silence of the night. The cold glow of the artificial lighting stretched shadows across the white walls, making the room feel like a cage made of glass. Leonora sat curled on her bed, her gray hair spilling over her small shoulders, the thin blanket wrapped tightly around her.
"Hey… Leonora."
The whisper came from the ceiling. She flinched and glanced up, wide-eyed.
"Thirty-six? Is that you!?"
A thin, wiry boy dropped from the air vents with a soft thud. His arms were spindly, his hospital uniform stained faintly with antiseptic and something darker. He looked like a ghost trying to look human.
"Wow! How did you even get in there!?" she whispered, half-excited, half-terrified.
"I can fit inside. From my room to yours. This way I can visit without being seen," I said, my voice low, as if the walls themselves were listening.
Her face lit up like a spark in the cold. "That's so cool! So… when do we start?" she asked, leaning forward, hungry for something—anything—that wasn't needles and white rooms.
"Don't worry." I crouched near her bed, pulling out a creased pen and paper, the only contraband of hope I had managed to smuggle through the vents. "Let me just grab a sheet."
She handed me a crumpled page with trembling fingers. I began to write the letters, one by one, across the paper. Her eyes glowed as if each line of ink was a key turning inside a locked door. The sterile, lifeless room became a small universe of words and whispers.
Day by day, the lessons continued. Words became phrases. Phrases became stories. Her laughter—soft, hesitant at first—began to echo in the halls like sunlight creeping through cracks in steel. She was so happy. She could finally read.
I still remember what she told me that day, her voice trembling with something I couldn't name:
"Thirty-six, you made my biggest wish come true. I'm glad you snuck into my room that day. Thank you… from the bottom of my heart."
I had blushed, looking away. She had laughed—warm and soft, like a bird in a cage that had forgotten how to sing.
But the warmth didn't last.
After that day, they took me to the chamber room. Cold metal tables. Straps that bit into my wrists. Needles sliding under my skin, drawing flesh samples, pumping unknown drugs into my veins. I drifted in and out of blackness for three days, until even pain became a dull throb. When they brought me back, I couldn't see out of one eye. My body felt like it had been hollowed out.
But I wanted to see her. Needed to. So I crawled through the vents again, every movement tearing at my wounds, until I reached her room.
"Thirty-six… you're back!" she gasped, her face lighting up even as she noticed my swollen, darkened eye.
"Hey, Leonora." My voice was thin, brittle.
"What happened to your eye!?" she asked, reaching out, as if she could touch the hurt away.
I forced a smirk. "I tripped. Fell. It's nothing."
She frowned. "You should be more careful with yourself, Thirty-six." Her voice was soft but scolding, like a thread of kindness in a world built to crush it.
"Look," I said, pushing the pain aside and holding out a book. "I brought you a new one."
Her eyes widened with delight. "Wow… Caspia! It's huge!"
"Yeah." I tried to smile. "There's a girl just like you in the story. I think you'll like it."
"Thank you, Thirty-six. I'm going to love reading this."
Days blurred together, our small lessons and stories a fragile rebellion against the cold corridors of Altex. But then one day Malden, the head doctor, appeared at my bedside. His white coat glowed under the sterile lights; his voice was calm, like a scalpel before it cuts.
"EH36… it's time for the next phase. We'll replace your cells with another body's cells. You should be proud. You're going to save a little girl's life."
I knew immediately who he meant.
They took us both to the operation room. The air smelled of disinfectant and ozone. The lights burned like suns overhead. She lay asleep, anesthetized, pale as paper. They began the procedure. My healthy cells for her dying ones. My pain for her future.
I had survived that place for two years, but in that moment, I had a purpose. I was glad. Glad I could do one last thing for her—give her a life outside of that hell.
I don't know how I survived afterward. My body became an experiment, a battlefield of cells and metal. Child after child came through. They took my cells again and again. Somehow, my body repaired itself, a freak of science.
But the pain was endless—like a thousand cuts under my skin every day. The worst part wasn't the agony. It was knowing I would never see her again.
So I killed everything inside me. Hope. Love. Good. Evil. All of it. I begged Malden to make me a machine so I wouldn't have to feel anymore. He failed. But I still became what I am now—a monster built from scraps of a boy who once taught a girl to read.
I looked at her now, my voice breaking like dry glass.
"So dear Leonora, I became who I am today because of you. It's not your fault. My destiny was always to be the monster you see. But for that little time we had together…" His eyes softened for the first time. "…I once again felt truly human."
Leonora fell to the floor, stunned. Tears burst from her eyes, streaming down her cheeks like a river.
"Thirty-six… it's actually you," she whispered, her voice cracking under the weight of years. "I can't believe it. I searched for you everywhere. No one told me anything. Until one day a box of books came to my door… they were yours. There was a note inside. You sent that to me? I thought you were dead…" Her sobs tore through the silence.
"You idiot…" she shouted again, harder this time. Not an insult, but a plea. A word trembling with grief, guilt, and the ghost of a lost childhood.