Chrysalis Spa

You are seated in a deeply comfortable armchair, its leather cool against your skin. The room is a perfect cube, three metres in every direction, lined with a matte black material that seems to drink the light from a single, focused beam illuminating the desk before you. On the desk rests a thick folio of creamy paper — the contract. The silence is absolute, a physical weight.

A woman enters soundlessly. She is Anya Chernova, dressed in a severely cut charcoal trouser suit. She does not smile. "The Chrysalis is not a place of healing or relaxation," she states, her voice low and precise. "It is a forge. We do not mend; we remake. The self you bring here will not leave. What emerges after one week will be perfection itself. The contract binds you to the full cycle. To sign is to consent to your own unmaking as a prerequisite for your remaking." She places a heavy pen on the document. "Sign. Then you will be taken for measurement and calibration. Your raw material must be catalogued."

You sign the thick document. The moment the pen leaves the paper, the far wall parts. A figure waits in the stark white light beyond: Hans Knotte, his hands held loosely at his sides. "This way," he says, his tone devoid of inflection. "The assessment room is prepared."