Cress’s mother got skinned yesterday. Ever the trendsetter, she had gone for a lighter complexion this time. Like always, it took some getting used to.
Bright and harsh, the white LEDs that lined the seamless white corridors only enhanced her timeless beauty. Walking at her side, with her real, pale mottled skin looking like the milky wastewater that drained out of the grating in the squalor below, made Cress want to wrap her hair around her face and hide away in her capsule. Everywhere she looked, the blinding lights left flashing scars beneath her eyelids. Every time she blinked, they pulsed like an electronic heartbeat. Something she should be used to by now.

Polished and sterile, the floors, walls and ceilings effortlessly slid past. The only indication that they were actually moving were the panelways that could only be identified by the metallic numbers embedded into their plasterglass exteriors.
612
613
614
They came to a stop outside panel 615. She wasn’t sure what lay behind it.
Cress’s heart bet tentatively. She would miss that after the procedure was complete. The constant rhythmic reminder that she had blood in her veins instead of rainbow wires, bones instead of carbon fibres and that her memories were intangible delicacies instead of 1s and 0s was a comfort she hadn’t realized she had until now. The sudden realization that her days were now numbered made her skin feel a size too small, as if it wanted her to stay too.

The panel, sensing their approach, soundlessly slid open. Curved like a semi-circle, the room had a high domed ceiling and was just as startlingly white as the corridor. The walls were lined with sleek alabaster countertops and seamless cabinets. Stainless steel tools, that gleamed menacingly from magnetic trays mounted on the walls, looked like the far too realistic versions of props from the vintage horror movies the bots from the third level loved to watch when her mother wasn’t paying attention. On a curved part of the wall to her left, the familiar glow of an electric blue holoscreen displayed an anatomic diagram of a mortal body that Cress suspected was her own. Various numbers, graphs and labels that Cress didn’t understand surrounded the image. However, it wasn’t any of these things that made a lump roll up into her throat. Centred perfectly in the middle of the room was a blue-tinted glass tube that lay horizontally on a raised white bench. The shape of a human body was cut out of the dense foam that filled half the cylinder. Blacklight strips ran on either side, illuminating the plethora of electrodes that hung from the roof.
And beside it all, holding a syringe with an impossibly long, sharp needle and full of an achromatic liquid, stood a lady in a long, white coat. Cress could immediately tell she was a humanoid by the way her eyes glowed as blue as the holoscreen and her neon orange hair that was pulled back in an immaculate chignon.
“Miss Crescentia Abbot,” She said, her voice too even to be mortal, “welcome to your first appointment.”
Cress’s mother strode on in while she stood in the doorway like a broken circuit.
“Monique.” She acknowledged, with an incline of her head.
“Dr Abbot, it is a pleasure to have you join us.” Monique recited. Cress reckoned that if her monotone voice could transmit emotion it would be instilled with awe.
As the creator and owner of the Aeternum Project, Dr Victoria Abbot had single-handedly forged the new modern era. Her venture to design, program and evolve a new vessel for humankind had made her a celebrity. Acclaimed as the most influential women in human and humanoid history, her seal was lasered onto almost everything in this room. From the pen that stuck out from the chest pocket of her blazer to the tattoo that Cress knew was branded into the underside of Monique’s right foot.
During her one hundred and twenty-three years, Cress’s mother had built herself an empire founded on the promise of immortality. She was an empress in her own right.

Once Cress’s brain had stopped buffering, she took a deep breath and stumbled the rest of the way into the room. She stopped a few paces from Monique and her ludicrous excuse for a needle, not wanting to be any closer to it than she had to.
Being the only one in the room with a chest that rose and fell with a living breath and nerves that prickled all over her body suddenly felt hysterically lonely.
Her mother paid no mind to her obvious discomfort. She wouldn’t understand anyway. Living almost a century without the perpetual rhythms of one’s natural body, the only discomfort she felt within her own synthetic skin was the fact that there was none.
Monique, the needle still wielded in her right hand, stepped towards her. Instinctively Cress jumped back, eyeing the needle wearily. She had known this was going to happen, but being surrounded by all this cutting edge equipment that wanted nothing more than to sever her soul from her body made her stomach clench and her breath shallow. Monique, either not recognizing the state of her distress or deciding to ignore it, clamped a mechanical hand around her upper arm to still her. Her skeleton of titanium and carbon fibre was unnaturally strong.
But the thing that Cress felt the most was the smooth coolness of her skin. Her hand was cold. A reminder that she was nothing but a hollow machine, uploaded with the conscience of a girl whose original body had been dissected and preserved for experimentation over fifty years ago.
She tugged Cress forward as her mother tapped a button on the side of the glass apparatus. The top half of the tube opened with an easy whoosh.
With her heart pulsating frantically in her throat, Monique’s cold hands maneuvered her into the machine. Cress’s body slid perfectly into the mould. The foam scratched her skin and caught on her hair as she stiffly lowered her head into place. The blacklights exsiccated her vision. They seemed to pulse in time with the blood behind her eyes.
As Monique leaned over her, her face an emotionless mask, the needle once again winked into Cress’s sight. The glow of the lights slid down its tip.
Sweat accumulated above Cress’s top lip as it descended towards her.
She didn’t know if her racing heart made time slow down or if Monique was deliberately taking her time.
The needle got closer and closer. The colourless liquid swirled tauntingly inside.
A breath caught in her throat is its tip pierced her upper arm. It paused for a moment. Cress gritted her teeth, panic nearly blinding her.
Then slowly, the steel slid through her skin. Her muscles tensed, sending beats of pain through her nerves.
Cress watched as it slid deeper and deeper.
Until her mind went blank.