EPISODE 4: THE WHISPER
1194 Words
Seviah wasn’t sure how long she stayed on the floor after the lights went out.
The darkness inside Echo Room 3 wasn’t normal. It didn’t feel like night.
It felt like being swallowed.
She pressed her forehead against her knees, trying to slow her breathing, trying to think — but the air was thick with memory.
She could still see his face in the mirrors.
Still hear his voice.
“You were chosen before you were born.”
Chosen for what?
She didn’t ask.
She couldn’t.
Something was crawling just beneath her skin. It didn’t hurt — not exactly. But it itched. Burned faintly. Like silver pressing through her veins, too big to fit.
She wrapped her arms around herself and whispered, “This isn’t real. This isn’t real.”
But even that felt like a lie.
Eventually, the lights returned — a dim red glow that barely illuminated the walls. The door hissed open without a sound.
No voice told her where to go.
No guards waited for her.
She walked out alone.
The hallway was colder this time.
Her feet left faint smudges of ash behind her — not dirt. Not blood. Ash. She bent down to touch one. It disappeared beneath her fingers.
They didn’t return her to the same cell.
This one had no bed.
Just a chair.
And a screen on the wall that flickered with static.
No camera. No window.
Just her. And the silence.
Until it spoke again.
“Are you ready to listen now?”
The voice wasn’t external.
It was inside.
But not in her thoughts.
It was like her bones were vibrating. Like something was using her as an echo chamber.
“They erased your name,” it said.
“But we remember.”
Seviah gritted her teeth.
“You’re not real.”
The voice didn’t argue.
It just laughed.
The screen on the wall flickered.
And suddenly she saw a file.
Her file.
Subject S-47: Seviah Lirien
Classification: Null Echo / Unstable Carrier
Below it, a diagram appeared — not of her face.
Of her nervous system.
Glowing lines traced her spine. Her skull. Her heart.
And around them, something coiled.
Silver.
Alive.
She touched the screen — and the image bled into movement.
Her pulse synced with the light. She could feel it: the gift wasn’t a flame. It wasn’t lightning. It was something quieter.
Older.
“You don’t carry it,” the voice said.
“You were born from it.”
The screen shut off.
And suddenly — she wasn’t alone.
She turned.
421 stood behind her.
Not burning.
Not speaking.
Just watching.
She took a step back, hand against her chest, heart threatening to leap through her ribs.
“You’re dead,” she whispered.
He blinked.
And then his lips moved:
“No. You are.”
Seviah gasped and stumbled back onto the wall — but her body didn’t hit the metal.
It hit water.
The room changed.
She was no longer in a cell.
She was standing in the middle of a shallow lake. Barefoot. Sky above. No roof. No walls. No guards.
And in the water — a reflection.
But not hers.
Nali.
Eyes closed.
Mouth open — screaming silently.
Then the surface shattered.
And the voice came again.
“She’s not gone. But you will lose her. Unless you burn.”
Seviah fell to her knees, fists clenched into the reflection. The water rippled beneath her.
She opened her mouth to scream — but instead, she spoke.
Words she didn’t choose.
In a language she didn’t know.
The sky answered.
A flash of white cracked above her head — a storm forming with no clouds.
“You are waking, Seviah.”
“And they are already afraid.”
She woke up on the chair.
No water.
No screen.
But her fingers were glowing again — not brightly. Barely visible.
But there.
Real.
The door opened behind her.
A voice — this time real — spoke through the intercom:
“Subject S-47. Cognitive Scan: Complete. Proceed to Power Isolation.”
Seviah didn’t move right away.
Her hands still burned.
Her mind still echoed.
“You will speak, and it will not be your voice.”
“You will burn, and it will not be your choice.”
But even as her breath steadied, and her feet touched the floor again, the feeling didn’t leave her.
That sensation — like her body was wearing something too heavy. Something ancient. A presence that hadn’t come from outside, but had always been there, hiding. Coiled in her ribs. Watching her with her own eyes.
She remembered something Nali had once whispered in the dorms, curled beneath a blanket after lights-out, when no one else dared speak.
“Do you ever feel like… you’re two people?”
Seviah hadn’t answered. But she remembered feeling it.
Two pulses in the same body.
Now she felt it again.
Twice.
Her own heartbeat — fast, unsteady — and then another.
Slower. Deeper.
As if something was syncing itself to her from the inside.
She reached toward the wall to steady herself. Her hand brushed the cold panel, and this time it didn’t respond with static or light.
It hummed.
A low, bone-deep frequency.
She yanked her hand back, startled — and the hum followed her.
Like an echo that didn’t need a voice.
She turned toward the exit, but paused.
The shadows in the corner of the room had shifted.
There, standing just barely visible — another reflection.
But this time, not 421.
Nali.
Younger. Paler. Wearing the same dorm uniform she disappeared in.
Her eyes were closed.
And yet… she was speaking.
Mouth moving in slow, mechanical movements — like a puppet trying to remember how to be human.
Seviah took one step forward.
“Nali?”
The shadow didn’t respond.
But the voice — the one inside her — returned.
“You forgot her.”
“She didn’t forget you.”
Seviah’s throat tightened. “What are you talking about?”
“She’s still here.”
“But they buried her name.”
“Like they’ll bury yours.”
The vision of Nali vanished.
And suddenly the lights overhead strobed — once. Twice. And then stayed dark.
The door behind her clicked open again.
But she didn’t move.
Because now her hands were glowing again — this time without permission.
And the pulse in her chest was louder than her own thoughts.
She looked down at her fingers.
They weren’t just glowing.
They were… cracking.
Hairline fractures ran up her wrists, filled with liquid silver light — as if her bones themselves were trying to break out of her skin.
And then—
Everything went quiet.
The voice whispered one last line — like it had saved it until she was ready to hear it:
“You’re not a vessel, Seviah.”
“You’re the beginning.”
She stood.
And whispered something she didn’t mean to say — something that made her lips tremble and her pulse slow:
“I’m not the first.”
She didn’t know where the words came from.
Only that they felt like truth.
And like a warning.
- Writer
