"Subject is regaining consciousness," a male voice said clinically. "Vitals stabilizing."
Subject? Alex tried to speak, but his throat felt raw, as if he'd been screaming for hours. Maybe he had been.
"Sedate him again," a familiar voice ordered. Haley.
Alex's vision cleared enough to see her standing over him, no longer the flirtatious college girl but someone else entirely—surgical mask hanging around her neck, hair tucked under a cap, blue eyes cold and calculating as she studied a tablet in her hands.
"Can't," the male voice replied. "Too soon after the first procedure. We need his system to clear the previous sedatives."
Haley sighed with irritation. "Fine. Prep him anyway. We'll proceed."
Panic surged through Alex's veins like ice water as memories flooded back. The coffee. Collapsing. Haley's emotionless face as darkness took him.
Haley.
Images flashed through his mind in rapid succession. Meeting her at the university library. Their first date over coffee. Her friends with their strange questions. The candlelit dinner invitation...
Alex remembered it all now. How they'd met at the university library where she worked. Their first conversation over coffee had quickly blossomed into a relationship that seemed too good to be true. And it was.
Two months in, Haley had begun introducing Alex to her sophisticated friends - doctors, medical students, and researchers who asked oddly specific questions about his health.
"Blood type?" one had asked casually.
"O negative," Alex answered. "Universal donor."
"Very valuable," they'd remarked, exchanging glances with Haley.
Just last night, she had invited him to dinner at her apartment. "A special occasion," she'd called it with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
Alex had knocked on Haley's apartment door at exactly six, holding a bouquet of flowers. He'd debated bringing wine but decided against it—Haley was particular about her wines, and he didn't want to choose poorly.
She had opened the door, her smile tight at the edges. "You're right on time."
"Something smells amazing," Alex had said, stepping inside. The apartment was dim, lit mainly by candles.
"Coffee first?" Haley had offered, taking the flowers. "I just made a fresh pot."
"Sure." Alex had settled onto one of the barstools at her kitchen counter, watching as she moved efficiently around the small space.
Haley had handed him a mug, their fingers brushing. "I've been thinking a lot about us," she'd said, not meeting his eyes.
"Good thoughts, I hope?" Alex had taken a sip of coffee, noting an unusual aftertaste.
"I've never met anyone like you," she'd continued. "So genuinely good. Trusting. Uncomplicated."
"I'm feeling very complimented and slightly insulted," Alex had joked, though the room had begun to tilt slightly. He had blinked hard, trying to focus. "This coffee tastes different."
"It's a special blend," Haley had said, her voice sounding suddenly distant. "From very far away."
Alex had tried to set down the mug but missed the counter entirely. The ceramic shattered against the floor, the sound echoing strangely in his ears. His limbs felt impossibly heavy.
"Haley," he'd slurred, reaching for her. "Something's wrong."
She had caught him as he slid from the stool, easing him to the floor with surprising strength.
"I know. I'm sorry."
Alex's vision had tunneled, darkness creeping in from the edges. The last thing he saw clearly was Haley's face hovering above his, her blue eyes filled with something that might have been regret.
"Why?" he had managed to whisper.
"Nothing personal," she'd said softly. "Just business. You're worth more in parts than as a whole."
His phone had buzzed in his pocket—a text message he would never read. As consciousness slipped away, Alex had heard Haley speaking to someone on the phone.
"The package is ready for delivery," she'd said clinically. "Prep the operating room."
And now here he was.
"Wait," he croaked, his voice barely audible. "Please..."
Haley glanced at him, her expression unmoved. "You're awake. Inconvenient, but workable."
The surgeon approached with a syringe, and Alex felt the sharp pinch of the needle as it entered his flesh, once, twice, three times across his chest and abdomen. A cold, creeping numbness spread outward from each injection site, but to his horror, it wasn't complete—he could still feel pressure, still sense every touch against his skin.
