Chapter Text
**Maya Reyes learned early that the world doesn’t end all at once — it just gets more expensive.**
The warning on the checkout screen blinked red in the corner of the display: *payment declined*. Again. The hospital didn’t need to say anything else. The electronic silence was clear enough — her brother’s treatment was overdue, and overdue, in that world, was just a polite euphemism for a sentence.
She closed her eyes for a second longer than she should have.
“I’ll fix it,” she lied — to Adrian and to herself, as she had been doing for weeks.
The boy was asleep. There were too many purple bruises on his hands, and his breathing was shallow, as if his body were constantly negotiating with itself. Maya pulled the blanket up to his chin with exaggerated care, as though the world would break if she got the gesture wrong. The only things she knew for certain about herself were three facts — she was eighteen, she was now his legal guardian, and she had zero margin to allow herself to fail.
Her father had died in a robbery months earlier — one of those quick, stupid ones that never make headlines, a nobody among so many. Her mother left shortly after, carrying a small suitcase and a promise to return. Maya learned not to rely on promises — only on money.
She sat on the edge of the bed, staring at her own hands as she cried in silence. Her thoughts drifted to her own body and how much it might still be worth. She thought about things she didn’t want to think about — about the pain of a girl who had barely turned eighteen and was forced to give her virginity to a disgusting old man who had watched her grow up, just to pay the rent and keep a roof over her and her brother’s heads. She wouldn’t survive that. She couldn’t live like that. For a moment, she almost wished she didn’t have to carry this weight — dark thoughts — and then she cried harder out of guilt for even thinking them. Adrian wasn’t to blame for getting sick. He wasn’t to blame for being born.
As she left the room and stepped into the hallway, she saw the ad.
Not loud — the RDA was far too sophisticated for that. It was clean, calm, filled with colors that felt like a dream. Smiling people. Happy people.
**RDA — Expanding the Future of Humanity.**
**Recruitment for colonization projects.**
**Guaranteed compensation. Medical assistance included.**
Medical assistance, medical assistance, medical assistance — it became a mantra — medical assistance, medical assistance… Maya clicked before she could think.
The process was too fast. That should have been the first warning. Then came physical tests, genetic screenings, invasive questionnaires wrapped in bureaucracy. No one asked *why* she wanted to go to another planet where, despite all the promises, war could break out at any moment. They only asked if she was willing.
And she was.
The contract room was too white. Too cold. A man with a polite smile explained everything using beautiful words and long sentences that said very little.
“The project requires total commitment,” he said.
“How long?” Maya asked.
“As long as necessary.”
She read a few lines, skipped others. She looked for explicit risks, fine print, something that screamed danger. She found nothing. The RDA didn’t scream. The RDA whispered promises — promises she wanted to believe, even though a part of her, deep down, knew words meant nothing.
“My brother…” she began.
“He’ll be covered,” he replied — too quickly. “Completely.”
For some reason, the pen felt heavier than it should have. Maya signed anyway.
One week later, she was aboard a ship heading for Pandora. Her brother would stay behind to receive full treatment and was supposed to join her once he got better. A social worker had visited them, assuring her he would be taken care of and that they would reunite soon. *The RDA takes care of its own*, she had said.
After a few days, Maya realized she had been completely deceived. A journey that was supposed to last only days stretched into months. Her little brother — with whom she was supposed to communicate every other day — slowly stopped responding, until the final shock came. He had died. The RDA specialist claimed the treatment had been too strong for someone already so weakened.
She cried. She cried because he died alone. She cried because she knew he must have believed she had abandoned him. She remembered how he hadn’t wanted her to go — but this had been her only chance to try to keep him *alive*. And she had failed.
As silent witness to her grief, Pandora appeared before her for the first time through the observation deck — too blue, too alive, too wrong. When they landed, the forest breathed like a conscious organism, and for one second — just one — she had the strange sensation of being watched.
The premonition hit hard and true. She swallowed dryly. She had been promised a life in a human colony, caring for children born on Pandora — a new life.
What she found was an underground base. White, sterile cells. Several human women in each one. All of them terrified.
She tried to fight before her brain fully processed the fact that Pandora’s air was poison if she somehow managed to escape. Her struggle was useless. She and several other young women who had arrived with her were surrounded by armed men and women.
The next thing she knew, someone struck the side of her head as she kicked and scratched. As she fell, all she could hear were screams and sobs. She wanted her father — but her father was dead.
There was no one to turn to. Alone, she had no one left. But in truth, she never had. The eldest daughter. The substitute mother. The adult.
She finally understood the cruel reality: she had never had anyone — not even when she fooled herself into believing she did.
And in that moment, there was no room for fear. Fear saved no one.
That day, Maya Reyes — eighteen years old — realized she had never stood a chance, neither on Earth nor on Pandora. Some people are born only to suffer.
What she didn’t know was that her suffering would become far darker.
By the end of that day, Maya Reyes was dead.
She was no longer a girl.
She was a product.
**Test subject F-13.**