My butt barely touches the car seat before Charlene starts blabbering again. I’m surprised she can breathe between words, and that both Sloane and Oz can keep up. It’s talk about potential styles, personalities, angles I can play. Stoic cyborg? World-weary young worker representing the common folk? Quirky genius mechanic? 

It doesn’t seem like my input is necessary, which is good, because I’m not in the mood to talk. 

I stare out the tinted window and hope the moving image of my hometown flashing by will distract me from my immediate reality. We pass through the inner city, all neon lights and odd angles. There’s that miniature replica of the royal palace in Cerise. There’s the giant statue of King Rembrandt the Second, who I’m pretty sure is the prince’s great-grandfather. Around him are projections of adoring crowds, figures of light cowed and collected before their obelisk of a king. Viera was his favorite province. Something about the resilience of the downtrodden. "Strength through effort” is the quote under the statue — he believed the heavier our burdens, the stronger it made us. I guess that’s why his favorite province also became the poorest during his reign. And why his trashfire family lives in mansions.

As we travel further and further out of the city, the familiar buildings and streets get replaced by stretches of towering apartment complexes, copy-pasted rectangles stacked like dominoes one after the other. Beyond those are construction sites and bases for more apartments, torn up earth and exposed pipes surrounded by flimsy fences. Who’s going to live here? It’s not like the homeless are snatching these up, the previous apartment complexes are standing empty because the rents are so high.

We arrive at our destination. I follow “my team” into the private underground train station that apparently exists for the royal family. The station is modern and classy, but clearly minimal and rarely used. It’s the maglev train waiting on the tracks that’s the main attraction here, because it too is sleek and chrome, like a giant bullet shot from the most privileged of rifles. 

I’m ushered into the middle one of the three sections of the train and suddenly there’s forty people swarming around me shouting stuff and my bag is yanked from my grip and carried away and I don’t even have time to protest because several people have started undressing me. 

“Hey! What are you doing!” I screech and flail wildly to slap at the sea of hands. 

Sloane is somewhere in the room, but her voice does little to calm me. “They need to make you presentable. Just relax and do as they say.” 

Which one of them? They are all saying different things but are somehow making sense of each other like a hive mind. Charlene appears in front of me and grabs my face. 

“This is routine, Katrien. We will make you look absolutely beautiful.” 

Maybe it’s her sympathetic expression, or maybe it’s the existential fatigue, but I accept my fate and let them at me. I’m shoved into a cramped white room and the amount of people decreases significantly. They pry off my clothes and my arm while my face burns with embarrassment, but the fact that they’re all so clinical and focused and don’t seem to give a damn about what my naked body looks like makes me feel a bit better. 

Soon I’m stuffed into a small shower booth that blasts me with hot water and funny-smelling soap, then it blasts me with hot air to dry me up, and finally a laser scans my body from the neck down and all my body hair fries off. The process stings, and I wonder how many cancers they just gave me. I’m handed some sort of lotion to soothe my skin, after which I’m finally deserving of some seamless white underwear, and then they shove me into a chair and three separate people start doing stuff to my nails while a fourth cuts my hair. There are weird metal beauty things prodding and cutting me while someone rubs all sorts of weird goop on my skin. 

Maybe I died and this is the afterlife? Eternal fashion torment for those who dared to wear overalls? Either way, it takes me a few seconds for my frazzled mind to realize I’m suddenly in a new room, wearing a fluffy bathrobe and completely alone. 

I look around. I’m sitting in an uncomfortable, brand-new armchair. There’s a number of bright lights, and one giant mirror standing before a dozen clothes racks, all heavy with plastic-covered outfits. 

The door slides open, and my team struts in looking important. Oz is holding a large, long box in his arms. He smiles when our eyes meet, and begins unpacking whatever it is while Sloane and Charlene inspect my new hair and clean face.

“She’s a very classical sort of beauty,” Sloane says to Charlene. It’s impressive how she makes a compliment sound like the worst insult.

“It gives us a lot of room for creativity,” Charlene replies. “Pale skin and dark hair allows dramatic contrasts, but the features are soft enough for a more demure look, too. Hmm. She is a bit too soft around the edges, in fact.”

