[Begin Recording — Audio: faint static, distant whine from machine hum]

Dr. Leeren: Ja. Hallo. This is... Dr. Sabine Leeren, recording live from Lab 3B. Phase Drei of Inter Lineas is ready. Finally, hm? Seventeen participants, all willing, primed, scrubbed down to their inner scaffolding. They’re lying there in Chamber A like dolls in storage. Not asleep, not awake. Just hovering. Suspended. Peaceful, like they’ve forgotten they were ever human. I envy them a little.

[Pauses. A soft chuckle. Something clinks.]

But gut. Everything is prepared. They’ve all done the journaling, the memory drills, the empathy-tracking. The mind is... wunderschön, you know? Even when broken. Especially then. They think I’m doing this for science. That’s what I told the board: “non-invasive psychic bifurcation through voluntary induction.” Sounds sexy, ja? But nein. This is not for the data. This is not even for them.

It’s for her. Talia.

[Silence. Then, something quieter: breath catching.]

She was not like the others. She burned. Not metaphor. She really did, sometimes, if she cried too hard. Lit candles just by touching them. Once, she nearly set the bed on fire from a dream. But I didn’t care. I should have, scheiße, I should’ve written her up, sent her back for inpatient recalibration, but I couldn’t.

She wanted to be beautiful, always. Not just seen, but made. Do you understand? She was becoming, all the time, like her body was not hers. She wanted curves like the women in black-and-white movies. Voices like velvet. She said to me once, “I want to look like how you look at me.”

Gott. That nearly ruined me.

This project, Inter Lineas, it’s the only way. Not a surgery, not hormones, not mirrors. Transformation. Neural print transfer, the body rewritten from the inside, ja? A new skin grown from memory and yearning. And maybe... maybe if I get it right, I can give her the shape she dreamed of. Maybe she won’t cry when she looks at herself anymore. Maybe she’ll stay.

[Mechanical click. Door hisses open. Air pressure shift. Her voice echoes now.]

I’m entering Chamber A. Environment is stable. Theta, the rat, poor bastard, is ready as anchor vessel. Fallback plan, in case I get... stuck. She’s a good rat. Soft. Smart. Talia liked her. If something goes schief, I reroute into Theta, use her as buffer. Eh, not ideal, but what is?

[Steps. Her breathing grows deeper.]

Locating serration site. It’s... ach. It’s humming already. Like a cello string under my ribs.

Okay.

Talia, liebling... I’m bringing your name with me. I’m slicing this mind open and threading you through it.

Please be waiting.

Beginning psychic split. Pressure rising. Holding image: her in the golden dress, bare feet on the lab floor, singing to herself like she didn’t know I was watching. She always knew.

Serration point reached.

Now...

Ich sehe—

[A sharp whine. Recording ends.]