Chapter 1: Lilia

A rich voice spoke to her being from the darkness cloying about her, "I see nothing that cannot be cured with a little spark of life." With those words ringing in her ears—reaching through her to something more profound than her soul—she left her body on Earth. She could not crush the rising hope that she would find a purpose in her new life.

* * * * *

She didn't so much crawl as was pushed onto the bank by the weight of the river. Using her one good hand, she pulled herself out. Her body shook from blood loss and the onset of hypothermia. Without the water constantly washing away the blood, the clay under her began to turn bright red.

Clay, she noted, how... fitting.

She tried to get a handful of it but moved her bad arm by mistake. The fog in her mind kept her from feeling the pain of it. How curious it was. She wasn't thinking straight and knew but didn't care. What was once smooth and unblemished skin was now twisted into a poor facsimile of an arm. The flesh itself looked like a rag pulled taut over misshapen bone and tendon. Where the skin was rent, blood oozed out. Even the blood seemed wrong, looking more akin to a sap than a fluid.

Her arm fell and she lost the energy to keep her eyes open. Her vision faded, but she rejected that dark place. She squeezed her fingers closed over the clay. Once again, she tried to will the darkness away. This time she pressed the feelings inside her toward her uninjured hand. The faint memory of her mother teaching her to force pain to a pinprick ran through her mind. She smiled with colorless lips.

When blood loss finally pulled her under, her eyes closed, and a faint smile was on her lips. Through her fingers, one could make out a small red crystal glimmering in the predawn light. The gem fell from the unconscious girl's hand. It hit the mud and continued through it as though sinking through honey.

As the sun rose, the blood seemed to disappear into the mud. If one was careful and watched closely, you might see that the blood seemed to be sinking toward where the crystal sank into the earth.

Just as the sun reached its zenith, a hand made of clay pulled itself from the ground. It seemed confused for a minute as it laid there next to the injured young woman. After a time, it twitched, and it crawled toward its master.

On the back of the palm, a familiar little crystal reflected the light of the sun onto Lilia's face. Red light danced over her face as it stood guard. It didn't think per se but knew its job was to protect its master. Just like it knew that while it was small now, it would grow larger.

It was just a matter of time.

* * * * *

Hospitals smelled sterile. Having lived in them for years, Lilia associated the smell with her friends' deaths. Bedridden like her, they never lasted long. The ones who'd preceded her rarely wanted to speak. Now, Lilia had a room to herself to save the nurses a headache later on.

She may not be able to see but imagined the fluorescent lights she could hear buzzing above. She listened to the nurses' drama and the tears of the families losing their sons and daughters.

Her life revolved around using the beeps of the machines plugged into her—each beep a breath of wasted space and money to keep her alive.

A man walked in, bringing the smell of sawdust. The scent so contrasted with her surroundings that she could almost feel him in the room. He stood at the foot of her bed. He shuffled a few papers before clearing his throat.

"Miss Hammond, my name is Doctor Zurine, and I am here on behalf of Gene Engineering Corporation. May I have a minute to discuss the possibilities in your future?"

"Doctor," Lilia answered curtly, surprised at the venom in her tone. Proud of it too. Just put him on the back foot so he'll leave me alone. Her lawyer's advice worked well for the last year. Plenty of people visited her only to try and work deals to secure her silence. So far, money, careers, and even threats were offered, and she'd ignored them all. What use are they in my situation?

Her case was not exactly novel. A simple accident where a Gene Corporation board member's son clipped her car. She survived the fender-bender nearly untouched. She was scared at the time and had her foot stomped on the brake when she saw the oncoming traffic jerk into her lane.

The man broke her window and beat her unconscious. Then her weight shifted, and the car accelerated off the road into a ditch. Airbags don't deploy a second time. The assailant's blood all over her after cutting himself on the glass was not enough to convict him. Only her fear for her life kept her from agreeing to testify against him.

"What do you want?" she asked. "If the nurse let you in, then she better have gotten a good tip this time."

"Ah. Well, that can be arranged. You see, I am not supposed to be here," the doctor said.

