Art by: TYT
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Prologue
My vision erupted in a tempest of pulsing, prismatic bursts. White noise crashed against my eardrums like brutal waves, massive sound battering my skull with relentless force. I had no conception of where I was. Sprawled across the floor? Blown skyward? Or had I already been torn asunder by the blast?
I tried to twitch my fingers, but my brain's commands vanished into the ether. I could feel nothing at all—not my limbs, not my flesh. But that smell... charred, putrid, like meat left to cook and rot. I smelled blood as well, metallic and sharp, mingled with the acrid bite of gunpowder. The very heat of it all seemed to burn my nostrils.
The white noise continued its relentless buzz within my head. Static electricity danced across my face like invisible threads, racing through my blood vessels. Something drew closer; a weight settled upon my chest.
"Quick!!! Give him the shot!!!"
More voices, louder now but muffled, like shouting underwater. Their screaming churned the fog in my mind into a violent maelstrom. Words threaded through the cacophony, phrases tangled with those disgusting odours... but where the hell was I?
Not a clue in the world why I was lying here. And why the cold, hard surface pressing against my back.
The white noise still roared.
Through it all, however, a silhouette suddenly pierced the buzzing haze. That arrogant, flowing hair. Those broad shoulders. That back—one I had witnessed countless times yet remained frustratingly indistinct. I know him. Know it as surely as my own reflection. He is why I came.
My throat suddenly constricted, likely from blood pouring from ruptured organs that had finally surrendered, yet I felt nothing. No suffocation, no pain. Though the vertigo-inducing screams in my head continued their relentless assault. Then understanding struck: what was slowly drowning my lungs was not blood but something else entirely.
It was sorrow. Pure, undiluted grief somehow made liquid, seeping into every corner of my chest. My eyes burned, pressure mounting beneath the blur.
"This blood loss!!! —We're running out of time—"
Had I found him? Had I finally caught up to him?
"Portal—"
The colourful patches before me darkened as blurry shadows crept in, followed by shouts that bled into a single roar, waves morphing into dense blocks of noise that hammered my skull. I strained to focus, rolling my eyes, but the haze refused to sharpen.
Something leaked from my eyes. Tears, I supposed, yet they felt wrong somehow... thick and viscous. Like a haunting note, a delayed farewell.
I felt as though I had stopped breathing entirely.
The figure hovering above me reached out. Not a tendril but a hand, distinctly human, with fingers. They might have touched my face, my skin too numb to discern. They tilted my head slightly to one side. The hot wetness crawled across the bridge of my nose and seeped into my other eye.
Then came the red. Not merely a splash but an entire ocean of it. The white noise amplified to unbearable levels as patches of black and red conquered what little light remained.
I finally surrendered, abandoning all attempts to translate this riot of colours into anything comprehensible. My eyelids, mercifully, began drawing the curtain on this bewildering spectacle.
No. Wait. I had forgotten something. Something of… critical importance.
Did I actually find him? Why was I looking for him?
I tried to scream, but my mouth filled with more of that sorrow. Warm and viscous, flooding my throat. I fought for breath, but my lungs, chest, even my vocal cords might as well have belonged to another. I forced them to vibrate, curled what remained of my useless tongue, struggling to produce even a single sound.
A name, any name. But who was I even trying to call?
The silhouette in my mind crumbled to ash, breaking into dust so thin it seemed to seep directly into my nerves. It latched onto something deep inside me, and that urgent, familiar feeling finally morphed into a word.
Theo. Theo.
That was it. That was who I was coming for.
"It's closing!!"
"Lord—"
Where the hell did he go?
"Get your ass over here now!!"
Hands moved me closer to whatever was making that deafening white noise. My flesh was struck by a faint spark—barely a slap, but enough to hit my off switch.
The jumble of names and voices finally faded to nothing. That molten heat and stickiness peeled away from my mind, and the scene in front of me blinked out completely. The sounds surrendered to a dark abyss, draining slowly. My world went dead quiet.
No, that's not right.
I was the one who'd been pulled out, extracted from that broken meat puppet I used to call a body.
I drifted through darkness that felt strangely like home, knowing somehow, I would always end up back here in this void. I sensed I could hear again, breathe again, but only because I'd shed the constraints of that physical shell. But, how did I know any of this?
As though I had been here before. Like this return was inevitable—a homecoming to the origin point of everything. And then an echo, or maybe just an instinct, nudging me.
Open your eyes, reach out, listen. Feel.
I felt I floated downward, slowly, like a feather caught in the rhythm of perfect stillness, guiding me toward... something.
So I opened my eyes.
Blood-red memories exploded across my mind like lightning splitting open the night sky. Jagged truths ripped through my brain, like a million blades slicing across my mind.
And there he was—the long-haired man with features and eyes almost similar to mine, wrapped in those white robes, with that lethal smile on his face. The man who wore my father's face better than I ever could.
I felt disgust, like the elegant corner of his coat just slashing through my veins. Yet somehow the fabric was still purely clean, untouched by the absolute hatred boiling up from my core.
I watched myself running flat-out, boots hammering against metal flooring, pushing every muscle to its breaking point.
A voice suddenly cut through the void, perhaps someone's desperate shout: Aim for the energy pillar!
But I was deaf to it then. Blind rage in my heart, poison hatred in my blood, thick toxic grief clogging my chest. They drowned out everything else.
I watched as my past self-levelled my gun at him. This time, I had to end him. Failure wasn't an option. Not one more fucking day of him breathing. I could not afford to fail. Not anymore.
Trigger pulled. The man fired at the exact same moment.
