It was 4901's longest and most coherent speech. Maybe I can get somewhere with him, Marquis thought. I can find out something.
But 4901 wouldn't say any more. Marquis kept on trying. No one, he knew, would ever realize what that meant—to keep on trying to die when no one would let you, when you kept dying, and then kept waking up again, and you weren't dead. No one could ever understand the pain that went between the dying and the living. And even Marquis couldn't remember it afterward. He only knew how painful it had been. And knowing that made each attempt a little harder for Marquis.
He tried the poison again. There was the big stamping machine that had crushed him beyond any semblance of a human being, but he had awakened, alive again, whole again. There was the time he grabbed the power cable and felt himself, in one blinding flash, conquer life in a burst of flame. He slashed his wrists at the beginning of a number of sleep periods.
When he awakened, he was whole again. There wasn't even a scar.
He suffered the pain of resisting the eating bells until he was so weak he couldn't respond, and he knew that he died that time too—from pure starvation.
But I can't stay dead!
"... You'll have to give in!"
He didn't know when it was. He had no idea now how long he had been here. But a guard appeared, a cold-faced man who guided Marquis back to the office where the fat, pink-faced little Manager waited for him behind the shelf suspended by silver wires from the ceiling.
The Manager said. "You are the most remarkable prisoner we've ever had here. There probably will not be another like you here again."