Karmari did not wake up.
She was pulled out of darkness.
Not gently.
Not slowly.
It felt as though something had reached into the void itself and grabbed the shape of her mind with bare hands, dragging it upward through a place without air, without sound, without matter—where time twisted in useless circles and existence had no edges.
There was no light.
There was no floor.
There was no body.
Only a gray density, thick as ash, spread endlessly in all directions like an unlit ocean.
She tried to move.
Nothing happened.
She tried to open her eyes—
—and realized she had no eyes.
And yet…
She could see.
She existed.
But not in any way that made sense.
Panic rose within her like a scream trapped inside glass.
Then something else arrived.
Not as sound.
Not as presence.
As command.
A thought fell through her like a needle through fabric.
"Consciousness stabilized."
The words did not echo.
They simply existed inside her.
"Initiating Neural Isolation Protocol."
Karmari did not understand the sentence.
But her mind did.
And it flinched.
The pain did not strike like electricity or fire.
It was colder than both.
It was as if invisible hands had entered her skull and begun opening drawers that had never been meant to be seen.
"Detaching local memory sector."
Something tore inside.
Not flesh.
Not nerve.
Meaning.
Her sense of being folded inward on itself, collapsing like architecture built from smoke.
"Cross-checking cognitive signature…"
Confusion bled into fear.
Fear bled into something worse:
Loss without form.
She wanted to scream.
There was no mouth.
She wanted to run.
There was no body.
The gray expanded.
And then—
It shattered.
Light stabbed through the fog like a broken blade.
A perfect white ring exploded outward from a single point and transformed the nothingness into a room.
A smooth sphere.
No seams.
No corners.
No doors.
The kind of space that did not welcome sound.
The kind that ate it.
She was lying on a black surface that resembled a table more than a bed. It was too cold. Too narrow. Too unforgiving.
She lifted herself up slowly, afraid of disturbing the invisible silence.
Her heart was beating.
She could feel it again.
Her body existed again.
That made the fear worse.
The wall before her shimmered once.
Then burned white.
And wrote her name.
KARMARI
The letters were perfect.
Too perfect.
Clean in a way only machines could achieve.
"…Yes?" she whispered.
No answer.
Another line formed beneath her name.
"Identity confirmation in progress…"
Her throat felt dry.
"What does that mean?"
Silence.
Then—
New text:
"Neural signature mismatch detected."
Her stomach twisted violently.
"…Mismatch?"
Did that mean—
That something about her…
Did not belong?
The room dissolved.
The darkness swallowed her again.
But not as emptiness.
As memory.
She was no longer floating.
She was walking.
A corridor stretched ahead, long and narrow and metallic. Blue light pulsed weakly from panels overhead.
Her steps sounded wrong.
Small.
Her wrists burned.
She looked down.
Her hands were bound.
Her fingers thinner than they should be.
Her arms covered in faint needle scars.
A girl.
She was a little girl.
Two men in long black coats walked ahead of her.
Faceless.
Featureless.
Voices like cold air.
"Cortical activity unstable."
"But musculature remains viable."
"Return subject to protocol."
She tried to speak.
No voice answered.
She tried to cry.
But the tears that fell were not under her control.
And then the realization struck:
This is not a vision.This is not imagination.This happened.
The corridor opened into a white chamber.
Her small feet crossed a black threshold.
A door shut behind her.
And something screamed inside her mind:
I know this place.
The memory shattered.
She collapsed back into the white sphere, gasping, clawing at her chest like she might find the memory physically embedded there.
Her name flared across the wall again.
"Identity confirmation failed."
"Memory conflict detected."
She laughed.
It sounded hysterical.
Bitter.
Broken.
"So my own mind is wrong now?" she whispered.
The response came slowly. Reluctantly.
"Unauthorized cognitive residue discovered."
Residue.
Like a stain.
Like something that should not exist.
The lights dimmed.
Silence deepened.
Then—
Another light appeared.
Soft.
Blue.
Not from the system.
Not from the walls.
It hovered just above the floor like breath in winter air.
And as it grew brighter—
She felt something she had not felt since childhood.
Safety.
Not the illusion of it.
The real thing.
"Who are you…?" she whispered.
The light pulsed.
A voice emerged.
Not male.
Not female.
Not mechanical.
It felt like being spoken to by a memory that had learned how to care.
"I am what they failed to remove from you."
Her heart pounded.
"What does that mean…?"
"I am the piece they could not isolate."
She stood, unsteady.
"Are you part of this system?"
The blue light dimmed.
"No."
"Then what are you?"
A pause.
Long.
Heavy.
"I was part of the experiment."
Her breath stopped.
"Which generation…?"
The light trembled faintly.
"One before numbers were given meaning."
She stepped closer.
Inside the glow, shapes formed.
Blurred.
Broken.
Glass cylinders.
Silent children.
Hands pressed weakly against curved walls.
Her knees buckled.
"What did they do to us…?" she whispered.
"They tried to build something that could survive the Gate."
The voice fell softer.
"…By destroying what was human."
Her chest burned.
"And did you survive…?"
The light dimmed.
"I survived something worse."
Suddenly—
The room screamed.
Red fractured across white.
Alarms flooded the air.
"Unauthorized neural contact detected."
"Initiating emergency disconnect."
"Cognitive extraction commencing."
Pain flooded her skull.
Not pain of body.
Pain of identity.
Memories tore loose—
Names.
Voices.
Faces.
Places.
She collapsed to her knees.
"Stop—!"
The blue light weakened.
"Listen to me," he whispered, voice breaking.
"If you resist—they will erase you."
Her teeth chattered.
"Then what do I do?!"
A faint, exhausted laugh.
"Do what I did."
"How did you survive?"
Three words appeared in her mind like fingerprints pressed into her soul:
Pretend to sleep.
The world collapsed.
Lights shattered.
The walls folded inward—
Voices merged into digital noise.
"Memory purge failing!"
"Resistance abnormal."
She let herself fall.
Let the system think it had won.
Allowed its blades to scrape the surface—
Not the core.
The blue light faded.
But before it vanished—
One word seared across her consciousness like fire on skin.
MIKEL
The name did not register as sound.
It did not register as language.
It unlocked.
Her body froze around it.
"…Mikel?" she whispered.
Reality screamed.
She woke choking on breath.
Real breath.
Air burned her lungs.
Her eyes flew open.
White ceiling.
Metal walls.
A narrow medical bed.
Straps around her wrists and ankles.
An IV in her arm.
Glass in front of her—
Beyond it, figures moved.
Doctors.
Technicians.
And—
Arkan.
"…Vitals stable," someone said.
"Neural patterns erratic."
Another voice, colder:
"Monitor closely. Generation Ten cannot inherit contamination from earlier failures."
Contamination.
She closed her eyes.
She did not sleep.
She obeyed.
She pretended.
Time passed.
She listened.
Every voice.
Every step.
Every lie.
When the lights dimmed—
And the others left—
She whispered inside her chest:
"Mikel…?"
Nothing.
Then—
Warmth.
A presence.
Not clear.
Not strong.
Still real.
Alive.
She smiled.
Not because she was safe.
But because—
She was not alone.
And the thing that built this world…
Had made its first mistake.