The scene slowed to a sadistic crawl, like some cruel mockery. I watched as the blinding laser beams erupted from his weapon, slicing through the air before punching clean through my right shoulder. Saw my own flesh explode outward, bone fragments glittering white against the red mist, scattered by the laser's punishing force.
The impact hurled me backward like a discarded doll, my gun arm tearing free from my shoulder in a sickening ballet of rending muscle and snapping tendons. Flesh charred, bone splintered to dust, all turning into that nauseating stench in microseconds.
Light exploded, blinding burns. The shock wave hurled me onto a floating platform; the back of my head crashed violently against the cold surface before being flung in another direction. Not that it mattered. Not that anything mattered except my bullet.
My vision tunnelled, fixated solely on the projectile arcing toward that wretch at the carousel's edge.
I watched in horror as my shot drifted off-course, veering into nothingness beyond the memory's boundary. The satisfaction of seeing his smug face disintegrate never came. No closure, no justice. Just a rage that ignited like delayed napalm, spreading from my shattered shoulder through every cell, climbing up my throat as I fought to unleash a scream that would not come.
If I could just rip him apart, see the light leave his eyes... I would gladly trade my last breath for it.
I howled hopelessly like something feral, rage consuming me like wildfire through dry timber. I had to end him. Had to tear him limb from goddamn limb, grind him to dust, make him feel every second of suffering. I etched his face into whatever was left of my mangled flesh, took every word he'd ever spoken and ground them between my teeth, letting them seep into my nerve endings, my marrow, my soul. I was still conscious, still thinking—which meant I still had a shot. Revenge was still on the table.
But even my white-hot hatred for that worthless piece of shit could not explain the soul-crushing anguish flooding my chest. A glacial cold spread through me, faster now, as memory fragments stretched and twisted into bloody hieroglyphics, thrashing wildly in all directions. My anger suddenly froze solid, and something massive and invisible dragged my consciousness down into deeper darkness.
Sylvain's face, the scorching laser, my shredded flesh—all vanished. But the heat, the crimson fury, the rage remained trapped in the darkness. One by one, images succumbed to eerie lilac flames, curling into ghostly ash. In one burning memory fragment, Sylvain's carefree, almost gleeful laugh dissolved into frigid light.
Before that scene burned completely, the farewell song reached me again.
"Theo? Dead."
This time, the lyrics were damn clear.
That verdict froze me solid. I was encased in pale violet ice as I lost all control, plummeting deeper into the void. The free-fall clawed at my throat with the need to scream, but I couldn't make a sound, couldn't break free from my own paralyzed mind, couldn't reach that figure in the memory crumbling to ash.
That tall silhouette walking away forever.
More scenes orbiting me like dying stars, flaring to life and then extinguishing. All those pointless fights just to feel something, the silences and cold wars, the accusatory questions. Theo’s sleeping form beside me during those rare nights I'd wake and watch him. Bodies colliding then retreating, lips desperate then distant, fingers intertwining before tearing apart… those ceaseless dances of us, finally ending.
I saw, too, that cigarette box of him, and those eyes that looked at me with that impossible mixture of adoration, perhaps regret and… disgust.
Bitter pain took form. Thousands of phantom hands stretching from the void to strangle me. Grief poured like concrete down my throat; I thrashed against it uselessly as more fingers latched onto me, dragging me toward the end of this nightmare. Inky poison invaded my lungs, expanding, endlessly expanding until my bones fractured under the strain. My ribcage snapped, innards and gore exploding outward in a ghastly fountain, drenching my dying thoughts in pitch-black and crimson.
Senses gradually withdrew. I saw his cocky half-smile when we first met. It was something I didn't want to admit: a part of him I liked.
The final memory burned away.
I couldn't reach him, not anymore.
The macabre slideshow flickered to black, and I finally let go of that last, useless breath.
Ah...
A soft, resigned sigh rippled through the emptiness. Tinged with regret, yet achingly familiar.
Then came those hands I would recognize anywhere, tenderly gathering what remained of my fractured soul. That gentle strength wrapped around me like a cocoon, soothing my splintered essence the way a mother would calm a feverish child...
Rest. I'm here.
Chapter 1
The Eldest
"Child, you should rest a while," said the white-clad woman standing by the bed, her voice unhurried.
I blinked hard. When my eyelids touched, a dry, searing pain knifed through them, the swollen skin beneath radiating heat like a furnace.
The pain told me this was real.
Last night when I'd jerked awake to find myself no longer caged in that blinding prison. And when I'd scrambled toward my second sister in the next bed, clutching her while we both fought to swallow our sobs, I knew for certain this wasn't just another drug trip messing with my head. I'd pinched my thigh hard enough to bruise.
The wall clock ticked away actual seconds, nothing like those fake digits in that prison. The cold floor that chilled my feet was real. My sisters, flesh and blood, real. We'd busted out of Astragan alive.
Forty hours without sleep, if that holo readout on the wall wasn't just another sick joke being played on us.
My tears had dried up hours ago, leaving my eyes so puffy that everything blurred like I was seeing the world through frosted glass. Still, my nerves stayed wound tight as tripwire, ears straining for the rhythm of my sisters' breathing and the slightest whisper of movement in this strange place.
People kept shuffling past our door; I'd catalogued their footsteps by now. The light padding of nurses, the heavier tread of guards, and those muffled conversations that died whenever they passed our ward. The tiniest sound would snap my drifting mind back to high alert, like a slap to the face.
My second sister and little one were out cold in the beds beside mine. They'd cried themselves empty. The youngest hadn't stopped sobbing for a whole day after they'd brought us back.
