The past few days had been dreadful, till one arrived without ceremony. GR1m1 sensed it before anyone spoke, long before the alchemists unlocked the outer door. The clues had been building for days. They had cleared the tables the night before…. Had brought in new cases with reinforced hinges. Placed the severed arm on a raised platform instead of leaving it in the storage basin. None of them said anything while looking at him, but the pattern was as clear as it could have been.

  He stood inside his cylinder, watching the room through the transparent wall. The alchemists unrolled a sheet of parchment across the central table. The surface showed a rough outline of his body, drawn with uneven strokes. They added the arm beside it, marking points where muscle would meet muscle… locating where nerves would be threaded through the existing pathways. The parasite would be encouraged to grow new vessels. They traced each connection with slow, deliberate movements. Their fingers hovered over the lines as if testing the shape of the future they wanted to build.

  GR1m1 leaned closer to the wall… The parasite under his ribs shifted in a steady rhythm. The group of alchemists present in the scene didn’t look at him. They only adjusted the drawings, adding small symbols near the joints as if marking were to cut. They spoke quietly, their voices blending with the faint hum of the containment field around his cylinder. He couldn’t understand the words, but he recognized the tone. It was a mix of focused intent. They didn’t want to rush this stage, needed and possibly wanted the arm to attach cleanly, without the failures that had ruined so many other subjects.

  One of them activated the spheres of light mounted along the ceiling. The room brightened with a cold, steady glow. The spheres emitted a faint vibration that traveled through the floor. GR1m1 felt it through the soles of his feet. The alchemists adjusted the globes hanging from their belts. The devices produced a thin, controlled sound whenever they powered them on. The noise wasn’t loud, but it carried a sharpness that made the air feel thinner. They used those globes with knives incorporated on them to cut flesh with precision. He had seen them do it many times to other bodies they would bring to the lab.

  They pulled on their masks next. The fabric clung to their faces, covering their mouths and noses. The masks weren’t for his protection. They were for theirs, and didn't want anything foreign entering their bodies while they worked. They moved with a practiced rhythm, checking each strap, adjusting each filter.

  The room settled into a stillness that felt heavier than silence. GR1m1 scanned the space. The tables were clean. The tools were arranged in straight lines. The arm lay motionless on its platform, fingers slightly curled. The alchemists positioned themselves around the table, their movements steady and controlled.

  He couldn’t hear any screams. He hadn’t heard any in a long time. The alchemists had severed the vocal cords of every subject who entered the room. They didn’t want noise interfering with their work. They didn’t want reminders of what they were doing. GR1m1 remembered the moment they cut his own cord. The pressure. The sudden emptiness in his throat. The way the world changed when he tried to speak and nothing came out.

  He didn’t feel anything now. Not in the way he used to. They had damaged the sensory region of his brain after too many procedures left him unresponsive. They wanted him functional, not overwhelmed. Removed the part of him that reacted to pain, who knew what it could be. They didn’t call it mercy, didn’t call it anything. They just did it because they believed the creature would scream for future procedures, so he could keep on being obedient at the cost of feeling hollow, as they knew it was the only thing that kept him with purpose. As it was the only thing he learned ever since he was brought to life.

  He watched them prepare the table where they would place him. They adjusted the restraints, checking each latch. They tested the clamps that would hold his torso steady. Not only that, but they didn’t look at his face. Furthermore, they didn’t acknowledge him as anything more than a piece of meat they needed to try something on, like a cook in the kitchen.

  The parasite found a way to hide even deeper in the bones, now roaming under his ribs, shifted again. Slow but intentional… he pressed his palm against the transparent wall. The surface felt cool. The alchemists didn’t notice. They were too focused on the arm. They lifted it from the platform and examined the underside, tracing the lines where the parasite had reinforced the bone. The limb responded with a faint movement, the fingers curling inward for a moment before relaxing.

  GR1m1 watched the motion with a kind of quiet certainty. The arm acted as if it belonged with him. Not because it would make him whole. Because it had endured the same process he had. Cuts… Altered beyond recognition. Repurposed for something that might not have been its calling. It understood the world the way he did.