Sloane shrugs, “Nothing a few trips to the gym can’t fix.” 

Oz gives a clipped cough, and the two women step aside as he presents me with a beautiful, sleek prosthetic arm. It’s chrome, yet unbelievably elegant. I hate that I want to try it on. 

“Your old arm should be delivered to your room once we arrive,” Sloane says. “Let us know if there’s anything wrong with the new one and we’ll send it away for adjustments.”

I lick my lips in anticipation when Charlene pushes me to put it on. The harness is soft, transparent silicone. The socket is covered by a thin membrane of intelligent fabric, which means it’s equipped with tiny EMG sensors that will interpret the movement of my muscles and move the arm and fingers accordingly. It slips on easily, and despite my desperate attempts to hate this thing, it’s smooth and responsive and light. And when I put my hands together, I can feel the fingers of my natural hand. Both the warmth and the tiny ridges of my fingerprints. 

As I stand and admire the arm in the mirror, I see Oz gesturing quickly at Sloane.

Tell her they wanted to hide it, Oz signs. 

Sloane opens her mouth, but I interrupt, “It’s okay, I know some ASL.”

They all stare at me, Oz looking pleasantly surprised. 

You do? he signs. 

“Yeah. I had a friend in primary school who was deaf. Took classes until … well, until I couldn’t. But maybe with this, I can pick up where I left off.” 

I wiggle the fingers of my new arm and almost giggle with excitement at how quick and nimble they are. Almost better than my meat arm. 

Oz nods encouragingly. He proceeds to sign, and though he very much overestimates my knowledge, I get the gist of it despite a few gestures going over my head: The producers wanted me to hide it, but I think it would be better to turn it into a fashion statement. It was going to make you stand out anyway, so why not own it? 

“Absolutely. Thank you.” 

Despite his own outfit, Oz has an eye for fashion. I can’t help but admit that the pure white bodycon dress he chooses for me is very flattering. He laments my newly short hair, signing that it could’ve been used to make me stand out even more, but Charlene shoots that down. The haircut was her decision, and Sloane — who is gone by now — has apparently endorsed it.

“Long hair is all the rage now, half the girls have it. This? This is cute. It’s fresh. If she had long hair, she’d look like the rest of those girls. But now she looks chic.”

I can’t do anything but take her word for it, because just as they’re finished styling me, an almost imperceptible lurch of the floor tells me we’ve arrived. 

Oz leads me out of the room — not before Charlene blasts me with enough hairspray to turn me into a fire hazard — and Sloane meets me by the glass doors with a stiff expression. 

“This is the royal family’s private train station,” she says as though I didn’t just leave another one of those. “It’s half luxury lounge, half historical artifact. Do not break or steal anything, they will know. And while there won’t be any cameras here yet, try not to make a fool of yourself. The other contestants will talk.” 

“Okay?” I reply shakily. 

The doors slide open and all four of us step off the train and onto a slim platform. The marble floor is protected from the wear and tear of non-everyday use by gilded metal siding, glimmering in the yellow light of a giant chandelier. The platform’s as gaudy as anything, made even more conspicuous by the fact that there’s nothing to really do here — we’re met immediately by a pair of huge wood-and-glass doors (stained glass, might I add) and the scent of newly brewed coffee. 

“Try to make a good impression,” Sloane condescends as she holds the door open for me. 

I step inside and try not to gawk lest I look too poor to be here, but it’s a challenge I’m bound to fail eventually. The lounge is huge, a giant stone hall with marble columns holding up a vaulted ceiling, presumably a relic from when the very first underground railroads were built several centuries ago. It’s intimately lit by discrete lights built into the walls, and old-timey swing music warbles pleasantly from a souped-up antique gramophone. There are several seating areas, a billiards table, a snazzy bar with a small buffet, and ugly modern art sculptures dotting the floor. 

“See you soon!” Charlene says quietly as she passes me. My team leaves through the only exit at the far end of the hall without so much as a “good luck” and I remain standing, alone and afraid.