Dr. Uncle And His Niece:
The world swims back into focus like a half-finished painting, all warped edges and surreal darkness. I'm floating in it, a ghost in my own head. Or maybe someone else's head. Hard to tell when your last memory involves your head taking an unscheduled vacation from your shoulders.
You'd think beheading would be more final. But here I am, thinking, which means something went terribly wrong or terribly right. Never can tell with these secret organizations and their radical procedures.
I turn—or the thought of turning happens—and there he is. A boy at a desk, writing like the paper might save him from drowning. The scratching of his pen is the only real sound in this place. Then a woman screams somewhere in the distance, raw and human, the kind of sound that strips paint. A gunshot silences her. Of course.
Black-masked men pour into the room. Center operatives. Their armor absorbs the light, their movements efficient and cold. They don't see me. I'm a ghost here, watching a memory that isn't mine. Or is it?
"What about the child?" one asks, his voice filtered through the mask.
Their leader stands apart, his face blurred like a bad photograph. Unmasked, but unreal. "He still carries his father's blood," the leader says, clinical. "As long as he's not infected, he might be useful."
They scan the boy with a device that beeps in steady rhythm. The child has white hair, pale skin, eyes like frozen lakes. "Did you kill my father?" he asks, his voice devoid of warmth. "I'm afraid I'll turn like Mom if he's still alive."
The leader smiles, a cruel, practiced expression. "Your father is alive. But neither of you has an emotional attachment to the other." He says "attachment" like it's a medical term and a death sentence all at once.
The scene dissolves into black ink, and I'm falling—
—and waking up under a soft, padded white ceiling.
I blink. Still alive. Still thinking. Still apparently in possession of my head, which comes as something of a surprise. I touch my neck. No seam, no scar, no evidence of decapitation. Just smooth skin.
The room is circular, sterile white. No sharp corners, no visible medical instruments. Just my bed and a single stool where a man sits watching me. White hair, white eyes, immaculate white clothes. He smiles, calm as you please.
"Dr. Uncle," he introduces himself.
Right. Because when you've just survived a fatal procedure by a shadowy organization, you definitely want your doctor to also be your uncle. I keep my face neutral. "Alias."
Dr. Uncle studies me, his white eyes unblinking. "How do you feel?"
How do I feel? Let's see—decapitated, reassembled, and now chatting with a man who calls himself my uncle. Peachy. "Since you put my head back on, I'm fine," I say, my voice flat. "It's an improvement over the alternative."
He laughs, a soft, unsettling sound. "I apologize. I heard the report from my niece. She was supposed to inform you that the decapitation was part of your mission logistics."
Right. Mission logistics. Because nothing says "welcome to the team" like a temporary beheading. Before I can muster a sarcastic reply, the door—which I hadn't even noticed—slides open silently. In walks the blind white woman from the coffee shop, her clouded eyes fixed ahead. She's still dressed in white, but now she wears a lab coat over her clothes, an ID tag clipped to the pocket. I squint at it. No, it really does say "Dr. Niece." Of course.
Dr. Uncle gestures toward her. "My niece, as I mentioned. She's... poor at communication."
Understatement of the century. She nearly offed me without a word of explanation. Now I'm supposed to believe it was all part of the plan? Sure.
"She was tasked with explaining that your body was disassembled and packed into a suitcase for transport," Dr. Uncle continues, as if discussing grocery logistics. "Head included. We needed to move you discreetly to this facility."
"Okay," I manage, my brain stuck on the word "disassembled." So that's how they did it. Took me apart like furniture, stuffed me in a suitcase, and shipped me off. I wonder if they labeled the parts. "Head: Fragile." "Left Arm: This Side Up." Bet they charged extra for careful handling.
You're probably thinking this is insane. Yeah, join the club. But in the Compass, this kind of thing is Tuesday. White Eye must be rolling in credits to afford this—dismemberment and reassembly isn't cheap. At least they won't send me a bill for it, since they're the ones who did the cutting. Silver linings and all that.
I piece it together: they needed to get me to a top-secret location without me knowing the route. Can't have a loose cannon like me blabbing about the directions. So, chop-chop, into the suitcase, and voilà—instant covert transport. It's brutal, but it makes a twisted sense. In a world where corporations control everything with psychoactive perfumes and agents are disposable, this is just another day at the office.
Dr. Uncle nods, reading my expression. "You seem to understand already."
"Lucky me," I mutter. My hand drifts to my chest, where my heart should be beating normally. "So, being alive means the procedure worked?"
He smiles, that calm, infuriating smile. "Procedure?"
"..."
Dr. Niece nudges him with her elbow, and then a revelation came into Dr. Uncle's face, "Ah yes, of course. Yes, the procedure, it worked!"
Somehow I think I'm missing something here.