  The alchemists placed the arm on the table beside the restraints. They adjusted the position, aligning it with the blueprint in another table. One of them tapped the glass of GR1m1’s cylinder. The sound echoed through the chamber… A signal to wake up from his rest. A summoning of his presence through their own way…

  He stepped forward… The process had begun.

  They positioned him on the table with the same practiced rhythm they used for every procedure, but the air in the room carried a different weight. GR1m1 watched the alchemists adjust the restraints around his torso. Their hands moved with a steadiness that told him they had rehearsed this moment. The old arm… little more than exposed structure and uneven muscle… rested beside him. They didn’t bother numbing the shoulder. They assumed the sedative they put in the liquid of the cylinder was still active.

  But in fact it didn't cause any of its effects anymore in GR1m1…

  He felt the pressure of the blade against his skin, not as pain, but as a faint disturbance. A shift. A recognizable presence. He only recognized it because he saw the movement with his own eyes. The sedative had lost its effect weeks ago, but he had kept that truth buried. If they believed he still floated under its influence, they wouldn’t adjust their methods. They wouldn’t prepare for resistance. They wouldn’t realize he planned to use this moment later, when escape became more than an idea, a chance to be formed.

  The alchemists worked in silence. Their globes emitted a thin sound as they cut through the tissue around his shoulder. He watched the motion without flinching. The parasite under his ribs shifted in response, slow and deliberate. The alchemists didn’t notice. They were too focused on the new arm resting on the tray beside him.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  The limb looked still at first. Then the fingers curled inward, one by one, as if testing the air. GR1m1 stared at it. The movement didn’t match the usual reflexes he had seen in other specimens. This was different. Intentional. The parasite inside the arm responded to something near him. He didn’t know what. The idea was, it only knew the reaction wasn’t random.

  They lifted the arm and brought it closer to his shoulder. The moment the limb hovered above the exposed joint, the flesh along the underside shifted. The bone inside the arm moved with it, adjusting its angle. The motion carried a strange precision, as if the limb recognized the shape of his body and reached toward it.

  The alchemists froze in place, these organisms were attracting each other like magnets, as if they were part of a colony. They looked at each other and kept looking at it.

  GR1m1 watched the connection point. The tissue along his shoulder pulsed once. The arm responded with a small, steady movement. The two pieces of flesh leaned toward each other, not pulled by gravity or guided by hands, but by something deeper. A command he couldn’t hear. A call he didn’t understand.

  Come to me… in a deeper voice, as if the calling of a darker, stronger creature.

  The thought didn’t form in words. It came as a sensation, a signal or a telepathic message. A pull… A direction… The parasite under his ribs shifted again, reacting to the presence of the new organism. The arm moved closer, its bone aligning with the exposed joint. The alchemists exchanged quick glances. Their hands hovered above the limb, unsure whether to intervene.

  They had never seen this reaction. GR1m1 could tell by the way their shoulders stiffened. They whispered to each other, their voices low and tense. They didn’t expect the symbiosis to initiate on its own. The alchemists didn’t expect the organisms to recognize each other.

  One of them stepped forward and placed a hand on the arm, stopping its movement. The limb twitched once, then went still. The alchemist examined the connection point, tracing the edge of the exposed tissue. He hesitated. Then he signaled for a blade.

  They cut the arm again… they wanted to see if it was a reaction that would repeat to pain or an action in particular…

  Not at the shoulder. Not at the joint. They cut between the armpit and the upper arm, separating the limb into two distinct sections. The motion was quick. Clean. Controlled. They wanted to see how the parasite reacted when its structure was altered. They wanted to test the limits of the symbiosis.

  GR1m1 watched the pieces of the arm on the tray. The upper section twitched once, then steadied. The lower section remained still. The alchemists leaned in, studying the reaction. They didn’t look at him. They didn’t consider what the separation meant for the host.

