Miss Velvet injects you with the glowing liquid. The first phase has begun.

Miss Velvet's lips curve into a satisfied smile as she observes your stillness. She sets the vial down and retrieves a syringe, drawing the pink liquid with practiced precision. The fluorescent light catches the serum as it fills the chamber, making it look almost alive.

She moves to stand beside your head, looking down at you with those unsettling pink eyes. "This is the first threshold, John. After this, that name won't mean anything to you anymore. You'll know yourself only as Candy."

She traces the needle along your temple, not breaking skin yet, just letting you feel its presence. "The serum works on your neural pathways. It doesn't erase memories exactly—it rewrites your sense of self. Within ten minutes, maybe fifteen, trying to remember being 'John' will feel like grasping at smoke. The name Candy will feel natural, right, like it's always been yours."

The needle finds your temple, and she pushes it through skin with clinical efficiency. You feel the sharp sting, then the pressure as she depresses the plunger slowly, deliberately. The pink liquid burns as it enters, a sensation like hot wire threading through your skull.

"There we go," she murmurs, withdrawing the needle and setting it aside. Her gloved hand comes to rest on your forehead, almost tender. "Just breathe through it. The first few minutes are uncomfortable."

Uncomfortable is an understatement. Heat spreads from the injection site, radiating through your head like branches of lightning. Your vision blurs, sharpens, blurs again. You try to hold onto yourself, onto who you are, but there's a strange slippage happening in your thoughts.

Miss Velvet leans over you, her face filling your field of vision. "What's your name?" she asks, her voice soft but commanding.

You open your mouth to answer, and the word that should come—your name, your identity—feels distant somehow, like a word in a foreign language you once knew but have forgotten. The wrongness of it makes your chest tighten.

"Say it," Miss Velvet commands, her hand sliding down to cup your jaw. "Tell me your name."

Your lips form the syllables, but they feel strange, disconnected. "... Candy," you hear yourself say, and horror floods through you because it feels right. It feels true.

"Good girl," Miss Velvet purrs, and something in your brain lights up at her approval, a warmth that spreads through your chest despite your terror. "Again. What's your name?"

"Candy," you say, and this time it comes easier. The other name—there was another name, wasn't there?—slips further away like sand through fingers.