I shifted my gaze to the IV lines that disappeared beneath their skin, avoiding any acknowledgment of the woman hovering near my bed. I'd given her just one quick once-over.
She wore that same sickening white I'd hate till the day I died. But Astragan's white had been violently aggressive, like it could burn. This woman's white had subtlety… more like the pale glow of a winter moon. Her cape with its sharp lines draped over angular shoulders, like moonlight washing over some tall, forbidding solemn monolith.
Beautiful in a way, but just as cold and lifeless.
I shifted my gaze to the IV bag hanging from its stand. Two days on the drip with nothing but normal vitals, so it wasn't laced with anything nasty, just glucose like they claimed. I wiggled my toes; the gash on my knee had been treated and the throbbing reduced to a dull whisper. They'd told the truth about that much at least.
But we were defenceless against another betrayal. If, and God it terrified me to even think it, this place was just another elaborate stage for torture... we'd crumble like paper dolls. We had nothing left. Not a single drop of strength left to fight back.
My fingers twisted in the bedsheet as her footsteps whispered closer. Pure instinct kicked in. I yanked my knees to my chest and inched toward the far side of the mattress, my free hand snaking behind to close around the stolen scalpel beneath my pillow. Trust was a bridge I'd burned to ashes—not for this woman, not with anyone in this place.
She halted three steps away when the monitor betrayed my panic with its high-pitched warning, my heart hammering against my ribs. Without a word, she drifted backward.
I kept my gaze lowered, refusing to look at her, fixated instead on the bluish-purple veins standing out against my skeletal fingers as I clenched them. From that sterile white prison to this equally lifeless hospital room. Just another place with that minimalist futuristic shit I hated. My eyes still burned raw in the unnatural light.
"Should you require anything, the screen will summon assistance," I heard fabric rustling as she raised her hand. I could detect the faint whisper as her fingertips sliced through the air. Through my lashes, I watched her gesture toward a holoscreen that hovered above the end of my bed.
"Regular meals shall be permitted in approximately eight hours. I shall arrange for something gentle on your system. If you require nourishment before then, I can consult the medical team."
Her tone maintained that infuriating evenness, almost mechanical. Like the best AI ever designed, mimicking human concern with perfect technical execution but missing the soul entirely.
My focus drifted to the IV in my arm, memories flooding back of our arrival two days ago, when armed guards had escorted us into this ward, and my first encounter with this woman. When those so-called "doctors" had approached with what they euphemistically called "sedatives," the needles catching that same merciless light that populated my worst flashbacks, I'd shoved my terrified sisters behind me and grabbed the first weapon I could find. A surgical scalpel from an unattended tray.
"Back off!" I snarled, slashing the scalpel through air, daring these white-clad strangers to test me. The electronic collars that had kept us docile were gone; some feral part of me had woken up. For the first time in years, I could fight back.
Then this woman appeared, parting the sea of medic like some ethereal ghost.
"I am Aurora Vidal, Director of VSS... Lord Faucher's betrothed. You... please calm yourself," she stammered, palms raised facing us.
Replaying the moment now in my mind, I could see those flawless amber eyes fixated on the steel in my grip, that porcelain facade of control fracturing just enough to reveal something human underneath. Her credentials meant nothing to me, but that name, that family name pierced through my rage like a bolt of lightning.
Surrounded and outnumbered as we were, I hesitated, squared my shoulders, retreated half a step, and reluctantly lowered the quivering tool. But my fingers remained locked around the handle in a bloodless grip, the weapon still very much mine.
She had mentioned Faucher. The name of that person Papa had told us about.
Whatever happens, trust Francis Faucher. Listen, he's just a bit shorter than me, with neatly trimmed straight hair, and those same beautiful purplish eyes you girls have. Just make him take that damn mask off, and you'll see. Oh, and he has a mole behind his ear, he probably doesn't even know about it. Remember that.
Papa had pulled us against his chest, soothing us as we wept, just like he always did.
My God, look at you three, you grew taller now my sweethearts. It's okay now, it's okay, shhhh …Papa's here to save you.
Those were his last words.
"What exactly is this place?" I asked, yanking myself back from that memory spiral. Stay focused. Stay sharp. Papa had entrusted my sisters' lives to me; falling to pieces wasn't an option.
"You're in the Faucher family's private estate. This is a guest suite on the ground level, temporarily converted for medical purposes," Aurora turned slightly, gesturing toward the doorway. "Out and to the right leads to the main hall, if you're wondering about the exit."
I raised my eyes to hers, truly facing her for the first time since our arrival. Aurora's gaze dropped to my raw, swollen eyes, and something flickered behind her calculated exterior. The ghost of empathy, perhaps.
"We're allies, not jailers. This distinction matters." she said.
"Those girls… over a thousand of them." I bit back the acid in my tone, reminding myself these people had, at minimum, freed us from hell: "Why were only the three of us brought here, while everyone else was taken elsewhere?"
I didn't even know if the others had survived. Aurora's gaze slid away, her eyelids falling shut with what seemed like resignation. As if the algorithm had finally processed the query she'd been programmed to avoid.
"Your father."
The mention of Papa stole my breath, but couldn't stop the molten grief surging up my throat, spreading like poison through my chest.
"The arrangement was between Lord Faucher and him specifically. Faucher assumes guardianship of you three now. For the specifics, you'll need direct consultation with him, I believe," she paused, her lips compressing to a bloodless line, that flawless composure developing its first fracture."...His condition isn't promising either."
Her knuckles whitened as she tightened her grip.
