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Maya was led to an operating room, where she was strapped down. She gulped nervously. After Phoenix failed to save her at her most recent trial to revoke her Unwind status, she was led to the nearest harvest camp. A few days later, she was next on the list to be unwound.
"Maya? Your name is Maya, right?" A nurse asked. Maya nodded.
"Ow!" Maya said, feeling a couple jabs in her neck. "I thought it wasn't supposed to hurt!"
"Actually, that would be the only pain that you'll be feeling, today," the nurse said, smiling at Maya comfortingly behind her mask. "We're inserting a solution through your carotid artery and jugular vein. It has oxygen and is an anesthetic, so you won't feel any pain during the process."
"The solution is meant to replace your blood during the unwinding," a surgeon explained. "The real thing goes to the blood bank."
"So you're knocking me out?" Maya asked. "I won't know what's going on?"
"On the contrary," the nurse said. "By law, we're required to keep you conscious throughout the entire thing; you have the right to know what happens every step of the way."
"But I don't want to know!" Maya asked. "I thought I could just...die." the nurse slid a mask on Maya.
"You don't die, sweetheart," the nurse said. "You just stop living."
"What's the difference?" Maya asked. She then began to wonder: would she be able to be channeled? And would the people who get her parts be able to channel? Those are questions that never needed to be asked, before. And now she's wondering if she'll ever get the answer. Speaking of answers, the nurse decided against answering her question (most likely because there really is no difference between dying and not living, at least that's what Maya thought.)
"You'll feel a slight tugging at your ankles," the surgeon said as he removed Maya's legs.
"Please," Maya said in a wobbly voice. "Please, stop!" I don't want to be unwound!"
"I'm afraid it's too late for that, sweetheart," the nurse said as the surgeons moved to her abdomen and started removing her organs. Maya then noticed a tugging at her arms before they, too, were gone.
"I'm afraid that we'll have to stop talking soon, and no, I'm not going to leave you," the nurse said. "It's just that you won't be able to talk." Suddenly, Maya felt a tingling, uncomfortable feeling in her chest for a few minutes. "Blink twice if you can hear me," the nurse said. Maya blinked twice. "You're being very brave, sweetheart," the nurse said.
"Preparing optical removal," a surgeon said.
"I'm afraid that you won't be able to blink for much longer," the nurse said. Soon after, Maya was surrounded by darkness.
"Splitting the corpus callosum," the surgeon said. Maya's life then began to flash before her eyes, coming and going just as suddenly. She remembered her training, her sister Mia, her younger cousin Pearl, Mia's death, meeting Phoenix, finding her unwind order, Phoenix trying and failing to save her life.
"Did you get the auditory nerves?" One surgeon asked.
"I'm about to," another said. Now, Maya can't hear. But she can still feel. Soon, she began to lose her memories, and herself.
...
Phoenix looked at himself in the mirror in his hospital room with nothing but guilt. He permanently damaged his eyes when a drunk driver ran into him while he was on his bike. The doctors say that he's lucky that his eyes were the only part of him that got damaged. And that they just got a fresh new pair of eyes. However, what he learned far too late was that those eyes once belonged to Maya. He stared at himself. It was his fault, after all, that Maya got unwound, just as much as it is Morgan's. He finally turned away from the mirror and laid back in bed, his-no, Maya's-eyes staring at the ceiling. He heard a knock. "You can come in!" Phoenix called out, In walked Edgeworth.
"Wright, I-oh," Edgeworth said, looking down on the floor with guilt.
'Thanks for asking me if I wanted another pair of eyes," Phoenix said dryly.
"I did not know that they were going to use Maya's eyes," Edgeworth said.
"As if another Unwind's eyes would be better?!?" Phoenix snapped.
"Wright-" Edgeworth began.
"It's just...I wish that you would have asked me what I wanted before having those doctors give me someone else's eyes," Phoenix said.
"Wright, the doctors said that this was the only way you could regain your sight," Edgeworth said.
"In that case, I'd rather be blind than walk around with someone else's eyes, especially Maya's," Phoenix said.
"Wright-" Edgeworth began when he noticed that Phoenix's eyes were glistening. Edgeworth then awkwardly hugged Phoenix as he began to cry, the guilt finally overtaking him.
