Chapter 1

My mom ran an exclusive underground fertility clinic. Her dark red serum smelled like rotting blood, yet the rich still lined up with massive checks for her "perfect designer embryos."

I’d watch her lock desperate young surrogates into the room. A few minutes later, the whole floor would shake.

Strangely, when the girls stumbled back out—looking entirely drained and aged by years—they would weep and kiss my mom’s hands in gratitude.

It never made sense to me.

Until the day I saw a pitch-black mass frantically clawing just beneath a surrogate's flat stomach.

I finally knew what kind of "embryos" my mom was actually planting inside them.

——

"Twenty million has just been wired to your offshore account, Dr. Evelyn." Mr. Sterling, the man in the bespoke suit said.

"Excellent." My mom, utterly expressionless, tapped the glass of her clipboard. "We will begin the final phase immediately."

She turned toward the heavy metal door of the Extraction Chamber and gave a curt nod. Anna, her current medical assistant, stepped forward.

My mom followed her in, locking the deadbolt behind them.

The soundproofing absorbed most of the noise, but standing on the other end of the corridor, I could still feel the non-slip tiles vibrating beneath my soles.

Minutes felt like hours before the pressure valves hissed.

The door cracked open, but only my mom walked out.

She peeled off a pair of soiled surgical gloves with practiced ease and walked straight to the stainless steel sink, scrubbing her hands mercilessly.

Pink water swirled down the drain.

"Congratulations, sir. The 'genius' you requested has successfully implanted."

A heavy hiss of depressurization echoed as the metal door of the Extraction Chamber slid open.

The young girl Mr. Sterling had brought in stepped out. When she first walked into that room, she had the plump, rosy cheeks of youth. Now, her steps were hollow, her cheekbones sunken, and stark streaks of gray threaded through her hair.

The terrifying part? She was smiling sweetly.

She grabbed my mom's arm, tears of gratitude welling in her eyes. "Thank you... I feel absolutely perfect. It’s giving me strength."

Mr. Sterling stepped forward to embrace the girl, and the two showered my mom with endless thanks before finally leaving the underground clinic.

"I can be your debridement assistant," I said, stepping into the light and offering her a sterile towel.

My mom’s movements stopped instantly. She turned slowly, her icy glare sizing me up.

"You don't even have the clearance to approach the console, Clara."

"I'm of age! All I do is empty medical biohazard bins in this godforsaken basement—"

"Shut your mouth!"

She snatched a pair of surgical scissors and slammed them into the metal sink. The sharp bang made me flinch.

Striding toward me, she slammed a small plastic cup of thick, dark red liquid onto the counter. The overwhelming scent of artificial strawberry flavoring couldn't begin to mask the sickly sweet, metallic stench of iron beneath it.

"Drink your medicine. Your only job is to keep your vitals stable and stay alive. Stop meddling with things that don't belong to you!"

I gritted my teeth and forced the nauseating syrup down my throat.

Satisfied, she untied her apron—smeared with some unidentifiable translucent mucus—and turned to lock herself in her office, completely ignoring whatever was left in the chamber.

Face pale, I walked over to the desk. My mom’s intranet terminal was still unlocked. A row of glaring red text flashed on the screen:

[Urgently Hiring: Exclusive Medical Assistant. Female only. Peak health required. Non-Disclosure and Mortality Waiver execution mandatory.]

My blood ran cold. This was the fifth casting call she’d sent out in just half a month. She was already looking for a replacement.

But Anna was still inside.

I looked back down the corridor at the sealed metal door.

Just two weeks ago, Anna had stood on the security monitor in frayed jeans. She was an applicant driven to a dead end by loan sharks, desperate but humming with raw, youthful vitality.

The astronomical hourly rate must have made her blind to the stinging smell of formalin that hung in the air.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I took a step toward the Extraction Chamber. My hand hovered over the biometric keypad. I wanted to hit the override, to drag Anna out of whatever nightmare was happening on the other side of that steel wall.

But a glance toward my mom's office paralyzed me. The fear of what my mother would do to me if I crossed her boundaries was a wall I didn't dare breach.

I suffocated my own courage and pulled my hand back.

A grueling hour later, the depressurization hiss echoed again.

The heavy door slid open. I held my breath as Anna finally stumbled out.

When she had first walked into this clinic, she had the plump, rosy cheeks of youth.

Now, I barely recognized her.

I went to help her up, but when she looked up at me, her eyes were just... empty. Cold and dead, exactly like my mom's used to be.

It freaked me out.

Deep in the night, sleep evaded me.

I decided to check on Anna, so I grabbed a tray of anti-inflammatory pills and headed to her breakroom.

The door was slightly ajar.

Anna was lying flat on her narrow cot. She had hiked up the hem of her light blue scrubs.

Her hands gripped the bedsheets white-knuckled, her eyes locked dead onto her own abdomen.

I peered through the crack in the door, and my breath hitched instantly in my throat.

Right on her previously flat stomach, a jagged, unnatural contour bulged upward by at least two inches.

It looked exactly as if a pitch-black, sharp-edged mass was frantically crawling back and forth right beneath the paper-thin layer of her skin.