"How did Papa die, and where is his body?" I hissed through a jaw clenched so tight my molars threatened to crack. Since yesterday, she had persistently dodged this one question, sealing her lips in silence, exactly as she was doing now.
I wrenched my gaze away, a sudden flare of anger bringing tears that burned behind my eyes. I trusted Papa, of course I did—but whether these strangers were players in yet another cruel performance, I couldn't tell.
Who exactly was this Francis Faucher? What power did he wield? What desperate bargain had Papa struck with him? All questions remained mysteries. Everything about these past few years felt too surreal, and I had no idea what came next, with no one telling us what to do, whether to stay or flee. Never again would there be certainty.
"Regarding your father... my deepest condolences."
The same hollow phrase she'd offered forty-eight hours ago. I met it with stone silence. Aurora exhaled softly, almost convincingly human. She turned on her heel, and glided from the room. The barrier door shimmered as it dissolved with a whisper, then recongealed as she left.
The minutes crawled by. Slowly, the room's ambient lighting shifted to a warmer spectrum, the harsh glare softening as if responding to the thinning tension. Still white, but no longer that sickening sterile glare.
I raised my head slowly, eyes fixed on the closed barrier, ears tuned to the rhythm of my sisters' breathing. They were steady, untroubled.
My wrist rotated as I drew out the scalpel from its hiding place beneath the blanket. The subdued light traced its outlines, the polished metal reflecting back my swollen, bloodshot eyes. I allowed them to close for just a moment, then slid the tiny weapon back under my pillow.
Should we run? And even if we could, where the hell would we go?
I exhaled heavily, collapsing back against the soft pillow. I let myself pretend it was stuffed with cotton from home. Real cotton, hand-picked and carded by the aunties from our underground small city, a place now so distant I couldn't even point to which slice of the horizon might hide it.
From our earliest memories, we'd joined everyone to harvest the ripe cotton, tiny fingers learning to pluck the fluffy bolls without tearing them.
Once Papa came with us. Our haul that day had spilled over the sides of the collection bags, cotton so downy it rivalled those rare clouds we'd glimpse when we were permitted topside during the cooler seasons. When the temperature dipped below 40 and the air wouldn't scorch your lungs.
Papa had this way of selecting the most perfect cotton puffs, tucking them like precious jewels into my sisters' and my ponytails while we trudged alongside the neighbourhood women to the processing plant.
The way those women melted around him, stifling giggles behind weathered hands, like teenagers rather than the hardened survivors they were. Nobody stood a chance against his smile. Not a soul.
I'm sorry, Papa. God, I'm so, so sorry.
These damn tears keep breaking through every time I let my guard down. Home's not real anymore, is it? Without him, it's just some word in a dead language, a stupid fairytale we can't go back to. Now everywhere's just... geometry. Four walls, a ceiling, a floor.
He was our true north, and the compass shattered when he left.
The barrier door's whisper-soft melting jerked me from sleep like a gunshot. That faint sound of hard fibres breaking… to my hypersensitive ears, it crashed like shattered glasses.
I snapped upright, instantly alert despite my body's protests. Dried tears had cemented into a crust along my eyelids, making every blink feel like sandpaper against my swollen, fire-raw eyes. They'd cranked the lights back to that stupid white that made everything look sterilized and dead.
In the beds flanking mine, sheets rustled with movement. My sisters were awake too.
Two figures glided in. Masked women wrapped in that blank white guided a floating cart that… Thank God, I saw no scalpels, no syringes, no restraints. Instead, a clear water jug caught the harsh light, surrounded by what looked like... dishware?
I dragged my hand across my face; Aurora's earlier comments about meal schedules suddenly clicking into place. The digital readout on the wall pulsed 7:00 AM in light blue numerals. I squinted, trying to make out the smaller font beneath the time—some date I didn't really trust, along with ambient readings for temperature and humidity that all blurred together in my exhausted vision.
I slept exactly eight hours. Which meant my sisters had been out for nearly thirty hours straight. I twisted toward the furthest bed, where my little sister had tucked herself into a defensive ball beneath the covers. She knuckled sleep from her eyes, her bottom lip already beginning that telltale quiver that she might start crying again.
As the cart hovered closer to us, my hand slipped beneath my pillow on pure instinct, fingertips reconnecting with that sliver of metal. I felt the scalpel's handle, cold against my skin.
The twin attendants moved with this creepy grace, their steps matching each other perfectly, like someone had choreographed them down to the microsecond. They positioned their cart at the foot of our beds and struck identical poses, hands folded all prim and proper over their cores, spines straight as boards as they did this shallow, robotic bow.
Their hair—just like Aurora's—was pulled back into tight buns, the colour a silver-white, so devoid of warmth.
"Good morning, ladies," one said, though I couldn't tell which one right away. "From this day forth, we shall serve as your caretakers."
It took me several seconds to figure out whose lips were moving behind the masks. They looked... identical, in height, features, eyes, everything. Basically carbon copies of each other. My sisters and I exchanged glances, totally speechless for a moment. My second sister scooted sideways toward our little one's bed, muscles tensed to jump in if anything went wrong.
"Who sent you to us?" I kept my voice neutral.
"We have been dispatched from V.I.D.A.L., scholars temporarily assigned by Lady Vidal to attend to your requirements until Lord Faucher provides further instructions."
"Vidal is your family name?" My brain connected the dots to Aurora Vidal. These must be her robots or something. And... "Scholars?"
The pair exchanged glances with this weird synchronized awkwardness, like marionettes sharing a single string.
