White. The blinding lights of the examination room sear into the backs of my light grey eyes. White. The doctors dressed in pearly white scrubs surround my upper torso with needles and instruments I can only guess the purpose of. White. The perfect shade of unnatural luminescence that colors the walls. White. Are the tips of my furred toes. Red. Is the blood running in all directions through tiny tubes placed everywhere in sight. Black. Is what comes. It is what always comes.

In a haze of grogginess I open my eyes. Not that it really makes a difference: the room has no light of any kind. Soreness radiates through my body with each throb of my weakening heart. And the thought of all of the needles brings a phantom pricking sensation to my spine. Like it always does. Everyday. For... I don't know how long anymore. My sense of time has collapsed upon itself. I don't even know how old I have become.

With this unmeasured amount of time, the darkness and I have become friends. It is the only comfort I have remaining, the only constant. It watches me as I whimper, it engulfs me as I sleep. Only when it is gone do I feel pain. In it I am immune. I long for it as the doctors drag me from my cell in to the white tiled laminate hall. To the operating room. To hell. 

I lust for my cell. Every second we are separated it is my only thought. The padded walls and floor is all I desire now. The perfect prison. That's what I've come to believe anyways. Escape is no longer really a thought. I reflect on the thought like an adult, shrugging off the naivety of their childish aspirations. That is no longer an option or possibility.   

The only part of me that is truly left is the little nagging question that tugs at the back of my mind: why me? Of all the furs in the world to be chosen... abducted, why me. I was a just a normal pup before this: a little 6 year old pup who went about his life without a care in the world. I was a good fur too, listened to my parents, did my chores, went to school and played nice with all the other furs. Why did whoever in charge of this godforsaken place have to pick me to be taken right out of the school bus? 

At first they told me I was special. That I was some sort of anomaly of the system. With the mind of a year old I believed them. They kept telling me “you're the one,” convincing my naive little self that I belonged where I was. That I deserved this treatment. To make a better world. I was designated by these lunatics as the sole savior of the Four Earths.  I wanted to be like all the superheroes I read about in the near infinite books and comics my parents provided for me.

Slumping down the the padded floor I think about my parents for the first time in ages. I want to know their faces but all my memories can muster is a pair of generic canine forms standing together in what I think of when I think love. Holding paws in a warm embrace. Standing close, cheek to cheek. Ears pricked as they gaze into each others eyes with the utmost attention. 

As my eyes begin to soften and water collects at their edges, the familiar clatter of the tumblers of the door lock fills my acute ears. The doors creaks with a loud metallic grind filling the previously pitch black room with a disorienting amount of light. The tears filling the creases of my eyes turn into a steady stream, dampening my cheeks with their saline solution, “No, NO!” I moan, unfamiliar with the sound of my own voice. I kick and thrash about like a toddler screaming with tearful passion.

“Hush now child,” whispers the blue-masked doctor restraining my left arm, his voice anything but comforting, “This one won't hurt a bit.”

“Get your paws off me!” I scream baring my teeth at the fibbing doctor.

“Now, now child, let's not show those teeth,” he says with a more forced tone, urging me to obey with a tightening of his grip, “We aren't feral here ar-”

“Shut- Ahhh!” I growl and bark, baring my teeth even more forcefully for emphasis as a needle stabs into my left shoulder.

“I did say hush,” the doctor smirks through his mask as my vision blurs.

“Let... me... gooo...” I mumble as the sedative takes hold and my last tear drips off my cheek down to the perfectly white floor.

Blurry flashes of the operating room appear as I beginning to regain consciousness. The tubes, the doctors, they're all still there, working away frantically, wielding shiny objects I can't quite make out. They appear nervous, occasionally dropping tools with shaky paws, unlike the perfection that I was used to seeing. The mumbling of hushed voices echos through the grogginess of the sedative. Red alert, and escape are the only coherent words I'm able to extract. Unable to truly grasp the meaning of those words because of my drugged state, I passed out again, hearing the crashing of the metallic table next to me and a flurry of raised voices and growls as my eyes fluttered shut once again. 

“It's alright pup,” says a garbled voice, sounding as if it is miles away, “Let's get you outta here.”