Then it all becomes crystal clear, and I know exactly what needs to be done.
I know what I must do.
I strip off the sleep gown and pull on pants and a shirt, slip on my shoes, and head toward the conference room. I pass a couple of scientists in the hallway, and they quickly avert their eyes. I let it roll off my shoulders. I know they fear what I am, and that’s perfectly fine with me.
Mischka pads along beside me, her presence steady and reassuring.
A man in a pristine white lab coat smiles and nods. “Katja,” he says, opening one of the double doors for me with exaggerated courtesy, and I’m glad he’s taken to using my name finally. Too bad it won’t make a difference.
The room has white floors, white walls, and a long gray table stretching the full length of the space with fourteen chairs positioned around it. There’s a small podium at the far end and a massive screen mounted on the wall beyond the table.
I take my usual seat at the very end, right next to the head of the table where Dr. Harrison always positions himself. Mischka curls up at my feet under the table, hidden from view, and I rest my hands on my knees, waiting for everyone to arrive.
Two men sit across from me, typing furiously on their laptops without so much as glancing in my direction.
Ten minutes to the second, the double doors swing open and several more people in lab coats file in, finding their designated seats with practiced efficiency. Dr. Harrison enters and settles beside me, waving four board members over to claim their spots. Besides me, they’re the only ones not wearing white coats.
Every single person at this table is a man except for me. So typical.
They’ll learn, eventually.
“Thompson has been cataloging Project Viridian since conception in March of 2263, over three years ago now,” Dr. Harrison says, his gaze sliding past me to the board members seated beyond. They all smile and nod, waiting for the juicy parts.
“Thompson has put together a presentation to walk you all through what we’ve been working on here at Unity Lab Core,” he continues, then looks across the table to the young blond man with wire-rimmed glasses and a thick stack of paperwork beside his laptop.
“Thompson, the room is yours.”
Thompson clears his throat nervously and rises to his feet, gathering his computer as he moves to the podium. The large screen flickers to life, and my own face appears in stark detail, a photograph with “PROJECT VIRIDIAN” typed in bold letters across the top.
We’re off to a great start.
“Katja, or as I refer to her, Viridian, came to us under desperate circumstances. Without our intervention, she would have died. After extensive waivers were signed, experimental treatment began,” Thompson starts, his voice confident and practiced.
He’s a fucking liar, but I keep my stoic mask firmly in place as the screen changes to display an image of the sterile lab where they run most of their experiments.
“She has become like family here to a lot of us because we’ve spent so much time together. Her dog even came along with her and has since been our first animal test subject for Project M. More on that later, but it has been incredibly successful so far,” he continues with nauseating enthusiasm.
I’m thankful I have Mischka. Thankful I’ll have her forever now, but not in the way they’ve intended.
I’m ready for him to hurry through this sanitized version of my life. He’s putting on quite the happy family show for the board’s visit, painting our relationship as some heartwarming collaboration instead of the systematic abuse it really is.
Under the table, I stroke Mischka’s fur and wait. Let them present their data. Let them celebrate their breakthrough.
They have no idea what’s coming.
I zone in and out of Thompson’s presentation, catching fragments as he reduces years of systematic torture to sanitized bullet points.
“Viridian is the first of her kind—no longer entirely human but something else, something more.” His voice carries the pride of a creator discussing his masterpiece. “She can alter her aging process as it suits her and can ultimately live forever. She has superhuman strength, can communicate with the dead, and see the future.”
He rattles off my extraordinary assets like I’m livestock being appraised at auction, each ability a commodity they’ve harvested from my humanity.
“She can predict things and has shown some telekinetic abilities as well. But when I say she can see the future, it’s not as simple as you may think. When she dreams, it’s like she’s living through future simulations, complete sensory experiencesindistinguishable from reality. We created a specialized neural interface machine just so we could extract and view what she sees.”
They’ve been mining my dreams, stealing my most intimate visions and turning them into data points. Every nightmare I’ve lived through, every moment of terror and love and loss, all of it reduced to footage for their experiment, their hope at a better future.
“Listen, we all already know our current world is headed down a catastrophic path—environmental collapse, social upheaval, economic devastation. It’s why we started this project. But with Viridian and our simulation extraction technology, we can see firsthand what the future holds and make the necessary interventions.”
The man to my right, some corporate vulture in an expensive suit, speaks up while leering at me. “What exactly do you mean by necessary interventions?”