"V.I.D.A.L. stands for Virtual Intelligence and Data Archival, the central neural network and resource infrastructure of Inoasis."
My tongue was already forming questions about what exactly they did when Papa's face flashed through my mind, stopping the words cold. I needed to keep my mouth shut. These weren't Faucher's people, which meant any screw-up could blow our cover.
And we still had no clue whether Francis Faucher was even alive and awake. Whoever this Lord guy was, I had to keep our cards close to our chest until he showed up. If he turned out to be our target, we'd save time; if not... I'd deal with that mess when I got there.
The caretakers started moving. They came to my bed and my second sister's first, doing some simple stuff on the touchscreens at our bedsides. Along both edges of each bed, these softly glowing white fragments popped up, hovering in perfect alignment like shards of glowing ice. The translucent puzzle pieces assembled themselves in midair above our laps, building what gradually took shape as small tables. And then the glowing seams between fragments faded, leaving behind surfaces as smooth and seamless as if they'd been made in one piece.
"Peb, don't move." My second sister's voice dropped to this steel-edged whisper, her eyes tracking the caretaker looming over our youngest's bed.
"Where... where are we?" Our little sister squirmed backward until she was practically swallowed by her pillow, voice cracking around the edges, tears about to spill. I shot her a sharp headshake, signaling her to stay quiet.
My fingers stayed locked around the scalpel beneath my pillow, ready to go. My second sister pressed her index finger against her lips. The little one pulled the blanket up to cover half her face and shut up.
In Astragan, silence had been totally pointless against the electronic eyes that never blinked, the collars that monitored our pulses, the hidden systems that tracked our every move. I swept my gaze across the ceiling's corners, hunting for that telltale glint of surveillance, though I knew better. Tech this advanced probably didn't need anything visible to track us.
The IV stuck in my vein, the medical equipment humming beside me... they could be listening devices for all I knew. Still, keeping quiet around these creepy strangers might buy us some time, however brief. For what? I couldn't say. This constant readiness felt partly like bullshitting myself, as if staying battle-ready gave some meaning to our existence here. A comforting lie I told myself to keep from losing it completely.
The caretakers methodically arranged what looked like food on our glass tables, making several trips between the cart and our bedsides. Finally, they filled each glass with water that at least looked normal, before retreating to their original spots. We stared down at our "meal," if we could even call it that.
Before us sat perfectly uniform cubes that didn’t even look like actual food: Awful blocks with the texture of canned ham but in colours that screamed poison. Neon green, light blue, grey. Block after block of blended, compressed meat thing sat on separate white plates, looking like smooth building blocks. Only the water in the glass seemed to have escaped whatever processing nightmare had created the rest.
The caretakers bowed once more. "Ladies," they chimed together, "please enjoy your meal."
Was this the first phase of reprogramming us? Some creative new torture method? Even Astragan's bland potatoes and undercooked rice looked like gourmet food compared to these... things.
The unnatural colours seemed designed as warning signs, nature's universal way of screaming "toxic," and the stench rising from them... like rotten eggs. None of us reached for anything on the table; we weren't stupid enough to put these shits in our mouths.
The door dissolved again, fibres unweaving themselves like a digital curtain. The caretakers pivoted in perfect unison, folding into identical bows as a familiar figure stepped through.
"Good morning, children." Aurora glided in, today wearing a relatively looser long dress, no longer as stiff and formal as the previous three days. Her silver-white hair, long enough to reach her knees, flowed from a high ponytail, the ends gathered through a metallic ring, while her heels made rhythmic taps on the floor as she approached.
The caretakers stayed in their submissive posture, heads bowed. She approached them, lips barely moving as she whispered something that made them nod slightly before pushing the cart toward the exit.
"How are you feeling today? Are you experiencing any discomfort?" Aurora moved toward the monitoring panels at our bedsides, eyes scanning the displays before checking our IV lines. "Please inform us if you experience nausea or digestive distress. Severe malnutrition often causes stomach upset during refeeding."
Nausea? What an incredible timing.
"What are these?" I flicked my gaze from the... things to Aurora's face, muscles in my neck going rigid. The substance yielded reluctantly, like cheap gelatine left to set for way too long, releasing another wave of that nasty smell.
A condescending smile flickered at the corners of Aurora's mouth. "To Outsiders, this might seem rather primitive." She swept her hand across a section of wall I hadn't noticed, summoning a holographic display that shimmered into existence midair. Another gesture produced a confirmation tone, followed by a chair generating itself beside my bed, fibres weaving themselves from nothing, just like our tables had. The casual display of technology was obviously meant to impress us. Or intimidate us.
"This constitutes standard Inoasian nutrition. Resources in our society are not squandered on such... archaic luxuries as traditional food. We engineer nutritional requirements through laboratory cultivation and molecular compression techniques. Each serving requires no preparation, remains viable for eight years, and contains precisely one day's nutritional requirements. Per meal daily. Maximum efficiency, minimum waste."
"You seriously don't have anything else?"
I kept my expression neutral, casually resting my hand on the table's smooth surface, fingertips searching for the vanished seams to figure out if they'd just darkened or truly fused into a solid. "This smells like dead rats."
I heard her suck in a sharp breath, like the false calm before a storm when patience was nearly shot.
"Everyone here consumes this." Her voice dropped several degrees. "In a world where Earth has collapsed beyond recovery, mere sustenance constitutes privilege enough." Her chin lifted slightly, disdain seeping through the cracks of her mask. "Alternative options are not a luxury we shall entertain."
