The third floor down had a table bolted to the tile floor with chairs stationed on each side. I walked over to one and was launched by my shoulders down into the seat. The only light hovering above the table was a clouded circular lamp. I couldn’t make out any of the room’s corners. I couldn’t tell the size of the space. 

Like those quarter gumball machines, there was a loud thunk of an item dispensed behind a metal flap. My guard retrieved what looked to be a hefty black bracelet from the shadows to my left. When he pointed to the ground in front of me and held his hand out, I gave him my confusion when he otherwise wanted something I didn’t understand. He huffed and ripped my right foot off the ground. I grabbed the table to save myself from falling backward off the chair.

Holding my heel in one hand, he clasped the ring around my ankle with the other. It gripped my leg as a second skin would with no leeway to fit anything between it and I. Still, I immediately went tugging at it, testing its give.  The device wasn’t heavy, made of only light plastic, but it was its hold on me that had weight. It made me feel more restrained than the cuffs. I wasn’t being bound but collared. The protruding square side of the band lit up in green. Numbers popped on its small, digital screen.

“What’s this?” Giving up, I threw my hands in the air. There wasn’t a chance in Hell I could remove it on my own.

“Tell me what it says.”  He weaponized his low voice in the chair across from me. It sounded like it came as much from the room's veiled edges as from his mouth.

I pushed a dense pretense and scratched at my temple. “It’s upside down.”

He beat his fingers on top of the table in impatience. When he started leaning forward, I thought he wouldn’t stop till he could strangle me across the distance. “What. It. Says.” The shadows rumbled.

I scowled but receded. “Fifty-six.”

The back legs of his chair returned squarely to the ground. With his hands collected in each other on the table, he went off on a lecture like it was read off cue cards he stuffed away in his uniform. Instead of droning on with his memorized speech, he recited it with muted hatred, talking down on me in displeasure. This energy made it easier to pay attention. “You are now under the authority and jurisdiction of Inertia Correctional Facility. Our rules are now yours. You were deemed unfit, so a name, an identifier, is no longer permitted to be in your possession. If we see your rehabilitation as a success, “Paige Mercier'' will then and only then be granted to you. Until that time comes, if at all, you are now “56.” Nothing more.”

“How do I-”

“Our rules are now yours.” He reiterated, “You will abide by them, unlike your track record.” He must have improvised that last part with how much more enmity flared from it.  “I need vocal confirmation you understand.”

“What about-”

“Do you understand?”

Bodiless cold tendrils crushed my throat when I tried again to say anything but “Yes.”

I slouched my posture as he tightened his, wondering if these “rules” had something in them against questions. I threw one of my legs over the other and placed my elbow onto my thigh to prop my head up. My eyes glared at the device fixed on me and its abundant implications. I was decided to be a great many things tonight by people who didn’t have the slightest idea about who I was. Guilty, perpetrator, unfit, worthless. 56 rounded out the list. A pitying thing if they believed for a second I’d answer to any of the words they used to label me. They could bury me as deep as they wanted in their attempts to alter me, but the concept of inertia had another angle. My resistance to change took precedence when I wasn’t ever malleable to begin with. An object at rest tends to stay at rest, doesn’t it?

“Trial for tag tranquilizer ready.” I looked up at the unfriendly sounds in “tranquilizer” to see it wasn't said to me. Rather, to a small mic clipped to his breast pocket. My heart rate became agitated. The words may have not been intended for me, the ramifications of them, however...

“What?” I spouted sharply. Getting to my feet didn’t provoke him into action in the slightest. His warring stare went slack while giving me a parting one-over. On my face, he flicked from one feature to another. A sneer broke through his militant poker face.

From beneath the new accessory, a sharp prick stuck my ankle. The piercing from an unseen needle lasted until an overwhelming numbness offset the pain. The feeling in one leg and then the other began to dissipate like my bottom half was evaporating. I ground my teeth together and grabbed the table, but even then my fingers and hands left next. I couldn’t keep my hold or my balance. I sent the guard a tell of aggression before I lost the muscles in my face. Inevitably, I headed to a hard landing on the tile. My consciousness went before I took the impact.