“Rein Ashlin hereby forfeits her civilian rights, freedom, and autonomy. From this day forth, she will be known as v.0429—property of VirtuNet.”

They shoved me forward—barefoot, half-naked, into a cube that reeked of bleach fighting a losing battle against piss, bile, and sweat soaked so deep into the walls it had become part of the paint.

The lights were surgical. Harsh white, no shadows. No corners to hide in. The kind of light that made your pores look like bullet holes. The floor hummed—low, constant, mechanical—like I’d stepped into the chest cavity of a living thing. Underneath the sterile, eye-watering sting of disinfectant, there was something sweeter. Rotten. Synthetic. Like fruit left too long in a sealed bag.

Glass walls flanked both sides. Full-body reflections, multiplied. There I was: skin pale, limbs drawn tight with cold, the paper gown clinging half-transparent to my thighs. Thin as regret. Less useful.

I didn’t look away. I made myself stare.

Behind the mirrored glass, I could feel the room breathe. Quiet clicks. Keys. Shifting weight on plastic chairs. Monitors humming. I knew the layout. Knew the interface. Knew how the glass turned opaque from the inside so the subject didn’t have to see the people studying them.

I'd sat behind that glass. I’d designed some of those UIs. Watched test runs. Gave feedback.

“You’re not executing anyone,” Dad had said, handing me a mug of lukewarm coffee that tasted like recycled batteries. “You’re offering a path to correction. If they choose villainy, that’s on them.”

I drank the coffee. I believed him.

Now I was here. Now I knew better.

This wasn’t a chance at redemption. This was a game with a fixed ending. Public death, cut into episodes.

“Keep walking.”

The voice came clipped, professional. But I knew the shape of it. Knew the pause between consonants, the faint rasp from too many whispered secrets under blankets during school-night sleepovers.

“Desi,” I said.

She was behind me, but her reflection gave her away. Same dark eyes. Same hands clenched around a datapad like it might crack under her grip. Same girl who once held my hair back while I puked after sneaking our first drink.

“Desi—please. You know I didn’t—”

“Don’t talk.” Her voice snapped like cold plastic. “You don’t get to talk.”

And then she shoved me. Just hard enough to make me stumble forward a step.

I caught myself. Straightened.

Wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

She looked down. Like I was a smudge she didn’t want to touch. Her hand didn’t shake when she passed the datapad over the console.

A man turned from one of the stations. Mid-forties. Generic face. Neatly buzzed hair. A lanyard around his neck that said VirtuNet Compliance Officer in raised blue print. He could’ve been a bank clerk. Or a pharmacist. Or a bureaucrat paid to forget people existed after shift.

He picked up a matte black box from the counter and offered it to her like he was passing over a stapler. “v.0429 will not speak,” he said without looking at me. “Pray while you can.”

I didn’t blink. Didn’t respond.

If they wanted a reaction, they could choke on the silence.

Desi took the box. Stepped in. Her grip on my wrist was clinical. Cold. She shoved my hand into the opening without a word.

Click. Whirr.

Pain.

Something inside the box bit into my skin—blades or teeth or needles, I couldn’t tell. All I knew was the flash of white behind my eyes and the way my fingers spasmed, nerves jolting like live wires.

I didn’t scream. Just bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.

The machine released me with a hiss of released pressure.

I pulled my hand back, trembling.

Across the inside of my wrist:

v.0429

Fresh. Raised. Still bleeding.

Desi leaned in. I could feel her breath against my neck. “I hope you get what you deserve, you murderer.”

And then she walked away.

No hesitation. No glance back. Just turned and handed the box to the man like she was done with me—like I was already dead and the paperwork just hadn’t caught up.

I stared down at the mark. The skin around it was red and swollen, still pulsing with heat where the machine had carved the numbers in.

v.0429.

Burnt into my wrist like inventory. Like a serial number. Like a reminder.

Whatever I used to be—Rein Ashlin, top student, daughter of a man who built this fucking nightmare—I wasn’t anymore. Now I was just a statistic. A resource. A line in their execution schedule.

Two techs in white stepped in, faceless behind visor shields. They didn’t speak. Just moved.

One reached for my shoulder.

The other tore the gown from my back in a single, practised motion. Cold air hit skin like slapped glass. The fabric was gone before it touched the floor, yanked into a wall chute that lit orange as it hissed shut.

There was no delay. No hesitation. No countdown.

Just smoke curling up from the grate like the ghost of who I’d been.

And me.

Butt naked. Back straight. Jaw locked.

Nothing left to cover myself with. They had taken everything I had ever known, and now even my pride.

They didn’t look at me. Not even a flicker of eye contact. That was the worst part. Not the nudity. Not the mark. The fact that I wasn’t worth their discomfort.

I wasn’t a girl anymore. I wasn’t even a mistake. Just a meat puppet waiting to be slotted into the machine.

The man at the console didn’t raise his head.

“Subject v.0429. Convicted of high-level data sabotage. Multiple counts of murder. Breach of simulation law.” His tone didn’t change. He may as well have been reading a receipt. “Sentence: Full Immersion. Category Four. Villain Path. Begin induction.”

