“Where am I?”

Silence.

Lilac turned around, watching as Maria smiled widely.

“I think, for now, you should worry about other things.” She glanced at her long, pointy fingernails. “Are you ready for the Transformation Room?”

Lilac blinked. She opened and closed her mouth before nodding. “I’m ready.”

Maria clapped her hands. “Wonderful! If you will follow me through this door.”

The girl frowned as the woman pointed towards a sleek metal door that was certainly not there a moment ago. She looked behind her, realising that the door she used to enter the room was not there. She shivered.

“Are you coming or not?”

Lilac turned her attention back to the red-headed woman and nodded. “I’m ready.”

Maria smiled and pushed open the door.

The girl followed after the woman like a lost animal. She took one last quick glance at the room behind her before turning back. The impossibly white corridor seemed to close in on her as her mind whirled with questions. First, Chickadee briefly disappeared, then the sun, and then the doors? How was that even possible? What was going on?

She paused as the walls seemed to pulse. A strange humming sound filled her head. The girl clenched her fists, squinting her eyes.

The hazy figure of Maria continued to grow smaller, and Lilac forced herself to continue walking.

A second later, something in her mind seemed to snap. Suddenly, her vision righted itself and once again, she was in the middle of a featureless corridor. Her eyes cleared and started as Maria gave her a blank stare.

“Are you alright? You look quite pale.”

Lilac nodded. “I’m alright.”

“Anyways, as I was saying, the Transformation Process will be relatively simple. You will be taken apart and then modified before being put together again. There will be two injections, but that’s for surface-level gene modifications. One’s for your pre-existing cells, and the other is to ensure the modifications stay with you. Do you understand?”

Lilac scrunched her brows. From what little she understood, the process sounded unpleasant. The idea of being taken apart and then changed felt wrong on a bone-deep level. The vague mental images of cut-up flesh gave her a prickling unease. She was even questioning why she agreed in the first place.

Her thoughts circled back to Chickadee suspended in a tube, reminding her of what was at stake. The girl sighed and made a non-committal sound.

Maria clapped her hands once more. The wall on the left side rippled, revealing another sleek door. Lilac frowned and shook her head.

Nothing in this place made any sense.

“Now, just go through this door. The room itself will respond to your presence. It will be a bit dark, and there will be some weird sounds but don’t worry about them. The process won’t take too long. I’ll wait for you on the other side, alright?”

Lilac nodded and watched as Maria walked away. She turned to the featureless metal door and pushed. It swung inwards without a hint of resistance, making the girl stumble into inky oily darkness.

There was a light click as the door closed, leaving her in the abyss.

Lilac stumbled, unable to find her balance. There was a long eerie silence before a small squeak echoed through the room. Ice-cold water sprayed at her from multiple directions. Pellets of water pricked at her skin, leaving stinging pain in its wake. The water suddenly stopped, and the girl was left to shiver in the dark.

A second later, a whirring sound caught her attention. Something seemed to pop, and a thin mechanical whine filled the room. A flash of light briefly lit up the room, revealing a metal spider of sharp pointy tools at the end of each leg.

That’s when the pain started. Something jabbed into her left shoulder, rendering the girl’s body frozen. Lilac vaguely felt herself crumpling to the floor. Cold metallic ropes snaked over her arms and legs with a hiss.

More pain appeared, this time slowly moving up her legs. Her mind seemed to implode as agony overloaded her senses. Then, her consciousness flickered for a second before succumbing to the darkness.

…

The girl sat on a chair in the middle of a featureless white room. The walls on one side rippled, and two people, a man and a woman, walked in. They watched nervously, waiting for the wall to still.

“Is this her?”

The man nodded. “Yes. Little Mary_01, the Originator.” He crouched down and stared at the small child with dark grey eyes. “Do you want to leave this place?”

Mary blinked. She looked around, unsure if this was another test designed by the Operators. She looked at the woman, watching as she smiled and nodded.

“He’s safe.”

The girl looked down. Her hands shook. A thin, weak voice trailed from her dry throat, “Please help me.”

The man smiled sadly. He stood up and pulled out a remote and pressed a button. With a hiss, the ropey, metallic restraints that held her wrists to the arms of the chair loosened.

Mary blinked and lifted her arms. She slowly stood up and turned around. Her legs gave out.

The man rushed forwards and cradled the girl in her arms.

“Thank you, Dr Mike.”

The man shook his head. “Call me Dad.” He turned his head to the woman. “And call her Mum.” He smiled. “Your name shall be Lilac, Lilac Mellows.”

Lilac closed her eyes. Her chest felt strangely warm.

…

Lilac opened her eyes with a gasp. She turned around, watching blankly as various faces stared back at her. Struggling through the fog lingering within her mind, the girl attempted to turn to the side, failing.

Panic rose up from her chest. “Wh-Where am I?”

The faces turned to each other in confusion. A voice called out.

“What’s the problem?”

“She’s awake, Sir. She’s registering our presence when she should be in the virtual world.”

There was an annoyed sigh. “The process must have short-circuited her neural interface. Sedate her and fix the problem.”

There was another jab in the arm, and darkness reclaimed her vision.

…

“Mary_01, are you listening to me?”

Mary started at the mechanical voice reverberating through the featureless room. She nodded.

“Good. All you have to do is stay in the chair. Do not try to stand up, or you’ll be restrained.” There was a pause.

“Testing variant 2.87, nanomachinery based on viral templates.”

The room dimmed, and a strange hissing sound filled the room. Then, slowly, the air turned purple. At first, nothing happened. Then, the sensation of burning filled her nose and lungs.

The girl gasped and attempted to stand. Her screams burned into nothingness as she struggled against the restraints. Tears pooled at the corners of her eyes.

As suddenly as the pain began, it stopped.

Mary coughed, watching drops of red spittle slowly fall on her white dress.

“How are you feeling, Mary_01?”

The girl gasped and heaved. A thin voice scraped across her ragged throat. “Hurts.”

“But it’s getting better, is it not?”

Mary hiccupped. She felt her nose, throat, and lungs tingle like pins and needles. Nevertheless, she nodded.

“It’s a success, then. Thank you for your hard work.”

The room plunged into darkness, and Mary sat in the chair with tears dripping down her face.

…

Lilac opened her eyes. She gasped as she found herself in a bed with a window at its side. Memories flickered at the edge of her mind, and her lungs seemed to throb at the memory of burning suffocation.

The girl yelped as the wooden door creaked open. The enthusiastic face of Maria greeted her.

Maria bounced from side to side. “The operation was a success! I’ll leave you to rest for a bit.”

The woman skipped out of the room, slamming the door shut.

Lilac breathed out a shaky sigh. She closed her eyes as her thoughts returned to the fragmented memories of pain and despair.

As far as she could remember, she was an average child belonging to a middle-class family. Only when things went wrong did she find herself and her family demoted to Trash status. So, when did all those events happen, and what did those memories mean?