The girl remained silent for several moments.
When she finally spoke again, her voice was quieter than before.
"...The place you're in is called HOLO OF FAIR."
Maya slowly lifted her head from the wall.
Her brows drew together in confusion.
"...HOLO OF FAIR?"
"Yeah."
The girl's tone held neither pride nor fear.
Only bitterness,"Most people have never heard that name."
She gave a quiet, humourless laugh.
"You won't find it in history books. It isn't written on government records. No map points to this place."
She paused.
"Officially...it never existed."
Maya's fingers slowly tightened against the cold steel wall.Her breathing became quieter.
If it didn't exist...Then who would ever come looking for them?
"...What is it?" she asked softly.
"It's not an orphanage."
Maya blinked, "...What?"
"They call it one."
There was unmistakable disgust in the girl's voice now.
"That's the story they tell inspectors, donors.. governments... anyone who asks questions."
Another pause.
"The real place lies beneath the orphanage."
Her words slowed, as though every sentence carried memories she wished she could forget.
"A massive underground research facility.
The walls above are only a mask. "
Maya's eyes widened slightly. Her mind struggled to picture what the girl was describing.
Endless white corridors, Scientists in spotless laboratory coats.Cold fluorescent lights.
The images matched everything she had already seen.
The girl continued.
"They don't raise children here and when
they finish with one experiment....They
begin another."
Maya felt a chill spread through her body that had nothing to do with the cold room.
She lowered her eyes to the metal band locked around her neck.....The smooth
green surface reflected the white light.
"...What about this?"
The girl answered almost immediately,
"That's your code."
"My... code?"
"They have a hierarchy here. Every child is assigned a colour. It isn't identification, it's your rank."
Maya instinctively wrapped trembling fingers around the collar.The metal felt colder than ever before, "...A hierarchy?"
The girl let out another faint, exhausted laugh.
"From the moment you arrive...They decide where you belong and once they give you a colour..."
She stopped speaking for a moment.When her voice returned, it was almost a whisper.
"...your life begins to follow the path they've already chosen for you."
Silence.
When she finally spoke again, her voice had changed.
The irritation was still there...But beneath
it lay something worn down by years of remembering.
"...Over twenty years."
Her words drifted softly through the steel wall,
"This place has been running for over twenty years."
Maya didn't interrupt.
"Tens of thousands of children have been brought here."
A short pause.
"They came from everywhere. Some were abandoned.Some were kidnapped. Some were sold."
Her voice grew quieter.
"And some...simply disappeared."
Maya felt her chest tighten,
"Tens of thousands entered....Only seventeen survived the first major phase."
Maya's eyes widened, "...Seventeen?"
"Yeah. Out of tens of thousands...only seventeen."
The words echoed inside Maya's mind.
She forgot to breathe.
The number refused to make sense.
Tens of thousands...
She tried to picture it in her mind— a sea of frightened children, faces she would never know, voices swallowed by endless white corridors.
And from all of them...Only seventeen.
Her heart gave a slow, painful thud against her ribs.
How many had fallen before those seventeen remained?
The question echoed through her mind, but she already feared the answer.
A heavy pressure settled over her chest, making every breath feel smaller than the last.
For a moment, the room seemed to tilt.
The faint mechanical hum around her blurred into a distant ringing inside her ears.
She tightened her fingers against the cold steel wall until her scraped knuckles burned.
If tens of thousands of children couldn't survive.....What chance did Subject Seventeen have?
A quiet chill spread through her body.
"And the Pre-Phase ?"
The girl sighed softly.
"It's called the Pre-Phase Evaluation.
They also call it...Suhani."
"...Suhani?" Maya whispered.
"Every child has to pass it.
It decides whether you're even considered worthy of entering the real experiment.
The scientists say it measures potential."
A bitter laugh escaped her, "I think it just measures how difficult you are to kill."
Maya slowly lowered her gaze,
"...What happens during Suhani?"
The girl answered without hesitation,
"It has two trials. The first belongs to Code Yellow."
Maya instinctively looked down at the yellow memories still fresh in her mind.
"The children are released into an arena.
They aren't alone."
Maya's fingers slowly curled,
"...Who else is there?"
The girl's voice became cold,"The Chimeras."
Silence.
" Chimeras??? "
"They were children once but the experiments broke them. Creatures that barely remember what they used to be.
They don't even look human anymore."
