Hot.

I wasn’t lying. The water was hot. How was that even possible… In prison, we froze to death under the icy jets that touched us once a year, and here, they had access to showers, baths, every day—and hot ones, too? Shit, I was starting to understand the appeal of this game. You got a taste for comfort, and it was human to want more, as much as you could. Greed became stronger than everything else. It felt too good.

I sank beneath the surface. The warmth wrapped around me. It was so comfortable. It frustrated me to have been deprived of it until now. It was cruel, unbearable, unfair. It pissed me off. When I emerged from the water, even the air around me couldn’t cool me down. I settled comfortably in that rough bathtub, and Malik, the omega, gently took my arm to run some kind of small, soft thing over it. I flinched slightly, but his smile softened.

I recognized in his features the kindness of an omega; in his scent, tenderness; in his gaze, charm and sincerity. I wondered if I looked like that.

"It must be strange for you. You must have forgotten everything," he explained. "Like the other prisoners."

"Forgotten… why do they make you forget?"

"You’re an outsider. It must be very different for you, that’s true. More than any of us could ever understand. Why do the upper spheres make us forget, you ask? To make us forget everything precious, but still remember enough to want to find it again."

"I didn’t have anything to forget," I confessed. "And I don’t know much. The prisoners taught me, but obviously, I still have a lot of gaps. This, for example… what is it?"

He looked at what he was holding, and his brows furrowed. Inexplicably, his eyes filled with tears, and I moved back a little. I had never really spent time with another omega. I knew we were soft and more inclined to be loved, sensitive, yes, but I had never been able to be that. Was I strange for not being that way? I probably didn’t give off the same thing he did. He had grown up elsewhere and had always embraced his nature as an omega.

"It’s a sponge. It’s soft, it doesn’t hurt the skin, and it’s used to wash you. Look, we put soap on it so you smell good, and there."

He rubbed my skin without roughness, and tiny bubbles formed. A fresh scent wrapped around the room, and I breathed in deeply.

"Not everyone gets this here, but we’re lucky to live in a building, to be part of the White Rabbit. It’s an influential gang. They have good patrons, influential people who take care of them, and because of that, we get hot water, body care, medical help sometimes, and good food."

"White Rabbit. That’s what they call you. And do you share everything?" I asked.

"Yes. It’s easier to survive that way. Oren believes it’s the best thing to do. With the other gangs outside, it’s better to stay united, and he helps everyone be that way."

So Oren really was a leader. I wasn’t surprised. Malik continued washing my body, and I let him. It wasn’t unpleasant, being taken care of.

"You have beautiful white hair, though it’s cut a little messily. And your eyes are so mauve… you really are part of the Fourth wave."

"It wasn’t very clear in the tutorial I took. What’s with all this wave stuff?"

Malik moved behind my head and massaged my scalp with soap. I closed my eyes under the more-than-pleasant attention.

"Domus calls them ‘the four waves,’ but here, we call them ‘the four generations.’ The first was the Burning Station’s, created and destroyed with the Station. It was a trial run, and when they wanted to cover it up… there was only one thing to do. Boom."

I sank a little deeper into the bath.

"The second generation was the first one present on SOTA. People like Oren, Ravenne, or me. They call us ‘the Greys’ because of our skin. Unfortunately… there are quite a few things wrong with us."

"Explain," I murmured.

"None of us, none of ‘the Greys,’ have ever known the surface. We were created up there, but we grew up here. Child after child. They didn’t keep any failures, but they like it. They like watching how we evolve, like horrifying freak-show beasts."

I opened my eyes slightly. That “horrifying” hurt my heart.

"I think you’re beautiful. Maybe a little terrifying, but you all have a charm that can’t be found anywhere else."

And yet Malik’s face remained neutral. It was impossible to detect even a hint of sorrow in what he had just said. He had shown it for me, though. But when it concerned him, or the other Greys, he seemed… resigned? Now that was one observation with the merit of pissing me off. In prison, we were resigned to our fate, yeah, but this wasn’t the same. Here, I could sense hope—and they certainly could too, and that was why they accepted their lot.

"Is it hope that keeps you going? Who else would accept being treated like monsters? I mean… if it were me, it would really piss me off."

He only laughed.

"Oren always says we have to take advantage of what we can. Being a freak-show beast means attracting attention, and attracting attention means having a chance to climb higher."

“Climb.” That was what mattered to them. I hadn’t been here long enough to understand how important it was to them. No matter how hard I tried to imagine it, nothing would measure up. Giving them enough hope to think they could climb, but not enough for it to be reachable by everyone. From the way Malik talked about him, Oren might have been more than just a leader. Even there, I could feel I was only briefly touching the surface of what there was to know about them.

