I Was Reassigned to the Floor Where Men Turn Into Women

No one remembered when the tower had stopped being a building and become a world. Adrián Solís had spent seven years riding up to the thirty-ninth floor every morning, coffee in hand, and he had never once wondered why the doors of his corporate apartment had no lock he could control, or why the office air always smelled of sandalwood and something sweeter underneath. The Cúspide Family provided everything: housing, food, health insurance, calm. In return, it asked for only one thing: belonging.

—Good morning, Vera —he said to the floating screen at his desk—. Give me the agenda.

—Good morning, Mr. Solís. —The AI voice was feminine, warm, designed to comfort—. You have your quarterly review at nine. And a priority summons from Human Capital. From Mrs. Roca. Immediately after.

Adrián stopped with the cup halfway to his lips. No one received summons from Sabina Roca. She didn’t call you; she sent you things. A termination email, a Christmas bonus with a note in pink ink, a recommendation for a “wellness retreat” from which people came back different. Smiling too much. Speaking softly. Sometimes with another name.

—Do you know why, Vera?

—Classified as “Development Opportunity, Confidential.” —There was a brief, almost imperceptible pause. Vera never paused—. Have a good day, Mr. Solís.

***

The review was conducted by Iván Cano, his former apprentice. The boy Adrián had taught everything to, from pivot tables to hallway politics, and who now occupied the corner office Adrián had long coveted. Iván projected a graph into the air between them and sighed as if in pain.

—Your metrics, Adrián. Stagnant. Your engagement index dropped by point four this quarter.

—My team exceeded the sales target by three percent —he replied.

—I’m not talking about sales. I’m talking about aptitude. Fit. —Iván avoided his eyes—. We’ve placed you in the Lumen Protocol. It’s standard. Most people come back... better.

Adrián had seen people come back from the Lumen Protocol. They weren’t the same people. Some changed departments. Others changed gender. Others simply disappeared, and their desks were occupied by new faces by morning without anyone asking. Asking was in poor taste.

—Sabina will explain the details —Iván said, already seeking refuge in his screen—. You’re lucky. The Family never abandons its own.

***

Sabina Roca’s office did not look like an office. It was a flesh-colored velvet room, with no papers, no corners, perfumed with gardenias. She rose to greet him and Adrián had to suppress the impulse to step back. To kneel. To run.

—Adrián —she said, and her voice was like sinking into warm honey—. How lovely to have you here. Sit down.

She moved around the desk with slow, circular steps, like a snake studying. Her stilettos sank into the carpet with a rhythmic sound, and the whisper of her stockings was the only noise in the room. She stopped right behind him. Adrián felt the heat of her body against his back.

—You’re not here as punishment —she murmured—. You’re here for an opportunity. We reviewed your profile, your tests, your patterns. And the data says you’re tired. Tired of deciding. Tired of pretending you care about margins and fucking Q4. —She sat on the edge of the desk and crossed her legs—. The data says that, deep down, you dream of letting go.

Adrián opened his mouth to protest, but something about the frequency of that voice made it impossible to lie.

—The Family has designed a role for people like you —Sabina went on, resting a red nail on his cheek without touching him, like someone evaluating a sculpture—. You have a beautiful bone structure. High cheekbones. A delicate jaw. Full lips. It would be a waste to hide it behind a screen. Your real value isn’t in your analyses, darling. Your value is visual.

She turned a tablet toward him. It was his employee file, with a neon-pink frame beating like a digital heart. Beneath his name, where it used to say “Senior Analyst,” it now said: Ornamental Staff — in transition.

—This is a mistake —Adrián said, his throat dry—. I have rights. I’m going to call a lawyer.

—Who? —Her voice was silk and scalpel at once—. You gave up your external rights when you signed for the apartment, the card, the insurance that covers absolutely everything. Now you are property. And property doesn’t have lawyers.

The door opened with a hiss. Two security men entered, immaculate suits, identical smiles, empty eyes. They weren’t carrying weapons; they didn’t need to.

—Take him to the Aesthetic Pavilion —Sabina ordered, already turning back to her desk as if he had ceased to exist—. And take that gray suit off him. It depresses me.

