The wet soap smacks the dirty stone floor.

  The sponge smacks it next.

  It wipes the floor in a circur motion.

  Round and round it goes.

  Round and round until someone bumps Adamus’s head.

  “Sorry, cleaning boy,” The plump man ughs as he adjusts the weight of the rge wooden pnk in his hands.

  The guard ughs along with the man as he pces the pnk down and finds his seat beside the other woodworkers.

  Out of all the pces in this wretched workers' prison, Adamus has come to hate the woodworking room the most.

  These idiotic commoners think they can ugh at me? Adamus squeezes the sponge tighter as he wipes the floor and thinks to himself, They make bird cages and furniture for wealthy elites, and yet it’s me they make fun of?

  The beast twitches within him.

  Adamus pushes it down.

  He’s learned that the beast writhes with his anger.

  He must remain calm. He can find another way out.

  There’s no reason to repeat his prior mistakes.

  Adamus drops the sponge in the pstic bucket full of soapy water and walks out the door to clean the next room, and the next, and the next, and the next.

  At least he won’t have to do the hall alone.

  “Your friend Leo said that we’re having wrapped Grogrung meat for dinner.”

  “Really?”

  “What are you surprised to be eating Grogrung? They just get meat from wherever they can, y’know.”

  “No,” Adamus pulls a stray hair off the floor, its slimy and drenched in unidentifiable gunk, “I’m surprised that it's wrapped.”

  Adamus plugs his nose as he rises to drop the hair into a getin disintegrator. The blob eagerly eats the hair and dissolves it inside its stomach. He isn’t sure what’s more disgusting, the hair or the getin.

  “The wraps are just some old wheat and flour mix, my brothers used to call it imposter bread.”

  Lot of impostors going around these days… Adamus clenches a fist at the reminder of the one impersonating him on Tethaseele.

  It’s their fault that he’s trapped here now. If even just one Republic guard actually believed that Adamus was really Adamus, he could have been halfway across the universe by now with a bde at Vanessa Soryu’s throat.

  He sighs before gncing back at Samend to ask, “Do they taste good at least?”

  “What?” Samend lifts his bck Martian eyes from the floor as his Human hair threatens to cover his gaze.

  “The wraps,” Adamus crifies.

  The halfbreed nods, “Yeah, they taste pretty good.”

  Adamus smiles. “Good,” he says, returning to his work.

  Samend is one of the few friends he has in this vile pce. The boy is just a year younger than him and cims to come from a rge Martian family on Tethagorn.

  Tethagron isn’t a wealthy pnet to begin with, but Samend’s family must have been ten times un-wealthier than the whole pnet put together from what he’s told Adamus.

  And he has told Adamus plenty.

  Samend nearly talked his ears off the day that they were both designated as cleaners.

  At first, Adamus wanted to punch a hole through the guard who had condemned him to such cruel menial work, but Samend’s ramblings quickly turned his brain to mush before he could have done anything so rash.

  Over these past few days, Adamus has learned more about Samend than he has about the prison that holds him.

  The thing that shocked him the most was learning that Samend had been arrested for the simple crime of being a halfbreed.

  Adamus already knew that inter-species retionships are outwed, but he didn’t know that those born from the results of it are cast out as well.

  Upon telling Samend of his dismay at this, Samend only ughed at Adamus and said, “Oh, Inter-species retions happen waaay more often than you think. But let’s just say that I am one of the rare few who actually made it into the proper hole. My good looks and smarts were enough to keep me around long after that.”

  Adamus ughed with Samend at that. The pair have become fast friends, if only for the fact that they share the same crude sense of humor.

  Samend reminds him of that fact as the pair return their buckets to the storage closet with two guards watching them.

  “Last time I had a wet thing in a closet with someone watching me, they were less uptight and far less clothed.”

  Adamus snorts, “They were probably happier to be watching you as well.”

  Samend sneers, “Not as happy as the wet one and I were.”

  One of the guards pelts Samend over the head with a pstic baton at that, and the other pulls Adamus from the closet.

  “Enough,” The one who hit Samend states, “Dinner’s in the hall, get a move on.”

  The pair of guards shove the pair of prisoners forward.

  Adamus trips and stumbles across the smooth floor he just scrubbed. Samend tries to help him to his feet, but the guard behind him smacks him again, and the one behind Adamus smacks him after he’s risen.

  The guards seem to beat and shove them forever until they reach the dining hall and fall into line with their comrades.

  Adamus and Samend then join the line of prisoners pressed against the wall to be counted before they eat. It is the Warden who does the counting.

  The Warden of workers is a stout, well-aged man with deep-set eyes that refuse to blink and arms that refuse to unfold from his broad chest.

  Adamus was well aware of the man’s horrid reputation before he even came here.

  Davon once told him that the Warden of workers was a former Republic general who had been courtmartialed after leading the failed battles of Tolka in the early days of the half-century war.

  It was those battles that firmly set back both the Division and the Republic war effort by decades due to the sheer loss of resources, equipment, funds, weaponry, and life.

  After those battles, Commander Deltan was stripped of his rank and his name, but his troops remained, along with his rage. That rage and those troops are now confined to this prison and its prisoners.

