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Gillian

D ay Four is the first time he cries. He hides it. Turns toward the wall, shoulders hunched, shaking. He doesn’t sob—just leaks. I watch the sweat on his neck collect in rivulets, tracing the shape of his vertebrae like I’m mapping fault lines.

Then I make it worse.

I sit just above the hatch—legs crossed, plate balanced on one knee. Let the scent fall before the sound does. Grilled meat, something marbled and still hot. Steam curling through the opening. A single drip of fat hits the floor beside him and blooms.

He looks up when I bite into it—slow, deliberate, loud. The kind of chew that sounds like relief. I don’t speak. I don’t smile. I just eat.

He stares like hunger is a trick he hasn’t figured out how to undo. Like maybe if he watches long enough, I’ll drop the rest. But I don’t. I finish it, lean forward so the plate scrapes softly against the hatch frame, holding the empty edge over the drop. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just follows it with his eyes like he’s tracking something sacred.

Then I say it:

“You can have your own. Once the teeth come out.”

I close the hatch before he answers.

When I send the tray down, it smells like food—meat again, mostly raw, lightly seared. Enough to trick the body into saliva. But there’s no fork. No knife. Just his teeth.

He doesn’t touch it. Just stares at the tray, eyes wide, the way I used to stare at myself in the mirror after a compliance wipe, waiting to see if anything was left.

Day Five, I send the pliers.

They come in a white linen wrap. Clean, but not sterile. Not shiny. I found these in a drawer at the research facility—the ones they used when the dental drill burned out mid-procedure and they needed to finish by hand.

I remember the sound, the way I screamed. And the way Ellis didn’t even flinch, just said, “Bite down,” like pain was my fault for noticing it.

So I don’t ask him. I don’t offer deals.

I just send the pliers down and let them sit on the tray while the meat rots beside them. That night, I whisper one thing through the mic:

“Four teeth.”

Then I cut the mic again.

He doesn’t respond. Not at first. But he picks them up. Looks at them. Weighs them in his hand like they’re a solution. Or maybe a sentence.

Day Six, he tries to hurt himself. Not the teeth. Not yet. But he takes off his belt and loops it around his wrist, tight. I think he’s trying to feel something. Maybe cut off circulation. Maybe just mark time. His lips are split. His gums are swollen.

He paces less now. Just sits, staring at the walls like they might eventually say something back.

I lower the lights until he’s living in a dusk that never changes. Then I pipe in faint static over the speakers, layered with a slow female voice counting backwards from one hundred in a language he doesn’t speak.

Soon he’ll see. It’s not pain that breaks you. It’s the waiting for it.

Day Seven, he pulls the first tooth.

I don’t watch. I’m listening in the hallway. The rag tears. Enamel scrapes against metal, a wet pop, and then the sound—the one no one talks about. The one that comes when pain hits the brain and the body stops knowing how to scream. He drops it into the tray.

I slide a bottle of warm water through the hatch. He drinks like a dog—face buried in the straw. When he looks at the camera, there’s no anger, just bewilderment. Like he still doesn’t understand how this happened. Like it doesn’t occur to him this is just the start.

I whisper again: “Three more.”

He doesn’t respond.

But he doesn’t say no, either.