Wake up" the man wearing a lab coat snapped at his latest experiment, "do you have any idea where you are?"

The man who had been restrained on a sort of bed-like device looked around him, the room he was in had a very pale tone with tiled floor, weirdly metallic curtains all around him, he looked back at the man in the coat, who he now noticed was also wearing a beak-like mask, and said "what?".

"What was the last thing you remember?" asked the man in the coat.

The man on the bed thought for a moment. He looked off and thought to himself about a possible explanation for this. No, the last thing he remembered was insufferable pain, how can he still be alive? With a brief state of confusion, the man asked in a somewhat ironic tone, "I'm in hell, aren't I?"

The coat-wearing man removed his beak like mask, revealing very dark, almost black skin that made his horns more visible, and pressed the goggles that were on his neck to his face. He smiled and said "when I tell you where you actually are, you will wish you were in hell instead".

He stuck out his hand to the bound man, whom he let free and instructed him to shake it. With hesitancy, he obliged and did as he was told, noticing something off about his hand, and his entire skin too. It was nearly black, but mixed with robotic elements, just like the man in the coat, "my name is Doctor Odellian, congratulations on your Evacandrius transformation".

"Eva-what now?" he asked, while sitting up and felt something off, "why do I have a third leg?" he asked while pointing at a protrusion out the back of his gown.

"Your kind would call us demons" Odellian had said walking closer to him, "the transformation process we have done on you turned you into one of us".

"I can see that, but what is going on with that plus" he felt his head, "I'm missing one of those uh, horns? I still don't know whats going on where the hell am I?"

The doctor stared at him and answered "those whom we turn into our kind, we have to remove a part of their tail and horns to signify that you are not a natural Evacandrian. Plus your skin isn't as well tinted (or as soft) as ours, notice how it is more orange-brownish rather than the gold of mine or the red of those who posses more unnatural powers".

"Unnatural powers, so you are actually demons?" the man asked.

"By your standards you would have considered us as such" Odellian explained, "We aren't any sort of mythical beings however, we're more or less like, as you'd say, "aliens" than anything else. While we are in a different galaxy from your original homeworld, we are not in any afterlife. Although I will admit our technology is a lot better than anything your kind ever had so maybe in some way you could view us as a higher power".

"I guess that makes sense" the man sat back down, more confused than ever "but where exactly are we? And why did you choose me of all people to... revive?".

"About that" Odellian turned from him, "We are not allowed to give you our exact location, but you are on a planet known as Tervium. It's our homeworld and is now yours as well."

He turned back to him with with a strange, rhombus-shaped device in his hand, "You were brought here as a recently deceased soldier that came from a certain planet. Do you remember its name?".

"Earth" the man said, but I was sent elsewhere to settle a mutiny with my platoon".

"Your platoon was wiped out almost immediately upon arrival because of broken promises, as far as I am aware the men there appeared to be friendly but opened fire on your little group as you all exited the ship" Odellian stared at him again, "we chose you because we believe you had a chance to be used again in our army as your body was the least disfigured, and you were the cheapest among our corpse dealers' prices.

"Corpse dealer?" the man asked, "you have a cartel of buying deceased soldiers? For bringing them back to life?"

"Precisely, and it can be used on a variety of sentient beings" he answered, "We use a technique so advanced other races are genuinely enraged that we have this technology available to us and will not share it to anyone else. Speaking of which, do you remember your name?".

The man sat down and thought hard, he was remembering the names of his family and friends, but not his own. He responded with a "No".

"I could see you were deep into thought" the doctor said, "as part of our transformation process we don't want to turn our soldiers into mindless zombies, so we do not completely wipe their memory in favor of giving them something to look forward to, but we have to wipe any mention of your name from your head as we can assign you one ourselves. Speaking of which,"

Odellian grabbed his forehead and scanned it with the device he held. The device projected out the letters VIO-52. "This is your new name, Vio fifty two. You can be referred to as Vio among other soldiers you meet in training".

The man, now having no choice but to be referred to as Vio, let out a sigh of relief. He wasn't dead (anymore), but he asked himself if it was worth losing his identity over to start a new life, where he would do nothing but serve.

He asked Odellian "what now?".

"Now?" he responded "now we take you to get your uniform, although you are not going to the weapons armory yet because we first have to make you learn our language, as what I am speaking to you now is more or less a language used among traders and ambassadors, come over here".

They exited the room and walked into the hallway where Vio was lead into a room after being given his uniform and was instructed to put it on and leave the gown behind. He noted the architecture of the place. Orange light tubes lined the walls and the hallways were shaped like tubes in general. It seemed like square rooms were a rarity here.

"This is the infantry uniform?" he asked as he came out wearing it, "it makes me look like some kind of action figure or something".

Odellian responded with "the higher up you rank, the less flashy your uniform becomes. The only reason it looks the way it does is because a lot of newly transformed don't know how to properly use their bodies so they often get injured easier. We also require the mouthpiece so that those that are harder to transform, such as the Squiggians, can hide their facial scars and resized parts as they heal".

"Resizable parts" Vio sighed "sounds fun".

"Be thankful you were conceived as a human" the doctor told him as they entered a room full of box-like structures, "although a lot of sentient life we know of has your body type, you will never have to deal with any insufferable pains from scars or skeleton implantation".

"I guess. What are all these gigantic square structures doing here?" Vio asked Odellian as they entered a large, domed room full of probably over a million of them.

"These are where we store the bodies we purchase from other systems" he told Vio as a drone let out an arm to check on the status of a container, "we are allowed to talk about what we do to get our soldiers because it's common knowledge, but cannot tell too much to those who are uncertified for access to that information, let us continue on, shall we?".

Walking down the path, Vio also saw his first glimpse of the outside world. The skyline was full of dark, non encluidian buildings that pirced through the orange sky behind them. It was as if at that moment he realized how different it all was. His home world was nowhere in sight even as advanced as it was.

"Where exactly am I being sent to now?" Vio asked the doctor.

"You are being sent to our training facility" he answered as they both were finally approaching a way out of the storage area after walking for minutes, "Learning our language shouldn't be that hard surprisingly, as it surprisingly has a lot of similarities with pronounciation and spelling, but it could take a while to learn".

"Do I really have to learn it?" Vio asked, "even though you said we are speaking a 'trader language', is it absolutely required?".

"I want you to take note right now" Odellian stopped, "if you decide to go against our word, we have to punish you harshly. If actual squid-like creatures that used to speak using beaks could learn it, I guarantee you should be able to as well".

He continued to walk with Vio following. So this is my new life, he thought, being used for something I have no control over again against my will. I never asked for this, but I guess this is what I'm going to have to get used to now.

"And another thing" Odellian added, "I heard a hitman named Aex needed help and was looking for a new recruit. He works for us so we can just transfer you to him if you ever wanted".

"What's he need a new recruit before?" Vio asked.

"He likes bringing extra people with him to use as meatshields" he smiled, "some people take that as an honor".

Did some more background experimentation. Also working on expanding this world of alien-demons more. Might decide to connect it to the Mars story who knows. Had to work on a lot of things this month so this image was not at the top of my priorities at first, although when it was I ended up redesigning the background like 5 times as I always do. Stick around to see me draw more of these guys!