A wave of nausea hit me so hard it nearly dropped me to my knees. My body felt heavy, sluggish—like I was wading through water just to move. I stumbled into the bathroom, clutching the sink for balance.
The face staring back at me in the mirror looked nothing like mine—pale, hollow-eyed, twisted with confusion and fear. I barely recognized myself.And then something shifted. It wasn't just dizziness this time—it was deeper, stranger. My perspective changed, as if the world had tilted in some impossible way. For a moment, I wasn't sure if I was the one in control anymore.That voice returned—the same calm, detached one I'd heard before.
"Fascinating," it said, with eerie composure.
"The limitations of the… primary consciousness. Remarkable."
The words froze me. Before I could even process them, an image flashed behind my eyes—sharp, vivid, too real to dismiss. But it wasn't my memory. It was… someone else's.I saw a laboratory lit by the cold glare of fluorescent lights. Machines hummed quietly in the background. And in the center stood someone—me, or rather, it—working with careful precision.
Electrodes, neural scanners, streams of data running across screens. They were performing a procedure—something to do with the brain, with altering it. Detailed, scientific, meticulous. I shouldn't have understood any of it, yet somehow… I did. Every nerve-ending in me recognized what was happening, as though that knowledge had been there all along, buried deep beneath the surface.The voice spoke again, this time guiding me through it, describing the operation with unnerving clarity—a process called neural partitioning, it explained. A way to split the mind, to create separate, independent selves within one consciousness. It spoke like the architect of its own creation.That's when the horror set in.This wasn't illness. It wasn't madness. Someone had done this—deliberately. This wasn't a case of fractured memory or psychological collapse. It was an experiment—a deliberate act of division.
A self-inflicted war inside the human mind.A chill crawled down my spine as the full weight of it hit me. The note hadn't been a warning about some vague threat. It was a piece of something much bigger—something designed. And I was at the center of it, both the subject and the experiment. A pawn in someone else's game.
The harder the second presence pushed, the more violent the struggle inside me became. My body felt like a battleground. My movements turned jerky and uncertain, every step a tug-of-war between two wills. One moment I was drowning in fear and confusion, the next I was watching myself from a distance—calm, calculating, detached.
The thing inside me, whatever it was, had a kind of precision that terrified me.It was cold. Analytical. It could think clearly when I couldn't. It accessed knowledge that wasn't mine—complex formulas, neurological terms, surgical techniques I had no right to understand. It wasn't just another voice in my head. It was something smarter, sharper... and maybe far more dangerous.
The truth slowly sank in: I wasn't just fighting for my sanity—I was fighting for control of my own body. There were two minds here now, two versions of me, both fighting for dominance. One human and terrified. The other—something else entirely.Then I heard it again, the voice inside my mind, cool and precise.
"We need to find Dr. Albright," it said.
"He's the only one who can help us regain control."
That name hit me like a punch. Dr. Albright—the one from the note. The connection snapped into place, a horrifying realization solidifying in my chest. Whatever was happening to me wasn't random. It was part of something bigger—a plan. Maybe a conspiracy. And I was right at the center of it.The tug for control grew stronger. My body twitched, fingers moving without my permission, muscles tightening as another mind tried to puppeteer me.
I fought back, but it was like wrestling a shadow—slippery, relentless. My arm moved when I didn't want it to. My mouth began to form words I hadn't chosen. Every involuntary motion pulled me further from myself.And then the flood came—memories that weren't mine slamming into my mind at once.
Secret meetings. Scientific blueprints. Conversations about consciousness and control. Fragments of plans for experiments that bent the limits of the human mind.It felt like someone had cracked open a vault inside me, and suddenly I could see pieces of a life that didn't belong to me. Except now, somehow, they did.
The second presence inside me held knowledge far beyond anything I could understand. It knew things about neuroscience, secret experiments, and that shadowy organization from the note—details so specific, so intimate. The puzzle pieces were finally falling into place, but the picture they formed was terrifying. This wasn't just a conspiracy. It was a war—a battle for control over consciousness itself.
The fight between us never stopped. We took turns steering the same body—one moment I was frozen in fear, barely holding on, and the next, I felt calm and analytical, able to think with a clarity that didn't belong to me. That's when the realization hit me like a cold shock:
I wasn't just a victim. I was a pawn in something much bigger, something that reached far beyond my own fractured mind.Every time control shifted, it left me weaker.
My mind felt split open, drained. The storm outside beat against the window as if echoing the chaos inside me—each raindrop another pulse of tension beneath my skin. This wasn't only a fight for sanity anymore. It was for existence itself.
And the thing inside me… it was winning.
It didn't really feel like a choice. At some point, standing there doing nothing became worse than leaving. The note was warm and worn at the edges from how long I'd been holding it, the address etched into my mind like a bruise.
I grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair and pulled it on, my fingers clumsy as I checked my pockets—phone, wallet, keys—like that little routine might somehow make things feel normal again.
I opened my door and stepped into the hallway. The air outside this apartment was cooler, carrying that faint old-building smell of dust and paint. My footsteps echoed more than they should have as I walked toward the stairs. Every step felt heavier than the last, like my body was moving forward while my thoughts stayed behind, stuck on the note, the voice, and the empty holes in my memory.
At the main door of the building, I paused with my hand on the handle and stared through the rain-streaked glass. For a second, I almost turned back. Then the words from the note flashed in my head again, sharp and unavoidable, and my grip tightened. I pushed the door open.The night air hit me at once—cold, damp, smelling of wet concrete and car exhaust.
Streetlights smeared yellow across puddles on the road, and passing cars hissed through the rain. I pulled my jacket tighter around myself and stepped out onto the sidewalk. In the back of my mind, the other presence stayed silent, but its quiet felt heavy, like it was watching.I stopped under a streetlamp and unfolded the note again, double-checking the address even though I already knew it.
Then I started walking. At first, everything was familiar: lit shop windows, flashes of color, the murmur of voices, the steady hum of traffic. People moved past me, umbrellas tilted against the rain, faces I didn't really see.With every turn the address demanded, the city seemed to empty out a little more. The shops gave way to closed shutters and dark windows. Neon signs disappeared.
The sound of conversation faded until there was only the distant rush of cars somewhere far behind me. The pavement grew cracked and uneven, puddles collecting in dips and gaps. Streetlights stood farther apart, leaving long stretches of shadow between them.I checked the note again, more out of nervous habit than doubt, and kept going.The buildings here looked older, more neglected. Some windows were boarded up, some were just black and dirty, reflecting nothing.
Graffiti crawled along the walls in layers—names, symbols, angry words half-washed away by weather and time. A few cars sat along the curb, coated in grime, the kind that looked like they hadn't moved in weeks.I turned down a narrower side street, following the numbers.
The city noise fell away almost completely, leaving only the sound of the rain and my own footsteps. The air felt heavier here, colder despite the jacket. Each step echoed off the walls, making the street feel tighter, like it was slowly closing in around me.
Then I saw it.
The building sat at the end of the road, half-swallowed by shadow. Even from a distance, it looked like it hadn't been touched in years. Cracked walls streaked with water stains. Vines crawling up the stone. Shattered windows staring out into the night like empty eyes. The door hung crooked on its hinges, open just enough to look like a broken mouth.
I glanced down at the note one last time. The number on the faded stone matched the address in my hand.My chest tightened, but my feet kept moving. I walked up to the entrance, the sound of the rain dulling behind me, and stepped over the threshold into the dark.