The Rules of My Body

Time blurred after that first night.

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The sisters wasted no time dragging me into their clinic. A guest? No. What they dragged into that clinic was nothing but a specimen. They experimented on me the way a blacksmith tests new metal, hammering away until something bends.

The problem was nothing ever did.

The blonde one, Karin, had eyes like burning coals. Every time she approached with another "test," those red eyes held nothing but clinical curiosity. She was tall, athletic, moved like a fighter even when she was just handing me poison to drink. Her long golden hair was always pulled back in a practical ponytail, strands escaping to frame a face that could have been beautiful if it wasn't studying me like I was a particularly interesting specimen.

The other one, Kaguya, was smaller but somehow more unsettling. Same red eyes, but where Karin's burned with fire, Kaguya's calculated. Her dark brown hair had subtle red undertones that caught the light, falling to her shoulders in neat waves that never seemed to get messed up, no matter how messy her experiments got. She wore white and black, cleaner clothes than her sister's red and black combat gear. Always had ink stains on her fingers from that damn quill of hers.

They looked nothing alike except for those eyes. Both sisters, both staring at me like I was a puzzle to solve rather than a person to save.

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They discovered three rules.

First: my body does not get sick. Not from poison, not from plague, not from anything they could dig up. They even handed me a vial with a skull and crossbones once. For a second, I thought it was salad dressing.

Second: my body fixes itself. Cuts vanish, bones snap back, organs sprout like weeds. They drowned me, starved me, even shoved me into the clinic's old incinerator. I walked out a few minutes later without a mark. If I was destroyed completely, I just reappeared nearby, like the world refused to throw me out.

Third: I remember everything. Burned to ash? It does not matter. It all comes back, the cuts, the pain, the experiments. Every mistake, every failure. Whether I want it or not.

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At first I saw myself as their prisoner. But over time I realized what I really was. The only thing in existence tough enough to survive their theories. I was not their victim. I was their proof. The instrument to chase answers nobody else could.

Something changed the day I caught Karin burning breakfast again. She stood there, glaring at the charred remains of what might have been bread, her blonde hair falling in her face. For the first time, those red eyes looked frustrated rather than coldly curious.

"Here," I said, taking the pan. "Let me."

She watched me cook, arms crossed, that intense stare tracking my every movement. But it wasn't the clinical observation anymore. She looked puzzled. Like she was trying to figure out when I'd stopped being a test subject and started being a person.

Kaguya noticed too. She'd started humming while she stitched my wounds, soft, absent melodies that made her seem less like a researcher and more like someone who actually cared whether the stitches were neat. Her neat brown hair with its red undertones would fall forward as she concentrated, and she'd tuck it behind her ear with fingers always stained with fresh ink.

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Quiet moments slipped in. Karin shoved bitter tea at me, swearing it "balanced my humors." Kaguya hummed while stitching wounds she knew would be gone in minutes. They stopped feeling like tormentors and more like scholars gnawing at questions the rest of the world had abandoned.

The evening Karin first called me by name instead of "test subject," I knew something fundamental had shifted. She sat across from me at the small kitchen table, her red combat jacket unzipped, golden hair loose around her shoulders. Those burning red eyes met mine, not studying, just looking.

"Ken," she said, testing the word. "That's really your name?"

Behind her, Kaguya glanced up from her notes. Her white and black outfit was rumpled from a long day of experiments, dark hair with its red undertones mussed for once. She'd stopped writing, quill hovering over parchment, like this moment mattered more than whatever formula she'd been working on.

They both waited for my answer like it actually mattered to them.

"Yeah," I said quietly. "That's my name."

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Eventually they tired of repeating the same tricks. Not because they had found answers, but because the answers refused to exist in the walls of that clinic. So they struck a bargain: I could roam free, as long as I handled every scrap of housework.

The clinic was prison and home both. Karin, for all her strength, was hopeless in the kitchen. I once found a charred fish skeleton smoldering beside something that might have been bread. Kaguya was worse. Scrolls and jars stacked to the ceiling, laundry somehow dirtier after she touched it.

So I scrubbed. I mopped. I cooked. If I did not, no one would.

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Conversations spiraled out of nowhere. The sisters muttered their questions aloud, and I answered without thinking.

One evening Karin stitched a gash in my arm, her golden ponytail swinging as she worked. "The body loses so much strength when blood spills. Why is it so precious?"

"It carries air," I said. "Every breath rides the blood to every corner of you."

