The sky over Zone 4 is the color of dried blood. Plastic bags drift like ghosts over the burnt-out cityscape. A mother named Eris Rell, terminally ill and desperate, steps off a rusted tram with one thing in mind: Clinic 88. Word on the street is it’s a miracle, DNA correction, full-body regeneration, neural rewrites. Unregistered. Cash-only. No questions. No laws.
She limps to the address, throat swollen from radiation scarring. Her fingers twitch with early-onset neural decay. Her son, Kellen, age 8, died two years ago in an AI-ventilated ward. She couldn’t afford to keep his body.
Clinic 88 is hidden behind a meatpacking plant, accessed through a biometric scanner disguised as a vending machine. She’s buzzed into a white corridor that smells like bleach and copper. At the front desk is a blank-eyed receptionist with skin stretched too tight, like someone carved her face out of a mannequin mold and forgot to let it set.
Eris signs forms without reading them.
She’s taken to Room 7, where a soft-voiced technician explains the treatment. “DNA cleansing,” he calls it. “Think of it like erasing the static from your blood.” A syringe enters her spinal cord. She blacks out.
When she wakes up, her body feels lighter. The tumors in her throat are gone. The tremors stop. Her skin is clear. She sees herself in the mirror and gasps: she looks fifteen years younger.
A week later, the side effects begin.
First, the dreams, Kellen’s voice calling from behind walls. Then, waking up with blood under her fingernails. She goes to wash her face and sees someone else in the mirror. A woman with her eyes, but not her memories.
She returns to Clinic 88. The receptionist is gone. A different technician is there. He doesn’t recognize her.
Room 7 no longer exists.
Eris forces her way in, kicking through glass doors and storage units. What she finds in the basement freezes her blood: rows of fluid tanks. Inside each—copies of herself, floating, sleeping. Some are partial. Some are wrong. One of them is awake, eyes wide open, staring.
On the far wall, Kellen—her son—is there. Cloned. Reconstructed. Tubes in his arms. Still 8 years old. Still alive. He looks up and says, “Mom?”
The technician enters behind her, holding a tranquilizer. “He’s not yours. Not really. None of them are. You’re iteration number thirteen. The others failed.”
She screams and stabs him with his own syringe.
Fire alarms blare as she drags Kellen from the tank. Sirens wail. Security bots descend. She flees through a sewer access and escapes into the undercity, clutching a child who may not be hers, coughing blood that smells like cleaning fluid.
They never stop running.
Every night, she checks him. His blood is warm. His eyes are real. But sometimes… she catches him speaking code in his sleep.
And she wonders:
Which version of her is he dreaming about?
She limps to the address, throat swollen from radiation scarring. Her fingers twitch with early-onset neural decay. Her son, Kellen, age 8, died two years ago in an AI-ventilated ward. She couldn’t afford to keep his body.
Clinic 88 is hidden behind a meatpacking plant, accessed through a biometric scanner disguised as a vending machine. She’s buzzed into a white corridor that smells like bleach and copper. At the front desk is a blank-eyed receptionist with skin stretched too tight, like someone carved her face out of a mannequin mold and forgot to let it set.
Eris signs forms without reading them.
She’s taken to Room 7, where a soft-voiced technician explains the treatment. “DNA cleansing,” he calls it. “Think of it like erasing the static from your blood.” A syringe enters her spinal cord. She blacks out.
When she wakes up, her body feels lighter. The tumors in her throat are gone. The tremors stop. Her skin is clear. She sees herself in the mirror and gasps: she looks fifteen years younger.
A week later, the side effects begin.
First, the dreams, Kellen’s voice calling from behind walls. Then, waking up with blood under her fingernails. She goes to wash her face and sees someone else in the mirror. A woman with her eyes, but not her memories.
She returns to Clinic 88. The receptionist is gone. A different technician is there. He doesn’t recognize her.
Room 7 no longer exists.
Eris forces her way in, kicking through glass doors and storage units. What she finds in the basement freezes her blood: rows of fluid tanks. Inside each—copies of herself, floating, sleeping. Some are partial. Some are wrong. One of them is awake, eyes wide open, staring.
On the far wall, Kellen—her son—is there. Cloned. Reconstructed. Tubes in his arms. Still 8 years old. Still alive. He looks up and says, “Mom?”
The technician enters behind her, holding a tranquilizer. “He’s not yours. Not really. None of them are. You’re iteration number thirteen. The others failed.”
She screams and stabs him with his own syringe.
Fire alarms blare as she drags Kellen from the tank. Sirens wail. Security bots descend. She flees through a sewer access and escapes into the undercity, clutching a child who may not be hers, coughing blood that smells like cleaning fluid.
They never stop running.
Every night, she checks him. His blood is warm. His eyes are real. But sometimes… she catches him speaking code in his sleep.
And she wonders:
Which version of her is he dreaming about?
