Each of them had paperwork to fill out. Medical information. Previous conditions. Allergies to penicillin or latex. Signatures. And, curiously, two hastily-added sections for "desired height" and "favorite fantasy".

Pedro jotted down, almost drooling. "Is this for real? I bet the doctor has... these succulent, STEAMY feet... Fuck, she was halfway zombified. I wonder if she even cleans those dirty, juicy sweat machines... Ahah..."

Hadi nudged Bello, pointing to the fantasy spot: "It's okay if I put you in here? I really want you to... y'know..."
Bello held her pen, and licked her ear. "I hope so, I want to put you right in, myself... Little snackling."
Hadi breathed heavily. "Getting vored... Getting vored by Bello..."

Tessay delibrated, fiddling with the writing device. "Hhhhm. I really just wanna shrink to nothing. I'll probably go with, 'milkers', just in case that doesn't work."

Anderson was already pacing with his paper. "You know this is once-in-a-lifetime, you can't waste it on weak shit. The Madarakis have made serious messes outta people, you know? That's the kinda damaged brain I want handling me." He held the document like an actor would hold a Shakespearian manuscript. "I've made it abundantly clear, no limits for me."

It took a lot of effort for Liu's hand to move across the page. "Y-you know, she SAID we wouldn't die, but if there's... say something goes wrong..."

"Then it'll be doing what we love," Bello murmured.
"With who we love," Hadi quickly chimed in.

Anderson crossed his arms. "I've written my will already. Revised it a hundred times. EVERYONE will know what I stood for."

"I've already picked out the music to play at my funeral." Tessay grinned for a moment, looking around furtively.

Pedro pointed a thumb to himself. "I'm insured, anyway..."

Finally, Liu managed to keep her pen moving. "If she's around, then... You... you know, I just want to tell you how great it is to be here, with you guys. We haven't been together much, but, uhm..."

They exchanged glances, none of them really answering for a while.

Tessay finally coughed. "Yeah, you... what was your username, again?"

***

"Good work, the stretchers are set at the correct positions and angles." Fran stretched her mask over her nose, and used other arms to point around the claustrophobic open chamber. "Call Adorea to Experiment Room Five with a smaller portion of gauze. Lay more tarp across the northeast!"

She strutted and wobbled between untouched medical beds, each out in the open - no privacy sheets, only a few large CRT monitors flashing static between dead pixels. An assortment of scalpels, knives, and lasers lay on the tables, staff sterilizing them. The only decoration on the windowless walls were fresh reference charts, showing incision points.

The doctor called to the ceiling: "Okita, we'll need to keep power consistent. Are there any rodents or bugs up there that could chew the wires?"

He peeked out from a loose tile. "No. I've arranged a truce with all of them."

She smiled behind the mask, tying her hair into her medical cap. "Good work, but keep an eye out."

"And you keep your eyes in."

Veronica wandered in the expansive room, so used to these procedures that she easily weaved through the bustling equipment. "Sis, you've put in way too much effort for those sexual deviants... and her."

Fran turned to her, a smile lifting her cheeks behind her mask. "Well, aren't you putting it a bit bluntly~~y? Some of them might call us 'monsters'."

The younger sister shuffled in place, her boot laces dangling. "Not all of them would."

"Exactly, they've shown proper courtesy." Fran explained. "So it's only right that we take the time to understand and work with their needs."

"But that's no reason for them to use my body--!"

As she was speaking, the doors behind her creaked. Veronica practically leaped to the corner, shivering. In walked the patients, entirely clotheless. Their bodies reflected on the walls, and in the small peeks of tile beneath rustling papery tarps below their bare feet.

"Nhg-aaah--" Veronica looked as if she were electrocuted.

Her pace quickening, exhilaration in her yellowish eyes, Fran tugged them in. "Perfect, perfect. No need to worry, this won't take long. There'll be more private quarters soon. Please, sir - move your arm..."

A small crowd of assistants, none of their faces discernable behind full-face masks, pressed cold measuring tapes across the twitching legs, shoulders, and backs. The patients were then guided single-file through electric scales.

Bello murmured. "First time, I've seen you naked..."
Hadi's pulse quickened. "Scary..."

The doctor seated each of the visitors into one bed. She dexterously stretched elastic bands around Liu's arm to make a vein swell. The girl winced at the snap. Fran punctured it with a needle - before moving to the next patient, and the next, like punch cards. They hooked into a single container of misty liquid, dangling high above.

Anderson grunted. "Anaesthetic? Sleeping gas? But I wanna... experience the... uhn..."

Liu used the last of her energy to hold her chest. The shadows of eight gloves passed over them, along with the sheen of clean, flat metal.

"Begin the operation!"

Taking steps in spirals, Fran grabbed a knife in each hand. The sound of cutting - but nobody was sure what it was she cut. Every lengthy, slender arm appeared to blend into each other. "This process will take roughly eight hours. We'll start, in simple terms, by cutting the bone marrow, then into a few nerves and aortas, extracting unnecessary blood from each of you." The limbs unfolded like a fan.

Tessay started halfway rolling in bed, before losing control of his lower body, then his torso. "You don't... have a... shrinking ray?"

The surgeon gently patted her client's slacking jaw with a cloth, wiping drool away. A thread of her blonde hair was visible, nestled beneath the looming bolt in her skull. "Such a thing doesn't exist, to my knowleeee~eedge. The correct process here is to compress your bodies manually."

A moaning noise. Bello wasn't sure if it came out of her own mouth. Already, thanks to the pumping, pulsing medication, the figure of Madaraki Fran seemed impossibly huge and dizzyingly far away. Her glossy pupils were unblinking pools that were easy to sink into.

Pumping pulse. Thumping steps. Green monitors. Bulging lumps.

"Analysis... the antiseptic... Yes, Adorea, these lungs are no longer in use, they can be donated to... Surprisingly diluted, signifying... from Room 4, please, the other one is... ah, your blood pressure... Your file didn't list Haemophilia, did it? So it will clot and... Phantom limb sensation..."

The details of her words trailed into the clouds, lost amid mechanical beeping and increasingly pounding, frenzied pacing. Yet, the gloved hands seemed insanely clear, right down to the viscera of their own immobile bodies gushing into the ridges and flexing imperfections. The heave of her bosom, in surgical garbs, splattering. Irony tastes settled in their mouths. A pumpkin getting carved out, its seeds stickling down, unhealthy amounts of stringy tendons clinging to the cracked shell of stained orange skin - only the pumpkin was their chest. Their own fingers grew further away.

A wipe of sweat off her brow. The forehead ridges above her eyelashes, lifting. A worried look. The very edge of her eyes, pink palpebral commissures, above the tent her small nose caused in the mask. Despite that, the cool chill of Fran's breath tickled their marrow and their livers. A noise at the door. A woman wrapped in bandages, dark hair behind her, face twisting into streamers.

What was that snap? Could it grow back?

Was that black hatted figure moving their numb arm a hallucination - a sleep paralysis demon - or Veronica looking over them, her stitches seemingly ready to pop apart in disgust?

Every blink lasted hours, and transported them through time. A smaller and smaller slit of fluorescent light shone through their eyelashes, closing despite resistance. Fran said something that seemed important and reassuring, leaning over with a gentle caress -

and tugging out the heart in a swift movement

aortas pumping and gushing lavender and crimson before them.