The second the floor stopped pretending it had structural integrity, Anne and Javier landed in a room that absolutely was not up to hospital code.
Gone were the sterile walls and medical machines.
Instead? Plants.
Everywhere.
Hanging vines curled around cracked tile.
Moonlight streamed in through shattered glass panels above them, filtered by a stained greenhouse ceiling.
Anne blinked.
"I swear," she muttered, brushing dirt off her hoodie, "if we just got dropped into some sentient Pinterest board, I'm gonna riot."
Javier groaned beside her, rubbing his elbow. "This is the old campus greenhouse. The one that burned down."
"Yeah. Super comforting to be back in a fire hazard with houseplants and trauma."
He stood up, looking around warily. "This was her last project. Kira digitized the place—uploaded the whole layout into her lab simulations before it got shut down. But it was never supposed to trigger like this."
Anne raised a brow. "Meaning?"
"Meaning... it's reacting to you."
As if on cue, one of the flower beds lit up faintly—blue pulses running across the soil like veins.
Anne stepped closer, despite every horror-movie instinct screaming nope.
Inside the bed, instead of roots or seeds—there were memory drives. Glowing. Alive. Nestled like fruit.
"Okay. Creepy garden of data," she said. "What next, a sunflower that judges my emotional walls?"
"Actually," Javier said, "that's a tulip. And yes. That one does."
Anne glared at him. "You're lucky I'm too confused to punch you."
"Runs in the family," he shot back.
She smirked despite herself. "If I had a dollar every time you used that line..."
"You'd probably blow it all on haunted sketchbooks and bitter coffee."
Before she could reply, a soft hum vibrated through the greenhouse.
A panel opened in the wall.
Inside, a single projection lit up—a video file.
Anne reached for it, and it flickered to life.
It was her—but not her now. Not hoodie-wearing, sarcasm-deploying Anne.
This was Kira.
Hair up. Eyes sharp. Voice calm.
> "If you're watching this," the Kira on screen said, "then the reset failed. Or succeeded. Depending on how you define 'rebuilding a broken version of myself through guilt and soft boys.'"
Javier muttered, "Hey—"
Anne waved him quiet.
> "I tried to erase myself," Kira said. "All the memories. The trauma. The failures. Even him."
She paused, her digital eyes flicking toward the camera.
> "Javier, if you're still here… I'm sorry. I didn't know how to let go. So I didn't. I just… copied the best parts and hoped one day she'd be strong enough to look for the rest."
The message glitched briefly, then continued:
> "But memories rot, even digital ones. And if the greenhouse is still active… that means the root files are about to destabilize."
Anne leaned closer.
"Kira," she whispered, "what did you bury here?"
The projection flickered violently.
> "Anne… I left you everything. But it's not safe. They're watching. They always have been."
The recording fizzled.
And then—
A second screen lit up.
Password locked.
Anne stepped toward it, heart pounding.
A prompt blinked:
> ENTER FINAL MEMORY PASSCODE.
She looked back at Javier.
He shrugged. "You're literally her. This is your thing."
She looked at the keyboard.
Tried the first thing that popped into her mind.
AntsOnFire23
Access granted.
"…Wait what?" Javier blinked.
Anne looked confused. "What?! It was a joke I used to tell Kira. She made fun of me for it."
A drawer clicked open.
Inside: a sketchbook. Black leather. Cracked spine.
Anne opened it.
Drawings. Poems. Blood-stained notes.
Then a photo fell out.
A younger Anne. Kira beside her. And—
Anne's voice caught in her throat.
Their mother.
Javier stepped forward. "That's…?"
Anne whispered, "She died when I was ten. I thought— I didn't remember this."
Javier's brows knit. "Which means the resets weren't just erasing Kira…"
"They were erasing me. My life. My family. All of it."
Before she could process it, the greenhouse lights dimmed again.
A voice—mechanical, cold—rang out:
> "Unauthorized access detected. Memory purge initiated."
Anne's hands trembled as the sketchbook began to disintegrate in her hands—pages turning to digital ash.
"No—NO—!"
Javier pulled her back as vines came alive around them, snapping like snakes.
"We have to move—NOW!"
The floor cracked.
Reality bent.
The greenhouse began to collapse inward.
Anne held on to what was left of the book, heart shattering.
And just before they were swallowed by the light—
She saw her own handwriting on the last surviving page:
> "Find the key in the painting. Only you will remember it."