  “Two-hundred ninety-eight,” The Warden huffs at Adamus while seeming to peer into his soul. The beast stirs within him as the Warden’s cold eyes look him over.

  Why is he focusing on me? Adamus wonders just like he has wondered every night before dinner when the Warden looks at him.

  Before he can wonder any further, the Warden moves on and counts Samend as “Two-hundred ninety-nine,” and the man who has set out the dinner trays as “Three hundred.”

  The three hundredth man meets Adamus’s gaze with a smile and a nod. Adamus simply shrugs in response with a disgruntled look on his face. This is the third night that Leo has been number three hundred.

  After the Warden has marched back to his office, Leo is sure to remind Adamus about the significance of those numbers.

  “I told you.”

  Adamus would rather eat his wrapped Grogrung meat than have this conversation. “You did tell me, and just like st time, I’m not listening.”

  “Because you don’t want to or because you think I’m full of shit?”

  Adamus bites into his meal, “Both,” he says to Leo with a full mouth.

  “I believe you, Leo.” Samened chuckles, “Just like I believe that this idiot is the son of Emperor Aidencrumb.”

  “Atheneum,” Adamus corrects him.

  “That’s what I said.”

  Adamus rolls his eyes as Leo sits beside him. “I’m telling you, Adamus, three hundred men in here, three hundred more in the next building, three hundred women, three hundred Martians, three hundred Squideels, and probably more than that in the pce they hauled Jasper and Kiren off to. We just need everyone in this building on our side, then it will be easy enough to take the others and—”

  “And then what? Have a little war against the Warden? I want to get out of here, Leo. Nothing else.”

  “What about killing Vanessa Soryu?” Samend adds with a mouth full of food.

  Adamus smirks, “That would be nice too.”

  Leo ignores him and keeps pushing forward with his ridiculous idea of childish teamwork as a solution, “I already have everyone in the kitchens backing me, I have half the book binders and gss workers as well, you’re a cleaner who has access to every room and—”

  “They all hate me, Leo,” Adamus gulps down a gss of water. “They hate Samend too. We’re dirt to them. We scrub toilets and floors, and smell like it too. You’re the only other person I talk to besides Marqus, and he hasn’t exactly won any favors either. So you can take your little rebellion idea and shove it up your—”

  “If you really want to get out of here, why don’t you just do what you did back in the vilge then?” Leo disparagingly asks.

  The beast twists within Adamus. The thing is begging to be let out. He should let it out. It would be so easy to let it out.

  “You don’t want that…” Adamus mutters under his breath as he forces himself to take another bite of an animal that was born to be ridden into battle, not grilled and wrapped in a sorry excuse for bread.

  “What happened in your vilge?” Samend cluelessly asks.

  Adamus questions if he should tell Samend, but before he can make a decision, a rger man hits him with a dinner tray.

  “Stupid halfbreed, your friend is a murderer, that’s what he’s trying to say.”

  This is why you don’t mention things like that out in the open, Leo! Adamus wants to yell as he wipes the blood from his mouth.

  Leo rushes between the man and Adamus, “Don’t jump to conclusions, Nesson. Calm down. There’s no reason to be brash here.”

  Of course you know this dumbass’s name, Leo, Adamus thinks as he struggles to his feet.

  “I’m not jumping to conclusions. I overheard what the guards said when they picked you up. I know what you did, and I know who you said you are. I was behind you in the registration line, remember?”

  Adamus recalls the man’s face now. He had ughed when he said his name. Now he looks down on Adamus like he was nothing but another piece of trash.

  “Some killer can’t be the son of Emperor Gelmidas,” Nesson scoffs, “Even if you were what kind of son would you be for handing the Division over to Vanessa Soryu?”

  Leo begins to speak, “Nesson, you shouldn’t—”

  Adamus pushes Leo aside and punches Nesson in the jaw.

  The beast screams in his arm and sends the man flying into the air.

  Adamus won’t let the creature out. No.

  This is all going to be him.

  Nesson falls onto one of the tables. It colpses under his weight.

  Adamus hits Nesson again. “What kind of Son am I?”

  Nesson tries to stand.

  Adamus hits him again.

  “I’m one who failed his Father!”

  Nesson crawls.

  Adamus kicks him.

  “I’m one who failed his mentor!”

  Nesson tosses another tray at Adamus’s head. It strikes against his brow and draws blood. Adamus grips his head and makes his hand into a fist.

  “I’m one who killed his own Mother,” He whispers to himself as he sms his knuckles into Nesson’s teeth.

  The guards rush to pull Adamus away from Nesson. “I am a killer!” He shouts, “I’m a fucking killer, and you're a fucking prisoner and—”

  A guard swings a baton into his stomach.

  Adamus spits out blood.

  Another guard comes up behind him and drives a baton into his knees, striking Adamus down.

  The other guards come down on him with a flurry of blows. They beat on him relentlessly until someone is stupid enough to try to put a stop to the assault.

  Samend? Leo? Adamus thinks before seeing Marqus.

  “Are you alright, my lord?”

  Adamus coughs out blood and saliva, “I’m not your… fucking… lord…”

  He colpses onto the floor as the guards begin to beat Marqus.