The girl's voice became quieter.
"Their bones grew the wrong way. Their bodies were twisted by experiments.
Some walk on all fours. Some move like broken puppets. Others.....don't move
the way any living thing should."
She fell silent for a moment.
"But sometimes.....if you look into their eyes...you catch something."
Maya frowned, "...Something?"
"A flicker."
The girl's voice was barely audible now.
"Just for a second...you can almost see the child they used to be. A tiny piece of someone trapped deep inside all that pain."
Another long pause followed.
"Then it's gone."
Her tone turned cold again.
"The scientists call them failed subjects. The younger children call them monsters."
She let out a bitter breath, "...I don't know which name is crueler."
Maya's breathing caught.
"They throw Yellow Codes into the arena with them....Why?"
"The objective is simple ' SURVIVE. '
For five minutes.
Exactly long enough for the arena to decide whether you deserve another nightmare."
Maya remembered the monsters.
The claws, the blood.
The endless running.
Her hands trembled, "...And Green?"
"If you survive Yellow...you become Green.
The arena changes. The Chimeras disappear, what replaces them..."
The girl's voice hardened.
"...are packs of trained attack dogs.
They work together, they never stop
chasing.
The trial doesn't have a timer.It ends only when the arena doors finally open."
She drew a slow breath.
"If you're still breathing when they do...You advance. If not..."
Her sentence faded. The silence beyond the wall completed the thought.
Then..."...I still remember one boy."
Her words came slowly as though each one had to be pulled from somewhere she had spent years trying to bury.
"He couldn't have been older than ten.
He was small. Too small."
Maya rested her forehead against the cold wall, listening.
"He kept saying he'd make it.He repeated it over and over while we waited outside the arena."
She lowered her voice.
"'Five more minutes... Then I'll eat until I'm full.' 'Five more minutes... Then I'll finally sleep.' 'Five more minutes... Then I'll see
the sky again.'"
A long pause.
"Nobody told him there wasn't any sky here.
When the gates opened....the dogs didn't attack immediately.
They watched, they circled him. Like they already knew he couldn't escape."
Maya felt her stomach tighten.
"He ran. I don't think I've ever seen anyone run that hard. He slipped, got back up.
Slipped again.
Every time he fell...he stood up again.
I remember thinking...'Maybe he'll
actually make it.'"
Her voice cracked for the first time,
"The arena doors finally started opening just a narrow gap. He saw it, he smiled."
It was barely more than a whisper,
"It was the first smile I'd seen in weeks."
Maya's fingers slowly tightened against the steel.
"He was one step away....One. One of the dogs reached him first."
The girl stopped speaking.
"...The doors finished opening but he never walked through them. The scientists wrote something on their clipboards."
She let out a bitter, exhausted breath,
"That was all. No one stopped to look.
They simply washed the blood away...
..and sent the next child into the arena."
Maya felt a cold shiver travel through her body.
The image of a frightened little boy smiling at an opening door—only to fall before reaching it—would not leave her mind.
For the first time...
She began to understand why every older child she had met wore the same broken smile.
"...You said every color means something."
A soft knock came from the other side of the wall, "Yeah."
Maya looked down at the faintly glowing band around her neck, "...Then... what is it in my neck. "
"Every subject wears one of those collars.
They aren't ordinary restraints, you can't
take them off.
They stay with you every second you're alive.
The collar around your neck...isn't just a collar. It is your rank."
Maya instinctively tugged at the collar.
It didn't move not even slightly.
The girl gave a humourless laugh,
"Everyone tries, no one succeeds."
She paused.
"Inside the collar is a permanent indicator.
The light tells every scientist exactly what
you are."
Maya stared at the faint glow, "...It changes?"
"Yeah, The colour changes as you move deeper into the program."
Maya's fingers slowly slipped away from the collar, "...What comes after Green?"
The answer came quietly, "...Orange."
Maya hesitated, "...What is Orange?"
A long silence followed.
When the girl spoke again,
"Orange is the beginning of the real program.
The scientists call it Phase One — Nirvana A."
The unfamiliar name sounded strangely beautiful, too beautiful.
Like a flower growing from poisoned soil.
"The word 'Nirvana' sounds peaceful.
Don't let the name fool you.
There's nothing peaceful about it.They wanted something beautiful.....to hide something monstrous."
They don't do it all at once that would be too easy. They divide it into levels.
