Human anatomy is indeed marvelous. It's the most beautiful thing God ever made. Every organ, tissue, and system works harmoniously to sustain life. Fall of any of these might destroy that harmony, which was not something Alexa, as a doctor, wanted to see.
"Among all the organs, my favourite is the heart," she muttered to herself, slipping on a pair of sterilised gloves. The dim yellow glow from the lamp illuminated a bare chest.
"Don't ask you me why?" Her gaze fell on the terrified eyes of her patient. Cute. His wide, bulging eyes screamed for mercy, from them tears streamed down to the tape sealing his mouth.
"Oh, I forgot—you can't speak." She giggled, her fingers dancing over the container of tools before selecting a scalpel with a swift movement. The blade glinted, reflecting the panic etched on his face.
"The heart never stops working on its own. And if it does, well, it doesn't need to work anymore," she murmured, dragging the scalpel down his chest in a precise incision.
"Mmph! Mmh!" Why those muffled cries? She glared at the terrified pair of eyes.
"Oh, are you trying to say something?"
"Mmhh! Mmph!"
"I heard that now. Loud and clear."
The sound of the scalpel slicing through skin and muscle was almost surreal. Alexa had to resist the urge to lose herself in the sensation.
She was a lifesaver, you know—not a life taker.
The incision deepened, exposing the sternum. Her hands extended, and one of her boys handed her a retractor.
She blinked at it, then carefully applied pressure to spread the ribs apart. Ah, the sound. She doubted even moans during sex could bring this kind of euphoria.
The heart bounced inside the ribcage, a beautiful, defiant rhythm. Her eyes trailed over the blocked coronary arteries. A smirk flickered across her lips before disappearing. She always became serious from this step.
"You're lucky, you know. My success rate in this is 100%." Her gaze shifted to one of her assistant's on the left.
She nodded, prompting him to connect the patient to the machine that would take over his heart's function until she cleared the blockage.
It was always a sight to see the heart suddenly stop beating. A rare moment for it to rest from its continuous work of pumping. The heart-lung machine took control, its rhythmic hum filling the tent. Her gaze hardened.
Next came the crucial part—harvesting veins. She moved to the end of the bed, her palm brushing along his leg. Goosebumps appeared on his hairy skin.
Ah, disgustingly cute.
She began extracting the saphenous vein from his leg.
"Oh, wait. What's his name again?"
"Oliver, Miss Doctor," one of her assistant's replied.
From Oliver''s leg, she prepared the vein to graft around the blocked coronary arteries. The process was physically tiring but mentally refreshing.
After what felt like an eternity, the moment of excitement arrived. She took the vein graft and expertly attached one end to the aorta and the other to a healthy artery below the blockage.
Alexa repeated the procedure for the second and third blockages, clapping her hands together when she finished.
"It's a success!" Her cheerful voice echoed in the makeshift operating theater.
But her smile faded when she saw Oliver's face. His eyes weren't filled with gratitude—just intense fear and pain.
Why?
Then it hit her like a wave of ocean. She arched her back and laughed.
"Oh no. We forgot the anesthesia." Her gaze fell on Oliver, his trembling form pitiful. She forced a few tears to spill, even though they burned like the entire bottle of water she'd downed earlier.
"That's fine, Miss. He looks like someone who doesn't need it," one of her boys said, thumping his chest.
Ah, my bad. How could she forget? She wiped her wasted tears and smiled.
"That's it," she locked eyes with Oscar, mimicking his voice, "You said before, 'Even if I die, I'll never betray my master.'
How could i let such a loyal man die? This session was free, just for him. So noble of me, right, Oscar?"
Right?
Before closing his chest, she gestured for the tape to be removed from his mouth.
"You beast…" he spat, the stench making her cringe.
"What an ungrateful fella. Miss, how about we re-block his arteries?" an assisnatnt of her suggested.
"That's a great idea." She tilted her head, feigning surprise at the horror morphed into the first primal expression of a human in him, "Eh, why are you nodding like that, Oscar? So eager for round two?"
Eventually, Alex broke. He spilled everything—about his master, Silas Sinclair, heir to the Sinclair family, and their ties to an organ trafficking organisation.
Smart of Silas to pin all the blame on her after he got caught. Not that she cared about a few more countries on her back, but it soured her mood to be blamed without compensation.
"Let's pay Silas a visit," she said, turning to her boys.
"And him?" one asked, gesturing to unconscious Oscar.
"Oh, his heart needs air to avoid re-blocking."
---
They took a flight. Strange, the always-present escorting copters were not in sight. She knitted her brows, glancing at Rishab in the pilot's seat, who flinched at her gaze.
So, that's it.
"How much?" She leaned into her seat, watching his fists clenching on the cyclic stick.
"It's not money…"
"Then what? Women? You know that's easy. I never mind airplay…" she pulled down her top a little.
