The restraints are titanium composite with electromagnetic locks—you recognize the design from military-grade interrogation equipment. Your wrists, ankles, chest, and neck are held with precision that suggests whoever designed this system knew exactly what they were doing. There's perhaps a millimeter of give, enough to let blood circulate but nowhere near enough to exploit.
Dr. Helena Voss circles your chair with the measured pace of someone savoring a long-anticipated moment. She's younger than you expected—mid-thirties, with sharp Scandinavian features and copper-red hair pulled back in a severe bun. Her white lab coat is pristine, and behind wire-rimmed glasses, her grey eyes regard you with the clinical detachment of an entomologist examining a particularly interesting specimen.
"Bruce Wayne," she says, her accent carrying faint traces of Oslo. "Or should I say Batman? The distinction will soon be academic." She gestures to the bank of monitors behind her, where your own brain scan rotates in three-dimensional space, sections highlighted in pulsing colors. "Do you understand what you're looking at? Neural mapping at a resolution that didn't exist five years ago. We can identify not just which neurons fire when you think about being Batman, but the entire web of associations, memories, motor patterns. Your fighting techniques. Your deductive processes. Even your voice."
She picks up a tablet from a nearby stand, swiping through data with practiced efficiency. "The beauty of identity is that it's not mystical or metaphysical. It's encoded. Neurochemistry, synaptic weights, hormone profiles, even the shape of your vocal cords and the muscle memory in your throat. Change those elements, and you change the person." Her smile doesn't reach her eyes. "I've done this forty-three times now. Some were criminals who volunteered for reduced sentences. Others were... let's say, acquired. Like you."
She leans in closer, close enough that you can smell her perfume—something expensive and cold. "Tomorrow morning, you'll go into the transformation suite. When you emerge seventy-two hours later, Bruce Wayne will be gone. Batman will be gone. In their place will be exactly what I design. Your body restructured. Your neural pathways rewritten. Your very thoughts filtered through new language centers that won't even comprehend English."
"The process is irreversible," she continues, straightening. "I want you to understand that fully. There is no antidote, no cure, no going back. The person you are now will cease to exist."