The platform beneath me groaned like an old throat trying to clear itself. Steel shuddered. Gears clanked. And I moved—not walking, not choosing—just moving. Conveyor-belt style. Like luggage heading to incineration.

A panel slid open ahead with a hiss that stung the ears.

Beyond it a narrow corridor. Walls mirrored from floor to ceiling again, but now they didn’t just reflect—they multiplied. Hanging from the ceiling on spindly mechanical rigs were dozens of screens, flickering to life one by one as I was rolled through.

Their glow hit the mirrors and refracted back, over and over, until there were a thousand me’s marching naked into a theatre designed for death.

A voice echoed around met—too chirpy, too smooth, with that artificial cheer that made your teeth itch. “Welcome to the VirtuNet Rehabilitation System!” It echoed off the glass like a threat pretending to be a lullaby. “You have been selected to participate in an immersive, therapeutic narrative experience.”

The screen above me flashed: A smiling inmate waving from a holographic cell. A woman in a jumpsuit hugging a priest. A cartoon couple skipping through a wheat field.

My lips parted. I laughed. Dry. Ragged. Cracked in the throat like something dying. Because if I didn’t laugh, I might scream. 

“Your assigned role: Villain. Through story-driven engagement, you will have the chance to reflect, redeem, and recover. Make the right choices… and earn a second chance at life.”

A second chance? 

What a load of steaming corporate horseshit. There are no second chances in a Villain Path. That’s the hook. That’s the blood-soaked sales pitch. You play the role. You earn the hate. You die on schedule. With a smile, if the ratings demand it.

And the public? They eat it up.

I knew what was coming.

Braced for it. Bit down. Dug my heels into what little of myself was left.

Didn’t matter.

The first blast of water hit my ribs like a brick made of ice, so cold it felt like fire. I gasped before I could stop it, lungs flaring, knees buckling as my spine jerked toward the stream. The next jet caught me in the stomach—hard enough to shove the air right out of me—and the third carved down my back like a whip made of glass needles.

There was no rhythm. No countdown. Just impact after impact—sharp, slicing, relentless. Hoses tracked me from all sides, battering bare skin with the kind of pressure that broke capillaries and forced bruises to bloom before you could name them.

It was supposed to clean me.

It felt like it was peeling me.

I clenched my jaw so hard my teeth ached, bit into my cheek until blood hit my tongue, metallic and hot. I wouldn’t scream. I refused.

But my body didn’t care about what I refused.

Every muscle shook. My skin shrieked with cold. My ears rang from the force of it, and still—the platform dragged me forward. No pause. No mercy. Just conveyor-belt precision, like I was meat headed for packaging.

Then the chair rose.

Out of the floor like a spider emerging from its den—jagged and gleaming, wired with clamps and bolts. I didn’t need instructions. The thing knew its job. The chest strap caught me mid-breath and locked down, slamming my spine into the seat hard enough to knock thought loose.

Then the others came. Ankles. Wrists. Neck. All of it.

I couldn’t move. Could barely breathe. Every limb stretched just far enough to feel exposed, but not enough to struggle. They’d done this before. I looked up—and there I was again. Reflected in the mirror wall. A wet, shaking girl strapped down like a dissected animal. Hair dripping. Face pale. Eyes wild.

Then the whine started.

A high, electric hum as the razor arm descended—sleek and silver, teeth exposed.

No warning. No hesitation.

It dropped to my scalp and began to carve.

Down the middle first—clean, brutal. Then left. Then right. The sound buzzed into my skull like a drill into concrete. Hair fell in clumps. Slid down my arms. Stuck to my collarbone in soaked patches.

One strand curled around my elbow. I watched it fall. Watched another follow. It wasn’t just hair.

They were cutting away the last of me.

Piece by piece. Strip by strip.

When the razor finally retracted, I looked at the reflection again—and something cold slipped into my gut.

Not a girl. Not a person.

Just a body. Wet. Shaved. Breathing harder than I wanted them to see.

“Welcome to the Immersive Villain Rehabilitation Program,” the voice chimed above—syrupy sweet, like it was welcoming me to a fucking amusement park.

The ceiling hissed as another machine dropped down—thinner, sharper, with a needle glinting at the end. It hovered. Targeting. A red dot danced in front my chest.

Click.

Then hiss.

And then—pain.

It slithered in slow, winding its way through tissue and muscle like barbed wire being threaded through a sewing needle. Wrapping itself around every nerve. Digging in. Tightening.

I tried to hold. Tried to breathe.

My spine arched.

Fingers convulsed in the restraints.

My mouth opened, but my throat clamped shut. No air. Just fire. Just static in my skull and the wet pound of my heart trying to punch through my ribs.

Don’t scream. Don’t scream. Don’t—

I screamed.

It tore out of me raw and involuntary, shredded past my teeth like something trying to crawl free. Animal. Broken. A noise I didn’t recognise as mine.

And still the pain kept going.

Sweat poured down my temples, soaked into the base of the chair. My heart felt like it was trying to escape through my sternum. My vision spotted. My name was gone—burnt away by voltage and screaming.

