eden le roux. d1 fin

His first memory is of the noise.

He's eight, and it's raining, and the sound of the storm hits the roof of the warehouse like a bullet spray.

He's wedged between his sisters.

Jennie calls him Jason.

His shoes scuff against the cement of the floor and there's a rat that squeaks somewhere from the corner. The adults are talking but it's just a low murmur, Jocelyn tries to get his attention too, but he's too focused on the pat-pat-pat of the rain and the swish-swish of his heels. His sisters know how he is. They'll take care of it and he'll follow them, one of their hands in each of his. He's the wallflower, the shy one, he likes to help the worms off the road after it's rained and he holds flower petals between his fingers in the spring.

He hears the little clink of a penny hitting the cement, then watches his mom bend over to pick it up, and then he never sees her again.

There's nothing else until the compound, when he's in the big training room and the man without a face tells him that he doesn't have a name anymore. He tells him that Jo and Jen are 11 and 13 now, and then takes him to a lady with long red hair to get a little 12 put on the inside of his wrist.

The ink stings when she does it, but the faceless man stands by the door so he just bites his lip and doesn't say anything. He's good at that. He's good at being quiet. Whenever he played hide and seek with Jennie on the backroads, he'd always win. So he stays silent, and the lady pats his wrist when she's done, then everything gets blurry again.

There's a year of scattering. Where he doesn't quite know what's going on yet.

One night, when the rooms are colder than usual, he hears 9 screaming through the wall and sits with his hands over his ears until wake-up call. 7 tells him over morning exercises that it was because 9 lost her fight the day before. He doesn't know what that means. 7 just laughs.

A woman overhears him calling 13 Jennie while they're eating lunch a few days later, and so she backhands him so hard that he falls off the bench and hits his head on the ground.

He doesn't speak again for two weeks.

5 teaches him how to curl his fist with the thumb sticking out and doesn't care that he won't speak to her. She makes it into a game, counts his steps one-two-three and then catches his hand in the air. There's a very tall woman that comes in sometimes to watch their game, but she never wants to play.

"Child's play." She says, then presses a finger to the side of her nose.

He doesn't know what that means either.

11 is the oldest, so she starts in the ring first. 12 and 13 get to watch, but only because the faceless man says it'll be good experience. His sister is strong, he knows that, and she's smart, so he knows she'll win. It isn't like the game with 5 though, it's something else, and he shuts his eyes halfway through, squeezing 13's hand so tight that she ends up kicking him.

The man without a face scoffs at his reaction and keeps a hand on his shoulder until he opens his eyes again.

There's a 12 on the little board eventually, right beside 13, and when the noise comes back they're standing down in the pit together with a man twice their size.

13 hits him first, then he sends her flying and the world slows down. 12 counts one-two-three but this man doesn't catch his fist like 5 used to. It makes contact with his jaw, then one-two-three again, one-two-three again, one-two-three again. It's just like the game, but it's not. His hands are wet and his wrists ache and there's blood that falls to the ground pat-pat-pat just like the rain.

Someone in the stands is cheering, but it's so loud that it makes his ears ring. 13 is there eventually, and she takes his fists and holds them both to his chest and then he goes still. The man is quiet on the ground, the crowd is quiet. The silence seems to lift something out of his lungs so he can breathe again.

It goes on like that for a long time. Every day he wakes up to noise and every night he falls asleep to silence. Every week he plays the game even though somewhere between the second and third year it starts to feel less like make believe.

In the winter of the sixth year, 5 gives him an old paperback and then goes and gets her neck snapped.

He forgot to tell her he couldn't read.