confusion

Final Episode: The Last Reset

PRIDE POV

Anna crouched beneath the desk beside me, blood soaking the front of her clothes.

“Don’t make a sound,” she whispered. “He still thinks I’m dead.”

Across the room, Dr. Reyes walked slowly between the monitors.

“Pride,” he called. “Come out before you hurt someone again.”

Anna pressed a knife into my hand.

My fingers closed around its handle.

A memory exploded inside my head.

The same room.

The same knife.

Anna standing behind a terrified woman while Dr. Reyes held a camera.

“Do it, Pride,” Anna whispered in the memory. “She knows what you are.”

I watched myself raise the blade.

The woman screamed.

Then everything went black.

I returned to the present with Anna gripping my shoulder.

“What did you see?” she asked.

I looked down at the knife.

“You gave this to me before.”

Anna’s expression changed.

Only for a second—but I saw it.

“You were never his prisoner,” I whispered. “You were helping him.”

Anna tightened her grip on me.

“Keep your voice down.”

“You both used me.”

“We can talk about this after we get out.”

“No.” I stared into her eyes. “You’re planning to erase my memory again.”

Before Anna could answer, Dr. Reyes kicked the desk aside.

We were exposed.

He pointed a gun at us.

Anna immediately raised her hands.

“Elias, wait.”

Dr. Reyes laughed bitterly.

“You faked your death, stole my research, and brought her here to kill me.”

Panic crossed Anna’s face.

“She wasn’t supposed to remember this much.”

I stood between them, still holding the knife.

“What did you do to me?”

Dr. Reyes kept the gun aimed at my chest.

“We discovered that traumatic memories could be separated from conscious thought,” he explained. “We could remove the guilt without removing the instinct.”

“The instinct to do what?”

“To kill.”

The word settled over the room.

Anna slowly stepped away from me.

Dr. Reyes continued.

“Anna found the victims. I erased what happened afterward. But the procedure was never perfect. Your memories always returned through dreams.”

I looked at Anna.

“How many?”

She didn’t answer.

“How many people did you make me kill?”

Dr. Reyes smiled.

“Five.”

Another memory struck me.

Five faces.

Five voices begging me to stop.

Five bodies hidden in places I could no longer remember.

I tightened my grip on the knife.

Dr. Reyes noticed.

“Put it down, Pride.”

“Did I kill Anna too?”

“No,” he said. “That video was staged to bring you here.”

Anna reached slowly toward her pocket.

Dr. Reyes turned the gun toward her.

“Don’t.”

She froze.

The emergency alarm continued ringing above us. Red light flashed across the room, illuminating the three of us in brief, violent bursts.

Dr. Reyes stepped closer to me.

“You’re coming with me. We’ll perform one final reset.”

He reached for my arm.

I allowed him to touch me.

Then I drove the heel of my boot down onto his foot.

He shouted and lost his balance.

I grabbed his wrist with both hands and forced the gun away from my chest. He fired.

The bullet shattered a monitor behind me.

Anna rushed toward us, but Dr. Reyes struck her across the face with his free hand. She crashed into the filing cabinet.

I twisted his wrist until the gun fell.

It slid beneath the desk.

Dr. Reyes grabbed my throat and slammed me against the wall. My head struck the concrete. The knife dropped from my hand.

“You were nothing before me,” he hissed.

His fingers tightened.

My vision blurred, but I reached for the strap of my belt bag. I pulled it over his head and twisted it around his neck.

He released me to tear it away.

That gave me enough time.

I drove my knee into his stomach, grabbed the back of his coat, and threw him into the broken desk.

Dr. Reyes collapsed onto the floor.

The knife was lying beside him.

We both reached for it.

He got there first.

He swung the blade toward my stomach.

I stepped aside, caught his arm, and slammed his wrist against the edge of the desk.

Once.

Twice.

On the third strike, his fingers opened.

I caught the knife before it hit the ground.

Dr. Reyes looked up at me.

For the first time, he appeared afraid.

“Pride, you’re confused.”

“No,” I said. “I finally understand.”

I drove the knife into his chest.

His mouth opened, but no words came out.

I pulled the blade free and pushed him backward. He fell beside the shattered monitors and didn’t move again.

The alarm stopped.

The sudden silence felt louder than the gunshot.

I turned toward Anna.

She was gone.

The metal door stood open.

I followed the drops of blood leading into the corridor.

“Anna!”

