I couldn't sleep.
My body was tired—exhausted, really—but my mind kept replaying the same few seconds of footage over and over. The creature—no, the thing, the subject we'd tagged as number 047—had obeyed a command. Not just reacted to pain, but actually obeyed. Like it had understood.
I sat up in bed, pressing my fingers into my temples. The facility was quiet at this hour, the kind of suffocating silence that made your thoughts too loud. I had tried to dismiss the moment earlier, tried to convince myself it was coincidence, or just well-timed conditioning. But it wasn't. I knew it now.
The way it had moved—slight, subtle, but telling. Like it had listened. Like it had recognized the command and decided to comply.
That wasn't animal behavior. That was cognition.
I shoved the blankets aside and got up, heart pounding. If I was right, it changed everything.
Fifteen minutes later, I was in the handlers' wing, pounding on the break room door. Sleepy groans and irritated muttering followed, but I didn't care.
"We're having a meeting," I said, voice firm. "Now."
In the old mess hall turned planning room, I didn't waste time. "Creature number 047 understood the command to 'sit,'" I said, straight to the point.
"So?" Graves muttered. "They all do eventually."
"No," I snapped. "This wasn't conditioning. This was recognition. It listened. It understood."
There were a few raised eyebrows, some scoffs. I pushed forward.
"We've been using collars and prods. Beating them into compliance. But what if they're not just mindless? What if some of them can think? If that's true, we're not training them—we're torturing them. And if they remember that, if they ever turn on us—"
A low silence settled.
I continued, "I'm not saying we abandon protocols. But we try something else. With just one. We use positive reinforcement. Empathy. We reward peace."
Mael raised an eyebrow. "And what, pet it when it behaves?"
"I'm saying we treat it like it can understand. Because it might."
I didn't wait for them to agree.
Later, I stood at the edge of 047's cell. No shock collar remote. No prod. Just a piece of food.
I crouched slowly. "Sit," I said.
It growled—but its head tilted. Just a little.
And then it sat.
My throat tightened. I placed the food just inside, then stepped back.
"Good," I whispered.
It didn't eat right away. Just watched me with a look I didn't know how to read.
But I had time to learn.