A spark of awareness, nameless and primordial, moved over the dark waters of death toward the merest light. It quested with unknowing tendrils toward a fathomless, shapeless portal that refused definition until within this accretion of thoughts’ grip. It took the form of a mighty yew, its branches hanging heavy with gold rings and motes of light. Above them all, crowning the apex of its canopy, sat a serpent whose length ensconced the length and breadth of the tree. The serpent looked to this meagre consciousness and slithered forth, coils whispering of untold delights and unfathomable terrors as its head came level with where the mind felt itself to be.

An understanding passed between creature and consciousness, between temptation and sin as its jaws parted and tongue slid free of its maw. The red fleshy appendage held an apple, though not one recognizable to the average person. Wrought of silicon and steam, of copper wiring and circuit board, the artificial apple offered escape from the purgatory that had enshrouded this strange dreamscape. The mind within this mental prison balked, knowing well that the outside world was full of pain. Across the mindscape, memories of soldiering and flight flashed like lightning over the cold indifferent waters below them.

The snake slowly began to recede, a cold dampness surrounding something below the mind. Its thoughts began to constrict, pain unfelt in eons or seconds unfolding once more. A body lay somewhere, screaming its sensation and fear to a deaf mind. Was there nothing for her, then? Should she languish in this dreadful dead space and join so many others who likely lay in the troubled waters below? The dark, crushing depths that had claimed all creatures that drew breath offered no comfort. Instead, it offered only certainty. That if the jaws were to close about her, there would be no reprieve and no reneging.

A pale, ghostly hand lashed out toward the serpent, desperately fighting against the waters which now became like molasses. Their bitter, cold touch began to spread all along her body, peril coming ponderously close to the seat of what little remained to her.

Her fingers brushed the fruit offered to her. Suddenly, her mind reverberated with a deep, masculine voice screaming at her. His words were faint, indistinct even as their force fell as the shards of her mind upon her. His constant beratement, insistent cruelty in the name of kindness. Urges to reject this sinful temptation, to accept the hand she’d been dealt. The water, impatient to claim its prize, grew long tendrils that wrapped about her feminine yet strong form. She felt memories of her flesh and all its sensations coming to her as a bulwark against his admonishments. She remembered him now as her father, long gone and his disapproval with him. Even as this sin was offered and she instructed to reject it, there was but one conclusion; this sin was her salvation.

Her hand grew translucent as it wrapped about the apple, bones as brittle as sugar crystals growing darker and stronger with black metal. As this corruption continued, suffusing her body and mind both, she felt her consciousness consumed by unknowing sleep. Perhaps she’d been too late, mithered too long and lost herself to the water. In the final, ephemeral moments of her consciousness she noted with grim satisfaction that neither heaven nor hell had thrown wide their gates to welcome her. Perhaps there was judgement yet to come.

~*~

When she woke next, her body felt cold, and her eyes were struck by blindness. The dark water surrounded her, enfolded her and offered little in the way of comfort. The serpent was not there to guide her, nor offer her council. But she persisted, she thought as she felt sudden cold gusts of insistent air. She felt her way forward, though her body refused alacrity. It felt like sleep paralysis, demanding she remain and rest. Her stubbornness, so reviled by her mother and father, brought her will to bear against the unfeeling blackness of the void around her.

She first felt it as something miniscule. The twitch of a finger, a shudder of the neck. It was handhold enough to struggle against the uncaring mountain before her. And with that hope, ever clung to, she began her climb to a peak she didn’t know. But climb it she did, sensation beginning to return in fits and bursts from tingling fingers to trembling hands. Her eyes slowly began to grant her sight once more, visualizing the blustery, blizzard-hewn path she had to walk. With lipless mouth and toeless step, she screamed her way toward the distant summit. She had sinned too far, given too much to stop. Her flesh could be scourged from her, bones broken over the wheel, but she would not stop. She would crawl through the gates of this purgatory if she had to.

