A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others.

  ~ Douglas MacArthur

  Tomas carried Sarah from the lounge and she was surprised to recognize the halls of the transfer lab. Everything was familiar and foreign at the same time. The vast sizes and rainbow light surrounding everything turned the normal into something frightfully alien. Toma’s words explained nothing, but only served to add an ominous sense of foreboding over her already-nightmarish doll experience.

  Could she trust Tomas? Could she not trust him?

  Tomas moved through the halls briskly, and when another white-coated attendant stepped into the corridor, he slipped Sarah into one of his wide jacket pockets and whispered, “Be quiet.”

  Sarah, her face pressed against the white cloth of his pocket, did not have to be told twice. The peril of her current situation was driven home by how easily he hid her from sight.

  If they want to, they could lock me away forever and no one would ever know. No one could ever find me.

  She was completely at Tomas’s mercy. Sarah pushed aside the fears that multiplied with the thought. She could trust Tomas, she had to. The alternative was just too terrifying.

  A moment later, Tomas pulled her from his pocket. He stood in a transfer station, although this one held only two gurneys. One lay empty, waiting for the donor, while the other held a motionless body covered by a white sheet and the ever-present, claustrophobic life support unit clamped around the head.

  Tomas moved to the corner of the room and positioned Sarah carefully on a high shelf. He placed a roll of paper towels and a stack of linens in front of her, arranged to hide her from view.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, happy that her helium-high doll voice masked the squeak of fear in her words. If he left her like that, it might be months before anyone noticed her.

  “Can you still see the gurneys?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” Tomas stepped back, critically eyed the shelf where he’d hidden her, and nodded. “You should be safe there.”

  “Safe from what?”

  He stepped closer. “You must remain silent. If they hear you,” he glanced around nervously, “If they hear you . . . well, let’s just say I don’t think I’d be able to save you.”

  The open fear on his face sent a shiver of dread through her sleeping doll body. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

  “You have to see.”

  “Maybe take a moment to think this through. We could discuss whatever you want me to see over a nice cup of coffee.” Hopefully in a public place. With witnesses.

  “That’s not enough. You need to know.”

  “But . . .”

  Tomas headed for the door, but paused with one hand on the handle. “Remember. No matter what happens, you must remain silent. I’ll return for you after they’re gone.”

  Then he slipped out of the room and left her alone. The closing of the door seemed unusually loud in the silent transfer station.

  Sarah peered through the narrow gap toward the two gurneys in the center of the room. There were many transfer stations, more than were strictly necessary to handle the donor transfers. Some were not used for weeks at a time.

  Had Tomas set her up as some kind of elaborate hoax to help Mr. Fleischer force her to sell her body? He’d been acting a little weird lately. Had he decided to kidnap her and keep her as his own little toy?

  Now I’m being ridiculous.

  She had been turned into a doll, though. No technology she’d ever heard of could do that. What could do it? Honestly, she could not come up with even a wild conjecture. Questions whirled through her mind, but she did not know enough to figure out any answers.

  Ten minutes later, the door to the room opened and two people entered. Sarah was so relieved to see someone, anyone, that she nearly called out to them. Only Tomas’s grave warning made her hold her tongue.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  She recognized the newcomers. The serious young blonde in the white lab coat was one of Dr. Maerwynn’s three medical assistants, named Almeda. The old woman was worn by Tawnya, the donor whose body had been injured by a careless renter.

  Almeda helped Tawnya up onto the empty gurney. “Your body is healing well.”

  “I can’t wait to get back into it,” Tawnya said with a glance at the sheet-covered gurney beside her.

  “You will experience some pain, but we must start physical therapy today for optimal recovery.”

  “I can take it.”

  “Very good.” Almeda injected Tawnya with the pre-op tranquilizer.

  Despite all the unknowns that clamored in her head, making her want to scream with frustrated fear and pull at her fake hair, Sarah watched with unblinking interest. She’d never actually seen a corporal transfer.

  She’d always been tranquilized prior to the operation, and no one but Dr. Maerwynn or her assistants were allowed in the room during the actual transfer operation. To protect the copyrighted technology, they were told.

  Almeda extracted from a squat cupboard near the door one of the bulky life support units, which she clamped around Tawnya’s sleeping head. Once it rested over her like a metal monster that had swallowed her head and neck in a single bite, Almeda flipped a couple of switches. The unit beeped twice, a few lights blinked, and its quiet hum filled the room.

