He woke choking on smoke.
His lungs burned. His hands trembled. Ash fell in soft flakes from the ceiling, mixing with the dark around him. The room smelled like scorched metal and antiseptic—like something meant to be forgotten.
He sat up too fast. The pain behind his eyes was sharp and immediate, like a memory forced back in.
Bandages.
Wrapped from his jaw to the back of his skull. One eye uncovered, the other blurred with dried blood. Across his chest, scratchy hospital fabric. His wrists—bare, except for the black numbers inked like a brand:
43.1107° N, 12.3926° E Subject: M13 "Do not awaken"
The words were stitched into his collar.
There were no windows in the room. No doors. Just four cracked walls, a shattered mirror, and a radio with no battery that kept repeating static… and then—once every few minutes—a voice.
"You shouldn't be alive." "Protocol failed."
He didn't know his name.
Didn't know why he was trembling.
But he did know something no one had to teach him:
He wasn't supposed to leave this place.
—
He found a rusted metal rod beneath the gurney. Used it to pry through a collapsing wall panel. Beyond it? A corridor smeared with soot, lined with wheelchairs facing the wrong way. The fluorescent lights above buzzed weakly—then burst one by one as he passed beneath them.
Something moved in the shadows ahead. A shape—tall, bent, dragging something long and sharp.
It whispered his name.
Only…
He didn't have one.
Outside—if this was really outside—the sky was colorless. No wind. No sun. A gravel path led through a dead forest, the trees with no leaves, the branches creaking without breeze.
Crows circled above. Silent.
He staggered forward.
The tattoo on his wrist burned.
He didn't know where the coordinates led, but something deeper than memory told him:
Someone buried the truth. And someone else is hunting it.
And whichever one found him first—
Would decide who he really was.