Voss pauses mid-stride, and something in her expression shifts—not quite pleasure, but the satisfaction of someone asked to discuss their masterwork. She returns to her tablet, fingers moving across the screen with practiced precision.
"Subject histories?" She tilts her head, considering. "They're living entirely new existences now. Subject Seven was a corrupt hedge fund manager. Forty-two years old, Yale educated, spoke four languages. Now she's a twenty-six-year-old Vietnamese woman working in a textile factory in Ho Chi Minh City. She has memories of growing up in Hanoi, a family that never existed, dreams in a language her original brain never learned. She has no idea she was ever anyone else."
She swipes to another file. "Subject Nineteen was more challenging—a federal prosecutor who was getting too close to our financial networks. The neurological restructuring took an extra day because his investigative thinking patterns were so deeply embedded. But we succeeded. He's now she, working as a hotel maid in Guadalajara. Twenty-three years old, mestizo features, speaks only Spanish and some indigenous Nahuatl. Perfect integration."
"Subject Twenty-Eight was experimental," she continues, warming to her subject with clinical enthusiasm. "A photojournalist who'd documented our supply chain connections. We gave her retrograde amnesia extending back to age fifteen, then built entirely new formative memories. She believes she grew up in rural Cambodia, survived the poverty there, immigrated to Thailand. The psychological testing shows complete identity consolidation."
Voss sets down the tablet and fixes you with that grey-eyed stare. "You're wondering if any of them escaped the process, aren't you? If any retained fragments of their original selves?" Her smile is thin and precise. "The answer is no. Not one. The initial subjects showed some residual neural patterns—phantom memories, linguistic fragments. We've perfected the technique since then. By Subject Thirty, the transformation was seamless."
She steps closer to your restraint chair. "The forty-third subject completed transformation last week. She's already been relocated, beginning her new life. Tomorrow morning, you'll be number forty-four." Her voice drops slightly. "I've been planning your specific transformation for months, Mr. Wayne. Every detail calibrated. It will be my finest work."