So slowly.....that many children don't even realise they're changing."
Maya felt a chill creep through her body,
"...Levels?"
The girl did not answer immediately.
For several long seconds, Maya heard nothing except the low mechanical hum beyond the walls.
When the girl's voice finally returned, it sounded tired ,"There are five. "
She paused.
"Aserith : 'The Arrival.'
It's the Level where your identity begins to dissolve.They separate you from everything familiar.
They strip away your name...your sense of who you are."
Maya unconsciously whispered her own
code, "...subject 17..."
The girl continued.
"Then comes...Vorexil : 'The Fracture.'
By then they know what frightens you, They study every weakness.They make you doubt every decision."
The silence felt different.
"The third level...Kaelith : 'The Severing.'"
Her voice softened.
"This is where they separate children who depend on one another. Every emotional bond becomes a weakness.
And they make sure you learn that lesson."
Maya closed her eyes.She remembered the younger children,Their frightened faces.
The older children's broken smiles.
"...Then..."
The girl drew a slow breath.
"Nyravel : 'The Hollowing.'
'Hope ' They drain it little by little.
Until one morning....you realise you stopped expecting tomorrow to be better.
You stop counting days.
Inside.....everything becomes empty."
Her words grew quieter.
"So empty...that surviving and giving up begin to feel almost the same."
Neither of them spoke for several moments.
"...Tharion : 'The Threshold.'
The final gate, the last trial before..."
She stopped.
Maya's heartbeat quickened,"...Before what?"
The answer came almost as a whisper,
"...Code Red."
Silence.
The girl did not explain further.
"Code Red." They lingered in the cold air.
Maya remained perfectly still. The name itself carried no meaning..yet something inside her recoiled from it.
It wasn't the way the girl had said the words.
It was everything that came after them.
Only silence.
Maya slowly parted her lips,"What happens—"
On the other side of the wall...She heard the girl breathe.
As though the mere mention of Code Red had dragged her back into memories she had spent years trying to bury.
Maya lowered her eyes and waited.
Seconds passed.
The silence stretched until it felt almost alive.
Neither of them spoke.
Maya tightened her fingers around the edge of her collar. She wanted to know what waited beyond the final gate.
But for the first time...She wasn't sure she wanted the answer.
~~
Mahim slowly lowered his head, unable to look at the screen for more than a few seconds at a time.
The words lingered in the air, "Code Red."
They sounded less like a promotion....
And more like a death sentence.
Naya slowly lowered her trembling hand from her mouth.
Fresh tears slid silently down her cheeks.
She looked at Maya's silent figure on the screen,
".....No wonder she never smiled.I kept thinking....someone would rescue them."
A bitter laugh escaped her.
"But there wasn't anyone left to rescue them."
Farhan stood motionless.
"Every smile those scientists gave...they already knew what they were sending those children into."
He looked away from the screen for a brief moment,"I've never hated anyone more."
Mahim remained staring at the projection.
"Twenty years, tens of thousands of children, That isn't research, it's slaughter. They built an entire civilisation beneath an orphanage."
Faha leaned forward, resting both elbows on his knees, "...They even gave every nightmare a beautiful name."
His expression twisted with disgust.
"'The Arrival.' 'The Threshold.' 'Nirvana.'
They wrapped hell in poetry."
Fahan rubbed a trembling hand across his face,
"The girl behind the wall...She didn't sound angry anymore, she sounded finished. She sounded like she'd already accepted she would never leave."
Faha's face slowly lost every trace of color.
He stared at the projection as if looking at something no human being should ever witness.
"They're not scientists...They're monsters."
His voice was almost a whisper.
"No... even monsters don't spend twenty years perfecting how to destroy children."
Nahi covered his mouth, tears streaming down his face, "How could anyone...They're children."
Mahi slowly leaned back.
"...I kept waiting for one decent person....Just one."
A long silence followed.
".....There wasn't a single one. Calling them monsters is too easy. Monsters kill because it's their nature."
One by one, every voice faded.
Fahim e didn't say a word, he stood perfectly still, his eyes fixed on the projection.
The reflection of the screen shimmered across his glasses, hiding his expression.
Yet the faint whitening of his knuckles betrayed how tightly they were clenched.
The silence around him felt heavier than every word spoken in the room.
It was the silence of a man whose mind
was trying to accept something it refused
to believe.
