The room held a mingled smell of disinfectant and sawdust. On a monitor that rendered body heat as color, dozens of small heat sources curled up or shifted about. Dead center on the screen, a green cursor blinked above the reddest, hottest of them. 'Host 417.' Seo Hyejin wet her dry lips with her tongue. From the automatic waterer in the breeding room beyond the glass wall came the faint drip of falling water.
The door opened without a sound and a man came in. Not in a white coat—a gray uniform tailored to his frame. He stood beside Hyejin and studied the monitor with her.
"Are you ready for the final synchronization, Ms. Seo Hyejin?"
The voice was gentle but held no warmth. Park Seonu, the account manager who had guided her through every step over the past 8 months. The company logo was embroidered on his shirt cuff. 'Regen Life.' Two helices wrapped around each other in an embrace.
Instead of answering, Hyejin nodded. Her throat had closed and no sound would come.
"Host 417's vital signs are stable. The fetus's development is also registering at the very top of our predicted range. Now we'll transplant your memory patterns to induce the initial firing of the nervous system. It may help to think of it as the moment a child first hears its mother's voice."
A child, he'd said. Hyejin seized on the word. The word she had spoken for the last time 4 years ago, in a hospital's sterile ward. She looked at the red mass on the screen. Soyun. My daughter.
"This way, please."
Park Seonu led her to the synchronization room. It was small and dark. In the center sat a single black leather recliner. Beside the chair was a headset trailing a tangle of cables. When Park Seonu adjusted the room's lighting, the wall opposite turned transparent, revealing a space far smaller than the breeding room from before. Inside it stood a single transparent rearing box.
Hyejin held her breath. 'Host 417' was there. Not a red dot on a monitor but a living, breathing thing. Enormous. It looked three times the size of an ordinary lab rat. Its fur was white and clean, but the belly that bulged upward showed blue veins through the thin skin. Each time something inside the belly moved, the skin rippled like water. The rat crouched without stirring. Its flanks rose and fell rapidly, as though it were gasping for breath.
"It's been given a sedative, so there'll be almost no movement. That's for the stability of the synchronization process."
Park Seonu picked up the headset. When Hyejin sat down in the chair, he came over and fitted the device onto her head. The metal against her temples felt cold.
"From here on, you'll share some of the host's basic senses. Sight, hearing, and limited touch. Don't be alarmed. The system filters out all harmful stimuli. All you need to do is focus on your happiest memory—the moment your bond with your daughter was deepest. Voice memories are especially important. Sing to her, or whisper the things you used to say. That voice will be the first world of the child we create."
Hyejin closed her eyes. Particles of light like static drifted across her field of vision, then resolved into a faint image. A blurred, low vantage point. What she saw before her was the translucent wall of the rearing box, and beyond it the silhouette of the dark synchronization room. She could see herself, too. A woman sitting rigid in the chair. An unfamiliar smell flooded her nostrils. Not her own scent—the smell of an animal. Sawdust and feed.
'It's all right. This is just a process.'
Hyejin struggled to summon Soyun. A sunlit afternoon, Soyun on her lap on the living room sofa as she read her a picture book. The feel of the small, soft hair. The child's little fingers turning the pages. Hyejin opened her mouth. Her voice trembled.
"Soyun-ah… it's Mommy."
In that instant, another sensation broke in. The feeling of something squirming inside the belly. Not her own belly. The senses overlapped. Separated by a single thin membrane of skin, something inside was thrashing. Hyejin knit her brow. It was too sharp, too restless, to call a baby's kick.
Park Seonu's voice came through the headset's speaker.
"Good. The brainwave synchronization has begun. Please continue."
Hyejin turned her focus back to Soyun. The lullaby the child had loved best. 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star…' She began to hum the melody. The singing came at once from her own mouth and from the headset's speaker, both at the same time. A strange duet.
As she sang, the shared senses grew sharper. The suffocation of being trapped in a cramped space. The heaviness of a body she could barely hold up. Thirst. A faint terror. Hyejin stopped singing. These were not Soyun's feelings. These were the rat's feelings.
"Ms. Seo, you need to concentrate. Unstable emotional patterns can affect the synchronization."
Park Seonu's voice was still serene. Hyejin squeezed her eyes shut. Soyun's face, her laughter, even the ragged breathing of her final moments—she called them up in desperation. 'Mommy, it hurts.' She fought to erase that memory and draw out only the healthy image.