The trail ended at the bottom of the staircase.

She attacked before I saw her.

Her shoulder struck my stomach, throwing me against the railing. The knife slipped from my hand and fell between the metal steps.

Anna wrapped her fingers around my hair and pulled my head backward.

“You ruined everything!” she screamed.

She pushed me toward the edge of the staircase.

I caught the railing before I fell.

Anna reached into her pocket and pulled out a syringe.

“I only need you to forget one more time.”

She aimed the needle at my neck.

I caught her wrist inches from my skin.

We struggled against the railing, both of us pushing the syringe between us.

Anna was stronger, but she was injured.

I drove my elbow into the wound on her side.

She screamed and loosened her grip.

I tore the syringe from her hand and threw it down the stairs.

Anna struck me across the face.

I fell to one knee.

She grabbed my belt bag from the floor and wrapped its strap around my throat.

The material tightened, cutting off my air.

“After everything I did for you,” she whispered, pulling harder.

My hand searched blindly across the floor.

My fingers found the silver necklace.

I wrapped the chain around my fist, turned, and swung the pendant into Anna’s face.

She stumbled backward.

I lunged toward her and looped the necklace around her neck.

Anna clawed at the chain as I pulled her toward the railing.

“You don’t want to do this,” she gasped.

A final memory returned.

Anna cleaning blood from my hands.

Anna smiling while I cried.

Anna telling me that I was sick.

But then the memory changed.

I saw myself standing behind her.

Watching.

Pretending to be confused.

I had remembered more than she realized.

Maybe I always had.

“You’re right,” I whispered. “I don’t have to.”

For one second, I loosened the necklace.

Anna smiled.

Then she reached for the knife hidden beneath her jacket.

I kicked her legs out from under her.

She fell backward over the railing.

The silver chain slipped from my fingers.

Anna disappeared into the darkness below.

A heavy impact echoed through the stairwell.

Then silence.

I walked down slowly.

She was lying motionless at the bottom of the stairs, the necklace still wrapped around her neck.

Her eyes were open.

I crouched beside her.

“You should’ve made sure I forgot everything.”

3:17 A.M.

I returned to the hidden room.

Dr. Reyes had recorded every session, every murder, and every reset. There was enough evidence to destroy all three of us.

So I changed the story.

I wiped my fingerprints from the knife and placed it in Anna’s hand. I put the gun beside Dr. Reyes and deleted every video showing me inside the building.

Then I started a fire in the file room.

By the time the police arrived, I was sitting outside with the other employees, wrapped in an emergency blanket.

I cried when they questioned me.

I told them Anna had forced me into the basement. I said Dr. Reyes tried to save me before they turned on each other.

They believed every word.

Three weeks later, the investigation was closed.

Dr. Reyes was blamed for the experiments.

Anna was blamed for the murders.

I was described as their only surviving victim.

No one ever discovered the five bodies.

SIX MONTHS LATER

I moved to another city where no one knew my name.

I found a quiet apartment and a better job. Meeko spent his afternoons sleeping beside the window.

The nightmares stopped.

The voices disappeared.

For the first time, I could look into a mirror without being afraid of the woman staring back at me.

At least, that’s what I told myself.

One evening, I found a small box outside my apartment door.

There was no name or address on it.

Inside were five photographs.

The five victims.

Each face had been crossed out.

Beneath them was a sixth photograph—one I had never seen before.

It showed me standing in the basement beside Anna and Dr. Reyes.

All three of us were smiling.

On the back, someone had written:

YOU WERE NEVER THE SUBJECT.

YOU STARTED THE EXPERIMENT.

My phone vibrated.

A video had been scheduled from my own number six months earlier.

I pressed play.

The woman on the screen was me, but there was no fear in her eyes.

“If you’re watching this,” she said calmly, “then Anna and Elias are dead.”

She leaned closer to the camera.

“Good.”

My stomach tightened.

“You’ll want to believe they controlled you. Let yourself believe it for as long as you need to.”

She smiled.

“But when you’re ready, open the red door.”

The video ended.

A soft click came from across the room.

I slowly looked up.

There had never been a door beside my bedroom.

Now there was.

Painted red.

Meeko stared at it, his tail moving gently across the floor.

My phone displayed one final message:

SIX IS WAITING.

I approached the door and placed my hand on the handle.

For the first time, I wasn’t confused.

I knew exactly what I was doing.

I opened it.

END