SARAH: Charlie, sweetheart, why are you staring at me?
CHARLIE: I...I’m sorry. I know it’s rude. But I can’t help myself.
SARAH: You’re curious, right? I get it. When I was Sam, I used to stare at my minder the same way. Petra was her name. She was so damn beautiful, and I was a lumpy, misshapen guy. That’s the first step, ya see. That’s why they don’t let you shave or take a bath. They wanna make you feel as gross and worthless as possible.
Charlie: It’s hard to believe you ever looked anything like a dude, Sarah. You’re gorgeous now.
SARAH: Yeah, well, it’s incredible what hormones, surgery, and the rest can do.
CHARLIE: What’s it like? Getting breasts and...and all the other changes?
SARAH: Horrifying. Never had much muscle before, but suddenly it was just gone, and my body got softer and softer. My nipples ached every day then I felt little knots forming underneath them. Petra tried cheering me up, but I only wanted to curl up in a ball and bawl my eyes out. First time I felt them jiggle, I tried ripping them off! They had to cuff me to the bed for a week to keep me from hurting myself.
CHARLIE: But you adapted...right? 
SARAH: What makes you say that?
CHARLIE: Well, you seem so comfortable in your skin now. 
SARAH: (laughs) Oh, Charlie. I put on a good show, but truth be told, I still feel like an impostor. I still glance in the mirror and wonder who this beautiful woman is staring back at me. Sometimes I wonder what my ex would think if she saw me now, looking better in this bodysuit than she ever could. Adapted? No. It’s more like trying to swim in the open sea.
CHARLIE: I don’t understand.
SARAH: Well, we can swim in the ocean, but we’re never truly at home there, are we? We can float on the surface, dive in and out, even hold our breath and stay underwater for a bit, but we always have to come up for air. That’s how I feel as a woman. I can move through it, exist in it, but part of me is always holding my breath. Every day, I have to remind myself I’m not a man anymore. I have to force myself to cross my legs properly, be graceful, speak in this voice I worked so hard to perfect. It’s exhausting. But it’s better than the alternative.
CHARLIE: Which is?
SARAH: To be nobody. Be transformed or be terminated. That’s the choice our captors give us, Charlie. 
CHARLIE: But I wasn’t ever anybody—just some scrawny dude with no ambition or goals.
SARAH: Same here. That’s why they chose us, probably. But, trust me, soon as they start messing with your body, cutting shit off and tackin’ other stuff on, you’ll start feeling like somebody. You’ll begin to love the man you are now even as he’s being erased forever. What they say is true: You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Now come along, it’s time for your first injection.