing my eyes, and even that is a struggle. I prefer to keep them closed. I can feel the needle in my arm, and that is about all I feel. I can feel the liquid pulsing through my veins.

How long has it been? I have no way of knowing as I slip in and out of conciseness. Meghan and Grief haven't come back. Occasionally I wake feeling slightly in control of my body and can hear things, just small noises, like faint grunts and moans. I have no idea what they're doing and frankly, I don't want to know.

Eventually the grunts die down and I am left in silence, a silence I slowly feel taking over my body. I fall into a sleep, that lasts what seems like a few hours, then I wake to Meghan at my side, fiddling with a screen. I go to say something but my eyes close again before I can.

When I open them again, she is gone. I feel the drugs feeding into my body slowly ween off, as a gradual pain makes it's way back into my body.

Slowly, I become completely conscious. I shuffle around slightly on the bed, although I can't go far because of the straps.

I'm not sure whether it is minutes or hours later, but Meghan eventually comes into the room as well. She looks completely regular, a white dress draped over her slim figure, that reaches down to just above her knee, and a black cross on her left sleeve shoulder. Her thin black hair is loose, and flows to her shoulders, and her short, thin figure flits around the room, checking a whole heap of computer screens and eventually the victims themselves.

She checks over Tala first and then Calix, before moving to me.

She pulls up a chair and sits next to me, and just watches me breathing for a while. I can see her taking notes in her head, as she examines my scars, new and old.

Eventually she averts her gaze and looks into my eyes. We just stare at each other for a while, and for the first time I notice the bruises that mark her arms and reach around to her chest. She notices me looking at them and sheepishly tugs at her sleeves.

"Don't hide your scars." I say, breaking the silence. My voice comes out strangely clear, no sign of the heaviness that I'd expected.

"What do you mean?" She asks, her eyes slightly curious.

Instead of replying, I just shake my head. "Can you let me up?" I ask, straining against the straps.

She nods. "Sure. You seem to be healing a whole lot better than the other two. Grief seemed to have stopped on you. As if he got halfway through torture and decided not to finish."

I shrug off the statement, as though it means nothing, but my mind turns to the end of the torture. It was true wasn't it? Grief had cut off short.

She fiddles with the straps, and loosens my arms and legs first. Then she unstraps the one across my chest and lastly the one across my hips.

"Get up slowly." Meghan instructs, and I do so. My back hurts, but it no longer pains me to extremities. More like a dull ache.

I slide my legs over the metal table slowly and place my bare feet on the cold grey concrete floor. For a few seconds, I just look down at myself. I am wearing a thin, almost transparent grey nightgown, and through it, I can see the outline and shadow of my crumpled body. Scars stretch around the side of my stomach, a place I would have though impossible to reach because of the black fabric that had covered everywhere but my back. My figure is thin and slightly hollow. My rib bones show through the bruised flesh and scars.

I look like a train wreck, even without the recently made whip marks on my sides.

Food is in short supply for blacks. Although the Complex said that there are no favourites, the chefs always have a graded system system. The A's always get the most, enough to feed two people, then B's get enough to feed themselves and half a person, then C's get a regular sized portion, and from there after, your plate gets smaller and smaller.

I get F sized meals for breakfast and dinner. For lunch I usually don't even get food. Lunch is a rarity for blacks. It isn't that we don't have enough food. We just deserve to suffer. The worse your mark is, the more you suffer.

At first this strikes people as unfair. Newbies get used to it though. We all have to. Or else we would starve.

And then the bruises, well, being the F takes it's toll. I have the hardest work. It is okay when I am training. And sometimes I'm set on just white guarding. But any other time, I get the worst. D's, E's and I are usually set in the factories.

Hard labour, that's what it is. Long hours of dealing with heavy machinery in black stone buildings, no air conditioning and air so thick with the smell of misery you can barely breathe. New blacks barely last a minute without breaking down. The people that watch us-whites-merely smirk when someone faints. The blacks are given the task of reviving the fainted. It doesn't even bother me anymore. It used to. Now I understand it is how it has to be. We are unstable. We are blacks. We have to be watched. Or who knows what we will do?

"How are you feeling?" Meghan asks as I slowly stand. I wobble slightly, but steady myself.

"Surprisingly good considering I was recently tortured." I say.

She smiles. "If you call 3 days recently."

My eyes widen. "Three days?"

She nods. "Your body went into a hibernation state for two of them. You came out of that state approximately six hours ago, when your body decided it was healed enough for you to regain consciousness."

"It felt like a few hours." I say honestly.

She gives me a slight smile. "It gives you that feeling. When your body is in hibernation, your brain doesn't generate dreams or thoughts, it just puts all of its might into healing your body. I have to say Mae, you have a pretty strong body system. You fought back quickly. Usually, even in your state, you wouldn't be ready for another set of torture for at least a week and a half. You should be ready for tomorrow."

"Lucky me." I mutter. I slowly get up, and take a shaky step away from the bed. Meghan watches me and offers her hand when I stumble, but I don't take it. Instead I slowly take a few more steps.

"Centre your body. It helps with balance." Meghan tells me and I follow her instructions.

"Your body is too arched."

I straitened my back and lift my shoulders. My back sears with pain but I grit my teeth, ignore it and take a few more steps.

I walk to the other side of the room, each step slowly making the pain in the core of my body growing, until when I reach the wall, it takes all my willpower not to slump against it, close my eyes and shut out the pain. But I don't. I just stop, take a few breaths and turn to go back. This time I only make it halfway across the room before my legs buckle underneath me and I fall to the ground sobbing.

In a blur, Meghan is beside me, supporting me, holding me, helping me.

With the pain streaming through my body, I have next to no resistance as she lifts my body and carries me to my bed again. She lays me on the metal and the cool steel cools the burning pain over my back. I let myself sink into the shape of the table and take harsh shallow breaths.

"I underestimated the extent of torture Grief dealt on you." I hear Meghan say. Her voice is far away, and soft.

My breathing slowly settles, and I want to fall asleep, but I will myself not to.

"What did you mean?" Meghan asks, gently wiping away the sweat on my brow with a cloth. "When you told me not to hide my scars."

I reach a weak hand up and push her white sleeve up to reveal the bruises and marks. I tentatively run my fingers over them. She watches my hand, then picks up my hand and places it back on the bed. I just look into her eyes.

"Your scars are who you are. Your scars are evidence." I manage to whisper.

"Evidence?"

I nod and close my eyes, imagining Grief and this woman. Imagining how she got these bruises. "Evidence to what he's done."

"I don't know what you mean." Meghan tells me, a slight quaver in her voice.

"Yes you do." I say, and before she can ask another question, I give way to sleep.