POV: Sharon Okoye
> Some secrets are hidden in darkness.
Others are dressed in velvet and sealed with silence.
---
It wasn't on any map.
Not the official blueprints of the library building.
Not even the encrypted access logs Damian had slipped into her notebook last week.
The door didn't exist… until it did.
It was behind a false panel in the history archives — one of those places students rarely visited, where the air always smelled like forgotten ink and polished wood. Sharon had leaned against the shelf while pretending to scroll through her tablet, and felt a soft click beneath her palm.
Now, her fingers hovered over the panel again.
Another press.
A mechanical hiss.
Then the wall shifted.
Not dramatically — just enough for a slender outline of a door to emerge, like the building exhaled and let her in.
---
The hallway beyond was narrow, colder.
Black-tiled floors. Lights that flickered, but never fully died.
Sharon stepped forward slowly. Her pulse thundered behind her ribs.
Every instinct screamed to turn back.
Every memory of Mikayla's erased name pushed her forward.
She reached the end of the hallway, where another door waited — this one glossy, padded with red velvet. Unmarked.
No scanner. No keyhole.
Just a sensor, blinking green.
It recognized her.
A soft chime.
The door slid open.
And Sharon stepped into the Velvet Room.
---
It was… beautiful.
Pristine.
Chilling.
Curtains draped over arched windows that opened to nothing — soundproofed glass with thick, black wiring running behind the frame. There were no desks. No chairs. Just a central platform with a holotable glowing softly, surrounded by projection screens that blinked to life the moment she crossed the threshold.
> "Welcome, Subject 12."
The voice was female. Artificial.
Polite, but cold.
Sharon froze.
Subject what?
On the holotable, several names blinked in succession:
Mikayla Oworu – Subject 04 – Status: Missing
Damian Vaughn – Subject 07 – Status: Passive
Sharon Okoye – Subject 12 – Status: Active
She nearly stumbled back.
Twelve?
There were at least twelve of them?
And her file — her own file — was accessible.
Hands shaking, she tapped it open.
---
FILE: OKOYE, SHARON
> Cognitive resilience score: 94%
Empathic sensitivity: 88%
Memory depth integration: HIGH
Exposure Date: August 14, Year 1
Recall events triggered: 2
Loyalty markers: UNCONFIRMED
Override clearance: PENDING
There were recordings.
Clips from her first week at Bellgrave. Conversations she didn't remember having. Dreams she hadn't told anyone.
Her voice, panicked in the dark:
> "Why do I remember pain I never lived?"
Then: silence.
And then: a photo.
Of her.
Younger.
Standing outside the school gates.
Before her supposed "first arrival."
Before her interview.
Before she had any reason to be here.
But there she was — in Bellgrave's uniform. Barely eleven years old. Wide-eyed. Unsmiling.
> They brought you here.
They watched.
They waited.
---
A soft click.
The door behind her shut.
Sharon whirled around.
Nothing. No footsteps. No alarms.
Just a second door, now illuminated in red.
Another file auto-loaded on the screen.
> SUBJECT 00 — CLASSIFIED
Status: Unknown
Current location: Re-integrated
Memory suppression: FAILED
The screen flickered.
Then glitched.
And for a split second, a name appeared in red:
BIANCA.
---
Sharon staggered backward, the breath sucked clean from her chest.
Bianca? The Bianca?
But the file vanished before she could react — overwritten by cascading code. Someone was watching.
Someone was trying to shut her out.
She turned toward the main screen again.
There was one last file. Tucked beneath layers of encryption.
It wasn't labeled with a subject number.
It was labeled:
"Control Group – Live Trials"
And beneath that:
ACTIVE PARTICIPANT: ZAINAB DADA
---
Sharon's fingers trembled.
Zainab?
But Zainab had never—
No. She had. The migraines. The mood swings. The moments when her voice changed, her memory lagged. The way she sometimes repeated conversations without knowing.
They had done this to her.
To all of them.
She staggered to the platform's edge.
"I need to get out," she whispered. "I need to—"
The red door beeped.
Opened.
And standing there — framed by the dim hallway light — was Professor Adesina.