  The door opened then, and Dr. Maerwynn entered the room, followed by a male technician wheeling a tall piece of machinery. He plugged it in, positioned it at the head of Tawnya’s gurney, and silently withdrew.

  As Almeda moved to the machine and began typing swiftly at the attached keyboard, Sarah studied the unit. She’d never seen it before, but assumed it was the actual transfer unit she’d heard so much about.

  She’d expected something more.

  The simple rectangular base stood three feet tall and two feet on each side. Made out of shining stainless steel, the outer shell was unmarked except for bright red letters emblazoned along one side that proclaimed, “SOTRUN 2.”

  Atop the steel base sat the keyboard with its small monitor, while a thick metal post rose to a height of six feet like a crane. A standard white, multi-segmented arm extended out the front, looking just like similar ones she’d seen so often in dentist offices and hospital rooms.

  Instead of a light or computer monitor, the arm held a silvery piece of machinery that looked a lot like one of those vision testing apparatuses used by optometrists. The difference was that this one was held horizontal, and some of the myriad knobs and circular viewports looked jagged. Sarah winced at the thought of that contraption pressing down against her eyes.

  Dr. Maerwynn positioned the odd contraption over the life support unit encasing Tawnya’s head, and locked the two together with a series of clamps.

  “Is everything ready?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Almeda said without looking up from her work at the machine.

  “Good.”

  Dr. Maerwynn slipped her hands into a pair of slots set in the side of the optometry-like device. Situated like that, her hands would be positioned directly above Tawnya’s mouth.

  Although the transfer unit looked nothing like what Sarah had imagined, she watched with growing anticipation. Surprisingly, Dr. Maerwynn closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and her face settled into a mask of concentration. When she opened her eyes, they started to glow like purple LED screens.

  What the . . . ?

  “Activate,” she breathed, her voice filled with anticipation.

  Almeda typed a quick command on the keyboard, then struck the Enter key with a hard slap.

  The hum of machinery increased and purple light flickered out the ports where Dr. Maerwynn’s hands remained hidden. It also flashed weakly from behind the opaque shield covering Tawnya’s face.

  Then a loud, metallic click echoed through the room, and the old body Tawnya wore twitched hard, as if she’d been hit with an electrical current. Dr. Maerwynn threw her head back, as if in silent ecstasy and, in a husky voice that was completely out of place in an operating theater said, “Release the clamps.”

  Moving with practiced efficiency, Almeda uncoupled the transfer machine from Tawnya’s life support unit, and Dr. Maerwynn lifted it away, her hands still stuck inside. The purple glow had faded, but the unit trailed some kind of weird, rainbow mist as they repositioned it above Tawnya’s injured young body.

  Sarah watched with growing confusion. This looked nothing like what she expected. Dr. Maerwynn’s weirdly ecstatic actions made her deeply nervous, and what was up with those purple eyes?

  Tomas clearly wanted her to witness the transfer, but was she supposed to understand what was going on? There had to be an explanation for what she was seeing, but she could not imagine what it might be.

  The rest of the operation looked wrong at a fundamental level that she couldn’t quite put her fingers on. Down in the transfer lab, the two women clamped the strange transfer device to the other life support unit, and the purple glow began flashing again from within the machines. Dr. Maerwynn bowed her head over the unit like a mourner over a casket, and her eyes again began to glow in that freakish way.

  Almeda typed furiously on the keyboard, her eyes glued to the little display. After a moment she nodded and said, “Brain waves stabilized. Engage.” At the same time, Tawnya’s entire body twitched like she was startling out of a sound sleep.

  Dr. Maerwynn removed her hands from the unit, unclamped it from the life support box encasing Tawnya’s head, and pushed it back toward the door. Her expression had settled back to professional calm, and Sarah struggled to reconcile the doctor’s strange behavior during the transfer. Maybe she was just someone who really got into her work?

  Almeda moved to Tawnya and began checking vitals, but Dr. Maerwynn strode from the room. A moment later, the same male technician entered, helped Almeda remove and stow the life support unit, then wheeled the transfer apparatus away.

  Tawnya, who slept peacefully under the lingering effects of the tranquilizer, looked fine, like nothing had happened. Still, Sarah shivered in her china doll body. She’d lain docile and unconcerned countless times through the exact same procedure, and now she felt like she understood even less than ever about what really went on in the lab.

  How did that simple-looking machine affect the full transfer of a person’s consciousness to another body?

  For the first time, Sarah began to fear the answer.