The room was white. Harsh, sterile, unyielding. Machines hummed with quiet precision, their blinking lights reflecting off metal and glass. Each surface was polished to a clinical perfection, unbroken by warmth or shadow.
On the table lay a boy. Fifteen years old, pale, thin, his body threaded with wires and tubes. The instruments above him hovered with mechanical patience, poised to bend flesh and bone to the will of men.
He did not move. He did not cry. He did not plead.
The air smelled faintly of antiseptic, smoke, and iron. The kind of smell that clung to the back of your throat, reminding you that life here was measured and weighed.
Behind a glass wall, the watchers observed. Scientists, doctors, men in white coats who had long since ceased to wonder if what they did was right. Their expressions were calm, almost reverent.
"Subject Twelve is gone," one said.
Another replied, "Cerebral overload. As expected."
A silver-haired man folded his arms. "This one… is different."
The boy's eyes remained closed beneath the clamps. He did not flinch. The faint twitch of his fingers was the only sign that he was alive.
No one noticed. No one would.
The mechanical arms moved into position. Tools aligned with a precision that only machines could hold. Above him, light reflected off steel, casting patterns across his pale skin.
The first cut was precise, sharp. Pain flared in his vision, burning and red, and yet he remained still. Breath measured. Heart steady.
Blood ran freely from his eyes, dark and bright, soaking into the sheets. Alarms shrieked. Warnings flashed. The scientists worked faster, speaking in low, clipped voices.
The boy felt nothing. He thought nothing. He observed only the rhythm—the endless, repeating cycle of action and reaction.
Time passed in a silence that was deafening. Every movement, every sound, every drop of blood became part of the room. The world narrowed until there was only white, only the hum of machines, only the inevitability of the end.
And then it came.
A stillness.
A pause in the air. The world did not shift, it merely waited. And in that waiting, he understood the limit. The final edge.
Then it was over.
He was still.
The monitors flatlined. The machines hummed on, indifferent. The scientists stepped back.
"Subject Thirteen… is deceased," one said.
No one spoke after that. The room returned to its sterile quiet, as if nothing had happened.
The boy was gone.
And the world, waiting beyond the laboratory walls, did not yet know he would return.