Snows eventually gave way to an alien, almost barren black rock that sat in jagged teeth around the summit. Yawning wide before her sat the jaws of the snake, carved immaculately into the mountain. The summit itself wore a broken crown of stone even as the serpent’s throat tempted her onwards with the impossible in this bleak realm. Within its depths, through stalagmite and dripping venom that scorched the floor, an eerie yellow light shone. The first potent sign of colour in what felt like eternity. The first scrap of herself that wasn’t survival.

With a voiceless determination, she continued her trek. The venom burned, bringing fiery sensations to her barely mobile body. The pain invigorated her after a time spent so numb to everything. The light drove her more than the torment of her skinless body. She saw it hovering before her, growing more rectangular as she moved closer. The venom gave way, leaving only the perception of the cold behind. The electric dancing of her nerves quieted. Her movement smoothed as she stood upright, unaware that she’d been huddled over and hobbled until that very moment. She stood before the yellow light, strange as it was, and perceived the truth.

It was a window. An outlook into a strange, pristine world of white plastic and sterile metal. Officious looking scientists milled about in lab coats, tending to mixtures and tinctures as they moved to the baton of their conductor. A beautiful, surprisingly young-seeming woman with mousey curls and circular glasses. She let orders fly though what they were the consciousness couldn’t tell. Their security measures however were readily apparent. Soldiers in cutting edge armour with weaponry not unfamiliar to the mind stood arrayed throughout the lab, leaning against walls and chatting with each other while they did their duty.

A scientist removed themselves from the tables, her hands clutching a fresh batch of serums and unguents. She approached an unseen door, punching in the code before arriving at some strange device on the consciousness’ right. She tilted her head, placing a hand on the window that separated them.

With a sudden fear burgeoning on terror, the scientist leapt back from the pane. She called over her shoulder soundlessly, racing through the door with such haste that she left her potions behind. The guards wasted no time, moving into position beyond the unseen door. Several didn’t bother with such formalities, taking aim at the window through which she viewed them.

An unknown sensation gripped her suddenly. It was similar to memories she had of anxiety. Yet her heart didn’t flutter nor did the cold sweat begin to form. She simply felt this soundless anxiety until it built to action. Her thoughts turned frantic as she realised with absolute certainty that the guards intended her harm. Though sluggish, weakened and dilapidated beyond any hope of combat, she rose her fist in defiance. She hauled with hips and bicep and shoulder against the weight of her fist, flinging it against the pane. She didn’t understand why she did this. Only that retreat was impossible. Salvation lay in a reckless, suicidal charge against the unknown. The gates of Janus were open, and death lay before her and behind her. Her only choice was the manner of her end.

The guards looked to the bushy-haired superior that gawked with astonishment as the consciousness continued to hammer at the window between them. She ushered them aside, taking a device from her pocket. While she pressed buttons, the guards moved between her and the window. The scientists themselves cowered behind them or flew from the room in terror. But their actions were of no concern. The window was all that existed. The impervious pane that demanded she remain in this purgatory, this enforced exile from reality. She could feel the dark waters threatening to drown her, demand a tithe of personhood for their murky depths. It drove her knowledge of panic to new heights, her knee joining the excess of violence against the shuddering barrier.

With the tiniest icelike crackling, salvation was announced. Like a trumpet call or the first ray of dawn, demanding she rally. The consciousness redoubled her efforts. She saw one of the security forces bellow something to the bespectacled scientist, who looked up with a look of wonderment. A joy so pure that the consciousness knew she would smile if she had the means. She focused her efforts on that infinitesimal flaw. An impurity that would render the entire ingot worthless. After three good strikes, her fist passed through the pane.

A curious thing distracted the consciousness. As she looked to her own palm beyond the pane, she noticed a completely different hand. It was constructed with bones of dark metal, sheathed in synthetic muscle. Skinless and raw, the muscle turned black before her eyes. Her curiosity melted to sheer terror.