'Soyun-ah, do you remember the day we went to the amusement park? You said you were bigger than the cotton-candy clouds.'
As the memory surfaced, the movement inside the belly grew more violent. A sensation grazed her—something clawing at a wall from within. The feeling of a sharp thing scoring tender flesh. A moan slipped out of Hyejin before she could stop it. She clutched her own abdomen. There was nothing there. The sensation was virtual, but far too vivid.
"Synchronization rate is 73%. Very stable."
Stable — what could possibly be stable about this? Hyejin wanted to scream. This is wrong. This is not my daughter. But 4 years of waiting, and the money she'd raised by selling the house, sealed her lips. This was the last chance. The only way to reclaim Soyun's cells, Soyun's genes.
She sang the lullaby again. Her voice was close to weeping now. The song no longer belonged to the Soyun of her memory; it sounded like an incantation meant to hush the terror of this very moment. The thing in the belly still thrashed. A phantom pain, as if tiny nails were clawing at the walls of the womb, spread through her whole body. It wanted out. Out of this dark, cramped prison, out of the body of a mother rat, out into the world.
Her vision blurred. The rat's sight and her own tears ran together. The image of herself sitting in the chair looked warped. Then, for an instant, the violent movement stopped. And one perfectly distinct sensation came through. Hyejin knew what it was. Similar to what she had felt 4 years ago, when she'd held Soyun in her arms — yet fundamentally something else. The will of a living being. But not a human one: the strange, primal writhing of raw life.
"Synchronization rate 98%. We've entered the stable zone."
Park Seonu's voice.
"We'll begin the extraction procedure now. Please just stay relaxed."
Beyond the transparent wall, several thin metal arms began to descend from the ceiling of the breeding chamber. Laser scalpels, suction tubes, fine forceps. Automated surgical equipment. They settled slowly over the belly of the sedated rat. Hyejin could not look away. Her daughter was about to be drawn out of that animal's body, through those machines.
A red line was drawn across the rat's swollen belly. There was no pain. The void where the system had blocked all sensation filled instead with a skin-crawling imagining of cold metal parting soft flesh. Hyejin tightened her own lower belly. In the linked field of vision, the skin of the rat that had been her body opened like a flower petal. Beyond the bloodless incision, a womb wrapped in a thin membrane came into view. Everything was unreally clean. A sterile dismantling, not a single drop of blood spilled. The automated mechanical arms moved through their set sequence without hesitation, without pity. Hyejin could no longer tell whether she was human, or the specimen inside that breeding box. She was merely a lump of sensation, made part of an enormous system, watching helplessly as her daughter was born.
As the fine forceps carefully lifted the womb, something inside gave one last thrash. In that moment, Hyejin felt a real sensation, beyond phantom pain. A short, violent shock, like a sharp nail tearing through the last remaining wall to get out. 'Ah—!' Hyejin swallowed a scream. It was not the rapture of life. It was the writhing of escape. The rat's vision shook wildly. Instinctive terror, having overcome the sedative, broke through the system's filters and surged in like a wave. Her heart pounded madly. This was not her own heartbeat. It belonged to a beast facing death.
"Synchronization terminated. Releasing the neural link."
With Park Seonu's voice, her vision went black. Every sensation was severed at once. Hyejin gasped like someone flung up to the surface from deep underwater. The cold touch at her temples, the hard leather chair against her back, the sound of her own ragged breathing — they gave her the coordinates of reality. With trembling hands she tore off the headset and threw it aside. Under the dim lights of the synchronization room, she could see the breeding room beyond the glass wall. The mechanical arms had already finished and withdrawn into the ceiling. Host 417 lay motionless, its belly split open. The body that had cradled a small life was now nothing more than biological waste that had served its purpose.
"A success, ma'am. The fetus has been safely recovered and is currently being transferred to the neonatal incubator. Once the stabilization procedure is finished, in just a little while, you'll be able to meet the baby right away."
Park Seonu approached and lightly steadied Hyejin by the shoulder. His touch was as businesslike as ever. Hyejin shook off his hand.
"Just now… what was that?"
Her voice came out cracked.
"At the end… that feeling…."
"A temporary sensory disturbance caused by the abrupt separation of the nervous system. It's a common occurrence during synchronization, so there's nothing to worry about."