"I can't actually," Lilia spat without thinking. "To see, I'd have to have eyes, and mine aren't exactly working these days. You might have noticed if you read that chart, you keep flipping through. So what do you want? I doubt you can rebuild eyes, and there's nothing you can say that others haven't offered."

She heard the doctor shuffle uncomfortably. He cleared his throat once. Then twice. She could almost imagine his mouth opening and closing a few times and smiled. Sure, she'd been less than civil with the last few people Gene Corporation sent, but she hadn't even given him a chance.

The chair next to her creaked as he sat next to her. In a whisper almost too low to hear, over the machines around her, he spoke, "What if you could? What if you could see? Walk? Run even and live however you wanted."

Her heart clenched, and as expected, her heart monitor betrayed her. But the doctor misconstrued the emotion as joy. Anger swelled in her and grew with the man's words.

"Yes! I can see that the thought makes your heart race! We have a wonderful opportunity to gift you a new body in a place much different than this. I have permission from the board and spoke with the director of project Alma V.E." He said excitedly, "It is quite fortuitous that you popped up on our radar. However, I wish we met under more favorable circumstances."

"Shut up." Lilia was not stupid. She heard similar speeches, and being sent into some retirement home was not how she wanted to be "freed" from her body's prison. The words hissed out of her, but the doctor didn't seem to hear. He continued, oblivious to the rising tempo of her heartbeat. An automated process that issued sedatives hissed as it administered a dose. She felt it immediately. The anger left her, and she tried to hold on to the feeling. To hold on to consciousness. Fear took its place.

"Right, we will take you to a new laboratory where we will run tests to make sure you are suited for the project. I've already looked over your charts and profile, and I doubt I would be here if you would not fit perfectly within our organization. I will have the paperwork sent over, and you will be moved upon approval. Perhaps even today. You'll absolutely love Alma. I can't imagine the pain you must be in now."

"With the help of Alma, you will be free again." She heard him stand and felt him lean over her. "The world isn't safe by any means, but I know at least that it is better than the darkness that must be surrounding you now. Listen, Miss Hammond," he said, taking her hand.

Lilia wanted to scream as she felt him press her fingers to a cold surface. A fingerprint scanner? She tried to call out to the nurses just outside the room, but the tranquilizer was pulling her down fast. She managed a whisper, "No. Wait."

"Do you want to live again?" the man asked right beside her. This time, none of his false cheer filled his voice. If she could have seen it, Lilia would know this man was no doctor. That the man's eyes never changed as he watched her unmoving body. He was searching for something in her. Trying to find something his information didn't include. "Despite all of these injuries, you can live again. I'll ask again, do you want to live?"

But all Lilia knew was a tunnel she was falling through.

". . . I want to live," she whispered, her last resistance to the darkness.

She couldn't hold on and slipped from the hospital room. Pulled down and away from her body. She fought to grasp at anything she could use to control her descent. Weeks and years passed before she stopped suddenly.

A rich voice spoke into the darkness around her, "I see nothing that cannot be cured with a bit of Life. Drink deeply of it and become strong on your own strength." Those words rang in her ears and soul. She left her body on Earth and pushed into new life.

The man leaned back and closed his tablet. The voice recording and fingerprints were stored successfully. He sighed as he set her hand back down gently. This part of the job was too easy. A nurse stood at the door waiting expectantly, "Where's my money?" she asked, holding out an open hand as if he would just hand her cash then and there.

"You will get it, Mrs. Kimberly Drescal. I'll have my assistant send it over once we have your witness signature," he said, nodding to the man typing furiously on his own tablet.

A simple plot, indeed. The agent still didn't know why the actual Doctor Zurine asked that this girl be a test subject or a "patient" for the project. He doubted the doctor cared so much about a bit of wisp stuck in a bed. No, Zurine had no motive for Lilia Hammond; it was more likely the board was using him to silence her. And she had no family worth mentioning to pursue her disappearance.

The agent left the hospital after his assistant secured transportation and an escort. Within the day, Lilia was on her way to the laboratories housing the Alma V.E. project.

Within the year, Lilia's corpse was discretely buried in a graveyard with too many fresh graves.

Doctor Zurine had tears in his eyes as the body was removed from the tubes housing his patients. But they weren't tears of sadness. No, the tears fell into deep creases of the man's smile—his second success.