For days, Lisa thought she was winning.
She strutted through the camp with swollen lips and red marks on her neck like medals of honor. When other survivors whispered behind her back, she ignored them. Let them sneer. Let them gossip. What did their words matter when she was finally climbing higher?
The officers had let her into their rooms. They had called her "special," given her scraps of food better than the tasteless porridge in the camp. She wore her shame like a badge of power.
But power, she was about to learn, was never hers to hold.
It ended one morning without warning.
Two soldiers came to her tent while she was still smoothing her hair. She thought they'd come to escort her to another officer's quarters. Her lips curled into a knowing smile as she fixed her clothes.
"Where are we going?" she asked, voice laced with false sweetness.
Neither answered. They only seized her by the arms and dragged her out.
Lisa's smile faltered. "Wait—what are you doing? Where's Officer Brandt? He said he wanted to see me again—"
Their grips tightened. They didn't even look at her.
That was the first moment Lisa felt fear creep up her spine.
The underground lab stank of bleach and rot.
Lisa's eyes went wide when she was dragged into a sterile hall filled with white-coated doctors and guards with rifles. She had never seen this place before, though whispers about it drifted through the camp. Survivors who vanished. Guards who came back pale-faced.
Now she knew why.
"Test subject 12,402," a doctor announced coldly, scribbling something onto a clipboard as the soldiers shackled Lisa to a metal table. The chains clanged as they fastened around her wrists and ankles, spreading her body in an X-shape.
Lisa thrashed. "What the hell is this? Let me go! I'm not—I'm not one of them! I know the officers—"
"Silence," a guard snapped, slapping her across the face.
Lisa's lip split, blood dripping down her chin. Her heart raced. Her ambition, her pride, her desperate dreams of rising—all of it crumbled into sheer panic.
She wasn't special. She wasn't chosen.
She was cattle.
The doctors moved around her like she was an object, not a person. They checked her vitals, scribbled notes, spoke in flat medical jargon.
"High adrenaline response."
"Subject appears healthy."
"Good candidate to test the infusion stage."
Lisa's sobs filled the room. "Please—don't do this—I can be useful! I'll do anything! I'll sleep with whoever you want—just don't—don't—"
One of the doctors looked down at her briefly, his mask hiding most of his face. His eyes were dull, lifeless. "You already did," he said.
Lisa froze. The truth hit her like ice water.
They had used her body, her desperation, her hunger for survival—and now that she was wrung dry, she was nothing but a specimen.
"No—no, no, no!" she screamed, yanking at her chains until her wrists bled.
The needle slid into her arm.
The liquid inside was thick, black-green, swirling like poison. It burned as it entered her veins, fire spreading through her body. Lisa arched her back, shrieking until her throat tore.
Her vision blurred. Her skin crawled. Every nerve screamed.
"What's happening?!" she sobbed, her voice breaking. "It hurts—it hurts—please stop!"
The doctors didn't stop. They only leaned closer, scribbling notes as her body convulsed.
"Subject entering shock."
"Heart rate accelerating."
"Mutation unstable—administer secondary compound."
Another injection. This one white, almost glowing.
Lisa's body jerked violently, her screams turning raw and guttural. Her nails clawed at the table, scraping until they broke. Tears streamed down her face, mixing with sweat and blood.
Her cries grew less human.
She begged until the end.
"Please—I don't want to die—don't make me—" Her voice cracked, hoarse and trembling. "I just wanted to live—"
But her words dissolved into screams as her body twisted, bones cracking, skin blistering. Her beauty—the one thing she clung to as her weapon—melted away under the corruption spreading through her veins.
Her once-bright eyes clouded over. Her lips curled back in a snarl as black veins spider webbed across her skin.
Lisa became another experiment, another broken body on their endless list of failures.
When the transformation overtook her completely, when her screams died into guttural snarls, one of the guards raised a rifle and ended it with a bullet through her skull.
The sound echoed through the sterile chamber.
Her body slumped, blood pooling around the table.
The doctors didn't look at her again. They only scribbled:
"Subject 12,402: Unstable. Discarded."
The lab returned to its mechanical rhythm, her screams already forgotten.
But they lingered in the stone, in the shadows, in the cracks of the cold underground. The echoes of her agony haunted the halls, a reminder of what became of those who reached too high, too desperately.
Lisa's ambition ended not in glory, but in chains.
And in death, she was nothing but a number.