Rapid Decay

Story takes place in a small, dull town overrun with illness. Zink is taken by a group of scientists out of town in attempts to test treatments for said illness. When all else fails, another scientist takes them in and uses them for her own personal project to alter them in a manner that would cause them to be impervious to the illness, making them into a useful asset to do further research: she turns them into a robot. If Zink wasn’t going to agree to work for her, she had other means of getting them to. Yet, when Zink awoke and rightfully disagreed to do such a thing, they managed to escape before she could do further harm. They return to their old town and stay in hiding, not wanting the other townsfolk to see what they had become.