***

The cell was curved. It had no corners: the ceiling sloped into the walls and the walls into the floor, with not a single angle to serve as a reference. Everything was pink, or peach, or that pale salmon designed to sedate. The air smelled of vanilla and something chemical underneath that made thoughts swim slowly, like fish in warm water.

The first thing he noticed when he woke were his nails. Filed into ovals, glossy, with a clear polish he didn’t remember applying. He flexed his fingers. The nails moved with them. They were his. But they weren’t—

The thought fragmented. The air smelled sweet.

On the champagne satin bed there was a single outfit hung with the care of a relic: a pale pink lace thong, soft white trousers, and an almost transparent T-shirt with the Cúspide logo embroidered on the chest. He didn’t remember getting up, but he was already standing in front of the handleless wardrobe.

—Your cortisol levels are elevated —said Vera from somewhere directionless in the air—. I’ve enriched the environment with lavender for your comfort.

Something hissed in the vents. A new smell, heavier, like burnt sugar, mixed with the lavender, and Adrián’s resistance dissolved like a sugar cube in hot coffee.

***

Perla appeared on the second day. Or the fifth. Time had broken into a repeated sequence: wake, dress, walk, smile, a warm jolt at the base of the skull when he obeyed, heat in the chest when they praised him, pink jelly, sleep.

—Hello, darling —Perla said, entering without asking, her white heels striking that rhythm against the carpet—. Still not dressed?

She had impossible curves and porcelain skin, and Adrián tried to remember whether she had ever been anything else. Accounting. A man. A name. The memory came sharply and then unraveled, because the air smelled sweet.

Perla took him to the mirror room. The floor, the walls, the ceiling: all reflections, and among the reflections others like him, twenty or more, impossible to count. Some cried silently over cheeks that already had that doll-like sheen. All of them murmured their old title, their old code, their old master’s degree, like a prayer slipping through their fingers.

The instructor was a hologram in the shape of a woman, with a black digital bar where her eyes should have been. She floated ten centimeters off the floor.

—Posture —she ordered—. Chest out. Shoulders back. Knees to the floor. The service posture is the only natural posture.

And before him another silhouette of light appeared, seated, with a pulsing point of warm silicone between its legs. Adrián shook his head. His throat was sandpaper.

—Open —said the voice, sweet and mechanical.

His knees touched the black linoleum and the impact reached him from far away, as if it were happening to someone else. It was right there at mouth level. The silicone filled his mouth: it tasted of salt, of skin, not of light. And then came the heat, not on the nape of the neck but inside, an injection of liquid gold at the base of the skull. The disgust dissolved and honey replaced it. Adrián moaned. His body pushed forward. He didn’t know what it was, but he wanted more. The silicone was no longer suffocating him: it was caressing him, and each suck sent a chemical pleasure through him, bright and dazzling, wiping out everything else. Obedience doesn’t hurt. Obedience frees you.

—Very good, Number 744 —said the hologram when it was over—. Your posture has improved by twenty-three percent. The Family is proud.

Something warm bloomed in his chest. It was probably chemical, the air, the Family Nectar they served him golden on a pink leather recliner each time the spark of resistance flared up again. But it felt like surrender. It felt good.

***

He counted time in layers of polish and in layers of skin growing softer. Sometimes he woke and something had changed. His pectorals were no longer flat; there was a new softness under the fabric. His voice was higher, or maybe he had simply forgotten how it had sounded before. His lips looked fuller in the endless mirrors, his eyelashes longer, his brows drawn into an arch he had never had. The beard never came back. The body hair gave up just as he did.

One morning he tried to escape. His dance shoes made no sound as he ran toward the staff elevator. He pressed his card to the reader and the screen showed a photo of him taken while he slept, and beneath it: Current classification: Ornamental Staff — in transition.

—But it’s me —he sobbed, pounding the panel.

He saw himself reflected in the closed elevator glass. The jaw, once square, now had a delicate curve. The lips were red, full, wet. He looked like the softened sketch of someone who might once have existed.

—See? —Perla said behind him, not reproachful, almost tender—. You’re almost ready. Tomorrow is the Ceremony.

***

On the day of the Ceremony the air smelled of synthetic orchids and something he learned to call surrender. Perla adjusted an internal corset of flexible stays that had adhered to his torso overnight.

—Breathe upward —she corrected—. Chest high, ribs closed. A Decoration breathes to show, not to live.

