Chromium

Chapter 2.1

The shackles binding her to the operating table broke with a loud crash, the plasteel twisting and warping until it reached its breaking point. Dia felt dazed as she got up and watched the broken fragments scattered on the floor. She just tried to get free, stand up on her feet, but she never expected to obliterate the plasteel, an alloy stronger than steel but way more malleable.

She tried to look around, but she had to squint her eyes, dazzled by the reflected light. The room where she was staying was pristine white, spotless clean to a point she had never seen in an imperial facility before. Well, clean except for that green, glowing blob splattered across the floor.

It was almost surreal, the red stripes inside that formless clump creating strange forms on the white floor. The clash of contrasting colors made it look like an abstract painting, giving the entire scene the taste of a dream. It made her think that everything that happened had just been a part of her imagination when in reality she was still sleeping on her ship.

But then she saw it. A body.

It was on the floor, face down, or at least it would have been if it still had one. The entire head was missing, in its place the same green mush she had seen before.

She closed her eyes, still trying to convince herself it was a dream. However, she winced, the pain at the base of her skull bringing her back to reality.

There was a hole in her head at the exact same point where Rowling had started to drill, so big it could fit two of her fingers in it; but as she went deeper, she found something smooth and hard, covered with some sort of viscous liquid.

She pulled out her fingers to look at them. It was dark blue, more close to ink than blood. She felt a sharp pang in her chest and began to breathe faster. Too fast.

She had to calm down, she was starting to hyperventilate. She looked around the room, trying to think of something, anything, that could distract her from the absurdity of the situation.

She found it when she looked to her left. There was a gun, a very big gun, hanging on the wall against the law of gravity. Probably it was because of some kind of magnetic field, but she wasn't a tech, she had no way to tell.

However, that wasn't what attracted her attention. The gun was smoking, molten pieces of metal falling from the muzzle to the floor below.

It must be the plasma gun that guy, Hendricks, was talking about.

It had to be the cause of their deaths.

Did it go off on its own?

The gun---in reality, more like a portable cannon---looked anything but common. It was probably a prototype of some kind, so it was possible that it hadn't been tested.

However, Dia shook her head.

This still doesn't explain the damage to the bodies, or why it shot two people who were standing on completely different sides of the room.

It almost seemed like it aimed at them, but she knew that was impossible.

However, even if she wanted to dismiss that as a strange twist of fate---maybe retribution for what they had in store for her---she couldn't do the same with the bodies.

The damage was simply too great.

Maybe the turbolasers of her ship, the Siren, could do something like that to a person, but a gun? No way. There was no infantry weapon that could reduce a man to that condition.

Even for plasma, it was physically impossible, the quantity of energy necessary too great to fit a clip of that size. That's why the gun overheated, it wasn't built to sustain such energy.

However, if it wasn't the clip to supply the power, where did that massive amount of energy come from?

She had no answer, only more questions, but they had to wait.

Dia was still wearing a space jumpsuit. The synthetic fiber was sticking on her like a second skin, leaving very little to the imagination. She had to change.

She went through the cabinets in the adjacent room, probably used as an antechamber before the operations. She found sweatpants, a shirt and a pair of shoes. She expected the pants and shirt to be a little loose since they were at least one size bigger than her usual, and yet, they fit her perfectly. No, the shirt was even a bit tight, especially in the chest area.

Dia took two deep breaths, her heart pounding as she did what she tried to avoid at all cost: look at herself in the mirror.

Then she stopped breathing entirely.

She didn't recognize the person she was looking at. It wasn't her, or better it was, but she really couldn't identify herself with the woman reflected in the mirror.

For starters, she was taller--- maybe three or four inches more than her five-four--- and way more curvy, but what really left her stunned was that entire ratio between her upper and lower body had changed. Her legs seemed miles longer than before, her original B-cup closer to a C but her waist was slimmer, almost thin for the rest of her body.

Then she looked up. Waves of raven black hair framed a face she could only define as perfect. She had always been pretty---though in homely kind of way---pleasant almost as much as she was common, but now it looked like some artist took her face, filed out all the imperfections, smoothed her skin and like icing the on the cake, decided to replace her eyes. Those eyes were exotic, not quite almond-shaped but close, their color ever-changing between various shades of green and blue, like those of a cat.

Dia shook her head. She didn't know how she felt about this. However, it was miles away from what she feared; the cyborgs she had seen in the navy special forces, all metal, red bionic eyes and woody, almost robotic movements.

She was human, or at least she looked like one. This had to suffice, for now.

Besides, she had already lost enough time. She had no idea of where she was, and if this wasn't a dream, it meant that what happened in that strange jungle was real.

Whoever took her had been able to locate and save her from some unknown planet, spending a huge amount of imperial credits to turn her into...well, she didn't even know what to call herself, because for sure she wasn't a cyborg. Not even close.

In any case, Dia had no intention to wait and see why he had done all this. She had to leave, but there was one last thing she had to do before that.

Dia moved closer to the headless body, pinching her nose as the smell of liquefied flesh hit her nostrils. She turned the body to the side with her foot, crouched down and pulled off his lab coat.

Then she wore it.

The sliding doors leading to the outside automatically opened when she approached, head down to hide her face in case she met anyone. Everything was going well until she made to step out. At that point, she heard a noise, high-pitched and loud, resounding like a siren inside the room.

The sound of an alarm going off.