I opened my eyes.
Fluorescent lights hummed above me, casting an eerie blue glow on the white walls. My hands were small again. Too small. My fingers trembled as I stared at them.
I was five.
Again.
"What just happened…?" I whispered.
But my voice came out high-pitched. Childlike.
My breath hitched. I spun around. There was no train yard. No Elias. No Mom. Just a cold, sterile lab. And on the far side of the glass—
A boy.
About my age, sitting cross-legged in another room. Dark-haired. Sharp eyes. Familiar.
Elias?
He pressed his hand against the glass.
"I remember you," he whispered. "But you weren't supposed to remember me yet."
"What… is this place?"
He stood slowly.
"This is where they made us forget."
I turned.
And then I saw it—on the wall, etched in black ink.
ECHO PROJECT: SUBJECT E-13 | MEMORY DECOMPRESSION TRIAL #42
I staggered back. A woman in a lab coat walked into the chamber beside me.
"Is she ready?" the woman asked.
Another man nodded. "She's stabilizing. Begin the injection."
I panicked. I wanted to scream, to run, to get out. But my small limbs wouldn't move fast enough. I pressed my palms to the glass.
"Elias! Help!"
He was yelling too, pounding on his side of the chamber.
But I couldn't hear him anymore.
The liquid burned through my arm. My heart raced. The room blurred.
And then—
Darkness.
****
I woke again.
But not in the present.
This time I was seven.
Running down a corridor with Elias beside me, both of us barefoot and terrified.
"They know we remember," he shouted.
A siren blared above us.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"Out."
We reached a sealed door. Elias pulled something from his pocket—a strange metal card—and swiped it.
The door burst open.
Bright sunlight.
Outside.
Freedom.
We ran. Faster than our legs should've carried us.
And then—pain. I fell. I looked down.
Blood.
I screamed.
And that's when it happened.
Time bent.
We were back in the corridor.
I hadn't fallen yet.
I gasped. "What—?"
Elias looked at me with wide eyes.
"You just… undid it."
---
Back in the lab, a group of scientists watched the scene on monitors.
"She's starting to loop spontaneously," one said, horrified.
"If she stabilizes before Subject 12, she'll overwrite him," another added.
The lead scientist looked grave.
"We trained him to protect her. But if she unlocks first… she might not need him at all."
---
Flash forward.
I was nine.
Sitting at a table.
And Elias was across from me, older now, eyes harder.
"We're being separated," he whispered.
"No," I said. "You promised."
"I'll find you again," he said. "I don't care if they wipe our memories a hundred times. I'll find you."
He leaned across the table and pressed something into my palm—a folded slip of paper.
"Don't read it until your memories return," he said.
And then the guards came.
They dragged him away.
I screamed.
****
Suddenly, I was back in the train yard.
My mom groaned beside me.
The masked man was gone.
The earpiece buzzed.
"Amara—do you copy?" Elias's voice crackled. "Please answer."
I blinked.
The note.
My hand trembled as I reached into my pocket.
It was there.
The same paper Elias had given me in the memory.
My heart thundered.
I unfolded it slowly.
One sentence.
"You were never just a subject, Amara. You were the only one who could set us free."