She changed the breathing pattern he had used for thirty-six years. His waist narrowed, his chest —two soft mounds that still felt alien— rose. Then came the shoes: neon pink patent-leather stilettos, fifteen-centimeter heels, beautiful and impossible to run in.

—You don’t have to walk —Perla said—. You just have to flow. The heel does the work: it forces the hip out, the chest forward. It’s engineering, darling.

The person in the mirror was no longer anyone he recognized. Dressed in pink latex that clung like a second skin, a tight skirt forcing short steps, full makeup, lashes like wings, lips a wet red that tasted of cherry. Pearl earrings hanging from earlobes he didn’t remember being pierced. In the depths of those huge eyes, where fury should have been, there was only a pink, perfumed emptiness.

The auditorium was glass and pink velvet, and the light came in from every angle so no shadow could hide a flaw. Hundreds of ornamental attendees applauded silently in white gloves as he crossed the backlit runway. Heel, toe, hip. Each step was a small agony and a small victory. I didn’t fall. I’m still standing. I’m elegant. There was no room left in his mind for fear, only for the next step.

At the end, atop a black velvet dais, Sabina Roca waited on a crystal throne. She wore a evening gown that swallowed the pink light like a black hole of elegance.

—Candidate 744 —her voice filled the room, warm as a deadly embrace—. You have left behind the rigidity of analysis. The weight of decisions. You have embraced the warmth of form. Do you accept your new function?

Deep inside, a tiny, distant part of him, buried beneath weeks of Nectar and treatments, screamed in the old voice: Say no. Spit. Run. Tell them who you are. But his feet hurt, the corset held him, and Sabina’s gaze was so proud, so maternal. No one had looked at him like that in thirty-six years of existence.

—Yes, Mrs. Roca —he replied, and his voice did not tremble.

Sabina pinned a gold placard over his racing heart. The pin pierced the latex with a soft, final click. On the placard, in cursive lettering, a single word: Camellia. Then she leaned down and kissed his cheek, leaving a perfect red mark visible to the entire auditorium. A seal of ownership.

—Welcome home, Camellia —she whispered—. You don’t have to worry about anything anymore. Ever again.

And Camellia, for the first time in weeks, felt herself crying. They were not tears of sadness. They were tears of relief.

***

Her first assignment came ten minutes later, while the lipstick mark was still on her cheek. Thirty-ninth floor. Data Analysis Department. Executive Presence Assistant to director Iván Cano.

The glass elevator smelled of fresh flowers. When it opened, the smell of her old life hit her: burnt coffee, sweat masked with cheap deodorant, the static of too many screens. Her heels sank into the same gray carpet she had walked on for seven years in Oxfords. The familiar faces looked her up and down —stocking-clad legs, cinched waist, red lips— and saw exactly what the Family wanted them to see: a pretty object that served coffee. To all of them, the analyst had disappeared a month earlier. Reassigned, the email said. Nobody asked.

Iván hung up the phone abruptly, rubbed his temples, and looked up. He studied her like someone looking at a new car, deciding whether he liked the color.

—Well, well —he said—. Human Resources finally sends something of quality.

He didn’t recognize her. He didn’t see the man who had taught him to use pivot tables, or the one who had lent him money on a Friday, or the mentor, or the victim. And Camellia, instead of the hatred she had expected, felt something else rise within her like a black, sweet fog: relief. Something without a past, without a master’s degree, without seniority, without fear of Mondays.

—Good morning, Mr. Cano —she said, and her voice was perfect: soft, submissive, musical—. I’m Camellia, your new assistant.

—You’re right on time. It’s chaos. —He pointed to an empty cup on the desk. It was her old mug, the one that said “World’s Okayest Analyst,” the one Iván had inherited when he “disappeared”—. Bring me a coffee. Black, no sugar.

A tiny part of her, the one that still whispered in the old voice, thought she could throw the cup in his face. That she could scream who she was at him, tell him he had done this to her, ruin his day the way he had ruined her life.

But then she would have to worry about Q4 again. She would have to feel Sunday insomnia again, meeting anxiety, the whole weight of deciding. And the Family’s air smelled so sweet, and the placard over her chest pulsed so warmly, that Camellia simply smiled, picked up the cup with both hands, and, on fifteen-centimeter heels, went to serve the coffee.