So, aware that I wouldn’t be able to understand more without truly knowing the “mantle,” also called “the burrow,” I didn’t ask any more questions. My brain was already overloaded with information. No need to fry it completely. I could rest a little, without alarms, without guards, without the usual prison chaos. Wow, fuck. I could hardly believe it. Was this real? Yeah, it could only be. Never, never, never, seriously never had I thought I would get out of there.

Or maybe… maybe I had. Maybe as a child, I had thought about it. My head cradled by dreams and empty words that had eventually disappeared, like so many things. The shapes, faces, and voices from that time were too far away now for me to remember without effort. And yet, several things here dragged me back to childhood. I breathed in deeply and sank beneath the water again, disappearing beneath Malik’s eyes and, I hoped, beneath my own memories.

Later, once the bath was finished and I was dressed in clothes different from those of the prison, Malik took me with him. At the top of the White Rabbit hideout, Malik leaned over the balcony and invited me to do the same.

"This is the rabbit hole. You can feel safe here. You’ll never be alone, never left behind. Everyone knows everyone here. We support each other."

I stepped forward and looked where his gaze, incredibly wonderstruck, kept lingering. I had seen this hideout from below and its dizzying length, but from here, there was only its immensity and all the life it sheltered. Steel lived everywhere and wrapped around us like a frozen mantle, but within all that cold grey, hundreds of pairs of yellow eyes lived. And unlike in prison, laughter echoed. It was noisy, yeah, but completely different—so much so that I still thought I was dreaming.

Malik pulled me along after him, his gaze bright and his lips stretched into a sincere smile. I didn’t find the prison’s crushing atmosphere here. Would Ivan and Break have liked this? Definitely. If a favor was granted to the winner, I wanted to bring those two up with me, but for that… I had to reach the top of the ranking. I looked around. They were all players, all “Greys,” and they all had the same goal: to reach the top. I certainly had less determination than they did, but… why not try?

I was curious.

He settled us at a table where plates had been set out. It wasn’t mush like in prison. It looked better, though visually, it was as dull as the rest of the world. But maybe that world wouldn’t stay that way for much longer. When I lifted my eyes, I saw Ravenne sit down across from me. His lemon pearls anchored themselves in mine. In their eyes, I found a flame I had never seen anywhere else—a flame that set my soul ablaze.

"It’s not a five-star dinner like your Jill might get, but it’s not too bad."

That confident, serene voice was unmistakable. Oren settled down beside Ravenne, the tall silent one, and raised his glass.

"To the lost little bunny who joined us. And to our rise—may it be glorious."

Many followed Oren’s glass, probably everyone who had one within reach. Yet despite the toast, he didn’t stay with us. He withdrew with a few other Greys.

"We have two meals a day. The rest of the time, the supplies are locked up and guarded. It’s not impossible for other groups to raid one another, so we always have to stay on alert," Malik explained.

Yeah, that seemed logical. Someone had tried to rip my supply bag away from me when I arrived, after all. Speaking of which…

"By the way… how does it work here with murder, theft, and all that? I might have blown a guy apart when I arrived. Like… spaghetti guts, boiled intestines, and leg skewers."

Malik blinked excessively, but I knew it wasn’t deliberate. I managed to catch a smile on Ravenne’s lips, and I leaned over the table with mischief.

"No way! He smiles!" I mocked.

He barely reacted—if at all. He set his glass down without making the slightest sound and began to eat. Malik laughed silently beside me, and I frowned. He really wasn’t funny. Shit, what the hell had I done to piss him off that much?

"You surprised me. I’m not really into blood, but you seem pretty comfortable with it. Don’t worry. You’re not in prison anymore. There’s only one rule: climb. Those up there don’t care what crimes you commit here."

That was… pretty damn contradictory, wasn’t it? People went to prison for those very crimes.

"Hard to understand, right? They just want to be entertained. Up there, you could reach a life that mattered by doing harm. Here, there are only the rejects of that society, so you can imagine they don’t care much about the lives of those who once broke the law."

"Seen like that."

We were shit. They didn’t give a damn about us. In other words, we were free to do whatever we wanted. And that was when I understood Jill’s words. If everything was allowed without fear of retaliation, how could you trust anyone? Use them? Was that how Jill had succeeded? If so, it had paid off well.

"We’ll teach you," Malik assured me. "How to live here. You’ll see, it’s not that terrible."

Malik was kind. It was obvious. I’d known naïve guys like him before, and I doubted he survived by being dishonest and cunning. He was the kind of guy people loved for his sincerity and candor. He was the perfect example for those questions… Was I really capable of doing anything to climb? Betray him? Rise by crushing him? Or kill him, if it became necessary? All you had to do was be seen. If the upper spheres feared what I might accomplish, then they could only watch me, right?

Was I ready for all that?