Bind or Be Erased

The chamber hummed with a low, electric pulse, the sound vibrating through the metal floor and up into her bones. The walls loomed around her, a dizzying tower of blank screens stretching floor to ceiling, waiting, watching. They glared white and empty, static flickering like snowfall in the silence. It was suffocating—an endless void, reflecting nothing back at her. The only color, the only movement, came from the steady blink of a small red circle in the corner. The ReBirth Button.

Marabell’s breath caught. She had heard whispers of it since childhood, stories exchanged in hush among the UnBound. The button. The door. The second chance. A forbidden word passed in frightened tones—ReBirth. Yet never had she imagined she would stand here, in its presence, with the light blinking patiently, endlessly, as though it had been waiting for her alone. Her lungs refused to fill; every inhale felt shallow, fragile.

On the center wall, Morgal’s face had hovered only moments before. His expression had been a delicate mixture of clinical patience and something like pity, though she couldn’t be sure. Then the projection dissolved into static, his voice still burning in her ears:

"The choice is yours, Marabell. But if you refuse to go forward, you know the outcome."

Her limbs no longer felt her own. They sagged heavy at her sides as though gravity had grown thicker in this room, as though the weight of every girl before her pressed invisibly down upon her shoulders. She blinked at the blank screen, straining, hoping, willing his face to return.

“Morgal?” she whispered. Her voice cracked, almost swallowed by the electric drone that filled the chamber. Silence. No answer.

Instead, the floor beneath her stirred. A seam split open with a hiss, exhaling pale smoke. Slowly, a pink box rose upward, as though carried by unseen hands. Its surface glowed faintly, light running in thin circuits across its lid like veins of electricity. Marabell’s chest constricted. She knew this box. It was hers.

The Box of Fifth Birthdays. Every girl received one, a vessel meant to hold treasures, heirlooms, fragments of childhood to be carried into womanhood. The box was proof of identity, proof of value, to be opened on the day of Binding. She had seen classmates unveil theirs with trembling smiles—porcelain dolls passed down from mothers, pressed ribbons from dresses, teddy bears with fur thinned by love. A ritual meant to remind them of who they had been before they were bound.

Her fingers shook as she lifted the lid.

Inside, her life.

A cracked ceramic doll, its painted face chipped and faded. She had carried it on endless transport rides, pressed against her chest when no one asked her to sit with them.

A yellow ribbon, frayed at the ends, slipped into her palm by her grandmother the morning she first bled. Her grandmother’s words were faint, hurried, a warning or a blessing—Marabell had been too young to understand.

A broken seashell, edges chipped, collected for her by Brinall, her brother, before the accident that took him.

They sat in the cold glow of the chamber’s light, not treasures but artifacts. They looked sterile, stripped of memory, as if her entire existence had been reduced to inventory.

And then came the music.

Soft at first, like a breath from the walls, then rising, circling her, seeping into every seam of the chamber. Her knees buckled. It was her mother’s lullaby—the same song sung to her and Brinall on nights when storms clawed at the roof, when the power flickered out and shadows grew long. The melody cracked something deep inside her chest.

The walls ignited.

Screen after screen flared alive until the entire room became a single vast display. The Ministry’s theater had begun. A film. Her life.

A boy laughing in shallow water, droplets catching sunlight like shards of glass. Brinall. Alive again. Whole.

Her small hands cupping the seashell, eyes wide with wonder.

The walls of her childhood bedroom painted pink, a bunny-trim border circling the room like a crown. Her stuffed rabbit, worn thin, clutched under her chin as she slept.

The day she first read aloud by candlelight, her lips stumbling over words, her mother’s patient hand resting on her back.

Then the shift.

The footage tilted forward into her first day at Female Optics. Her steps out of rhythm, her eyes darting sideways, terrified at the rows of perfect girls. Yet the camera softened her awkward edges, reshaped her uncertainty, made her look almost graceful, almost belonging.

Next, a montage of Binding ceremonies. Hundreds of them. Each classmate stepping forward, chosen, veiled, bound forever. She appeared only at the edges—pale, hollow-eyed, fingers laced tightly at her waist. But the reel lied. It painted her as radiant, smiling, clapping, a supportive shadow who wanted what they wanted. They had rewritten her silence, her emptiness, into devotion.

Her throat tightened as new images swelled across the walls. Her mother—just last year—standing in her bedroom each morning, projecting eligible Binds onto her walls, pixelated faces hovering around her bed. Strangers who might have saved her. Her mother’s voice, strained and breaking, urging: don’t let it come to this.

Tears stung her eyes.

This was her life, but not the way she remembered it. The Ministry had sculpted it into something beautiful, a story worth keeping, worth preserving through Binding. It was not truth. It was propaganda. A fabrication of warmth.

The lullaby swelled until it was unbearable. Then, silence.

The screens went black, and the crest of the Ministry burned into every wall. Bold. Unshakable.

A voice, cold and unyielding, rang through the chamber:

"It is your duty to the Collective. Bind or ReBirth. We must restore order. Binding ensures survival. ReBirth is freedom. Tomorrow you are twenty-five. Tomorrow, you are either bound…or erased."

The words echoed. Then stillness.

Her chest heaved as though the chamber’s air had grown thinner. Her hand hovered above the pulsing red button. Behind her, the door waited. She could feel its pull even without turning, the gravity of the unknown pressing against her spine.

Painless, they promised. Simple. Just press, step forward, dissolve, and return as someone better.

But her mind fought. The doll. The ribbon. The seashell. Brinall’s laugh. Her mother’s song. Even the mornings she had thought wasted, spent staring at her own reflection in silence—they mattered. They weren’t nothing. They were her.

Her throat closed.

The screen flickered one final time. Morgal’s face reappeared, ghostlike, caught in static.

"The choice is yours, Marabell," he said, his voice steady but weighted. "But if you choose not to go forward with this…you already know the outcome."

Then he was gone.

The chamber plunged back into silence. The red button pulsed. The door loomed.

Her body trembled, her eyes fixed on the light.

It was the day before her twenty-fifth birthday, and the greatest decision of her life waited.

The walls watched. The system waited.

Marabell stood alone.