91's eyes opened as he laid upon the broad, uncomfortable cot suspended from the wall farthest from his cell door. His name had not always been a number, this he knew----but just what it was, he could not remember anymore. When glimpses of the life he'd once had skittered under his eyelids at night, or roved around as a bulbous mist as he dreamt while awake, 91's stomach would lock, as if he'd witnessed something terrifying. This was an effect of the treatment: identifying and quarantining memories deemed threatening to the host; deemed threatening by the invading nanomachines that sought to rewrite the very codes that made him human. But of this, 91 was not aware. What he knew was that at 0600, a meal high in potassium and carbohydrates was slid through the slot in his cell door. At 1200, the massive locking mechanisms that held that door in-place would make an awful lot of noise as they disengaged. Four men with rifles and in horrifying masks, featuring glowing red visors and filtered mouth guards that made them look like robotic aardvarks, would enter orbiting a stretcher. They'd lace 91 up, strap him in and take him away to the test silo, where his every biological function was measured, where he was lauded when the results were satisfactory, and where he was given resigned sighs and headshakes when they were not.
91's eyes closed.
'I'm finished with all this. . . I'm finished being a rat in a cage. They thought I'd succumb to their "treatment", but I was the one playing them. I knew after several days of this torture that they wanted to make me into a monster. And so I let them. Now we'll see how adept they are at slaying the monsters they make.'
With a smile on his face, 91 tore through the bindings by which he was bound, these simple leather straps that were attached to the bed, as if they were tissue. The young man stood and strode over to door of his cell. He placed his hand upon it. Beginning at his flattened hand and eventually stretching all the way up his arm, 91's flesh became covered by a uniform pattern of neon-red octagons, each perfectly sized and shaped as the one adjacent.
'I'll tear this prison to the ground.'
But this prison was not without eyes. The minute 91 activated his ability, a bulb on the ceiling began to spin red light into the room. The young man looked up in shock: 'Damnit---a sensor.'
Now, however, he had nothing to lose. If punishment awaited for his discourse, then his fate was sealed. Whether he decided to lay down and await the guards, or blast his way out became little more than a choice of punishment: blowing the door off his cage would likely force the guards to employ lethal weaponry to stop him, while surrendering now would probably bring about a more potent strain of mind-erasers. Death was the better option. 91 closed his eyes again and concentrated. A moment later a massive blast of raging red energy blew his cell door right off its massive hinges. Wearing his loose blue trousers and nothing else, 91 stepped into the hall, bathed in the red light of the revolving sirens that lined the ceiling of the hallway.
'Eddie, was it? Eddie Star. That's right. That's who I was---who I am.'
Down the hall, subject 0091----Eddie Star----could hear the thumping boots of the guards. He smiled.