~~
Maya remained leaning against the cold concrete wall. The words she had just heard refused to leave her mind.
Twenty years...Tens of thousands of children...Nirvana... Code Red...
Each sentence felt heavier than the last, settling over her like layers of stone.
She slowly lowered her head.
Her fingers rested loosely against the metal collar around her neck.
For a long time, she said nothing.
Her breathing was slow, uneven.
The tiny room felt smaller than before, its walls pressing silently against her from every side.
She looked at the dried blood covering her scraped hands.
The cuts, the aching muscles that still trembled whenever she moved.
Those injuries had seemed unbearable only an hour ago.
Now .....They hardly mattered.
They were only the beginning.
The endless experiments.
Every answer had only revealed another nightmare waiting farther ahead.
Maya closed her eyes.
A faint, tired smile touched her lips— not one of happiness, but of someone whose strength had been worn away by the truth.
When she finally spoke, her voice was barely audible, "...I'm doomed."
The words were little more than a breath.
Silence answered her.
She stared at the floor without seeing it.
Tiny streaks of dried blood covered her scraped hands.
They had hurt so much before.
Now...She could barely feel them.
Pain suddenly seemed insignificant.
There were worse things than pain.
Worse things than bleeding.
Until this moment...Every terrifying thing she had faced had still carried one fragile hope.
Escape.
Every locked door she had stared at.....
Every footstep she had taken somewhere inside her, she had believed they would eventually lead outside.
To a world where people still had names instead of numbers.
She had believed there had to be an end.
A mistake the scientists had overlooked.
A door left unlocked, anything.
But now...The girl had shattered every one of those thoughts.
HOLO OF FAIR wasn't simply a prison....
It was an entire world built beneath another world.
She imagined herself months from now....
Then years, walking the same white corridors.
Wearing the same collar.
Surviving one trial only to be thrown into another.Slowly becoming like every older child she had met.
Empty.
One day...Perhaps she would stop asking questions.
Stop wondering what the sky looked like.
Stop remembering the warmth of sunlight.
The thought terrified her more than death itself. Because death ended suffering.
This place...It taught people to live without truly being alive.
For the first time since she had awakened in this place, she could no longer imagine a future beyond these walls.
Hope, which had flickered only moments earlier when she realised someone was behind the wall, now felt impossibly distant.
Silence lingered between them.
Maya remained sitting against the cold wall.
She could hear the girl's quiet breathing through the thick wall .
For several long moments, neither of them spoke.
Then...The girl let out a short, weary sigh.
"...Well."
There was an odd shift in her voice.
It was the exhausted humour of someone who had long since run out of tears.
Maya frowned, "...What?"
On the other side of the wall, the girl gave a faint, humourless chuckle, "Hold on."
Maya blinked in confusion, "...Hold on?"
"Yeah."
The girl cleared her throat with exaggerated seriousness, "This is an important ceremony."
Maya stared silently at the blank wall.
A moment later, the girl spoke again.
Her voice carried the dry satisfaction of someone pretending to complete an official duty,
"I'm raising an imaginary flag....Welcome to Hell."
The words echoed softly through the steel.
Maya lowered her eyes, "H...Hell."
She slowly lifted her head. Her gaze drifted upward toward the empty concrete ceiling.
"Yeah, around here, that's probably the most honest name anyone could give this place."
Maya frowned, "...What?"
"...Welcome to this hell, Subject Seventeen.
And one more thing, be careful."
Maya instinctively straightened against the wall, "...Careful?"
"Yeah...Watch your back."
"Why?"
The girl let out a slow, tired breath,
"Because in this place, If someone comes for you...don't assume they're coming to save you.
Around here, someone is always trying
to take anything from you and if you're unlucky.....your life.
Hummm....I hope nobody comes to collect your life before you even have the chance to understand where you are."
At first...Maya had thought the girl was trying to be sarcastic.
A bitter joke.
The kind people made when life became too cruel to face without laughing.
But the longer she sat there...The more those words settled inside her. It wasn't a joke.
It was simply the most honest description of this place.Every colour on a collar marked another step toward suffering.
Maya felt the cold wall against her back.
For the first time...It no longer felt like she
was sitting inside a room.
It felt as though she had already been buried beneath the earth.
Above her...Somewhere beyond countless layers of concrete...The sky still existed.
Yet none of it seemed real anymore.
It belonged to another world.
A world so impossibly distant that it might as well have been a dream.