Her hands froze, those red eyes snapping up to meet mine. "Air in blood? Nonsense."

Another time, I was frying cutlets on the battered stove. Oil spat, filling the air with a sharp aroma. Kaguya frowned, pushing a strand of dark hair with red undertones behind her ear. "Meat softens in boiling water, but here it hardens. How can the same fire give two outcomes?"

"Because water never gets hot enough. Oil does. It breaks proteins, makes sugars combine. That is why frying changes food while boiling just keeps it soft."

She flushed and snapped her notes shut, ink staining her fingertips darker. "You say nonsense so confidently it almost sounds true."

I did not try to provoke them. But what sounded obvious to me sounded outrageous to them. They argued, faces red, and then I caught them scribbling my words into their notes.

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Once they registered me with the plague doctors guild, life moved past the stove. On paper, I was a field agent. In practice I was a disposable tool. An unbreakable body was useful, whether the mind inside it agreed or not.

The cities still stood, but only behind the barriers. Shimmering domes of wards and old science kept the Sephis out. Beyond those domes lay lost land. Some whispered it could be reclaimed. Most knew better.

That was where I came in.

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When they shoved an iron mask into my hands and told me to report, I nearly laughed.

"You will help reclaim what has been taken," Karin said, sipping tea I had brewed. Her red jacket was buttoned up again, all business, but her eyes had lost that cold edge.

"Your condition makes you ideal," Kaguya added, scribbling deployment notes. Her white and black outfit was crisp, hair with its red undertones neat, but she kept glancing up at me like she wasn't entirely comfortable with this arrangement.

Ideal. As if unkillable meant volunteer.

So they gave me a tattered coat, a badge, and a route into the outskirts. The other doctors looked at me with pity and relief both. I was the one meant to walk the fog-choked streets, lure out the Sephis, and burn them.

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The next morning, Kaguya burst into the kitchen waving a vial glowing an unhealthy green. Her usually neat hair with red undertones was wild with excitement, white and black clothes wrinkled like she'd been up all night.

"Ken, drink my special Ultra Sephis Ender Max 3000!"

I stared. "Three thousand? This is the first one I have seen."

She puffed her chest, ink-stained fingers clutching the vial proudly. "Ha. I skipped past the others and leapt straight here."

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "That makes no sense, you pain in the ass."

"Yosh, yosh," she beamed. "Now drink. Be a good guinea pig."

And like always, I did.

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By noon I was outside the barrier. The air was damp and sharp. Behind me the dome shimmered. Before me broken streets stretched into silence.

The Sephis never made noise until they wanted to. That was the worst part. You could walk half a mile in peace, then the fog twisted and something crawled out.

My stomach churned. Not from dread, but from Kaguya's Ultra Sephis Ender Max 3000.

"If I collapse," I muttered, "it will not be the monsters that killed me."

The fog stirred. A shape lurched forward, dripping black ichor that hissed against the stones.

I pulled the pin on a fire grenade.

The Sephis lunged, jaws clamping down on my arm. The grenade went with it. My arm tore away in one snap.

Pain flared. Blood spilled. Then stopped. Bone and muscle spiraled back, a new arm forming before the creature even finished swallowing the old one.

Smoke curled from its gut. It shrieked, convulsed. I flexed my new fingers.

"Guess that counts as a field test."

The blast tore it apart. Ash scattered. The fog swallowed the rest.

I looked at the bandolier across my chest. Twenty nine grenades left.

"Field test continues."

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At dawn the next day, the dome screamed and shattered.

The Sephis poured in like a tide.

Black ichor sprayed as grenades lit the streets. Doctors shouted through iron masks. Civilians fled while fire lances spat bursts of powder. For a moment we believed the line might hold.

Then Karin roared into the fray. Flame gauntlets lit her fists like cannons, her golden hair whipping behind her as she moved. One punch reduced a Sephis to cinders, another drove one through a wall. For an instant the line froze to watch her tear through monsters as if strength alone could save us.

Then the ground shook. A giant Sephis lumbered from the fog, swollen like a diseased tree. Karin struck its chest, cracked it open, and it did not fall.

The monster's kick hit her like a battering ram. She flew through a billboard painted with a grinning red orba, the trading company's mascot collapsing in flames around her. I recognized it from their advertisements, though I still didn't understand why they needed such a cheerful fruit to sell their wares.

Kaguya screamed her sister's name, her neat composure finally cracking. The line buckled.

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