The rest of the night was a twist of white blur. Guards were ordered to usher Clio to the labs, and there were many of them, as though his nakedness and the evidence of what he had happened in his sleep was a cause for alarm, though Clio could not guess as to why. It only left him upset and embarrassed when guards grabbed hold of his upper arms and he was forced to traipse, bare, to the lab. 

He was sobbing by the time they reached the lab, trying desperately to cover himself. His suffering did not last much longer, however, when a woman in a lab coat stepped forward with a device that he was familiar enough with: a mask that, once placed over his nose and mouth, allowed him to sleep.

His head was grabbed, and he was forced forward.

That was where his night finally ended when darkness fell, and Clio couldn’t determine if it was a relief or not.

The following days passed without explanation from the PCA as to why he had been brought to the lab that night. It had felt like a punishment of a type, though he had no explanation as to why he was being punished. Had it been what had happened to him when he had slept that night? Had his ‘puberty’ failed, the thing that PCA was waiting for?

But they revealed nothing to him. Even Dr. Connors, who normally was open with Clio, became stoic, clipping off conversations before they started.

Going forward, the times in the lab where sleep was induced became more and more frequent. He would wake up in his room not knowing what, exactly, had been done to him. Sometimes he would wake up tied to his bed with plush, padded arm restraints, and bandages on different parts of his body, as though he were waking up from a surgery. 

But he wasn’t ill or injured.

So why was he being cut open?

His sense of time slowly dwindled to mushes of hours, and absent bits in between. One time, he had woken from one of the marathon lab sleeps, and Three had reported to him, seeming surprised himself, that ten days had passed before they had been last united.

Clio concluded that he was being punished and that he himself was changing in some crucial, disturbing way. What had happened the night he had awoken sticky could not have been normal. He tried his best to stop it, pleading with Dr. Connors that he would try to make it stop, yet the change in him continued.

The nights in which he would wake up with wet pants became more and more frequent. He remembered bits of his dreams when he had them, tangled with the horrific, disturbing memories his telepathic ‘voice’ had shown him, followed by, more disturbingly, a bright, endearing, sensation low inside him.

Then he would wake up and need to wash himself. 

He continued to attempt to hide the evidence, and found the best solution for this was to simply sleep naked on the bathroom floor, so he could easily wipe up the tiles in the morning.

The most tormenting issue on this matter was the sensation that haunted him nearly every hour of everyday, now. Once he had felt the pleasure in his sleep, which he had decided was the core of the problem, he wanted more.

And he hated himself for it. He felt devilish when thoughts of the pleasure consumed him, self-loathing in the idea that he had only a mere taste of it in his sleep, when now he was starving enough for it where he wanted a full chance to eat it raw.

It felt wrong, and for this, he knew he deserved the PCA’s suspicion over him, even when ultimately, he was persistently unsure of what it all meant.

Over the next three years, the PCA continued to observe him like this, where he would lose time, as well as, eventually, motivation. He felt his goals slipping away as his mind grew numb with his inner torment.

His need for the pleasurable sensation grew inside of him, yet above all else, he knew the importance of its suppression. It was there, as well as a looming darkness inside of him, opening itself up to him like a void ready to swallow a victim to its blackness. Sometimes, Clio thought he should let it.

But there was a drive inside of him that heroically made the effort to keep the darkness suppressed. Perhaps it was his surviving value of being a good boy for the PCA.

The telepathic presence that he had heard that night was still there, but quiet, and only brought about when Clio thought of it. The person at the end of it, however, was silent, as though suspicious by Clio’s presence as much as Clio was suspicious of him.

Him. The ‘voice,’ Clio decided, was a boy. 

Clio’s curiosity regarding the voice slowly dulled, as well, as the efforts to maintain his darkness overcame his nearly every passing thought, trumping every other interest he had.

He knew that the PCA was waiting for something to happen to him as well. From the measured looks he received, to the dismayed expressions that overcame the doctors’ features when they checked their printed graphs and analogs. They were displeased that either something was, or something wasn’t, changing in him.

The day after his sixteenth birthday, after a traditional day of Winnie the Pooh and eating a cupcake that had tasted like ash in his mouth, he received a visit from Agent Jackson.

Clio had received less and less visits from the agent over the past few years, though he was aware that it was partially due to his own emotional distancing during their time together. He would gather into himself, urge the conversation along, and eventually demand that it end.

He would have once begged Agent Jackson for his time. Now, he did everything he could to make sure their times together never came.

For the darkness became nearly impossible to suppress when Agent Jackson was around. He feared that one day it would erupt.

Clio had pretended that he was sick that morning, though he was fairly certain that the guards knew it was just an act. In truth, the thought of eating anything left his insides squirming uncomfortably, and he couldn’t bear the thought. In truth, he was hungry. Starving for something. So much so that he could feel his eyes sometimes begin to haze and his mouth water. The darkness would swell up like a fueled, haunted presence.

But he had no idea what he was hungry for.

It wasn’t food, though, so he sat in his room, on the bed, wishing the day would end, as well as his hunger and his darkness.

When there was a knock on his door, he frowned. The guards didn’t knock.

Not knowing how to respond to a door knock, Clio shot up from his bed, staring wide-eyed at the milky glass.

Another knock.

Clio stared.

He heard a low sigh from the other side of the glass, and a familiar, exasperated voice calling, “Clio, may I come in?”

“Agent Jackson?” he asked Agent Jackson.

“No. Abe Lincoln. Yes, Agent Jackson! Now let me in.” A hand appeared over a face, as though Agent Jackson were straining to peer into the room. 

Agent Jackson had never visited his room before. 

“I…don’t know how,” Clio was hesitant to admit. “Try, um…could you ask a guard?” he called back. “They normally use their task-watches.”

“Hmmm, lemme try…” There was a moment of fumbling, and then the glass door was sliding open, revealing the tall, broad figure of the man he had come to know so well. “Hey, looks like I got authorization. It worked!”

Clio nodded, standing wide-eyed at the threshold in disbelief. He always had a normally clear and solid routine throughout his days at PCA, and this routine had never been one of them. He glanced down at himself, making sure he was fully clothed, and squeaked upon realizing his slippers were missing. 

He scrambled to put a pair on his bare feet.

“Hey, you look like your head is about to explode. Calm down, kid. It’s just me.” Agent Jackson stepped further into the room, nearly having to duck to step inside, his werewolf genes made him tower well over a height that couldn’t have been reasonable even in the outside world, and the door slid shut behind him. “Hey, where’s my hug?”

Clio shook his head, backing away. The darkness was always stronger when they touched. He fidgeted and glanced around nervously.