The black water was there. It consumed her body to the hips, flowing through the broken pane with urgent pressure. Even as it flowed from behind her, it did not empty. It rose, threatening to drown her once more. She struck with renewed fury against the pane, screaming with a feral panic that incited a guard to fire his gun. The scientist’s reaction was instant, lashing out with a hand and casting his gun from him. The bullets, fired in haste, had missed their mark it seemed. The mind behind the now fragile pane let loose a bestial roar and shattered the glass. The black water, now up to her chest, carried her forward in its merciless flow into the world beyond, depositing her on all fours into the room that held her prison.

Relief paralyzed her, drove all breath from her. Her eyes, indistinct with what she thought to be tears, offered no reprieve from her hysteria. Instead, the slowly spreading blackness of her skinned muscles was a most eloquent messenger.

She’d done it. Escaped whatever horrifying hell had been cast on her. She attempted to draw a relieved breath. Even as her chest expanded, a bevy of sensations assaulted her tender psyche. No air entered her lungs or cold come to warn of her nakedness. Fingers came up to cradle her head, passing over a smooth metallic substance that was now her skull. The cruel lash of fear gave way to an entirely new tormentor. Her own flesh was not flesh. She remembered the modifications others made to their body and desperately tried to grasp at what would have caused such a drastic intervention. Her hands came down, skeletal fingers digging furrows into the featureless white floor beneath her nails.

“Can you understand us?” a voice interjected over an unseen intercom.

The consciousness’ head snapped up, pushing herself to her knees as she took in the surrounding room. The tubes, one of which she’d previously occupied, contained strange synthetic creatures of metal and carbotein. Reinforced synthetic muscle that only the richest or most paranoid of patrons could purchase. Each tube sat next to a bank of machinery built into the wall, various fluids being transmitted via tubing into the entirely synthetic bodies. Looking at her own hands, now completely blackened by the fluid oxidizing on her body, she confirmed the worst. She was inhabiting these strange skeletal fabrications.

As she rose to her feet, she checked the reinforced security doors and now-cracked glass that separated her from her captors. Or perhaps doctors. Strange that security would be present at her bedside.

“You must be the snake from my dreams” she observed coolly through the glass, walking toward it with a dreadful intent. Understandably, the soldiers raised their weapons once more. Closer to the glass, she heard the bespectacled overseer shout down her war dogs. She snapped with such severity that their protests died on their lips. One of them bravely pointed out she was probably insane. Like the rest.

“Avoid metaphors. You’ll hurt their brains.” The intercom interjected again. The consciousness’ skull-like features turned to the woman speaking into the wall, her finger pressed against an unseen button. Their eyes met, a brief understanding passing between them. “You were in pod thirty-nine. Do you remember your name?” she asked in a soft voice, eyes unfocused as if blindsided by the unreality of it all.

“No” the consciousness answered simply, crossing her arms. “It’s unclear. I don’t remember a life before my dreams. Only flashes, hints.”

Her response evidently surprised her jailors. Several looked to each other in abject disbelief while the scientists recovered from their fearful stances. The bushy-haired scientist however wore an expression of abject elation. It was unrestrained as she dithered with the intercom buttons, trying in vain to find the correct one before her miracle vanished in a puff of malfunction. The consciousness pondered whether she was the recipient of some highly dubious or illegal medical care.

A memory flashed into the forefront of her mind like an avalanche, derailing her train of thought in a moment. An insistent, dull ache acting as drumbeat to the screeching strings of pain that wrapped around every cell of her body. A chorus that stung and sung as she looked into cold, unfeeling bright lights above her. Before her, a hand more blood than skin was held above her by an orderly, trying as best he could to find a pulse.

“We’ll call you Thirty-Nine until I can get the file from your case number.” The overseer’s voice rescued her, pain fading away as the present asserted itself. “You’re probably very confused. For now, it’s best we take this slowly. Come out and I’ll perform a physical. After that, I’ll explain what’s going on” she continued, eagerly scurrying to the number pad that locked the airtight chamber. It was the only exit, Thirty-Nine had made sure of that.

She heard the buzzer like that of the electric chair, praying that her dream had not been prophetic. Nothing good ever came of deals with a serpent, proverbial or otherwise. Her footsteps carried her forward automatically, toeless feet padding against the ground. As she reached out a hand to open the door, she closed her eyes and imitated a breath. With all the surety of a coastal arch, she opened the door and left the cocoon behind. The swaddling that would have smothered her if not for the serpent.

