00:30:00
Silence.
Then beeping. Slow. Rhythmic.
Isla's eyes snapped open. The world was upside down. She was suspended, wrists bound in black straps, staring at the floor far below. Machines hummed softly around her, their screens filled with scrolling red text.
SEQUENCE INTERRUPTED. SUBJECT NOT COMPLIANT.
She tried to move, but gravity felt wrong as if every motion pulled her in a different direction. The room was spinning, or she was.
Her timer flickered back to life.
00:29:59
00:29:58
Then, 00:30:01.
It was counting up.
Her breath hitched. "No…"
The walls around her distorted, rippling like heat. Figures appeared in the haze, scientists, doctors, people in hazmat suits moving backward. One poured a syringe of clear liquid into a vial, which refilled itself.
Her voice, echoing across the room:
"Begin the reversal test."
She thrashed in the restraints. "Stop! Stop it!"
The room obeyed, not her words, but the memory.
Everything froze.
A mirror slid silently from the wall across from her. Her reflection hung upside down too, eyes wide, mouth sewn shut again. But this time, a line of black liquid dripped upward from its lips to the ceiling.
The stitches split. Her reflection smiled.
Then the straps released, dropping her hard onto the floor. The mirror crashed down beside her but instead of shattering, it absorbed her reflection completely.
The surface rippled.
Inside, the reflection stood upright while Isla remained on her hands and knees. The reflection tilted its head, then mouthed something silently.
Wake up.
The timer jumped again.
00:31:00
00:32:00
00:33:00
The world bent. Gravity reversed, she was being pulled into the floor.
She clawed at the tiles, but her fingers sank through. The floor became liquid.
Then, a voice whispered behind her, Mason's, ragged and broken.
"Every time we die, we come back wrong."
She turned he was standing in the corner, face fractured by shifting light. His timer had stopped completely.
00:00:00
"Run," he said softly. "Before it finishes counting you backward."
The floor swallowed her whole.
Isla fell through a blur of static and shadow until she landed on her feet somehow upright in a room that looked exactly like the first one.
The clock on the wall blinked red:
00:59:59
Reset.
She wasn't alone. A different Isla sat in the center of the room, knees drawn to her chest, whispering the same word over and over:
"Please… don't let me wake up again."