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Everything was always the same for the monster. She stayed in the cell, and people brought her food. If she moved or if they were angry, they hit her before they left. They didn’t talk to her much, except they liked to remind her that she was a monster. After two times bringing food, the lights would go off, and she would sleep. When the lights came on, she woke up and more food came. In between foods, she slept, and twisted her hair together, and practiced her hand signs that she made up in case she got to use them someday.
But then everything was not the same. The people came in, but they didn’t bring food. They brought chains to put around her wrists and ankles, and a sharp thing to push into her skin. The monster gasped because it hurt . That made the people grab her hair and pull back her head, and growl at her to behave . Behave meant to sit still and not move and not hurt anyone. She’d figured that out all on her own, because they said it so much.
She didn’t want to hurt them, though. They always thought she was going to hurt them, but she never did. She didn’t like hurting people.
She was just scared . Everything was different, and she didn’t understand why.
But she behaved, just like always. Even when her body started to feel heavy, and she couldn’t keep her eyes open, and that was not the same, either, that was not how falling asleep usually happened…she still behaved.
Even when she opened her eyes again, and everything was different - a different cell, a different muzzle, different people wearing different clothes, different clothes for her - she stayed still and quiet and didn’t hurt anyone. She was so afraid that her chest hurt and the cell sometimes looked like it was moving around her, but she just watched the people come and go, and waited until she was alone again to get up and look at everything.
It was the same grey floors, the same white walls, the same hard silver bed and white toilet and sink. But it was not the same. She knew her cell, she’d spent her whole life in it, and this was not her cell. The door was in a different place, and there was one less light on the ceiling, and the bed was turned sideways. The monster spent a very long time just staring at it all, trying to get used to it, amazed by the new .
Then she sat on the sideways bed again and rubbed her fingers all over the new muzzle. She knew it was different right away because it didn’t scrape her nose. The spot that was always sore was up above the muzzle now, and she rubbed her finger across it, too, over and over again, even though it hurt. She’d never been able to touch it before.
The straps were different, too, and she stuck her fingers underneath them, pulled at them, scratched them and flicked the edges. They were soft, but bumpy, and she’d never felt anything like it before.
The lights on the ceiling turned off, but she didn’t sleep. She couldn’t stop touching. She had to feel all of the new things. Her thoughts were more wide awake than they had been in a very long time.
There was even something around her throat now, something that felt a bit like a muzzle strap, but thicker, and with two pointed pieces on the inside that pressed into her skin. She messed with those for a long time, too, wondering what they were for, but mostly just enjoying another new feeling after so long with nothing changing.
As exciting as it all was, though, she was still scared when she stopped to think about the changes. Why was she in a new cell with new people? What had happened to her old owners? Were they coming back? What other new things were going to happen to her?
She couldn’t have ever imagined the answer to the last question. Not long after the lights came back on, waking up the monster from the light sleep she’d finally fallen into, some of the new people came into the cell - not her cell, she couldn’t think of it as that yet. They fed her first, and there was nothing different about that except that they didn’t hit her, but her old owners didn’t always hit her.
But then, after she was fed, they grabbed her by the arms and stood her up. One of them said, “Come on, we’re taking you to medical,” and that was a word she’d never heard before, but of course she walked with them like they obviously wanted her to, even when they opened the cell door and started taking her out .
She wanted to fight them. She was not supposed to go out , she was a monster , and monsters belonged in cells. She had always been in a cell, she had never been out, she didn’t know what out was , and as much as she wanted to know, as many times as she had watched the people go out and wondered where they went and what they did while they were out…she knew that she didn’t belong out there.
But fighting was not behaving. She was supposed to behave, or she would get hurt. So, no matter how scared it made her, she walked out the door with them, only the way her hands started shaking showing how she really felt.
Out was still white walls, but they were smooth, not bumpy with straight lines. The floors were white instead of grey, and she could see the lights on them, so shiny and bright that it hurt her eyes. And out was long . It was so long, she couldn’t see the walls on two ends because they were so far away.
There was so much for her to take in. The people kept walking, because they were used to out, but she was still trying to look at the shiny white floors without her eyes making tears when they started passing doors. So many doors, one after another after another. They all looked the same at first.
But then the out turned and went another way, and the monster’s head was spinning because out was so big . And the doors looked different now, some had white rectangles with black words on them. She knew they were words, even though she didn’t know what the words said, and she didn’t know how she knew because she didn’t remember ever seeing words before.
By the time they got to what must be ‘medical’, the monster could feel her heart pounding inside her chest and she could barely make her feet keep going. They opened another door and went in, but this was not a cell. The only thing in the room that was like a cell was the silver bed in the middle of the room. Everything else was too much to look at all at once.
She didn’t mean to stop in the doorway, but her feet seemed to stop working, and when the people pulled at her arms her legs stopped working, too. They quit holding her up, and she would have fallen if the people hadn’t held her arms even tighter.
“Stand up,” one said, and they were angry, everyone was always angry. “Don’t fight it.”
She wasn’t trying to fight, she couldn’t even think . Her thoughts had turned into screaming inside her head.
“Move, now .”
She wanted to. She couldn’t .
Pain exploded from her throat and through the rest of her body. But not just pain. It was nothing like she’d ever felt before. The inside of her body was buzzing, like the sound the light made in her old cell. She couldn’t move, but where before her arms and legs had been loose and weak, now they were completely locked in place. Colors flashed in front of her eyes. She wasn’t breathing .
