Concept art for the shower room [https://i.imgur.com/RvocwGI.png]

Concept art for the shower room

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In the end, Zac had complied.

Walking down the aisle Zac saw the door they had come through, and rather than walk towards the ramp leading down to the basement, he took a step towards the door. The moment he did however, he felt like he was wading underwater. The air had become thick, restricting his movements. His breath sat deep in the recesses of his lungs. He struggled to exhale, and his lungs became more and more inflated with every further breath. Something was very wrong. He had only taken one step yet he felt like his lungs would explode. He was dying.

Zac turned his head. The captain wasn't even looking at him. He didn't even care.

Zac turned his head back. He saw his goal, the double doors, just paces away. Freedom. There he froze and stared, weighing up his choices as lungs screamed at him.

Zac took a step back and the pressure dissipated. He gasped, releasing turbid air and inhaling fresh oxygen.

The citadel doesn't tolerate dissent. The captain's words were loud and resounding in his mind. Maybe I shouldn't escape yet. Bide my time.

Zac took another step and joined the procession.

I'm not even wearing any clothes. People will easily find me. 'Look for the naked dude' 'there he is'. Just stay alive to fight another day. Come back stronger.

Zac tried to convince himself that he was justified, but he knew. He was a coward. Zac lowered his head, ears glowing red as he followed the crowd.

Tears welled up in his eyes. Rift this. Rift you. Rift me. Powerlessness overwhelmed him.

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Everyone slowly walked down from the auditorium, through a passageway and into a dimly lit concrete room.

It was a clear change from the manicured lawn and well polished wood flooring before. All the walls were concrete. There were no windows. The room was lit by flickering fluorescent tubes, and even at its most stable and brightest it only offered enough light to make out general shapes and structures.

Zac's vision was still blurry and he was using the wall as support as he stumbled forward. With his free hand he clutched his chest. Sharp stabbing pain was shooting straight through his chest to his back. He could feel a sharp and porous floor. If he had to guess, if felt like acid had chewed out the concrete and left the floor littered with tiny holes and gouges. As he shuffled forward with the crowd, every now and then he would feel a larger man-made circular hole covered by a metal grill.

Looking up, he could see the silhouette of multiple shower heads poked out of the ceiling.

The temperature also had dropped noticeably. The concrete slabs were cold to his bare feet and Zac could see everyone's breaths condense into a fog.

Zac eventually huddled in one corner, closing his eyes. His intercostal muscles were fatiguing from hyperventilating, and he was still trying his best to slow his breath and calm down.

Zac's mind was previously conflicted. On one hand, he just wanted everything to stop. To be calm. To open his eyes and be somewhere completely different. Why couldn't he wake up from this crazy dream and find himself in a beautiful garden, having a picnic with someone important to him by his side, and they would laugh about his story together.

Another him had accepted this reality and plotted revenge. Every shape, every silhouette, every stimuli was being burned into his mind. This him would not forget lightly.

But then? But then he had made his choice: to follow. And with that choice came acceptance. He could feel his previous emotions drain away into emptiness, leaving him a lifeless husk.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

He slid down onto his bottom and placed his face into his knees, mentally no longer capable of appreciating anything beyond survival instincts and registering the presence of those around him.

But perhaps that was better for his moral compass, because around him were sculpted shapes of all types and sizes. Hourglass, apple, V. Male and female. Different Postures. Muscle mass. Fat percentage. Chest hair. Skin colour. Hair colour. Freckles and pimples. Acne and backne. Associated reproductive organs of distinctly differing sizes. Areolae size and number.

Mentally everyone was dealing with the events differently. Most were affected and kept to themselves. Some were vomiting, some crying, some wailing. A number were like Zac, shivering on the ground, fully disengaged. Some were unperturbed, and those who did thrive were predominantly males strutting around rigid genitalia.

A pale sickly yellow skinned woman with straight black hair to her shoulders crawled next to him. She must have had the same idea, wanting to get as far away as she could. She was on her knees, leaning forward and dry wretched spittle and flecks of blood.

