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How many times have I woken up without remembering what I was?"**
This was the first thought that crossed his mind when his eyes opened to a blinding white light, gnawing at his eyelids as if searching for remnants of him in the void. No sound. No movement. Just a faint vibration in the metallic walls of the room.
His hands were restrained by transparent straps, glass-like yet fragile. But his breath was free. Something deep in his chest pulsed—unlike a heartbeat. Its rhythm was too precise to be alive, too chaotic to be mechanical.
Seconds passed… or minutes? He couldn't tell.
Then the door slid open.
A woman in a white coat stepped in with cautious strides, holding a glowing glass tablet in her hand. Her right eye flickered with a violet glint—a telltale sign of an embedded smart lens.
In a carefully modulated voice, she asked:
**"Kyle... Can you hear me?"**
He tried to respond, but his throat was parched, as if sand had settled in his vocal cords.
She spoke again, this time with less urgency:
**"You are in Kendra-7, an independent research facility under the supervision of the High Authority. You are safe. You are under observation. Do not worry—no action will be taken without your consent."**
**"My consent?"** he thought. *Who am I to give consent? I don't remember… anything.*
Then he heard it.
The voice.
**"Listen... Don't answer her. Don't move your lips. I am inside you."**
❖
Days passed in a disorienting haze. Every time he tried to remember, something within him dragged the memory deeper into an abyss. Medical scans. Surveillance. Strange dreams where he wandered through endless corridors, walls lined with mirrors… yet no reflection.
And every time, the same voice—calm, steady, but unlike anything human:
**"Kyle… Remember. You did not begin here."**
Then they started asking him questions he didn't know the answers to.
**"Do you recall Project Neosis?"**
**"Do you feel another presence in your mind?"**
**"Do you see things others don't?"**
He didn't answer. Not out of fear. But because he no longer knew who the **"others"** were.
❖
One night, he jolted awake to a faint whisper reverberating through the walls:
**> "When memory writes you... who reads?"**
He approached the small mirror hanging in the corner. For a moment, he saw his reflection… staring back. But it wasn't moving as he was.
His eyes widened in shock. But the reflection… smiled.