From the beginning of the story we are shown a very clear power imbalance between Abnesti and the prisoners. He is in charge of pretty much everything they do. But it isn’t until a very crucial moment in the text that we realize Abnesti is on the lower end of a power imbalance too. When talking to Jeff about him not wanting either girl to receive Darkenfloxx, Abnesti says those results were., “…good enough for me, but apparently not good enough for the Protocol Committee.” Abnesti then changes the experiment, “per the Protocol Committee,” to see how Jeff reacts to each girl under the influence of the Darkenfloxx. This is interesting because we can actually see how this power imbalance is weighing down on Abnesti. When Jeff is incompliant to the new rules of the Protocol Committee Abnesti acts differently than he has the whole story. He shares information about Heather’s past which he “legally can’t,” he tries to bribe Jeff to comply with more time to talk to his mom, and later in the story he curses, and gets the idea to drug Jeff so he will do whatever he wants. All of these actions stem from Abnesti wanting to please the Protocol Committee.