"That's the world in your fantasy," my second sister suddenly jumped in. I turned to see her lounging against her pillow, arms locked across her chest, chin tilted in challenge. "We ate pretty damn well out there."
Aurora's perfect posture went even stiffer, her chin lifting as storm clouds gathered behind her eyes. She rose from the chair with this regal slowness, hands automatically folding at her midsection. That defensive gesture again, like armour she didn't realize she was putting on.
"Our technological advancement surpasses yours by a thousand years." The words fell like ice chips. "These measures ensure humanity's continued survival, not your temporary comfort."
"Abandoning us and then locking yourselves up, this future doesn't seem that great either."
"Pony." I shot my sister a warning glare despite my throbbing eyes. She was playing with fire we couldn't afford. I looked back to Aurora, voice staying neutral. "Just one meal a day, right? And you're sure it's not poisonous?"
The momentary crack in Aurora's composure sealed itself. Emotion drained from her face like water through sand, she looked almost relieved to get back to her script.
"Lord Faucher's directives regarding your protection have been absolute since the contract's inception," she replied, that serene mask firmly back in place. "Your wellbeing falls under his personal oversight. You have nothing to fear whilst under this roof."
If true, we had a temporary shield. Safety, at least until we could sort fact from fiction. But one critical question remained.
"This Lord Faucher, your fiancé, he is Francis Faucher? The current family head?"
"Indeed."
"Where is he now?"
Her body language betrayed everything her face kept hidden. Heartbeat suddenly racing, faster than during her momentary anger. Not anxiety or concern, but something way more primal: guilt, panic. Those perfectly controlled hands tightened until knuckles went purple-white against her skin, tiny rebellions against her carefully maintained calm.
"Intensive care." The words seemed reluctantly dragged out of her. "Deep coma. Recovery... statistically unfavourable."
"Is he sick?" I pressed.
"No." Her gaze flickered away for a second. "He was gravely wounded in the rescue that brought you here."
Under my pillow, my hand loosened its death grip on the scalpel.
Chapter 2
Our first breakfast in Inoasis was hardly pleasant. Steeling myself, I held my breath and slid one of those light blue cubes past my lips, and to my shock, the expected wave of rot never hit my taste buds.
The texture reminded me vaguely of peas, with notes of soy underneath. What it lacked entirely was flavour. No seasonings, no herbs, nothing that might make food actually taste like something. Luxuries that probably didn't exist in this energy-conserving country. It was like unseasoned beans boiled in plain water, edible but barely, which already counted as a surprise.
We were absolutely starving. Discovering the food wasn't as impossible to swallow as I'd imagined, I still couldn't stomach the alien colour palette.
So I took my fork and mashed all the cubes on my plate, stirring the mess into a uniform brown sludge that at least didn't look toxic. My sisters caught on instantly, their utensils clanging against their plates as they followed my lead.
That 'Lady' apparently found our table manners lacking. She let out a soft huff before gracefully turning and leaving the ward.
"Tch," Pony's fork smacked against her plate with a disgruntled clang. "Same damn face as those Jacques' assholes."
"Did they just trick us?" Pebble whimpered, fingers pinching her nose shut while she chewed, her voice turning into a nasal drone. Pony shot her a look.
"Don't talk while pinching your nose, little one. Your ears will balloon up and you'll go deaf."
"We need to ask Faucher," I said, already three-quarters through my plate. If I shovelled it down fast enough, my nose wouldn't have time to register what was happening. "What exactly happened to Papa when he entered Inoasis. He seems to have joined Faucher's side."
"Just have him send us home and be done with it," Pony muttered, her face dropping. "Papa's gone. No answer brings him back." She hunched over her remaining food.
If only it were that simple... I ran my fingers around my water glass, the lukewarm liquid leaching heat from my palm where it had flushed angry red from clutching the scalpel's handle. It didn't hurt as much now.
The wounds on my feet were healing too. The raw, flayed skin of my soles barely protested when I shifted my weight. I guessed the IV might contain something to speed up healing. Maybe.
Or perhaps this was another "gift" from my modified genetics. Accelerated healing to complement our unnaturally lengthened lifespan. What other alterations they'd smuggled into my DNA, I didn’t know. The super sensitive hearing thing was my curse alone. My sisters didn't share it.
Those two caretakers who had just left were still standing guard outside. Their heartbeats pulsed steadily, their breathing so perfectly timed it was as if they breathed from a shared lung.
VIDAL clearly wasn't operating on any normal organizational chart I recognized. No legitimate institution still practiced this level of behavioural conditioning and master-servant hierarchy, at least not in the world I'd known. They called themselves "scholars" rather than employees. Though "servants" might be more accurate.
Their reverent use of "Lady" when addressing Aurora confirmed her position at the top of their pyramid.
But to get the real story about Papa and this mysterious contract thing involving us, we'd need to corner Francis Faucher himself. I knew nothing about the guy except that Papa had trusted him, which was saying something.
And now he was barely hanging on between life and death, and I didn't even know if he was somewhere in this building or halfway across the damn city.
The guards beyond our door made one thing clear: seeing him wouldn't be as simple as asking nicely.
I turned to see Pony pushing away her empty plate, tilting her water glass to drain every last drop, while my little sister was still making faces as she forced the last scraps into her mouth.
Snapping back from my concentrated eavesdropping on the hallway, I stared at the remaining sludge on my plate. I swept it into a pile with my fork, then lifted the plate and shoveled everything into my mouth.
About half an hour later, the two caretakers came back into the room, gliding toward our tables to collect the dishes. Having figured out these robots wouldn't give us anything useful, I kept my mouth shut. Pony, however, never the one to read the room.
