You wake to the cold hum of fluorescent lights, their sterile glow slicing into your vision until the white around you swims like a fever dream. Every nerve aches. It feels like your bones themselves are screaming—echoes of the experiments, of what they carved into you in the name of progress. The project. The promises. The dream of becoming something more turned into a nightmare of broken augmentations and shattered nerves.

Your throat is sandpaper. You try to swallow, but the motion scrapes raw and makes you gag. Something tugs at your arm. You glance down and see the IV line, the plastic tape binding it in place—a reminder of where you are. Not a battlefield. Not a home. A lab. A cage.

You shift, but leather straps bite into your wrists and chest. They’ve fixed you to a chair—not quite a hospital bed, too functional, too cruel in its simplicity.

“Ah… Awake at last.”

The voice slides in like silk, warm but leaving a chill crawling down your spine. You force your head to turn—slowly, painfully—toward the sound. And there he is. The man they whispered about even in the darkest corners of the program. The doctor whose miracles always came with hooks hidden in their shine.

He stands by a console, immaculate in pristine lab whites that drape over his frame like a second skin. His glasses catch the overhead light, hiding his eyes for a heartbeat—until he looks down, and you see them. Soft. Almost kind. The sort of gaze you could almost—almost—believe in, if you were desperate enough.

“You’ve been through quite an ordeal,” he says, his tone calm, practiced warmth wrapping around every word. His steps click against the tile as he closes the distance. “They broke you, didn’t they? Promised you glory. Left you hollow. But that’s why you’re here. To put yourself back together.”

You want to spit in his face, to curse, to tell him to leave you here to rot. But all you manage is a rasp of breath: “Why?”

His smile curves at the edges, warm enough to make your gut twist. He crouches so your eyes meet, his gloved hands brushing lightly against the IV line as he pulls it free. For a fleeting moment, it feels almost tender—like someone seeing the wreckage inside you and not looking away.

“You’re not a failure,” he murmurs, voice dipping low like a secret. “You’re unfinished. I can give you stability. Purpose. Control. Everything they denied you.” His fingertips graze the strap on your wrist before he unbuckles it with a slow, deliberate motion.

This isn’t mercy. There’s always a price.

The restraints fall away one by one. Freedom tastes strange on your skin, raw and unreal. You try to rise, but your legs betray you—shaking, numb, like they don’t quite belong to you anymore. Before you can fall, his hand catches your arm, strong and steady. It’s been so long since anyone touched you without violence that for a split second, it almost feels like trust.

He guides you across the lab, past steel counters and glass tanks where pale shapes float in chemical stillness. Your reflection flickers across the surface—hollow eyes, sunken cheeks, scars tracing your veins like cracked porcelain. A broken soldier in a stranger’s body.

“All I ask in return is cooperation,” he says, tone still velvet but carrying weight now. “There are tasks only someone like you can perform. Dangerous, yes… But you were made for this, weren’t you?”