The Reset Program

The clinic was white. Too white. Walls and floor and lights buzzing overhead. He sat in a chair, the vinyl sticking to his back with sweat. The intake nurse smiled too long. Her teeth were the color of bone boiled down.

“You’re here for the reset,” she said. Not a question.

He nodded. His stomach burned from the fasting prep. His arms felt hollow. They had promised him strength. A body made new.

A door opened. A man in scrubs waved him in. The room stank of bleach and iron. Machines lined the walls. Not treadmills. Rigs of metal with straps and pulleys. Hooks. Stained padding. Some still slick.

“Lie down,” the man said.

The table was cold. Restraints bit into his wrists. He told himself it was part of the treatment. A detox protocol. A new way to break down muscle before building it back.

The first incision came fast. Across the abdomen. No anesthesia. His scream filled the room and then died against the hum of the lights. The man in scrubs leaned close.

“Shhh. We’re extracting the fat first. Too much of you is wasted.”

He felt hands rooting inside him, pulling, scooping. Blood soaked the paper sheet beneath him. He thought he might black out but they kept him there, awake, with injections that burned like acid. They said it was B12. It was not.

Another machine rolled close. A centrifuge. His blood spun into bright red layers. They pulled off the plasma and pressed it into syringes. Injected it into other patients strapped in nearby. He saw their eyes. Wide. Starving.

They whispered the clinic motto. “You are what you consume.”

When they cut deeper, he understood. The strong were being fed the weak. Every sinew, every ounce of marrow stripped, repackaged, recycled. Wellness through consumption. His flesh into their gains. His organs their recovery fuel.

He begged. His voice cracked and rasped. The nurse leaned down, stroked his cheek with latex fingers.

“You signed the waiver,” she said. “No refunds.”

The lights flickered. For a moment he thought he saw himself. Muscular, tall, perfect. But the reflection was wrong. The jaw too sharp. The eyes too hungry. It leaned forward in the glass, grinning.

And he knew. They weren’t building better bodies from his parts. They were building him. Again and again. Each patient harvested to sculpt a stronger version. A perfected echo.

The straps cut deeper into his wrists. His chest emptied. He tried to hold on to the pain, the sound, anything human. The clone in the glass flexed its new hands. Smooth. Veined. Alive.

Then it smiled wider, and stepped away from the mirror.