Morph met Monique outside the Chapelle des Damnés. She had come out of curiosity after seeing a report about the Kult on a news channel. There had been blurred footage of a ceremony, interviews with people whose faces scarcely resembled faces, and a brief mention of free surgery and parts for members.
That was what stayed with her. She had never liked the way she looked. The magazines offered a hundred ways to become someone else, all priced beyond her reach. Here, apparently, she needed only to belong.
She had no intention of joining.
Beneath the chapel, the Kult were rumoured to cultivate the living glands from which Venom was drawn. Some said they supplied more of it than anyone else in the city. The Ascendant bought their pleasure from discreet intermediaries; Fusion Docs bought anaesthetic for their operating chairs. Neither cared to interrupt the supply. Whatever happened above the laboratory could happen behind closed doors.
Morph stood beneath the entrance light, his face a metal mask shaped by desires Monique could not recognise. Nothing about it appeared designed to make him handsome, comfortable or even easy to understand. His jaw moved beneath overlapping plates. Fine mechanisms stirred around eyes that still looked painfully human.
Among the priesthood, he was unremarkable.
They had long since passed the point where an enhancement needed a purpose. An alteration healed; another began. Parts were fitted, replaced, distorted, fitted again. Venom carried them through each procedure in a warmth so complete that waking felt like being expelled from somewhere they belonged. Eventually they needed it between surgeries too.
Newcomers heard about transformation. Nobody mentioned what it would take to endure an ordinary morning afterwards.
Morph noticed Monique looking at his face.
“Too much?” he asked.
She almost said yes.
“I wouldn’t want that.”
“What would you want?”
He listened while she told him about her jaw, her mouth, the photographs she deleted, the women in the magazines. He gave none of the usual reassurances. He did not tell her she was beautiful already. When she finished, he said the chapel had artisans who could help.
Inside, voices rose beneath hanging machinery. Monique passed bodies remade in ways no magazine would print. She tried not to stare. Morph stayed beside her, speaking softly, explaining each alteration as though its owner had finally been permitted to express something long concealed.
At the altar, a ceremony was beginning. The congregation drew close to the operating chair. Morph’s attention left Monique so completely that she had to touch his arm twice before he heard her.
She mistook his trembling for devotion.
Three nights later, she returned.
His drawings began with the changes she had asked for. Then he showed her what could follow: a longer jaw, a sculpted framework beneath the cheeks, chambers in the throat that would give her a voice no unaltered person could possess.
She touched the first drawing.
“Couldn’t we just do this?”
“We could.”
He waited until she looked at the others again.
By the time she signed, choosing the smaller alteration felt like admitting she had come all this way to remain afraid.
Venom entered her blood. The chapel lights softened. Morph stood above her, and for a little while she felt certain that nobody had ever understood her so well.
When she woke, swallowing hurt. Her face felt heavy and unfamiliar. Morph brought a mirror, but the congregation gathered before she could study herself. They wanted to hear her.
The first sound from her new throat rolled beneath the chapel roof. Heads lifted. Someone closed their eyes. Morph watched with an intensity she had never seen when he looked at her drawings.
For a week, Monique believed his pleasure meant she mattered to him.
Then the warmth was gone. Sleep broke into short, miserable stretches. She began to watch the laboratory door. Another member told her she would feel better after her next procedure, and showed her where the new fittings could go.
She went looking for Morph.
He was at the entrance with a woman who kept pulling her sleeve over an unmodified wrist. His voice had the same patience, the same intimate softness.
Monique waited until the woman went inside.
“Morph. I’m not feeling right.”
He checked the seam beneath her jaw.
“Healing well.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
Behind him, someone called from the operating room. His eyes moved towards the sound.
“I thought we could talk.”
“Later.”
He left her beneath the humming ribs of the chapel. Through the opening door she saw the congregation drawing close around another chair, Morph finding his place among them.
Monique stood alone until the trembling became too difficult to hide. Then she pulled her collar over the seams and went downstairs to ask when she could have Venom again.