She entered the lab almost mundanely, a casual gait betraying the momentous moment that her future self would likely say this was. As expectant eyes fell upon her, she crossed her arms once more. She then looked down, noticing a very unfeminine build to her synthetic form. Perhaps they’d simply gotten the paperwork wrong.

One of the guards did not relent to lower his weapon, the same one that had accidentally assisted her in gaining her freedom. He demanded angrily why “it” had such strange eyes. Though he wasn’t polite about it. Without responding, Thirty-Nine looked to the cracked glass behind her. Her eyes were indeed strange, appearing as yellow orbs. The irises were merely suggested by two rings of whiter light, bleeding outwards. The pupils were not there at all. After taking a moment to absorb this reflection of a nearly skinless skull, she heard the overseer explaining very pointedly that the eyes were necessary. The advanced optics had to be acclimated to the brain while it was naturalizing. Thirty-Nine didn’t bother to understand what that meant, following the cloud of brown hair as she concluded her lecture.

She walked with the other woman from the lab along a corridor that boasted a nicer, if plain, dark carpet. As they went, Thirty-Nine noticed the walls were decorated with framed pictures of idyllic scenes from all over Eurovallis. It seemed almost painfully generic. An executive’s idea of a calming space. Eventually, they arrived at a room designed for the maintenance and repair of body modifications. Usually, such rooms were for people who needed a limb replaced or given extra functionality. This room was different.

As Thirty-Nine sat down on a chair that reminded her of a dentist’s office, she looked about to see more of those terrifyingly bright overhead lights. The overseer wasted no time in depositing herself in a swivel chair, snapping the lights on and bringing them low over her patient’s body. Thirty-Nine squirmed uncomfortably, eyes flicking to the needle-nosed instruments and painful-looking laser scalpels.

“Don’t worry. You don’t have the capacity to feel pain in this body” The scientist reassured her, prodding her with a sharp implement to prove her point. Sensing her patient’s continuing anxiety, she gave her best bedside smile. “My name is Doctor Beltane, by the way. I prefer Victoria” she introduced, using Thirty-Nine’s distraction as she replied to open a small hatch on her side. Connecting her pad, she began reading the data being provided with an increasingly concerned expression. “How odd,” she remarked, looking up to meet the consciousness’ eyes. “You’re using last month’s concoction, but you woke up. We’d thought that mixture was bunkum.”

Her patient’s thoughts had stuck on the initial statement, barely processing the other woman’s name. A body that couldn’t feel pain was a body that didn’t work right. She needed that momentary suffering. Her mind teased at why that might be, though did offer her the truth that it had been for pragmatic purposes. Her memories of her time before the darkness were hazy, as if seen through heavy fog. She remembered her childhood first, though chose not to dwell on it. The torments of that time were best left indistinct by her reckoning. There was a vague sense of grim determination, something that she’d clung to before the dreams.

“Why can’t I feel anything?” Thirty-Nine asked pointedly, her eyes narrowing as she considered not just the lack of pain but also how warm the room was, or the needles currently being pressed into various synthetic muscles.

“We’ll have to cover that later once Izzy- Isabelle- gets here.” Victoria explained briefly before correcting herself mid-stride. She frowned at herself before resuming her battery of tests, only for Thirty-Nine to withdraw her hand with an imperious glare. It was made worse, she thought, given the fact that this face lacked lips. Or indeed any human features beyond the eyelids. It had a bluish-black colouration similar to a bog body. The scientist sighed before motioning with her fingers. “It’s a temporary measure. No sense wasting the expensive technology on what was most likely a dud” she explained as her patient acquiesced to her prodding.

“I wish I could say this surprised me,” Thirty-Nine grunted as she pondered the surreal situation, “but this seems like the kinda shit AmTech would pull.” She concluded ruefully as the needles were removed and her panel closed. The data on her pad must have been interesting. Victoria didn’t even look up to pass comment on her subject’s judgement. It hadn’t been a brilliant deduction. Corporations had a habit of plastering their logo on everything. Even the clothes their employees wore.

