The young woman lying on the cot in her cell listened to the fearful sobs of her fellow inmates. The walls were sound proof, but that did nothing to keep their anguish from reverberated within her mind. Closing her eyes she allowed her mind to reflexively close and block it out. She sighed in despair, knowing it was only a matter of time before she would no longer be able to do just that; before the witch doctors would cut into her brain, removing the ability to isolate herself. She knew because she had seen it happen half a dozen times already.

The doctors were surprisingly naïve, they actually believed the ‘students’ didn’t know. They thought that by keeping them separated there was no way for them to tell what happed to those they took away. They could not have been more wrong though; not only did she know, they all knew. They could feel the violations they performed on each others minds through the sound proof walls; they could feel the terror and the pain; and worst of all, could even feel the death. If fact, it was only through their ability to communicate through the tenuous mental connection that any of the students managed to keep anything resembling a grasp on sanity. They consoled one another, counseled each other, they even shared stories and the occasional joke amongst themselves. That was not what had happened tonight though. Tonight they had had to say good bye to one of their own. A boy named Lewis had been taken to that operating room that they all knew tool well. It was the place where they violated minds; raping not his body, but his sanity. And as they did not sedate their patient during this procedure, they never did, they had all felt the shattering of his mind, and his subsequent descent into madness.

He had sent one last thought to them all before they had finally ripped away the vestiges of his own tenuous grasp of control over his own mind. “Goodbye.”

Focusing her self-control, the young woman opened her mind again, reaching out, seeking her friends. After a