  But he felt it… internally beyond anything that could be expressed…

  Not about pain… Not about being shocked… Something else was in place. A shift inside his body. A change in the rhythm of the parasite under his ribs. The organism reacted to the severed limb, adjusting its movement. It recognized the new structure. It recognized the altered shape. How it responded with a slow, steady pulse that traveled through his torso.

  The alchemists didn’t see the internal reaction. They only saw the external stillness. They believed the cut had neutralized the limb’s instinctive movement. Seemed to believed they had regained control… They hadn’t…

  The consequences settled into GR1m1’s body with a quiet certainty. The parasite inside him had learned something from the severed limb. It had recognized the pattern of the bone parasite. It had adjusted its own rhythm to match it. The two organisms weren’t separate anymore. They were aligning.

  He didn’t know what that meant yet… But he knew it wouldn’t be what the alchemists expected.

  He felt the shift before he understood it. The new nerves had linked themselves to his shoulder without warning, threading into place with a speed his mind couldn’t track. One moment the limb lay separate. The next, something inside him tightened with a sudden pull, as if the connection had already formed and his awareness lagged behind.

  He didn’t react. He kept his face still, eyes half?open, watching the alchemists move around the table. They believed the sedative still held. Believed he floated in a haze that dulled every sensation. They didn’t know the drug had stopped working weeks ago. He didn’t know, he felt the internal shift with a clarity that startled him.

  He couldn’t let them see that. Inside he was getting all sorts of reactions. They were poking his insides to the end of his very nerves.

  The symbiosis moved faster than his own understanding. His body adjusted to the new limb before he could process the change. The parasite under his ribs pulsed in a steady rhythm, responding to the new connection. His shoulder twitched once, a small involuntary movement he forced himself to suppress. He kept his breathing even. He kept his gaze fixed on the ceiling.

  If he had been capable of crying, a tear would have slipped down his cheek. The sensation pressed behind his eyes, a pressure he recognized from memories he couldn’t fully access. But the alchemists had taken that from him long ago. They had cut the parts of his mind that produced tears. It didn’t want reminders of what they were doing. They wanted silence.

  He felt the despair settle inside him, not as emotion but as a physical weight. A heaviness in his chest. A tightness in his throat. He shut it down the same way he shut down every reaction they didn’t want to see. He had learned to bury those signals deep enough that even he barely noticed them.

  GR1m1 lay still on the table. He didn’t have anywhere else to go. The restraints held him in place, but even without them, he wouldn’t have moved. The alchemists circled him with their tools, adjusting the globes that produced the thin cutting sound. They didn’t look at his face. They didn’t check whether he understood what they were doing. They only focused on the limb and the symbiosis they wanted to push further.

  The days blurred into each other after that. They returned each morning with new instruments. They opened the connection point again and again, examining the tissue with slow, deliberate movements. It traced the lines where the parasite had reinforced the joint. The cuts were small in sections to test how quickly the organism responded. They recorded every reaction on their slates.

  GR1m1 watched them work. He tracked the rhythm of their hands. He counted the seconds between each adjustment. GR1m1 felt the parasite shift inside him with each new test, adapting to the changes they forced on it. The limb responded with small movements, flexing or relaxing depending on the pressure they applied.

  He didn’t resist. He didn’t speak. GR1m1 didn’t give them anything they could use against him… He only observed…

  The symbiosis grew stronger with each procedure. The parasite learned faster than the alchemists expected. It reinforced the nerves they cut. It rebuilt the pathways they tried to disrupt. Not only that, but it adapted to every test they performed.

  They believed they controlled the process. They didn’t see how quickly his body changed beneath their hands. GR1m1 didn’t see how much he understood. Couldn't see the quiet certainty forming inside him. He had a long way to go.

  But he wasn’t done… Not yet.

  “???????? ??? ???????... ?????? ???? ?? ???????? ?? ?????? ?? ??? ?? ?????????...”

  “Monsters are mirrors... showing only the darkness we refuse to see in ourselves...”

  How was it??