The room fell quiet again, but this time the silence did not press against Sophia like a weight. It hovered instead—uneasy, reflective, unfinished.
She sat on the edge of the bed, shoulders slumped, eyes fixed on nothing in particular, while Saya's words replayed themselves again and again in her mind, each repetition stripping away another layer of assumption she hadn't realized she was carrying.
You haven't explored Mechatopia enough to know what understanding looks like here.
Sophia exhaled slowly.
Maybe that was true.
She had arrived here believing pain had a universal language, that suffering was something only humans truly owned. ISA had taught her that much—heroes bleed, machines obey, lines are clear. But nothing here followed those rules. Not DNA. Not Mechatopia. Not the beings who lived inside it.
I accused her because she wasn't human, Sophia admitted to herself. Because it was easier than admitting I don't understand this world.
Saya's calm confidence unsettled her more now than it had in the moment. Not because of what she said—but because of how little she needed to defend herself. There had been no resentment in her voice, no superiority. Just clarity.
Your culture isn't absence of desire. It's regulation.
Sophia swallowed.
"So what does that make me?" she whispered.
A human clinging to chaos?
A former hero stripped of purpose?
A woman whose emotions had become liabilities instead of strengths?
Her gaze drifted to her own chest, to the steady rise and fall of her breathing. Flesh. Fragile. Finite. No visible reactor to explain who she was, what she wanted, or where her limits lay.
At least they know what they are, she thought bitterly.
She remembered Saya mentioning her sister—another Sophia, blue-haired, blue-eyed, designed differently yet existing fully within this system. The coincidence made her chest ache.
Even here, there's another version of me that belongs.
And then—inevitably—her thoughts circled back to him.
Dr. F.
She hated how effortlessly her mind did that, how he had become the gravitational center of her thoughts without asking permission. She hated that even now, after rage and rejection and tears, part of her still measured the room by his absence.
He shattered me, she reminded herself. And then he stayed.
That contradiction gnawed at her more viciously than the torture ever had.
"I don't know what you are to me," she murmured, voice barely audible. "And that's what scares me."
Monster. Savior. Manipulator. Anchor.
None of the labels fit cleanly, and the ambiguity terrified her.
Saya's last words echoed again.
Tomorrow, you will be evaluated.
A test.
Ranks. Mk levels. Classification.
Another system ready to define her before she understood herself.
Sophia closed her eyes, pressing her fingers lightly against her temples.
I used to believe I was strong because I endured, she thought. Now I don't know if enduring is strength… or just habit.
She didn't know if she wanted to pass tomorrow's test.
She didn't know if she wanted to climb higher in DNA.
She didn't even know if she wanted to live in this future she'd been forced into.
But one truth, unwelcome and undeniable, settled quietly at the center of her thoughts:
Running won't give me back who I was.
If she was going to survive Mechatopia—really survive—it wouldn't be by pretending she didn't feel, didn't fear, didn't care.
Slowly, she lay back against the bed, staring once more at the artificial sky.
"Tomorrow," she whispered, more promise than resignation, "I'll face it."
Not because she was ready.
But because she was tired of being broken without choosing what she would become next.
Sophia remained in the medical room, half-awake, half-suspended in that thin, treacherous state where thoughts slipped into images without asking permission. The ceiling's artificial stars dimmed and reassembled, their patterns slowing, as if the system itself sensed her mind drifting too far inward.
Then the screen flickered.
A sharp, intrusive pulse of light cut through the darkness.
INCOMING CALL — DR. F
LOCATION: INTERROGATION CHAMBER
Her breath hitched.
The room temperature dropped by two degrees. The hum of the systems deepened, becoming oppressive, familiar in the worst possible way.
"No…" she whispered, heart already racing. "Not again."
The floor beneath her feet dissolved into motion.
She was walking.
No—being pulled.
The corridors of DNA stretched endlessly, their geometry wrong, folding back on itself. The walls were too close, the lights too bright. Every step echoed like a countdown she couldn't stop.
The interrogation chamber doors opened before she reached them.
He was already there.
Dr. F stood at the center, white coat immaculate, posture relaxed—too relaxed. Behind him, suspended from the ceiling, was the device. The same one. The helmet. The one that had torn through her mind and left her screaming into red static.
It pulsed softly, hungry.
"You're late," he said, smiling.
The smile was wrong.
It was too wide. Too pleased.
Sophia tried to step back—but her arm was suddenly in his grip.
Hard.
Pain shot up her shoulder as his fingers closed around her wrist with crushing precision. This was not restraint calibrated for safety. This was force without limit.
"Let go!" she shouted, struggling. "Dr. F—stop!"
He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper that felt like knives pressed against her skull.
"I will extract every bit of information," he said calmly, almost lovingly,
"until your skull collapses."
The device descended.
The room screamed.
Sophia jolted upright with a gasp so sharp it burned her lungs.
Her body was drenched in sweat. Her heart pounded violently against her ribs, each beat disoriented, frantic. The medical bed creaked beneath her sudden movement, systems flaring briefly before stabilizing.
No corridors.
No device.
No hands on her arm.
Just the quiet medical room—sterile, dim, intact.
She pressed a trembling hand against her chest, feeling her heart, grounding herself in the undeniable reality of being alive.
"It was… a dream," she breathed.
But her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
Her eyes darted around the room, half-expecting the walls to bend, the ceiling to open, gravity to tilt in his favor.
Nothing happened.
The silence felt fragile.
Sophia dragged a hand down her face, fingers tangling briefly in her blue hair.
"What are you?" she whispered into the emptiness.
"What are you doing with me?"
Her voice cracked, the anger finally bleeding through the fear.
"Am I an experiment already?" she asked bitterly. "A variable? A project you haven't decided how to finish?"
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, feet touching the cool floor, grounding herself again. Her breathing slowed—not because she was calm, but because she was furious.
Her jaw tightened.
"Fuck you…" she muttered, the words sharp, real, grounding in their profanity.
She laughed once—short, humorless.
"That F," she added quietly, venom lacing every syllable,
"stands for that in your name."
The room did not respond.
But Sophia sat there awake now—fully, unmistakably awake—heart still racing, mind still fractured, yet one thing clear in a way it hadn't been before.
Whatever Dr. F was…
Whatever she was becoming…
She would not let fear decide it alone.
Not again.