Rankings
Z-0503 isn’t certain of the last time she’d seen so much blood.
Not just from her, either. She can’t see very well, on account of the tears that have involuntarily sprung to her eyes and blurred her vision, but she knows the blood slicking the floor beneath her doesn’t *just* belong to her. Z-0104 is less than a few feet away. When Z-0503 is able to blink away the tears from her eyes, she can see the waterfall of blood and viscera dripping off of his shoulder. The world feels strange, her surroundings unreal and a ringing deep in her ears. She’s aware of pain in her jaw, and that she can’t move it. She can’t speak, her powers are useless now, and with the difference in size that means Z-01 will be able to pummel her without issue. This will surely affect her ranking.
The last few minutes have been a blur, but later when Father sits her down and asks Z-05 what happened that led to such a brash turn of events she can recall a few details. She can remember why she’d turned to brazen, borderline animalistic levels of violence. Z-01 is larger than she is, twice her height and easily doubles her weight in muscle mass alone. His mutation aids him in physical fights, it’s allowed him to toss her around like an airbag since they began training *against* each other rather than alongside. The pink haired child isn’t stupid. Father has made several claims to the opposite really. He’s told her how she’s one of the most intelligent subjects they’ve had in the facility, how she could prove herself to be the best asset in their mission to free mutants from their faulty genetics. At the age of ten years old and eleven months, Z-05 is fluent in six languages and has a grasp on arithmetics typically taught to the eighth grade and above.
But she’s *small*. Father says that it’s due to her avian genetics, that with making her eyesight more adaptable and giving her the ability to perch high up with ease it stunted her growth. Z-05 stands at 4’2”, the shortest in her group, and weighs a mere 53 pounds. She’s small in comparison to her more physically average compatriots, let alone Z-01, who looks more like a 14 year old linebacker than a 11 year old boy that’s never heard of football. Her voice is big (too big sometimes, one of the guards always has a muzzle if she forgets herself) but his size is bigger. She’d fought with everything in her and Z-01 had still managed to pin her to the floor in less than a minute. What else was she supposed to do? He was cocky, he left a vital spot on his body open, and she *needed* to win.
So she did what was necessary. The taste of copper had been bitter on Z-05’s tongue, making her stomach twist in uncomfortable knots when she realized that along with the tangy substance there was a *chunk* of flesh between her teeth. It had gotten him to let her go, for a moment anyways. Then her head bounced off the floors. Z-05 could remember hearing a cracking noise before the white hot pain flooded her senses. They’d had to be separated by the on duty guards. Both of them had the electrical pulses embedded into their nervous systems turned on to disarm them, and then a guard had apprehended her. It took two to take Z-01 down, even with the addition of being tased through his nerves.
Father asked her, once the scientists had fixed her jaw and she regained most of her speaking ability, if she regretted what she’d done. Z-05 has been raised with the idea that the other children in her group should be akin to siblings, and she supposed they were. The dictionary definition made them siblings, they all shared Father as their primary guardian. They didn’t feel like her family. If taking down one or all of them was what became necessary to complete their mission then Z-05 would fight them all to death. She’d told Father as much.
The smile on his face with her answer told Z-A-0503 what their ranking results said three days later. Not only had she beaten out Z-B-0104 in their rankings, but she was the best in their group. The most useful, the most vital to the project, and from here on out she’d be charged with overseeing that the rest of her siblings got up to her level. Aside from Z-M-0323 of course, the twin brother of Z-D-0323, who was ranked last and therefore would be terminated in the coming months. It was a warning they’d all received prior to their assessments. It was the reason Z-A knew she needed to prove to Father and the facility scientists she was indispensable.
Z-B didn’t speak to her for two weeks. They’d never been close, from a young age Father has singled her out and stressed how important she would be to the mission one day if she could master her mutation. But going from neutrality to having one of her teammates blatantly ignore her was a difficult adjustment. Not that Z-A minded. If he couldn’t handle being second best then it was only proof she was more deserving of the title. She didn’t regret her actions. She had done the right thing, the thing they were all designed for. It had been worth it, because she was at the top now.
Wasn’t it?