Seconds later, it all stopped, and the monster was on the floor, staring up at the white ceiling, trying to figure out what had happened. Tears slipped from her eyes and ran into her black hair.
Hands grabbed her arms and ankles and lifted her up, setting her onto the bed, then were replaced by cold, hard restraints. A person leaned over her and held up an object she’d never seen before.
“This remote controls that collar you’ve got on. I’m not the only one who has one. If you don’t want to go through that again, I suggest you behave yourself from now on and do what you’re told.”
The monster stared up at him with wide eyes. She couldn’t remember anyone ever talking that much to her all at once before. There were so many words, it was hard to keep up with them and decide whether she knew what they all meant.
She knew one for sure, though. Behave .
She was trying .
She just wanted to know what was happening to her.
“Let’s start with the basics, then we’ll do the blood work.” The two people who brought her here were gone, but two more were walking quickly around and around her, grabbing things and handing them to each other. She was having a hard time keeping up with them. The one who had talked to her moved to do something in the corner that made a fast clicking sound, while the other stayed close to the bed. The monster wanted to turn and watch what she was doing, but she kept very still with her head pointed straight at the ceiling.
“I’ve got…five foot four and…ninety-six pounds.”
The man made a grunting sound from the corner. “And they said they fed it sufficiently. It’s a wonder they didn’t kill it a long time ago.”
“Well, it has no muscle mass, either. They’ve essentially been letting it waste away to nothing all these years. It’s going to take a lot of work to turn it into anything useful.”
“Not our problem. I’ll get a new diet worked up based on the blood work results. Vitals?”
The woman slipped some fabric over the monster’s arm and fastened it snugly. Her sleeve felt weirdly wrinkled underneath it, but it was fine. Then it started getting tighter, and tighter, and it didn’t exactly hurt yet but there was no sign that it was going to stop before it completely crushed her arm.
But it did. It remained tight for a long, silent moment, and the monster held her breath along with it, then released the air with a whoosh that matched the sound of the thing on her arm as it loosened.
The woman called out numbers that didn’t mean anything to the monster, and the man made clicking sounds again.
It was one strange thing after another after that - poking and squeezing and shining lights in her eyes and ears. Each time they started something new, she was afraid that it would hurt, but so far none of it had been more than uncomfortable.
The man reappeared from the corner finally, holding something shiny and sharp, just like her old owners had used yesterday. The monster flinched when she saw it. He frowned at her, and grabbed onto the strap of her muzzle so that he could jerk her face toward him.
“Hey. None of that. You’ve been good so far, but if you don’t hold still during this part I’ll have to use the collar again.” Letting go of the muzzle, he tapped on the thing around her neck, and her eyes went wide. She didn’t want to feel that pain again.
She was going to feel the pain from the sharp thing, though. She remembered what it had felt like, how it had made her gasp and that had made the people mad.
The man tugged up her sleeve, and started pushing on the skin of her arm with his fingers. They felt weird, covered in those strange, rough gloves. Then there was something cold and wet, and yet another something tight being tied around her arm.
Any moment now the pain would come, and the monster tried her best to brace herself for it. It was a struggle not to jolt with each new sensation.
She couldn’t help the quick breath that she sucked in when the sharp thing went into her skin, but she was quiet, and she didn’t move. It wasn’t too bad, not after the first second, but they just left it in and she didn’t like it. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to get used to the feeling.
She just needed to concentrate on breathing. If she kept breathing and didn’t think about the feeling, it would be over soon. She hoped.
It was not soon enough, not to her. But finally the man was taking out the sharp thing and moving away, and the monster could open her eyes again.
The door opened. The monster wanted to turn and look, but she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to move her head, so she kept staring at the ceiling. It didn’t matter much, anyway, because the person that came in - a man with white hair on his head and face - was soon leaning over her.
“So this is the new acquisition, hm?”
“Yes, sir,” the other man answered. “We were just finishing up with its first exam, got all its basic data here and will be running extensive tests on these vials. Was there anything else specific you wanted us to do today?”
“No, no, I just wanted to have a look for myself. Can’t wait to see it out on the training floor. I’ve heard it can do quite the damage already. Tiny little thing, though, isn’t it? We’ll need to beef it up some before it can do any real fighting.”
The woman hummed. “Yes, sir, it’s definitely undernourished. We’ll be able to tell specifically what it needs once we’ve run the first blood tests.”
“Good, good.” The white-haired man kept looking at her, and the monster wanted to sink into the bed and disappear, but she couldn’t even look away. She didn’t know what he wanted with her. He didn’t look angry, like most other people. She didn’t know what the look was that he was giving her, but she didn’t like the way it made her feel.
“I’ve already thought of a codename for it,” he said after a long silence. “Came to me as soon as I heard what it could do. ‘Siren’. What do you think?”
He was looking at her, but he wasn’t talking to her. She could tell that part. She just wasn’t sure if he was talking about her.
“That’s a good one, sir.”
The white-haired man chuckled. “Yes. Your name will be Siren, and you’re going to make me a very powerful man.”
Finally he stepped back, and waved a hand at the other two people. “Alright, carry on.”
He left the room, and the others kept talking to each other and making clicking sounds and moving around her. But the monster’s mind was on the man’s words.
A name?
Did she have a name now?
She didn’t remember ever having a name before. Or…maybe…did she…?
No. She had always just been a monster. But now she was…Siren.
She had a name. It filled her up with a warm, glowing feeling that made everything else from today not seem so bad.
She was Siren .