The lab didn't smell like dust it smelled like rust. Not from age, but from iron. From blood.
I opened drawers carefully. I didn't know what I was looking for, only that something in this room had once belonged to me. Or stolen me. One drawer stuck halfway. My wrist mark tingled not with magic, just memory. A trained reflex.
I forced it open.
Inside, scrolls lay stacked like bodies labeled with patient numbers and experimental terms I only half-understood:
"Ink-absorption trials." "Serum M-13." "Subject reflex thresholds."
Then one label caught my breath.
File: Subject 0 – Mei Lin
Status: Erasure Incomplete. Memory volatility high.
I felt like vomiting.
They'd treated me like a dosage test. Not a girl. Not even a patient. An experiment.
And someone in the palace had tried to erase the evidence.
Beneath the file was a small black ledger. No name on the cover. I opened it and everything clicked.
Surgical notes. Drug schedules. Behavioral charts.
Dates I don't remember living.
People I don't remember meeting.
But it was my handwriting in some of the margins.
At the back of the book, one page had a different ink rushed, messy. Almost desperate:
"She started asking questions again. She knows the ink stain wasn't natural. If she remembers the serum trials, we're finished. Burn this book. Burn her if necessary."
There was no signature.
But I recognized the handwriting.
It belonged to someone I still serve tea to—every morning.