"Then let's go get you fitted for your permanent home."
The door of the warehouse didn't creek. It slid open on silent, well-oiled tracks, revealing a space that shattered Yanna's expectations. She had braced herself for a dungeon—for rusty chains, damp stone, and the smell of rot.
Instead, she stepped into a laboratory.
The interior was vast, the ceiling lost in shadows high above, but the work area was illuminated by banks of surgical-grade LED lights. The floor wasn't concrete; it was polished white epoxy, spotless and gleaming. The walls were lined with rolls of material—black leather, red latex, neoprene, silk—organized by texture and thickness like a library of skin.
In the center of the room stood a stainless steel table. It looked less like a workbench and more like an operating slab.
And standing beside it was the Architect.
