Page 10 of Damsel in Disguise

I glance once more at the chamber for the last time tonight. The sterilization mist begins to curl along the floor, rolling over the remains like a slow erasure—methodical, thorough, merciless. It’s for diffusing the stench.

There’s no regret in me while I stare at what remains of the man he once was. He had been a serial rapist before he got put behind bars and sentenced to death.

We offered him a free life if he survived the experiment. That is, if he survived, he’d be our mechanical puppet but with breathing lungs and a beating heart.

He didn’t know that. Never asked either. Bastard heard ‘free life’ and volunteered for the program—too eager to barter a death sentence to go back to his usual filthy lifestyle.

At least now he died trying to be useful.

“Yes,” I say. “Prepare Iteration seventy-four beforehand.”

“Seventy-four?” genuine shock itched in his voice. “But the neural lattice hasn’t been stress-tested beyond—”

“—which is precisely why it’s necessary,” I interrupt, but my tone doesn’t rise. “Seventy-four will not be conditioned for suppression. As the head of the project Synthètes, I want observation without restraint.”

“That’s risky,” Iris says before he can stop himself.

I turn to him and meet his eyes. “So is stagnation.”

His gaze immediately lowers. “Understood, sir.”

This Synthète framework held longer than projected. Musculature responded beautifully, fibers adapting with near-elegant efficiency. Sensory receptors exceeded projections—pain, pleasure, fear, all registering cleanly along the neural pathways exactly as designed.

Emotion, however, remains the flaw. Always either too much or too little. Never catastrophically aligned.

Humanity is an unstable code. It fractures under pressure.

Strip away consequence, amplify desire, remove restraint, and what remains is never noble. It’s just hunger and impulse. A desperate, thrashing need to feel something, anything, even if it destroys the vessel carrying it.

You can map neural pathways, reinforce musculature, and perfect sensory input, but the moment emotion is allowed to run unchecked, it corrupts the system from the inside out.

“Clean the chamber,” I continue with a heavy sigh. “Purge the neural logs. I want the data isolated before the Council reviews it.”

Iris hesitates. “Sir, should we—”

“No,” I cut in before he could finish. “There’s nothing to salvage.”

He nods quickly and signals the technicians.

The room initiates its sterilization cycle, white vapor flooding the chamber, swallowing what remains of the subject until even the suggestion of his existence disappears.

An opaque fume fills the chamber with a hydraulic hiss. Ultraviolet arrays ignite behind the glass, washing the interior in a harsh, surgical glow.

Nanofiltration vents open along the walls, releasing programmed sterilants that break organic matter down at a molecular level. Residual heat is siphoned away. Fluids are vaporized. Particulates incinerated.

By the time the cycle completes, there will be nothing left but polished steel and a false sense of purity.

I leave the observation deck without another glance.

The corridor beyond is quiet—underground, windowless, washed in a sterile blue glow.

I try to keep my attention on the echoing steps of my shoes rather than the ninth failure of the project Synthètes—to create cyborg spies capable of regeneration and sell them to the highest bidder on the black market.

Buried beneath miles of ancient woodland in the Forest of Dean, where forgotten mining tunnels and abandoned shafts are, this excellent place is hiding the future from the world.

Failure doesn’t unsettle me. It refines me for viewing failure as the ultimate instruction.

Each collapse strips away another incorrect assumption, another sentimental miscalculation. It sharpens my methods, narrows my focus, and forces evolution. I never mourn for what doesn’t work—I catalogue it, dissect it, and learn from it.