---
> "So you're saying," Elias murmured, staring at the terminal screen, "that I'm trapped because I went there—or maybe because I was forced to. Forced by something. Or someone."
The air felt thick. Too quiet.
> "Because how else do I explain this?" His voice broke slightly. "A recording from 1945—locked. But made for me. Left for me. Years before I even got here."
Maya said nothing. Kiran stood a few feet away, arms crossed, jaw clenched.
> "Someone knew," Elias went on. "Someone knew if I saw even a glimpse of that data, I'd try to chase it. Follow it. Maybe because I was linked to it. Or maybe I am part of it. Some leftover piece from a failed experiment. A ghost walking back into the lab that built it."
He looked up. His eyes were rimmed red, not from tears, but from something deeper. Dislocation.
> "Maya ended up here because we dragged her in. But why did you come, Kiran? What brought you here?"
Kiran didn't answer.
> "And Dev," Elias said, eyes narrowing. "How do you know about things that happened in 2040? This place was sacked. Buried. Classified. So how the hell do you know?"
Dev met his gaze evenly. "Because some doors don't stay locked."
The silence that followed was colder than anything in the lab.
---
Kiran broke it.
His voice wasn't loud—but it was shaking.
> "You know what the worst part is?" he said, eyes on the ground. "It's that I don't even remember why I came here in the first place. What I was thinking. My girlfriend's stuck. My project is gone. Everything's upside down."
He looked up at Elias.
> "And it started the moment you opened that file."
Elias blinked.
> "Kiran—"
> "No. Just… think about it." Kiran took a step closer. "None of this started until you went digging. That file had your name all over it. It called to you, didn't it?"
> "You think I wanted this?" Elias said, tone hard. "You think I wanted to wake up and realize I might not even be a real person? That I might be some fragmented experiment shoved into a body that was never mine?"
He exhaled shakily.
> "Everything that happened—the coffee spill, the corrupted drive, the glitches—they all led to me. I was manipulated. Or maybe chosen. But I didn't choose this."
> "But you kept going," Kiran snapped.
> "Because I had no choice," Elias said, stepping forward. "Even if I hadn't opened the file, I would've ended up here. And so would you. We were all being herded."
Dev, until now silent, spoke with grim precision.
> "Exactly."
---
Kiran's eyes darkened.
> "You knew," he said slowly. "You knew too much, too fast. You acted like one of us, but you're not. You pretended to be a student. But you were never just that, were you?"
Dev didn't respond.
> "The machine warned us," Kiran continued. "It said not to trust you. So I have to ask—was it you? Did you push Elias here? Orchestrate all of this?"
Elias turned sharply to Dev.
> "Tell me it's not true."
> "It's not that simple," Dev said calmly.
> "Then make it simple."
Before Dev could answer, the lights above buzzed—then snapped into flickering chaos. The mannequins shifted again, subtly, almost imperceptibly.
But they moved.
All at once.
Just a fraction—yet unmistakable.
Maya stepped back, her voice cracking.
> "Did they just—"
A metallic groan echoed from the far end of the hall, somewhere below.
---
> "You see that?" Kiran barked. "This place is tearing apart reality and you're still playing cryptic!"
> "And you're trusting a cryptic machine over me?" Dev snapped back for the first time. "Do you even know what that 'machine' is? What it used to do?"
He stepped forward.
> "You don't have to trust me. But answer this: Which of you knows what this lab really was? What these machines are? What they did?"
He pointed toward the rows of humming, dormant pods.
> "Do you think you can solve this without me? These systems weren't built for your understanding. They were built to be locked away."
---
Kiran's breath caught in his throat.
But before he could answer, Maya cut in, loud, firm.
> "Enough."
The echo of her voice filled the corridor.
> "We're wasting time. Dev might be hiding something—but he's right. We don't know anything. And the only person here who does... is him."
She turned to Elias.
> "You said you recognized the code. Can you remember it?"
Elias looked down at the terminal again.
His hands trembled, but he reached out.
The code burned behind his eyelids—etched in somewhere he didn't remember placing it.
> REM-GHOST-26
The screen blinked. Then unlocked.
Rows of system data began scrolling fast.
> "Fragment Index 26-E | Subject: Elias Verran"
"Initial Host: Failed. Identity re-fragmented."
"Secondary Access: Host 7-Alpha [Status: UNSTABLE – PRESERVED]"
"Fragment Detected in Host 7-Alpha: Memory-leak risk high."
"Recommendation: Erasure or full sync with original index."
Elias's face drained of color.
Maya leaned in. Reading slowly.
> "Host 7-Alpha… Dev."
The screen distorted. And then a voice, grainy and metallic:
> "To complete the loop, Subject 26-E must descend to Reactor One."
"Bring no light. Bring no metal."
"Memory will guide you. If you are still you."
---