She sat on the cold metal slab under the ultraviolet lamps, legs open like radio towers, ankles strapped to silence. The gown was paper. It crinkled like static. She blinked sideways. Not by choice — it was how she had been made. Or remade.
The man who entered was dressed in yellow. Not clothing — skin. Peeling like government wallpaper. He carried a jar labeled RECLAMATION FLUID A. I couldn’t read the fine print, but the symbols were older than memory.
They didn’t speak. They had spoken once, and that was enough. Consent had been issued in hexadecimal.
He tilted the jar. The fluid hissed like old tape decks. It splashed between her thighs — not erotic, not clinical. More… ceremonial. A rite, not a fetish. She did not move. Her pupils dialed inward. He murmured numbers — latitude, blood pressure, time since last confession.
The liquid pooled inside her like light through a shattered window.
Something buzzed. A monitor spiked. I smelled ozone and forgotten names.
When it was over, she closed her legs. The fluid was gone. Evaporated, absorbed, repurposed by whatever strange engine her body had become.
He bowed. Left.
She laughed — a rusty laugh. Like the first breath of a corpse learning to dance.
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