"Not that…" His knuckles turned white. Alexa saw something she'd never seen in her boys: defiance.
But not against her. The frown that had disappeared on her reappeared again.
"Say that fuckin' reason!" All the illusions she had kept up for hiding her real feelings surged forth like a cyclone.
She was a hundred percent sure none of her boys would betray her; they had no reason to. Everything a person could dream of, she gave them.
On this entire Earth, no one but her was worth their loyalty. Then why?
Anger surged within her, not against them, but against that reason. Whatever it was, she would destroy it.
"So tell me, Rishab. Don't force me to pull this trigger." A metallic touch on his neck stiffened him. She put her finger on the trigger.
Sweat beads tickled down his neck, but he didn't speak. Her patience was thinning, and the pressure on the trigger grew.
A sickening sound of a bullet piercing through skul rang out. But she hadn't pulled the trigger.
"For freedom…" That was what she heard from Rishab before her eyes went dark.
---
Freedom… an absurd mirage of illusion humans always thought they had. But in her opinion, this same illusion was what chained them all along.
Was it truly freedom they always sought? No, it was something else entirely.
She believed that 'something else' was power. And it always jolted her back to reality to realise that this power, too, was chained.
It felt as though humans were forced to have a limit—endless, illusionary, but still a real limit. What she always sought was to break that limit. Only then could one be truly free.
So Alexa was angry. Not because of Rishab's betrayal, but because of the reason behind it.
Did he actually think he had gained freedom at the cost of her life? Naive!
She was certain that, when the time came, he would find himself trapped in that same illusion once more, again chasing a freedom that never existed in the first place.
She watched as the shapeless form of her soul shimmered with ethereal light, drifting across a multicoloured bridge toward a large door that materialised magically in the air.
Her senses extended beyond the bridge to a mirror mirroring rows of shapeless forms, waiting in line.
"So this is death," she thought. She had no idea what waited beyond that door for her, but the unsettled feelings washing over her from those ahead told her it was nothing pleasant.
After what felt like an eternity, she stood before the door, staring at her reflection in the mirror with a dumbfounded expression.
Next to the mirror stood a skeletal figure holding a large scythe over its shoulder. But that wasn't the reason for her surprise.
The reflection staring back at her wasn't her own. And the expression on that reflection was the exact opposite of hers.
"Tara Kingsley," the skeleton read aloud a name she'd never heard before.
Age: 15
Reason of death: Bitten by a venomous snake."
Was betrayal classified like this? Not really. She was sure there was some kind of error, so she tried to correct the skinless, naked figure before her.
"Oi, my name is—"
But she couldn't finish her sentence. Her words abruptly choked in her throat, and to her horror, the reflection in the mirror finished it instead.
"…is Tara Kingsley."
The skeleton seemed frozen in its movement as the surroundings around her began to shatter.
Her gaze fixated on the reflection of a silver-haired girl in the mirror, her light blue irises contracting in terror. Wait, that's her current expression.
And then everything turned upside down. A canopy of green trees replaced her surroundings, followed by searing pain, and then her consciousness was plunged into darkness.
---
A few bumps on her head awakened Alexa into brightness. She fluttered open her eyes, and in the next instant, her nose twitched as an urge to throw up reached her mouth.
What's with this smell? She turned to her left, then to her right, before staring at the branches of trees racing past her.
Surrounding her were humans—unnaturally cold and blue. Dead bodies! The color of their skin told her all of them were poisoned, and the smell pointed to them being dead for at most half a day.
She was inside something that resembled an open carriage. It took a few more seconds for the electric signals from her sensory receptors to reach her brain, as she felt a hammering pain in her head.
Unknown memories flooded into her mind, her brain failing to group them while trying hard to store them without breaking apart.
"Ugh…" A suppressed cry escaped from her lips, halting the movement of the carriage.
Sensitive group, eh.
"Did you hear something from there?" asked a voice.
"There's no chance for someone to be alive in the corpse room," replied another voice, strained at the end.
A shadow covered her form, and she squinted at the bare-chested man outside the carriage.
Her gaze lingered on his shriveled chest for a few moments before falling on the large axe resting on his shoulder.
The axe shimmered in her sight, and a name came to her tongue in an instant.
'Artefact- Weapons weaved with metallic elemental essence, possessing durability and strength far greater than ordinary weapons. Some powerful artefacts might have even engraved spells on them.'
Her eyes widened at this information. Terms she had never heard of before began to surface, the memories stored in her brain unraveling with it.
The world she was currently in had something her previous world didn't—magic! She stared at the face of the man, his brows raised on his almost mummified face.
"I don't remember having you here…" he rubbed his chin.
Crap, they seemed to have caught her. Hehe, now it's interesting.
~What are they gonna do to me?
She couldn't wait…