‘’Well, a young man like you shouldn’t have so much difficulty sleeping,’’ Jude says without looking up from his microscope. His ‘’young man’’ jab is actually a joke. He is only a few years older than me but you wouldn’t be able to tell if the two of us were standing next to each other.

After spending three months in the neonatal ward of the Research Building, I was sent to live in in the Compound orphanage. Technically, I could have been adopted but, being as I was a Labby, no self-respecting family would want the onus of caring for me. So, my care was transferred in to the hands of Ms. Fisher. Oddly enough, in the thirteen years I lived with her, I never knew her first name. I remember her being a comp...

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