Chapter One: To awaken in a new world.

The machine behind the mirror churned.

Not loudly. Not violently. But steadily — with the thick, wet rhythm of something that refused to pause. Tubes shuddered as fluid moved through them. Gauges ticked in quiet increments. Somewhere beneath the grated floor, something drained.

Lu’dunum, a young Sahash man standing at six foot one, washed his hands with the utmost care.

He scrubbed between each finger.
Under each nail.
Across the palms.
Up the wrists.

The water ran clear, though there had been nothing visible on his skin.

He whistled as he worked — a tone that was both deaf and noisy. It carried strangely in the green-lit room. Too cheerful. Too lively for the sickly fluorescence that bleached color from everything it touched. The sound bounced off steel counters and glass panels, weaving between scalpels and clamps and instruments whose names were printed on laminated labels in careful block lettering.

This room was best described as a laboratory.

More precisely, it was dedicated to the dissection of still living creatures.

The floor was metal gratework, spaced just wide enough that spillage would seep cleanly downward. Beneath it, channels sloped toward hidden drains. Overhead lights cast a green pallor that made even healthy skin appear faintly diseased.

There were two doors.

One to the east.
One to the south.

The eastern door was double-panelled and heavy, made from some dense industrial alloy — steel, perhaps, or iron. Its hinges were reinforced. A narrow observation slit ran through its center at eye level, currently shuttered.

Lu’dunum did not know what kind of metal it was.

“Only that it was hard and metal-like!” Lu’dunum chimed, glancing at his reflection in the broad mirror mounted above the wash basin.

His smile showed teeth.

“Yes,” he added brightly, as if answering a teacher. “Very metal-like.”

The south door was narrower, utilitarian. It bore a red stencil: DEFECTS.

“The south is where trash goes! Or defects!~” he said with a grin that did not quite reach his eyes.

He spoke to himself often.

Or rather, to the mirror.

Sometimes he answered questions that had not yet been asked. Sometimes he paused, tilting his head slightly, listening for something just beyond the audible hum of the machinery.

Behind him, the great mirror churn continued.

The apparatus occupied nearly an entire wall: a vertical column of reinforced glass chambers linked by silver tubing. Within them, something faintly luminous pulsed in slow waves. It was not blood. It was not oil.

It had color.

Faded violet.
Dull amber.
Occasional flickers of blue like lightning caught in syrup.

The liquid rose through one chamber, was filtered through a mesh of crystalline latticework, then descended in thinner streams into collection vats beneath the floor.

Each chamber bore a small brass plate.

Cycle.
Lucidity.
Yield.

A clipboard hung beside the final gauge.

Lu dried his hands with sterile cloth. He folded the fabric carefully. Precise edges. Straight corners.

The whistling resumed.

It was a lullaby, perhaps. Or something close to one. The melody wavered in odd places, skipping half-notes before correcting itself.

He adjusted the cuffs of his coat — white, though faintly green under the lighting. The sleeves were rolled just above his wrists.

The mirror above the sink reflected him cleanly.

Tall.
Composed.
Smiling.

“Presentation is important,” he murmured to the glass. “We must look reassuring.”

Behind the eastern doors, something shifted.

Not loudly.

A metallic clink.
A restrained movement.
The faintest exhale, too tired to be called a breath.

Lu’s whistling did not falter.

He stepped away from the basin and approached the mirror churn, running a finger lightly along the outer glass of the uppermost chamber. The warmth from within fogged the surface for a moment before fading.

The color inside pulsed again.

A deeper shade this time.

He tilted his head, watching it with attentive curiosity, like a gardener inspecting soil.

“Very productive today,” he said softly.

The gauge marked Yield trembled, then steadied.

From somewhere beneath the grate, liquid trickled downward.

And the green lights hummed on.

As Lu’dunum examined himself, he felt a sense of accomplishment.

Not pride exactly. Pride was loud. This feeling was quieter. Warmer. The kind that settled gently behind the ribs and said, Good. This is correct.

He tilted his head slightly to the left.

Then to the right.

He would describe himself as attractively thin.

The word thin pleased him.

Medically, the charts would have marked him anorexic.

But the charts were for paperwork.

The mirror was for truth.

Deep red, round glasses obscured his eyes from onlookers. The lenses caught the green laboratory light and dulled it, turning the reflection of the room into faint crimson halos. It was difficult to see where his gaze truly rested. That, too, pleased him.

His lab coat fell long against his frame — a mix of gray and white in honest light. Here, beneath the green fluorescence, it looked almost lime. Clinical. Approved.

His teeth were pearly white.

Jagged.

Sharp in the way of a canine, or a wolf, though he rarely thought of wolves. He smiled wider for a moment, inspecting the symmetry of them. There were no stains. No chips.

His horns — two of them — curled backward gently from his head. Their natural growth had once been harsher, more pointed. Now the ends were sanded down into softened rounds. A white ring circled each horn slightly above the base, smooth and polished.

Uniform.

His ears were large, almost rabbit-like, and covered in fine fluff that caught the light in pale edges. When he shifted his jaw, they twitched faintly.

Speaking of fur.

He was covered in a thin layer of it — subtle, close to the skin — save for his arms and legs where it grew slightly more tufted. The texture caught shadows differently than flesh would. It gave him shape. Definition.

He looked like a Sahash.

He leaned closer to the mirror.

The resemblance was successful.

The many surgeries he was forced to undertake to look this way had corrected what needed correcting. Bone reshaped. Cartilage altered. Skin grafted. Horns guided. Fur encouraged where it did not grow before.

His original species was far lost.

He did not try to remember it.

The mirror churned behind him.

And Lu’dunum smiled at the creature he had become.
---------

The last and most important feature he adored on himself was his tail.

He turned slightly, angling his body so the mirror could catch it in full. Pale fur with faint pink hues deep within the strands, it flowed from him in a long, abnormally fluffy arc — nearly two feet in length. It was unmistakably pink, though the green light dulled it into something almost coral.

He let it sway once.

Then again.

It moved with a softness that nothing else in the room possessed.

The reason he loved it most was simple.

It was big enough to hold.

Fluffy enough to wrap his arms around at night.

This one he had to beg to have installed.

The memory of that pleading did not sting anymore. It only felt like effort rewarded.

He gave it another small floosh, watching the fur ripple like a living thing.

A crude and horrible noise erupted from the corner of the room.

It neither bothered nor concerned him.

The sound came from a wooden box roughly a foot wide and slightly longer, perched neatly against the far wall. Its face was covered in metal mesh, the pattern dented in places from age or handling. Wires ran from its back and disappeared into the wall.

It allowed people to communicate both ways across long distances.

Useful for administrations.

Useful for multi-room organization.

Such was the factory.

Static crackled.

Then a man’s voice bled through.

A voice that sounded as if it had not slept in years.

As if it had not yet had its morning coffee.

Low.

Monotone.

Life drained thin.

“Stop checking yourself out in the mirror… you got another dreamer to process.”

He spoke in long pauses, as though each word had to be retrieved from somewhere heavy.

Lu’dunum liked to imagine him as human.

Perhaps forty years old.

A five-o’clock shadow dusting his jaw.

Hunched over his microphone with a mug that read Number 1 Advisor in chipped lettering.

Lu’dunum had no idea what his name was.

They had worked together for years.

He had never asked.

Lu gladly perked.

He rose slightly onto his bare, clawed toes — the movement quick, eager, almost bouncing.

“A dreamer! And so early in the morning!” he said with unmistakable delight.

The warmth in his voice was genuine.

It betrayed nothing of the cruel nature of his work.

The green lights continued to hum.