“Thank you.” Abner folded his hands in his lap, staring down at the familiar scars lining the backs of them. On a normal night Dr. Holland would be making her rounds right about now, checking in on Subject 51 and his siblings. There was no lights out in the dimly lit corridors of the lab, but that was his cue to settle down and turn his brain off until he was needed again.

“Was just wondering,” he continued after a moment of thought. “Something you said earlier, when I told you how I go away. You mentioned...” He’d been repeating the words in his head to remember them for later, but now he was drawing a blank. “A...feud state? Something like that, sir.” It didn’t sound quite right, but hopefully Anderson would get the point. “I’ve never heard of that before. They don’t have a name for what I do. Not that they told me, anyway.”