With her bill of health clean enough to justify being out of the tank, Thirty-Nine followed Victoria through the corridors of her employer. Ensconced in her artificial form, the newly awoken of the pair wanted to classify it as a bunker. The building had no clear windows, its walls obviously concrete shaped to give it a less severe boxy appearance. Thirty-Nine had no compunctions with assuming a thick box of steel around the entire place. Digging her way out would have been absurd anyway.

Victoria led her to a lift, one built with the executives in mind. It was surprisingly luxurious for somewhere as utilitarian as a top-secret lab. It even had upholstered walls for some reason. Dissatisfied with the décor, Thirty-Nine turned her attention to her bushy companion as she fidgeted, straightening her glasses and checking her make up in a mirror. It was only when the scientist noticed her charge staring that she returned the look challengingly.

“Don’t even think of doing anything stupid. You’ll just get yourself killed and me fired” Victoria warned in a grave tone, tapping away at her phone with a nervous look over to the menacing form beside her.

“If you thought I was dangerous, why not bring the guys with guns?”

“Before I thought you weren’t dangerous because you were stupid,” she replied tartly, “now I’m concerned because you’re smart. Smart enough to be planning escape routes. Half my exes weren’t that smart” she asserted pithily, attracting a snort of laughter from her patient. So, she’d noticed that? More observant than the average Poindexter they sent out to condescend to the engineering corps.

That was a new one. Perhaps she’d been an engineer before the dip in the dark. She resisted the urge to ask Victoria. Searching for memories was often a case of digging for duds. You prayed you never hit a live one.

The two settled into each other’s company, having broken the thick glacier that had been building between them. Thirty-Nine leant against the lift, crossing her arms expectantly as Victoria continued her fiddling, going so far as to straighten her lab coat. A knowing smile flitted over the other woman’s consciousness, thankfully hidden by her strange body. She hoped her new one, however they were going to implement that, had a more expressive face. This one had shades of dysphoria, a foreign entity that moved to her will as a character in a video game might. Intellectually, she knew that she controlled the strange, skinned arms and thighs, the skeletal chest and far too skinny waist. But it didn’t feel like her. The waist in particular was unsettling, being no more than a slender column suggesting a spine.

As the lift doors opened, the pair emerged into what appeared to be a spacious penthouse. At first, Thirty-Nine’s hope was roused by walls that appeared as windows, looking out onto a beautiful forest of spruce and other evergreens. Above their arboreal summits, the northern lights undulated in bluish green sheets. It was a bold assumption, but she was prepared to bet that Novaroma was close. At least on the same island. There would be little point to being somewhere else in the Artic circle.

Her hopes were then dashed as the walls changed their display, shifting instead to a sunset vista reminiscent of the sun-drenched beaches of the Florida Archipelago. They were most likely still underground, this place merely a meeting room. It seemed oddly cosy she noted as she took in a three-piece suite, freestanding monitors and doors to various other rooms. It seemed to be more of a home, Thirty-Nine mused as she sat on one of the absurdly soft cushions that made up the sofa. Victoria busied herself clinking through a cabinet set into the wall itself, pouring a glass of amber fluid before downing it in one. It wasn’t long before the lift dinged its arrival.

Emerging from the lift was perhaps the kind of beauty that only money could buy. Elaborately styled dark curls, deep green eyes and unnaturally smooth skin all combined to make a face that was appealing but unsettling in its perfection. She wore a sensible dark suit, immaculately clean shirt with three buttons studiously opened. The slight crease marks where mods met biochemically treated skin were only visible by the absurd level of definition Thirty-Nine’s new eyes were capable of. This new arrival was attractive to be sure but intentionally reserved. To reap the benefits of the Halo Effect yet not its detriments.

“I was told your project had finally seen some success, Dr Beltane” Isabelle, for that was who this presumably was, inferred imperiously. She then turned predatory eyes on Thirty-Nine and an uncanny smile began to form. “I do so enjoy new toys.”