The lights hit like a tactical fsh grenade. Zero to blinding in half a second, with a bonus arm that mimicked a wounded cat being strangled by bagpipes. Efficient. You can't plot escape pns while your retinas are burning and your eardrums are contempting divorce.

  "Processing Line B! Move!" The guard's voice carried the enthusiasm of someone who'd found their true calling in professional misery distribution.

  I shuffled forward with the others, keeping my posture slightly hunched, gaze downcast—Hunter Infiltration 101. Never be the strongest, never be the weakest, and for fuck's sake, never make eye contact unless you're pnning to end someone. I was several contingency pns away from that option.

  The herd moved through frosted gss doors into the "hygiene station," a euphemism that ranked high on the bullshit scale alongside "blood donation" and "temporary relocation." The smell hit first—industrial disinfectant with notes of fear-sweat and despair. Like a hospital bathroom during the apocalypse.

  A female overseer with a clipboard and dead eyes appeared, her gray uniform distinguishing her as human management rather than vampire personnel. Her badge read "Maya, Resources Supervisor." Because we weren't prisoners—we were "resources." Linguistic fuckery at its finest.

  "Remove all clothing. Pce in receptacles. Follow the yellow line." Maya's delivery suggested she'd given this speech roughly eight million times, each repetition killing another piece of her soul.

  A young mother clutched her teenage son's arm, both their faces frozen in the particur horror of people about to be stripped of both clothes and dignity in front of each other. I'd seen that expression before, in too many failed extraction missions.

  "Please," the woman whispered. "He's just a boy."

  Maya's eyes flickered—a microsecond of humanity quickly extinguished. "Male processing is separate. Yellow line for females, blue for males. Move."

  The boy was pulled away, his eyes wide with panic. The woman's hand remained outstretched in the space where her son had been. I filed the moment away with the growing catalog of debts that would eventually come due.

  An elderly man—mid-sixties, arthritis in his hands, former military judging by his posture despite the circumstances—caught my eye briefly. His face held the resigned calm of someone who'd already calcuted the odds and accepted the outcome. Smart man. False hope killed faster than pragmatism.

  Thirty-seven seconds ter, I stood naked in line with twenty other women, our bodies goosebumped under harsh lighting. The guards didn't leer—that would require acknowledging us as human. Instead, they inspected with the clinical detachment of butchers assessing meat.

  "Arms up, turn slowly," barked a guard, demonstrating with a twirling finger.

  The shower that followed was communal, industrial, and arctic. Disinfectant spray that burned the eyes and sinuses—another efficient design feature. Can't pn escape when you're busy trying not to drown in chemical snot.

  Gray uniforms awaited us after the shower—identical shapeless shifts with colored bands on the sleeves. I received yellow. Blood type, probably. Or maybe some obscure assessment metric for determining which vampire executive got premium beverage service.

  "Designation processing! Form a line!"

  We were herded to a row of metal chairs bolted to the floor, where two vampire technicians operated what looked like mechanized tattoo guns. The vampires wore white b coats over bck clothing, their pallor accentuated by the fluorescent lighting. They conversed over the heads of their human cattle.

  "The O-negative yield is down twelve percent from st quarter," said the taller one, a male with wire-frame gsses that were purely aesthetic. Vampires had perfect vision. Fashion over function, even at the apocalypse.

  "The new breeding program should correct that," his female colleague replied, adjusting a dial on her machine. "Though I maintain we should cull the AB-positives. Inefficient resource allocation."

  I fixed my face into the bnk mask of someone too terrified to process information. Behind that mask, I was mapping exit routes, counting guards (eight visible, likely more in adjacent rooms), and cataloging potential weapons (disinfectant spray—fmmable, metal chair legs—detachable with enough force, medical equipment—varied applications).

  "Next!"

  A woman ahead of me whimpered as the tattooing device closed around her wrist. The sound it made—a high pneumatic hiss followed by a dull thunk—suggested it went deeper than standard tattoo needles. Barcode and tracking chip in one efficient package. The farm didn't just bel its cattle—it inventoried them.

  When my turn came, I allowed myself a small, genuine wince. Pain wasn't the issue—I'd endured worse during extraction missions gone sideways. It was the permanence that twisted my gut. The physical manifestation of what they were trying to do—transform me from hunter to livestock with a single mechanized bite.

  I gnced down at my wrist. 4172. Not Sera Harrison. Not vampire hunter. Not daughter of Sheriff Harrison and Marie the wilderness guide. Just another number in the inventory.

  "Proceed to nutritional intake," said the female technician without looking at me.

  The "nutritional intake" was a row of paper cups containing what looked like liquefied cardboard. The smell suggested that was an optimistic assessment.

  "Drink," ordered a guard. "All of it."

  I complied, suppressing the gag reflex as the lukewarm paste coated my throat. The taste was aggressively bnd yet somehow also bitter, like disappointment had been scientifically formuted into a meal repcement.

  "Medical assessment! Line up by designation number!"

  The elderly man from earlier ended up behind me in line. He leaned slightly, voice barely audible. "First day's the worst. Keep your head down, stay middle of the pack."

  I gave a small nod, wondering if he was offering genuine advice or was a pnt designed to identify potential troublemakers. Either way, the advice was solid—invisibility was survival in environments like this.

  The medical assessment room had the sterile efficiency of a processing pnt disguised as a clinic. White walls, metal examination tables, and the distinct ck of privacy screens that signaled we'd moved firmly from "patient" to "product."

  A human doctor in a b coat—graying hair, dead eyes, wedding ring worn thin from nervous twisting—consulted a tablet. His badge read "Dr. Reynolds."

  "Designation 4172. Arm."

  I extended my arm for yet another blood draw, this one extracting significantly more than standard medical procedure would justify. The vial was beled and pced in a refrigerated container with mechanical precision.

  A younger woman—presumably Nurse Chen based on her badge—attached sensors to my chest and forehead. Her touch was clinical but not rough, and she avoided eye contact with the efficiency of someone who'd mastered the art of seeing without acknowledging.

  "Blood pressure 110/70, heart rate 68, body temperature 98.6," she reported.

  Dr. Reynolds frowned at his tablet. "Previous nutrition?"

  "Unknown. Recent acquisition."

  "Hmm." His eyes narrowed as he examined the blood sample results appearing on his screen. "Unusual markers in the preliminary. Fg for further testing."

  Shit. My hunter conditioning had altered my blood chemistry—something the vampire specialists would eventually notice. I needed a diversion.

  I let my eyes roll back, my body going suddenly limp with a half-choked gasp. Not too dramatic—that would trigger suspicion. Just enough to suggest low blood sugar and stress reaction rather than tactical deception.

  "Stabilize her," Dr. Reynolds snapped, already turning to the next designation.

  Nurse Chen grabbed my shoulders, her mask of professional detachment slipping for just a moment. "Easy," she murmured, low enough that only I could hear. "Deep breaths."

  I complied, gradually "recovering" while Chen noted something on her tablet that overrode the fg for special testing. One crisis temporarily averted.

  The remainder of the assessment proceeded with assembly-line efficiency. Height, weight, reflexes, vision—all documented with the dispassionate thoroughness of livestock evaluation. No health questions beyond reproductive history—they weren't concerned with curing ailments, only identifying defects that might affect product quality.

  "Reproductive capacity?" Dr. Reynolds asked without looking up from his tablet.

  "No pregnancies," I answered ftly.

  "Regur menstruation?"

  "Yes."