The boy quietly sighed inside the cell and looked over the new rings. Both were silver and...honestly, foreign. They were thick. They were big. The weight was still noticeable but thankfully, the same as the old rings. That reddish crusty stuff had finally been cleaned out of his hands and feet, so that was good. What did those men call it again...? Gust? No... Uh, just? No, no. Oh! Rust! Yeah, the rust was off now.

He lifted one hand up just in time to have someone open the cell door.

On instinct, he scampered over to the far corner, running on the sides of his feet—the rings protruding from his feet made it impossible to walk like they could. But at least he could move around. At least he was able to get to the corner.

The man calmly walked to the center of the room. He held one arm behind him. He was dressed entirely in white and smelled of fabric softener.

The boy dropped to the floor and curled into a protective ball at the smell—the one he'd come to recognize as dangerous.

"Stariĝu. Nun," the man commanded.

The boy merely looked up at him, barely peeking through his elbow.

"Nun!" the man barked. "Mi diris staras nun!"

The boy hesitated.

"Estas tio!" the man shouted.

He brought from behind his back a small bronze bell and shook it. The ringing sound resounded in the boy's ears and his eyes grew wide. He'd come to expect what this particular sound brought—the all too familiar ringing of a bell only symbolized one thing.

From a hook just outside the cage on the concrete wall, the man grabbed a black whip. From a hook right beside it, he grabbed two white ropes—most things in this facility were white, the few colored things being a whip and the gray concrete that surrounded him.

"Mi tuj donos al vi iom da akvo kaj nutraĵo sed..." the man muttered under his breath.

The boy shook violently as his left hand was yanked forward. The rope was tied tightly around the ring. The process was repeated with his right hand. Finally the man tied the other ends of the two ropes around his wrist while the other hand raised the whip high into the air.

"Vi povas esti primitiva, vi povas funkcii en instinkto...sed via obeo trejnado ŝajnas esti slacking," the man mumbled, probably more to himself than anything. "Mi akuzas min por ĉi tiu, mi vere faros. Mi jam estis iom malfacila por vi. Ripozo certigis ĉi ne okazos denove, kaj estu certaj mi certiĝu pri tio."

The man brought the whip down with a resounding CRACK, made all the more stern when its slim end made contact with the boy. Not so much as a squeak was heard on the boy's end. Normally it would be extremely painful. Well it was extremely painful—agonizing, in fact. But he couldn't speak. The upside he always loved to look at, the one that gave him a thread to hang on to, was that nothing lasted forever. And at least they left him alone—it could be worse. They didn't leave him alone for long, but it was the fact that they did sometimes that gave him a sliver of comfort. Hope? No. He didn't even know what hope was. This was life he had since...well... This was the life he'd led since as long as—and probably before—he could remember. But at least there was a little comfort in there and that was all he needed.

He pulled back on the rope in futile attempts to run, but it was literally just no use whatsoever. The rings had been pierced straight through the centers of his palms and came around over his middle and index fingers. The ones on his feet were the same, except the rings were pierced a little further ways forward, more near his toes since they wouldn't fit properly if pierced straight through the middle.

The skin on his hands stretched when the man pulled back before striking another lash in. He felt strain on the bones and decided to go against all the instincts they said he was supposed to run on. They said he was primal, instinctive like an animal. Yet they taught him the logic to overcome that instinct—that one thing that he was supposed to follow; and they were teaching him to override it. At the same time, they baffled themselves as to why exactly he wouldn't always try to run when he felt threatened. They were tearing him two ways, and no matter what he did, it seemed like he just couldn't get it right. He tried to please them to avoid these things. But he was obedient as he could be—having been trained to both override what he was supposed to do, and to be punished for doing so. But that was what they wanted him to do. They wanted him to overcome instinct, but then they backpedaled and frowned on it; which is where the punishment came in.

He felt the ropes go slack and dropped his hands. It could be worse... At least they didn't tie his feet. At least they only did this—more often than not it was worse.

The man returned the whip and ropes the their respective hooks and reached around him to grab a bowl of food and another bowl of water—the rings in his hands made it impossible to hold things using his palms, so he'd come to rely more on his face, eating like the animal they wanted...or didn't want, maybe?...him to be. Either way, his hands had just been stretched out and he didn't really feel like using them. That said, he merely waited in his safe little corner until the man left.

"Eksperimento 428? Pli kiel naŭza infanino..." The man scowled as he walked through the door at the end of the hallway.

A/N

The language is Esperanto and for now you really don't need to know what it means.

Review if you like. :P Seriously, please PLEASE review. It adds wood to my fire!