"That man, Francis Faucher, where is he now?"
Both women froze, sharing this panicked look. Their identical expressions of shock suggested Pony had just broken the most sacred rule in their little playbook.
"We possess no such information," one finally responded, her voice getting noticeably stiffer. "Lord Faucher remains under the exclusive care of his personal medical staff. We... we lack the necessary clearance to monitor his whereabouts."
"Doesn't your Lady ask them?" Pony cocked her head, looking like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. I shot her a warning glare. One more question and I'd shut her down myself.
"Unless Lord Faucher explicitly authorizes such inquiries, no one may request or receive information regarding his status," the second caretaker moved toward my sister, her gaze turning to ice.
"I strongly recommend the young lady refrain from addressing Lord Faucher without his proper title."
The rest of the post-meal cleanup went down in dead silence. Pony mercifully kept her mouth shut for once, while I tried to swallow down the burning rage building in my chest.
'Outsiders.' The word hung unspoken but you could practically taste it in the air. Without Papa's mysterious contract protecting us, we'd be worth less than dirt in this locked-up country.
As they got ready to leave, they gave us these polite little nods but wouldn't look us in the eye, like staring at us might contaminate their precious genetic purity.
The footsteps outside our door faded away, only to be replaced by the soft sounds of two new guards taking their spots.
Papa was right. Inoasis had been built on keeping people out, a fancy hideout where only those with supposedly "superior" genes got to live.
"I knew we wouldn't get anything useful out of them," I sighed, sinking back against my pillow, absently rubbing my uncomfortably stuffed stomach. At least the once-daily meal thing was legit. The thought of choking down that fertilizer crap twice a day was enough to make me consider starving myself instead.
"Who says we didn't learn anything? We found out tons," Pony finally showed her smug grin. Both Pebble and I looked at her.
"Other than figuring out they think we're trash?" I raised an eyebrow.
"First," she counted on her finger, "Francis Faucher outranks VIDAL. They can't track where he goes, which means Faucher doesn't trust them enough to give them basic updates."
"Shh," I hissed, pointing frantically at the door before holding up two fingers as a warning. Pony's eyes lit up with understanding. She waved us closer, patting the mattress of her centre bed. We leaned in, but stayed put in our own beds.
"Second," she whispered, "the help we're getting probably isn't coming from Faucher's people. We're not about to get murdered or anything, but we're stuck in this weird middle ground. Protected on paper but surrounded by assholes who didn't sign that contract."
My stomach dropped. That made total sense.
We stayed stuck in the ward for another day and night.
Yesterday afternoon, several medical staff came in to check our monitoring screens, probably checking our condition. I expected our stay in this room would drag on for weeks, definitely not days. When they announced our discharge for tomorrow, I was secretly shocked.
Free movement was impossible, of course, no doubt coming with invisible boundaries. I didn't think they'd let us leave this building, though we had no plans to anyway. Still, mentally mapping this fortress, its dimensions, pathways, blind spots seemed necessary. Just in case.
A cage with better furniture and treatment was still a cage. We weren't truly safe yet.
And our main goal was to find Francis Faucher, the master of this house and our supposed guardian. Pony had questioned the medical staff yesterday, only to get the head-shaking of people trained to know nothing. That left Aurora Vidal, his fiancée. But something about that woman... even minimal interaction with her made my skin crawl.
If Faucher turned out to be the same kind of person... I shook my head, stopping my thoughts from drifting toward a future I couldn't control.
It was just past 6 AM, and the room was still dark. Pony and Pebble were still asleep, but I'd had more than enough sleep these past few days.
I'd been awake since five, superhearing picking up the rhythmic click of boot heels. Guards rotating shifts throughout the building, equipment occasionally clanking against combat belts. The twin guards outside our door had cycled through several Vidal replacements already, their movements given away by whispering fabric and quieter footsteps.
Lying in bed, I remembered the day Papa came to rescue us.
His tactical gear mirrored the uniforms of those soldiers who'd brought us to Inoasis. Their midnight-black outfits had stood out against Astragan's sickly brightness like ink on white paper. To the Jacques guards, Papa's team might as well have painted targets on their chests.
I didn't blame them; Faucher's choice of that stark contrast made perfect sense. After Astragan, the colour white had become a trigger for memories I desperately wanted to forget.
Thinking about it, did all personnel under Faucher's command wear similar dark uniforms, representing a side we could relatively trust? I pressed my palms against tired eyes, my mind trying to identify potential allies besides Vidal. If we ran into such people during our limited exploration, maybe they might give us information on Faucher himself.
At exactly 7:30, the ambient lighting shifted from twilight to blinding dawn. My sisters stirred from sleep, hands instinctively covering sensitive eyes.
"Good morning, ladies. We have confirmed your health parameters and may proceed with discharge," announced one of the Vidals. They arrived in formation. Two nurses to do final wound assessments, yesterday's caretaker duo with our breakfast, and an unfamiliar addition.
This newcomer maintained the required formality, yet something about her was different from the standard template. Upturned eyes with honey-coloured irises. A mask hid her facial features, but those bright eyes provided an unexpected insight: the Vidals weren't all identical copies from the same mold after all.
She did a slight bow, her silver-white hair perfectly bound except for a single strand that had escaped, swaying gently across her forehead. My gaze tracked down to her nametag.
"...Muli?"
"Greetings, my lady," she raised her head, and I had this weird impression, as if I caught lines resembling a smile at the corners of her eyes. "I am Muli. In conjunction with Kori and Dera, I have been officially appointed to serve as your caretaker from this point forward."
