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She doesn’t remember the moment it began—only the sound.

Not a scream. Not at first.

A hum.

Low. Mechanical. Patient.

It started somewhere beneath her ribs, a foreign rhythm learning her body like a language it intended to overwrite. Now it pulses through her—wires threading out from her side like exposed nerves, trembling in the dark as if they can still feel something worth holding onto.

Her eyes are shut, but not in peace.

In refusal.

Because seeing would make it real.

The left side of her face is still hers—soft, tired, human. The right side has no such mercy. Cold plates kiss her skin where it no longer belongs to her. Light leaks from seams that were never meant to open. Red, sterile, deliberate. Not blood—something cleaner. Something worse.

There’s a moment—just a flicker—where she tries to stomp it down. The panic. The rising terror clawing at her throat. She tries to stamp her will over whatever this is becoming, like she can still claim jurisdiction over her own body.

But the machine doesn’t negotiate.

It adapts.

Her breath shudders. A memory surfaces—warm sunlight, a laugh she doesn’t fully recognize anymore, the weight of her own name spoken by someone who meant it. That’s the part that fights. That’s the part that refuses to go quiet.

And maybe that’s the cruelest design of all.

They didn’t erase her.

They left just enough.

Enough to feel the loss.

The wires twitch again, reacting to something unseen, and her body follows a half-second too late—as if she’s no longer the one giving the commands. The delay is subtle. Almost elegant.

Like possession dressed up as progress.

She gasps—not because she needs air, but because something inside her still believes she does.

Still believes she’s alive.

There’s a fracture at her center now, glowing faint and violent. Not a wound. Not exactly. More like a door left open too long. Something got in.

Something stayed.

And as the hum deepens—steady, certain—she understands, finally, that this isn’t transformation.

It’s replacement.

Piece by piece. Thought by thought. Memory by memory.

Until the only thing left of her…

Is the part that still hurts.