The room was a void of blinding white, a sterile cube where time was measured only by the arrival of the Tray. There were ten of us. We didn't have names, only numbers etched into the skin of our wrists. I was Seven. For the first month, we were a colony of ghosts, huddling together for warmth, whispering about the world outside that we could no longer remember. We shared the meager portions of gray paste, believing that our solidarity was our only shield against the Voice.

The Voice came through the speakers every morning, cold and precise. "The environment is evolving," it would say. "Efficiency is the only currency of survival."

The shift occurred when the Tray arrived with only nine portions. The Voice announced that the "most efficient" among us would be rewarded with a double ration. We looked at each other, and for the first time, the warmth of the huddle felt like a trap. The hunger was a quiet thing at first, but it grew into a precise, calculating hunger. We stopped talking about the outside and started talking about the others.

I remember the first time I lied. I told Number Four that the Voice had promised extra food to anyone who could provide "data" on their peers. I didn't do it because I was hungry—though I was—I did it because I wanted to see if the system worked. I wanted to see if the Voice was right. When Number Four was dragged out of the room screaming, and my tray arrived with a piece of real fruit, I felt a surge of power that was more intoxicating than the sugar.

The room became a chessboard. We stopped sleeping in groups; we slept with our backs to the walls, watching the others with predatory intensity. We began to orchestrate "accidents." A trip in the dark, a whispered lie to the Voice, a strategic theft of a water cup. We were no longer children; we were biological algorithms optimizing for a single variable: survival.

When I was the last one left, the door finally opened. I stepped out into a hallway of the same blinding white, expecting a paradise. Instead, I found a mirror. I looked at my reflection and didn't recognize the creature staring back—the hollow eyes, the sharpened teeth, the absolute void where my heart had been. The Voice spoke one last time. "Experiment complete. Subject Seven has achieved maximum efficiency." I realized then that the prize was not freedom, but the realization that I had become the very thing that had imprisoned me.

*** Objective Tensor Code: [OTMES_v2: M1=9.0, M7=9.0, N1=0.8, K1=0.6, TI=88.0, theta=210°]