She stepped back, lowering her gaze as medical staff removed the bandages from my feet. Fresh skin had formed across my soles, still thin and sensitive. They applied some cooling gel before sealing it with a transparent film. I wiggled my toes, feeling a tingling sensation on my soles but no pain whatsoever.
We slipped into the cloth shoes they gave us and followed Muli toward the exit. Muli led the way, and the ward door automatically dissolved as we got close, and we left the sterile whiteness behind.
We entered a corridor so dark it seemed to eat light, with only soft amber glow flowing from recessed panels along the walls. The space above us vanished into darkness.
My eyes struggled with the shift in lighting, making it impossible to spot any ceiling or surveillance equipment. The floor beneath was made of some matte material, not quite like ceramic tiles, more likely some synthetic metal.
The temperature dropped immediately—a penetrating cold that cut through our thin hospital gowns. They hadn't given us any blankets or coats to fight off the cold.
Pebble didn't complain, but I still silently signalled Pony to keep her close. As the chill settled against my exposed skin, I momentarily forgot all the New Human upgrades they'd forced on us.
Muli ahead of us turned her head to glance at us, not breaking stride. The other two quietly followed behind us.
The corridor ended in a sharp left turn, opening into a bigger chamber housing an elevator. Its walls rippled with liquid-like reflectivity, our reflections breaking apart and reassembling with each step we took. Here, finally, a ceiling overhead, lightened by warm lighting that somehow lit everything without casting shadows. Before us stood the elevator itself. It was a transparent capsule reinforced with dark steel. As we stepped inside, concentric rings of light pulsed beneath our feet, tracking our movements.
I watched as Muli pressed her palm against what looked like an ordinary section of the capsule's transparent wall. Light cascaded across her hand, scanning biometric markers, before a holographic panel of floor options glowed.
She selected level 3.
I barely had time to register seven total options. B2 glowed an ominous red, probably marking the lowest basement level, while the remaining floors shimmered with amber indicators.
Another identical corridor greeted us when we got out. We were brought to a wall that wouldn't have looked like a door if not for a screen. Muli repeated the authentication process, her palm triggering an intricate scan before the midnight-black barrier dissolved, fibres pulling back to create an entrance.
"Ladies," the three Vidals stepped aside, with Muli taking the lead. "These are your assigned quarters. The contract has stipulated shared accommodation initially, with flexibility for separate rooms when you feel prepared for that transition."
"This works for now." I replied, taking the first step forward into the warmed space.
My attention immediately went up to the skylight spanning the ceiling. Beyond the angled glass stretched absolute darkness, not natural night, but the artificial void beneath Inoasis's protective barrier, interrupted only by scattered pinpricks of distant city light bleeding through.
Three identical beds seemed to float in the dim space, their minimal frames barely visible against the deep charcoal flooring. Amber light seeped from hidden wall panels, bathing everything in a gentle glow that softened the manufactured darkness above.
"They've actually got carpet in here," Pony noted, genuine surprise in her voice as she guided Pebble toward the window to look at the artificial night.
"Synthetic fibres," either Kori or Dera corrected briefly. Pony rolled her eyes.
Each bed had a neatly folded stack of white fabric. I claimed the one nearest the exit and examined the materials they'd provided. Indeed, smoother than any cotton or polyester I'd ever felt, without even a single wrinkle.
They said these were our temporary wardrobes, with separate formal and casual options sized for each of us. They confirmed that the innermost bed had Pebble's size, and our little sister didn't object to that spot.
While Pony helped our youngest get dressed, I gathered my assigned clothing and went behind the privacy screen to the changing area.
The space was surprisingly big, connected to a full bathroom. I knocked the walls to check for hollow spaces, scanned corners for any hidden devices. Everything seemed solid and private.
I exhaled, relaxing my shoulders. I needed to at least try to trust the man Papa had put his faith in. For better or worse, we were guests under his protection now.
The mirror reflected a stranger wearing my face. Like all Astragan's test subjects, my body had been reduced to angles and hollows. Sunken cheeks, wrists like twigs, ankles that looked ready to snap under my minimal weight.
The white clothes only made this ghostly quality worse, their pristine fabric almost glowing against the changing room's dim lighting. The structured shoulders tapered sharply to a waist secured by a metallic silver belt. Very... Vidal, but we had no choice at the moment. If I had to identify what made me uncomfortable, any other colour would do. Just replace the damn white.
My sisters had also changed, the uniformity highlighting our shared fragility. The three of us together... we looked terribly skinny, as if we might faint over with the slightest push.
"Lady Vidal has arranged for additional clothing sets to be delivered," Dera noted, watching Pony fidget with her high collar, her eyes dropped, mockingly. "Should you have specific requirements, we are authorized to relay them."
That frost-laden tone basically implied: Be grateful for what you've been given.
"No, this is fine. Thank you." I tried to make my smile look more genuine. "What's next on our schedule?"
"Today's orientation includes the public meeting area and Lord Faucher's personal library, the spaces you have been granted access to," Kori explained.
"Lord Faucher has specified that your education shall fall under V.I.D.A.L. supervision," Muli added, her tone slightly less robotic than her counterparts. "You shall be introduced to Inoasis technologies and information systems over the coming cycle."
School, then. Just in a glorified prison.
We swapped the impractical slippers for more substantial boots and followed our handlers into the corridor. Dera and Kori took the lead position, while Muli fell back.
When I glanced over my shoulder to check on my sisters, I caught something unexpected. An unreadable expression in Muli's eyes that disappeared the second our gazes met.
*****
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