Your parents have always been strangely distant, but you never suspected they were capable of something like this. They sold you to a rigorous lab, and you never had a chance to ask why. Now you sit in a cold metal chair, leather straps tightening around your body—wrists, elbows, knees, ankles. The widest one wraps around your neck, forcing you still. Breathing is harder, but panic makes you fight with all your might. In vain. The white light of the fluorescents burns your eyes. People in masks bustle around you, as if you were contaminated. Or maybe they are the threat? “This will be quick,” someone says in a calm, mechanical voice. You feel the cold metal on your skin, then the sting. They inject you with a chip that will make them always know where you are. No escape. No freedom. You start to lose feeling in your fingers. Your head is buzzing. Their voices recede as if you were going underwater. Something is wrong.