Park Seonu recited his prepared answer without a hitch.
"Your memories and emotions have been successfully imprinted onto the fetus's brain. The child will now recognize you as its perfect 'mother.'"
The perfect mother. Hyejin turned the words over. She had not just watched her daughter be born. She was an accomplice who had witnessed a monstrous act of theft. Hyejin staggered to her feet. Her legs gave way and she swayed.
"Show me. My daughter… Soyun, show me my daughter."
Park Seonu nodded without a word, then took her arm and led her out of the synchronization room. The corridor was white and long, like a hospital's. Nothing could be heard but their footsteps. Past several doors, they stopped before a room marked 'Recovery and Observation.' Park Seonu unlocked it with his fingerprint, and the door slid smoothly open.
The room was brighter and warmer than the synchronization room. But that warmth was not meant for anything living. It was an artificial temperature manufactured by machines. Inside a state-of-the-art incubator at the center of the room, a small creature lay wrapped in a blanket. Her daughter, met again after 4 years.
Hyejin drifted toward the incubator as if under a spell. Through the glass she could see the child's face. The closed eyes, the fine straight nose, the small red lips. It was the very image of Soyun as she had last seen her 4 years ago. Genetic information did not lie. Tears ran down her cheeks. She had staked everything for this moment. The guilt, the terror, the ghastly memory from only moments ago—all of it had to be forgotten.
“Hello, Soyun. It's Mommy.”
Hyejin pressed her hand to the glass and whispered. That was when it happened. The child stirred, ever so slightly. A single small hand slipped out from under the blanket. Hyejin held her breath. Such a tiny, white hand. And yet something was wrong. The fingertips. Where the nails should have been, they were oddly sharp and long. A white, keen keratin that was hard to believe belonged to a newborn. It was like the claws of an animal not yet fully grown.
The child squirmed again. And those little claws dug into the soft surface of the blanket and scratched. Rasp, rasp. A very faint but unmistakable sound. That exact sensation she had felt during synchronization, that horrific vision of something burrowing into tender flesh, was replaying right before her eyes.
“Those… what are those nails?”
Hyejin's voice froze.
Park Seonu, peering at the tablet that monitored the incubator's status, answered with perfect composure.
“Ah, that's a minor malformation that appears during the early stages of development. It seems the host animal's genes have expressed themselves faintly, but they'll naturally regress as she grows, or can be removed with a simple procedure. It has no effect whatsoever on the product's quality, so please rest assured.”
Product. He had just called the child a product. Hyejin felt the blood drain from her entire body. She leaned her forehead against the glass. The child slowly opened her eyes. Clear, black pupils. Those eyes fixed on Hyejin precisely. Did she recognize her mother? Just as Hyejin forced herself to smile, a strange light flickered across the child's eyes. It was not trust or affection. The gaze of a beast wary of unfamiliar surroundings. A starved, raw, primal vitality. That gaze pierced deep into Hyejin's soul and asked: Are you the one who dragged me out into this place? The one who shattered my dark prison and cast me into this cold light?
Hyejin slowly turned her head to look at Park Seonu. The grief and rapture of just moments before were gone without a trace; only hollow eyes turned toward him.
“A product.”
“If there's been a misunderstanding, I apologize, ma'am.”
Not a flicker crossed Park Seonu's face.
“I merely used an internal term for the result of a bioengineering procedure. The child is a 100% genetic match to your daughter. That is the most important fact.”
“No.”
Hyejin's voice went cold as ice.
“The most important thing is whether what's in there is really my daughter.”
With a trembling finger she pointed at the incubator.
“What is that look in her eyes? The terror I felt during synchronization, that rat's final thrashing… I'm asking why I feel that same thing coming off of that child.”
Park Seonu's brow furrowed, ever so slightly. He looked down at the screen of the tablet in his hand and spoke.
“As I said, it's a temporary phenomenon. A fetus is profoundly affected by the host's biological environment. Think of it as a kind of 'environmental memory.' It's something that can be perfectly corrected through our Regen Life follow-up care program, so there's no need to worry.”
Follow-up care program. The phrase poured fuel on Hyejin's dread. It sounded like a procedure for repairing a defective product. Hyejin brushed past Park Seonu, all but shoving him aside, and pressed closer to the incubator. Her forehead against the glass, she whispered desperately toward the child.
