White.
Like a wound that hasn't bled yet.
Like silence that forgot how to breathe.
Elara opened her eyes. Not slowly. Not abruptly. Just… open.
No blinking. No reaction. No questions—
until consciousness arrived, slow and uninvited.
Her knees were weakly bent. Her skin wasn't cold. Wasn't warm. Felt nothing.
Everything... flat.
Her eyes stared upward—a blank ceiling, no lamp in sight, but light still scorched her corneas.
No sound.
No heartbeat. No breath. No... presence.
Even her body felt light—not as if floating,
but as if never owned at all.
She didn't know how long she'd been lying down. Or how long she'd been here.
The room—
...a sterile white box without seams,
its walls smooth like pages yet to be written on.
The room contained a single table in the corner... along with a large round mirror, a bed, a tall cabinet, a hanging lamp, a door in the corner, and a red digital clock on the opposite wall that read:
33:33
She turned her head.
Something pierced her stomach, slowly:
a black camera in the ceiling corner watching her—
silent, but alive.
That lens… like a pupil without eyelids.
Elara stood up. Her joints didn't complain.
Her feet touched the floor but didn't press down.
And when she stepped, the floor felt wrong. Too soft. Then suddenly hard. As if it hadn't decided what it wanted to be.
As if the room hadn't yet decided its own form.
Near the spot where she'd awoken,
a scratch.
Like a claw mark.
Curved… almost like a question mark.
But its end—
broken.
Like a failed attempt to ask.
She crouched, touched it.
Soft white dust clung to her fingertips.
Not ordinary dust. Too smooth. Too… familiar.
Like skin residue.
As if she had once shed herself and forgotten to grow back whoever was left.
"…Who am I?"
The voice came from her own lips—
but felt more like an echo of thought than a question.
She didn't remember her name. But she knew it wasn't the first time she'd asked.
It had happened—again—buried.
Like a folded note, opened, and partially burned.
She turned toward the round mirror.
Her face reflected.
But not in sync.
The mirror… lagged. A fraction of a second. Like a shadow hesitating.
And her eyes... too black. No color in the iris at all.
She touched the chair.
Cold.
Metal.
Real.
Behind it—
a sheet of black paper, folded into a bird that couldn't fly.
Elara unfolded it.
The paper was blank. But there were ink impressions.
Words erased? Or never written?
She pressed her finger to its surface—
searching for something unseen.
A message from herself?
Or from someone who knew who she was?
A faint sentence slowly rose, like ink growing under the weight of skin:
"don't let them speak first."
The digital clock lit up again.
Blinking rapidly:
33:33
33:33
33:33
Then off.
Leaving behind a red darkness burned into her retina.
Elara sat down.
She felt she had sat in that chair before. But hadn't the room been different? Had there even been a chair?"
Wasn't there only a table in the corner?
Something on the wall shifted.
Not heard, but felt.
The pattern on the left wall cracked slightly.
Not a normal crack—more like...
letters?
Fragments of the alphabet only visible at certain angles.
"R"
"O"
"3"
"3"
She stood. The letters vanished.
As if the room only told the truth when she wasn't trying to understand it.
"...Am I still human?"
"How do I know I'm real if I can't remember anything?"
"If I don't know who I am… can I still be afraid of dying?"
Or...
"…what if I'm afraid of remembering who I truly am?"
She spoke to herself.
Or to something waiting for her answer beyond the wall.
The camera lens moved.
One degree.
Soundless.
But she saw it.
Her eyes too honest to deny it.
A voice came from the room's speaker.
Soft.
Too soft.
Too close to her own voice.
"Welcome back, volunteer thirty-three."
Her head lifted.
A breath she couldn't feel began to quicken.
Or maybe just the illusion of fear?
Fear that didn't know what it was afraid of?
It felt like déjà vu being born.
Then the voice continued:
slow, as if whispering wounds through her skin:
"You don't remember how you got in,
but we remember how you begged not to be let out."
A sound—barely audible—emerged from behind the cabinet.
A soft click.
Too faint for an alarm. Too slow for normal mechanisms.
Elara approached.
Her steps felt guided by memories she didn't have.
She opened the cabinet.
Empty.
But on the floor—one small black box.
She opened it.
Inside:
a fingernail.
Still fresh.
Clean.
And written on the inside of the box:
"you pulled it out yourself"
Elara trembled. But her body didn't shake.
The shaking was only inside.
In a place no touch could reach—not even feeling.
And Elara, as she always did,
will wake again tomorrow.
Or perhaps…
just did.