Zac briefly glanced at her, drawn by the noise. Her hair was covering her face, and some of her spit clung to it. He leaned forward and lifted her hair up like a ponytail, out of the line of fire.

The smell of stomach acid hit his nose and soon he joined her, gagging and dry wretching.

"I'm impressed that some of you still have the stomach to be lewd after watching your fellow man die so gruesomely". The Captain's voice echoed through the room. The concrete was incredibly reflective, and any small sound was transmitted unimpeded across the rest of the room. A hologram of the Captain was standing on the other side of the room, observing everyone with a less than satisfied expression. "Ladies, pay attention to these men. They have either deeply unmet desires or have profound resilience to stress and trauma. Either way, you will find that once you leave this compound, that the citadel values virility and resilience". He paused and mumbled, "you will be taken care of if you can deliver a child to the state" before the hologram disappeared.

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Time passed with no interruptions. Both Zac and the lady next to him had stopped gagging.

At some point her head had fallen onto Zac's lap with her body lying on the cold floor. Zac's brain registered the pressure and the pins and needles that ran from his knees down to his toes as blood circulation was cut, but he lacked compulsion to move. He was already exhausted by the day's events.

Something wet touched his inner thigh. Looking down, he saw that she was silently crying. He stared at her, watching the tears roll down her nose and then disappear onto the other side of her face.

She had a gaunt face with sunken eyes and cracked lips. Her collar bones were very obvious with skin wrapped almost circumferentially around it. His eyes scanned indifferently, briefly settling on her pelvic hair before he unfocused and returned to staring through her.

She started to hiccup and cry uncontrollably, joining others who were already crying in the room. She curled into a ball by Zac's legs and cried herself to sleep.

Suddenly a scream echoed through the chamber. One of the men near Zac had tried to inappropriately touch a woman. She had turned away, shielding her chest, but the man had held her from behind in a tight embrace and was leering at her.

As he was trying to turn her around and pull her arms away, suddenly a section of the concrete lowered and revealed a small gun turret. It turned around and focused on the man, and fired one shot.

To Zac's eyes, it looked like a blue streak flew straight out of the turret into the man's torso. He expected sound or a shockwave, but contrary to that, there was, oddly, a peacefulness to it entering his body. One second there was a man holding a screaming woman, the next, there was a woman and another pair of legs with blood and organs splattered on the concrete wall. A dismembered head and limbs were propelled meters away.

Without resistance from the man, the woman in question stopped screaming and opened her eyes. She had heard the splat of his organs hit the wall. Turning around, she saw the remains of her attacker and began screaming again. She slipped on a small intestine and fell onto her bottom, knocking her head against the wall and falling unconscious, marinating in his blood.

"Lesson two. The Citadel accepts sociopaths. Your strength is necessary to our campaign, but your worth remains only while you are obedient dogs. Those who cannot conform will end up dead."

The captain had clearly waited for a scene.

Zac nearby, had been splattered with a little blood. He wiped his cheek and stared at his blood stained hand. An odd feeling stirred in his chest. This blood was… liberating. This was justice. Hope.

There was however no time to explore this further. Zac felt a wet droplet on his shoulder. Not looking away from the bloodied scene, he touched his shoulder absentmindedly to feel a weird muddy texture. As a first response he tried to push it away but couldn't. It was stuck to his skin. He turned his head and realised, it was actually his skin sloughing off and fresh blood coagulating into one mess on his shoulder.

Zac's brain started to catch up as his shoulder alighted in pain as if he was on fire. More skin and hair started to fall out as the droplets from the showerheads above became a torrential downpour.

All the recruits who hadn't already sat, fell down screaming in pain as their skin and hair also dissolved.

Slowly everyone fell unconscious from the pain as more liquid fell on their bodies. The coagulating mess clung to their bodies, infiltrating their mouth and nose until the envelope was completed and the shower room was filled with hundreds of human cocoons.