"Heart valves first," the surgeon said, positioning himself over Alex's chest. "Then corneas. Both are time-sensitive for the buyer in Singapore."
Metal gleamed under the harsh surgical lights. Alex's breath came in frantic, shallow gasps, tears streaming from the corners of his eyes, pooling in his ears and dampening his hair. He could taste salt on his lips, mixed with the copper tang of blood from where he'd bitten the inside of his cheek.
"P-please..." The word caught in his throat, mangled by a sob.
The first incision came with a strange, muted sensation—not sharp pain, but an unmistakable awareness of wrongness as his flesh parted.
He felt the warm trickle of his own blood sliding down his ribs, gathering in the hollow beneath his shoulder blades. His body jerked involuntarily against the restraints.
"Hold him steady," the surgeon instructed.
Haley's gloved hands pressed down on his shoulders, her face hovering above his, eyes visible over her surgical mask. For a moment, their gazes locked—his wild with terror, hers deliberately blank, though something flickered behind them that he couldn't name.
"You're killing me," Alex whispered, his voice cracking. "You're killing me."
She looked away.
Alex felt the nauseating pressure of retractors pulling his chest wound open wider. The sound they made—a wet, organic squelch—sent fresh waves of panic coursing through him. His back arched as far as the restraints would allow, his mouth open in a silent scream that finally tore free as a ragged wail.
"Blood pressure's unstable," Haley noted, glancing at a monitor.
Her voice was clinical, but her fingers trembled slightly against his skin.
"Expected," the surgeon replied without looking up. His hands moved with mechanical precision inside Alex's chest cavity. "He'll hold."
Every breath became agony, a desperate fight against the pressure inside his chest. Alex could feel the surgeon's fingers moving within him, touching parts of himself he was never meant to see or feel. The violation was absolute. Intimate. Unholy.
The room tilted and swam around him. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cold. A violent shiver ran through him, setting the surgical instruments rattling against the metal tray.
"I-I'm c-cold," he stammered through chattering teeth. Shock, some distant part of his mind supplied. He was going into shock.
Nobody acknowledged him. He had ceased to be a person to them.
Through tear-blurred vision, Alex watched as something bloody and glistening was lifted from his chest—a piece of his heart, he realized with nauseating clarity.
It was placed in a container, sealed, labeled. A part of him, packaged like meat.
A sob tore from his throat, raw and primal. Not just from pain, but from the profound indignity of it all. The reduction of his existence to inventory.
"Corneas next," the surgeon said, moving toward Alex's face.
"No," Alex whimpered, the fight draining from him as weakness took hold. His lips were numb, his extremities tingling with cold despite the sweat soaking his skin. He couldn't even turn his head away. "Not my eyes. Please... I don't want to die in the dark."
A tear slipped from the corner of his eye as the surgeon's gloved fingers pried his right eyelid open, holding it exposed. Alex stared up at the blinding surgical light, memorizing brightness before darkness could claim him.
"I'm not just spare parts," Alex whispered, his voice a ragged thread. "I'm someone. I matter."
For the briefest moment, Haley's movements faltered. A single tear escaped from her eye, rolling down to disappear beneath her mask—one last human connection before they took even that away from him.
"Everyone matters to someone," she said quietly. "Just not to me."
The surgeon's tool descended toward his eye, and Alex screamed one final time—a sound that contained everything he'd never said, everyone he'd never loved, every moment he'd taken for granted. His body convulsed against the restraints, blood from his chest wound spattering across the surgeon's gown.
As consciousness began to slip away, the wet warmth of his own tears mixed with blood on his face. The last thing Alex saw was Haley turning away, unable to watch the final violation of his humanity.
Darkness consumed him, but it wasn't the peaceful dark of sleep. It was cold, empty, a void that stretched endlessly in all directions.
And then, unexpectedly—warmth...
A flicker of light appeared before him
[Host Is dead]
[transmigration in process ]