“Soyun, can you hear Mommy? Please… say Soyun for me.”
In that instant, the child opened her mouth. She seemed about to cry. But what burst out was not an infant's cry. A short, grating sound scraped up from deep in her throat. 'Kak.' It was like the noise a small animal makes when it's wary of something. And then the child, again, stared piercingly at Hyejin with those clear, beastly eyes. In those pupils, in place of longing or kinship, glinted only a cold curiosity toward an unfamiliar thing.
'Kak.' The sound lingered in Hyejin's ears and, in a single stroke, brought down the 4 years of hope she had built up. The words Park Seonu spat out—'environmental memory,' 'follow-up care program'—were no longer any comfort. They were nothing but elaborate wrapping paper meant to hide a horrific truth. Her eyes were nailed to the child inside the incubator. The child made no more sounds. She only gazed steadily at Hyejin with clear, black eyes. In that gaze there was no attachment or dependence toward a mother. A chill searching, as though observing some unknown object—that was all.
Park Seonu took a step toward her, data pad in hand. As always, a faint smile hung on his face.
“Ma'am, this is the final acceptance form. Once you sign here, every procedure is concluded, and you can begin a new life together with your child.”
A new life. Hyejin turned the words over inside herself. Was this really the new life she had dreamed of? Averting her eyes from the data pad, she pressed her forehead to the glass wall. In her memory, Soyun had been warm. Hair soft as down, the sweet smell of formula and baby lotion mingled together, the tender skin of a face burrowing into its mother's arms. All of it was vivid still. But from the child beyond the glass she felt nothing. Only cold glass, the artificial warmth breathed out by the machines, and that primal stare.
"This child… what exactly will it come to remember?"
Hyejin's voice was so small it could barely be heard.
"Everything you synchronized, ma'am."
Park Seonu answered without a hitch.
"The lullabies you sang, the storybooks on sunlit afternoons, the cotton candy at the amusement park… every one of those happy memories has been imprinted as the child's first world. The child has been perfectly 'designed' to love you."
'Designed.' The word plunged into Hyejin's heart like a dagger. Love was not something to be designed. Her love with Soyun had been a miracle built from countless hours of laughing together, crying, sharing meals, falling asleep. This child had none of that time. A being thrown together in the terror and agony of a mother rat, force-fed Hyejin's memories. It was no restoration of love, only a counterfeit.
Just then, the child moved again. It raised a tiny hand and began to scratch at the incubator glass. A dry scrape. That faint sound bored sharply into Hyejin's mind. The very sensation she had felt during the synchronization. That desperate writhing, clawing at the thin wall of the womb from the inside. It was no first greeting to the world, no tender reaching toward its mother. It was the instinct of a nameless creature, scratching at the walls of the transparent prison that held it.
Hyejin understood everything. She had not gotten her daughter back. Using her daughter's memories as bait, she had become the jailer keeping a nameless life bound to this world. A guilt that nothing could ever wash away bore down on her whole body.
"Ma'am? Your signature, if you please."
Park Seonu pressed gently.
Hyejin slowly raised her head. There were no more tears in her eyes, no more despair. What remained was only the empty hollowness of someone who had resigned herself to everything, and a cold resolve. Without a word she took the data pad from Park Seonu. And into the signature field she carved her name, one character at a time. Seo. Hye. Jin.
Park Seonu retrieved the data pad with a satisfied look.
"Congratulations. Your daughter is now your legal child. I'll release the incubator lock for you."
Hyejin was not listening to him. She pressed the incubator's release button herself. With a soft hiss the front glass lifted upward. Warm, sterilized air wrapped around her face.
The child stopped scratching at the glass wall and looked up at Hyejin. In those black eyes Hyejin's expressionless face was reflected. Slowly she reached out her hand. Not to lift the child into her arms.
Her fingers moved toward the child's small white hand. And at its tips she carefully stroked the nails—white and sharp as an animal's mark. A cold, hard touch. Hyejin closed her eyes. This was not Soyun. But this was her responsibility. The one small living thing in all the world, shaped by her own terrible longing.
Holding the child's fingers still, Hyejin whispered low. It was not a lullaby, nor a confession of love, nor a word of apology.
"It's all right."
With the tip of her own nail, very slowly and gently, she scratched the child's tiny nail.