“Nanotech injection complete,” someone said calmly. Not even looking. Just another checkbox. “Subject v.0429 stabilised. Proceed to pod transfer.”

Stable?

My whole body was convulsing. My mouth tasted like copper and acid. My mind had gone static.

I was alive.

Barely.

That should’ve meant something.

The chair hissed beneath me, shifting into a flat position. The restraints held firm as the platform began to move again, slower now, smooth and methodical—like it had all the time in the world to deliver the corpse.

The walls rose.

Four of them, locking into place like jaws. No windows. No escape. Just reinforced steel and silence pressing in from every direction.

Overhead, the light narrowed to a slit. The last reminder of the outside world shrank to a pin before disappearing altogether.

Coffin. Cage. Processing unit. Pick your poison.

Footsteps clicked across the platform. Two shadows loomed above me, faces just blurred outlines behind glare-shield visors. One held a scanner. The other adjusted something near my head.

A bright light snapped on—directly into my eyes. I flinched. No reaction from them. Not even a damn blink.

“Vitals reading stable.”
“Cortisol spike noted.”
“Status green.”

Then the helmet descended.

It lowered like an executioner’s blade—slow, smooth, final. Cold steel met my brow, and then—

Silence.

Not quiet. Not muffled. Gone. Like someone had deleted the entire concept of sound.

I could still hear my breathing—shallow, too fast, echoing inside my skull like it didn’t belong to me. Couldn’t turn my head. Couldn’t blink it away. The helmet was pitch black inside. No light. No reference point. Just pressure.

Then—

Pain.

Sharp and sudden. Two spikes behind my ears, punching straight into the base of my skull like someone had driven nails through bone. I arched against the restraints, every muscle seizing.

I screamed.

That was the mistake.

The system reacted instantly.

A feeding tube rammed down my throat, choking the scream into a guttural croak. My body thrashed, trying to gag, trying to tear it out—but it was already lodged deep, anchored past the point of protest.

Then the taste hit.

Sweet. Sickly sweet. Like syrup laced with acid. It poured down in thick, warm waves—burning, numbing, flooding.

My limbs went soft.

My spine sagged.

My body let go.

Not by choice.

The panic kept buzzing, frantic, like it hadn’t caught up to the override yet. 

“Subject v.0429 prepped. Initiate sequence.”

The dark inside the helmet lit up.

A field of gold. Endless grass. Blue sky. Gentle wind. Perfect. A goddamn desktop background for peace of mind.

It felt like being wrapped in a warm blanket and told nothing bad ever happened here. My skin tingled. My lips parted in a soft, involuntary sigh.

I could stay here.

Say yes.

Play nice.

Lie down and let them erase me.

Live the part.
Play the villain.
Die for the greater good.

Yeah. That didn’t sound so bad. Maybe I should—

Then the flicker hit.

Like a skipped frame in a video.

The field burned away.

Dad’s office.

Blood soaked into the carpet. His body twisted on the floor like a dropped marionette. One hand outstretched. Eyes glassy, wide. Still asking a question I never got to hear.

My hands were stained red.

And in one of them—
a knife.

“No—”

The tube gagged the word. Just a choked breath.

My body moved without permission.

I lunged.

I stabbed.

Again. And again. And again.

I didn’t do this.

But my muscles reenacted it like a preloaded animation. Like someone had hit play.

I screamed into the silence.

I fought—every twitch, every movement, I fought.

But the memory didn’t care.

Dad’s eyes stayed open.

Then—cut.

Glitched.

Gone.

“Emotional response registered. Begin immersion.”

Cold.

It rose from beneath me—slow and thick, like chilled molasses flooding the pod. The fluid gurgled up, crawling over my feet, then ankles, then hips.

It didn’t drown me.

It buried me.

My lungs still worked. Technically. But every breath felt like it came with interest. The weight pressed against my ribs, wrapped around my limbs, seeped into the curve of my spine. It didn’t sting. It didn’t burn.

It settled.

Like it belonged there.

My fingers twitched in the restraints.

Then seized.

I couldn’t move.

Couldn’t breathe.

Not because there wasn’t air.

Because the pressure convinced my body it didn’t need any.

Stop fighting.
It’ll be easier if you stop.

The gel climbed past my shoulders. Around my throat. My jaw.

Just below the helmet’s seal.

My lips parted instinctively.

Nothing. No air. Just the weight.

Suffocating without suffocating. Crushing without breaking anything.

Yet.

My heart beat so loud it felt like it was trying to punch its way out of my chest. My spine arched. My back slammed against the restraints. My brain screamed at me to fight.

But my muscles had already stopped listening.

The system had me.

It wanted me docile. Submerged. Programmed.

And I was slipping.

“You shouldn’t have snooped where you weren’t supposed to.”

The voice slid through the fluid. Warped. Distant.

But I heard it.

Not the system.

Him.

The one who framed me. The one who took Dad. Who stole my sister. Who turned my life into a goddamn storyline.

My pulse spiked.

No.

You don’t get to end me in a fake field of flowers.

You don’t get to steal everything and hide behind a fucking protocol.

I will find you.

And when I do—

You’ll wish you’d killed me properly.

The black closed in.

And I let it.

But I didn’t let go.