Pliable Creatures | ✓

NINE

*WARNING! MATURE CONTENT AHEAD*

It felt like hours since Amrite had left the surveillance room.

Half-expecting to see a guard every time she turned a corner, Amrite instead found the facility eerily empty. The polished white walls were lined with nothing but metal doors, towering over her with intentional intimidation. When Amrite tip-toed to peer through the door windows, she saw nothing but blackness.

Even in her adrenaline drugged state, she was fully conscious of how strange it was to finally the outside of the Nest. New arrivals always showed up half asleep on the elevator floor, their earliest memories usually starting with about thirsty curious faces staring down at them. Amrite always imagined she would see the outside world again when she was selected, and marveled at this sudden turn of events.

Just when she had begun to lose hope of reaching whatever it was that she was searching for—after passing through numerous empty hallways just to find herself in another, identical hallway—she heard voices.

They were muffled, soft, and rushed, coming through a door in a hallway that looked no different than any other.

But before Amrite could investigate any further, she heard a sudden rattling coming from an intersecting hallway, and jumped behind the corner just in time before a mob of figures in white robes came speed walking down the section she had just been standing. They were walking with gusto, the air whipping through the fabric of their clothing as they moved with purpose. But there was another sound.

Taking her chances, Amrite peeked over the edge just enough to see something being rolled away on a green tarp, and then vanishing into the room where she had originally heard voices.

Waiting a few more minutes to ensure that the coast was definitely clear, Amrite carefully inched her way closer to the door.

Just when she had reached the window, pulling herself to peer through the glass partition, a terrifying sound erupted from inside the room that made her want to run, to leave, to never come back to this place ever again. Every invisible hair on her meticulously waxed body stood up to their highest extent, seeming to pull her in the direction she had come, and away from the noise. But there was also something familiar about that sound that drew her in, and she stepped closer.

The door opened onto a ramp that scaled along the wall and ended at the base of concrete chamber below. The figures in white were moving around the room, now intermingling with two red-robed doctors, wearing circular goggles that reminded Amrite of insects.

Then Amrite saw the body. No, the girl... and a shiver went down her entire spine.

91 was lying on her back, eyes half closed and her body twitching, knocking away any hands that tried to grab her. Horrified, Amrite realized that it wasn't just hands that were reaching towards 91. Something glinted in the doctor's fingers. Metal and sharp, the little silver instruments casted intimidating shadows across the wall.

Then she heard the sound again. A high pitched streak, that cut into her chest, just as one of the red robbed doctors cut into the girl sitting on the metal table.

No words could truly encapsulate what they were doing to 91. But there, finally, in all its truth, Amrite saw what was to be the fate of all the girls in the Nest. And what was her fate.

Digging into her body like savages, they sliced her face open, peeling away her skin in huge sheets and draped on a table beside them. They gorged at her scalp, her mouth, her eyes... and one of them was hacking away at her legs with a saw.

They were taking her organs away and placing them into containers for... and then Amrite remembered. She recalled the many beautiful faces that looked down on them from above the Nest. Saw their ageless bodies, their perfect skin, and understood the purpose of the Nest. Why they were forced to exercise, to eat a controlled diet, to maintain their skin and hair.

She was trapped in a human meat factory.