Walls of White

Students 1036 and 1077(Nix and Ivy)are trapped inside a school called the Institution. It is an extremely rigid school with many rules and harsh punishments. Ivy and Nix know nothing other than the Institution, but Nix wants to break out and see what's beyond the sterile white walls of his home. Ivy, on the other hand, is much more cautious about the whole thing.

It took me a while after that to realize I’d never actually seen an ivy plant in person. At least, not that I could remember. The only place I’d ever been able to find one was on the big screen-windows they had in the Pre through Third-Year classrooms, which displayed various tranquil landscapes with lots of vibrant flowers and sunny skies. When I first arrived at the Institution I thought they were real–most four-year-olds do–and was obsessed with watching the slow, hypnotic waving of the savannah grasses ‘outside’. But once I finally got a good look at them–by sneaking under the teacher’s desk and standing right beneath them–I could see the individual pixels that built my fascination. And after that, they weren’t so interesting anymore.
We didn’t even get any screen-windows in Year 4. Apparently those were also too disruptive, just like Ivy and I’s hushed conversations.

Gritting my teeth against the inevitable pain, I pulled my arm back as hard as I could. The bracelet creaked slightly under the pressure, bending ever so slightly. The unbent edge of it cut into my skin, sending a sharp burst of fire up my arm. But I kept pulling.
After what felt like ages of nonstop tugging, I felt the bracelet give a little. Hope flared inside me and I yanked again, harder this time. The bracelet snapped in a firework of blood and silver, twisted edges springing away from my skin. Now I was able to peel it away, flinching a little as the tiny needles on the inside of it came, one by one, out of my flesh. When I was done I rolled over, staring at my accomplishment in amazement.
The bracelet was nothing more than a porcupine of bloody needles now; it could no longer send shocks of pain into my body. My wrist throbbed angrily, weeping red from the strip of pink where the bracelet had been.
One down, one to go, I thought, holding up my other arm.