Chapter 7: Protocol 503

The mustard-yellow coat made her impossible to lose. A single ember moving through the crowd, her steps measured, head slightly lowered. People brushed past her, indifferent, the rhythm of the city swallowing her whole.

As she walked, the streets subtly changed. The boutique windows gave way to shuttered storefronts. Bright awnings disappeared, replaced with graffiti-scrawled brick and peeling paint. The sidewalks seemed narrower here, the air heavier, carrying the sour smell of old grease and damp concrete.

Still she walked, the yellow spot in a landscape that seemed to drain itself of color the deeper she went.

At last, she stopped. The address had led her here: a squat metal shutter wedged between two abandoned storefronts. No name. No signage. Nothing but a magnetic card reader bolted crookedly into the wall.

Elisabeth hesitated, glancing over her shoulder as though expecting someone to laugh, to stop her, to say she didn't belong here. But the street was indifferent.

She slid the white card across the reader. A mechanical groan. The shutter creaked upward and jammed halfway.

She tried again. Nothing. The shutter hung there like a mouth frozen mid-sentence.

Her throat tightened. She crouched low, brushed grit off her knees, and ducked under into shadow.

Inside, the air smelled of dust and chemicals. A flyer for pest control was tacked to the wall, the cartoon rat smiling obscenely. She moved down the long and narrow corridor, the flickering light buzzing overhead.

At the end, the space widened into a lobby no larger than a storage closet. Harsh neon bled across windowless walls, exposing every stain and every crack.

On one side, a grid of metal boxes. Dozens of them, stacked like forgotten coffins. Elisabeth scanned the numbers, her eyes stopping first on 207, low to the ground. And then, higher up, a box marked 503.

Her hand trembled slightly as she held up the white card.

Then followed a beep and the lock disengaged.

---

The cardboard box sat on her coffee table like an accusation. Brown and ordinary. Yet the numbers scrawled in black marker — 503 — pulsed in her mind as though they carried a secret code.

The apartment was immaculate again, Maria's touch restoring it to showroom perfection. Not a pillow out of place. Not a glass left unpolished. And still, in the middle of all that tidiness, the box waited for her.

Elisabeth sat on the couch, elbows on her knees, staring at it. She felt as if she were waiting for the box to open itself, to relieve her of the responsibility. But it did not.

At last, with a sharp breath, she tore at the tape.

Inside, the contents were arranged with unnerving precision, each object cradled in white foam. She lifted them out one by one and placed them carefully on the table, the ritual strangely reverent.

A vial no bigger than her thumb, glowing faintly under the lamp's light. On its label: ACTIVATOR — single use, discard after use. Her skin prickled. The word itself felt final.

Next: a clear plastic kit, sterile, clinical. Inside, long silver needles and plastic barrels, labeled STABILIZER — other self.

Her hand hovered over the next item. It looked like a sewing kit, yet nothing domestic or comforting about it. Steel scissors, gauze pads, surgical thread, disinfectant. Tools of repair… or violation.

A transparent tube coiled like a sleeping serpent bore a tag: SWITCH.

Finally, she drew out two heavy pouches filled with thick yellow liquid. They sloshed wetly when she shifted them. The words stenciled in black across the surface made her stomach lurch: FOOD — MATRIX — OTHER SELF.

On the plastic, numbers were lined in descending order, each paired, each mirrored: 7 — 76 — 65 — 54 — 43 — 32 — 21 — 1 Switch. Switch.

The symmetry was terrifying and absolute.

At the very bottom of the box lay a card no bigger than a business note. On one side, the instructions were reduced to iconography and brutal simplicity: YOU ACTIVATE — only once (intravenous) YOU STABILIZE — every day (intramuscular) YOU SWITCH — every seven days, without exception

Her fingers turned it over, the cardboard soft against her skin. One final line waited for her there, in stark black letters:

REMEMBER YOU ARE ONE.

Elisabeth's gaze swept over the table. The yellow vial caught the light like a drop of sunlight. The needles gleamed. The bags of thick liquid loomed, grotesquely alive.

She sat very still, heart thudding, as though afraid her movement alone might activate it all.

The air in the room seemed to tilt around her. For the first time, she felt that she was not sitting alone.

---

Later on, she stood naked before the mirror. Her reflection stared back, stripped of costume and mask. The bright bulbs traced every contour of her body: the curve of her breasts, the soft line of her belly, the beauty mark pressed like a fingerprint next to her navel. She slid her hand across it as though confirming that yes, it was still there — the one immutable detail in a body that otherwise felt like it was betraying her.

She was still beautiful. Everyone said so. But the glass didn't lie: the faint slackening of skin, the shadows under her eyes, the small betrayals that whispered time is winning. Each trace of age felt amplified, magnified into catastrophe. The end of youth, the end of desire, the end of everything.

And in the silence of the bathroom, she heard it again, the voice. Deep and resonant.

You are the matrix.

She froze. The words seemed to vibrate in her bones.

On the silver tray beside the sink, the instruments gleamed in clinical alignment. The vial pulsed faintly yellow, promising something more.

Everything comes from you. And everything is you.

Her hand trembled as she picked up the syringe, slid the needle into the vial, and drew the fluorescent liquid. She held it to the light: it glowed like captured lightning.

This is simply… a better version of yourself.

Her reflection studied her with accusation, as if daring her to go through with it.

She wrapped the tourniquet around her arm, bit down hard to tighten it. The alcohol stung her skin as she dabbed, searching for a vein. The metal tip hovered and poised.

One deep breath. And then the plunge. The needle slipped beneath her flesh as the yellow fire slid into her vein.

She waited with her muscles taut as her lungs locked.

Nothing.

A long exhale, part relief, part disappointment. Her lips twisted into a bitter smile. "This is bullshit—"

The world lurched. The tiles spun. She fell forward, skull cracking against porcelain white.

Then the pain came.

It was as if her stomach had been set ablaze from within. A violent spasm curled her body into a knot, forcing a strangled cry from her throat. Sweat poured from her pores, drenching her skin in fever heat.

And then — movement.

Something was alive under her flesh. Not cramps, not spasms, something growing. It slid beneath her skin, bulging, distorting, as if a thousand insects were crawling through her veins.

Her scream dissolved into gasps. Her hearing warped, the bathroom muffling around her, as though her head had been dunked underwater. Her own heartbeat thundered in her ears.

Her vision tunneled. Extreme focus. Her pupil dilated into darkness — then split. A fissure opened inside the iris itself, dividing into two. She blinked, but the second eye flickered in her vision, obscene, impossible and gone again.

Her back arched violently. Waves rolled beneath her skin, each ripple cracking the surface of her spine. The flesh split. Wetly. Slowly. As if unzipping itself.

From within, something pushed. Pressed like it was emerging.

Bone. A spine — another spine — rising, threading its way up from beneath her own.

Her body was no longer hers. It was a container, splitting at the seams.

The scream caught in her throat as the sound was swallowed by a deafening ringing. A black hole widened inside her pupil, pulling everything into its vortex.

She felt herself fall, spiraling into the abyss. A tunnel of blinding fluorescent light swallowed her whole, rushing toward a singular white point that devoured everything—

Then nothing.