The Revival Protocol
1255 Words
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White.
Everything was white.
Emily opened her eyes slowly. For the first time in what felt like eternity, there was no darkness, no cold, no dripping sound echoing from unseen walls. Just endless white.
She sat up. Her hands looked normal again—no blood, no bruises.
Her hospital gown was clean, her IV gone.
“Hello?” she called out. Her voice echoed, bouncing endlessly into the emptiness.
No answer.
She stood, bare feet pressing against a smooth floor that looked like glass. The air smelled faintly sterile, like bleach and nothing else.
Then, somewhere in the distance, she heard it—a steady beeping.
A heart monitor.
Emily began to walk toward the sound. With every step, the beeping grew louder. Her reflection followed her beneath the glass floor, walking upside down. It smiled when she didn’t.
Finally, she saw it: a hospital bed. And lying on it was Dr. Elias Morton.
He looked peaceful, almost asleep. But when Emily reached out to touch his shoulder, his eyes snapped open.
“Emily…” His voice was hoarse, distant. “You’re here too.”
She froze. “Where is here?”
He sat up slowly, rubbing his temples. “Not the hospital. Not anymore.” He glanced around. “This is where they bring us after Room 9.”
“They?” she asked.
“The people who built it.”
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A low hum filled the air, and suddenly, part of the white wall in front of them began to shift—like liquid metal melting into a doorway.
Beyond it was a lab.
Rows of screens lined the walls, filled with pulsing heart rates and digital brain scans. At the center stood a glass chamber filled with mist. Inside, Emily saw herself—her real body—lying motionless, wires running from her chest into a machine.
Her stomach dropped.
“That’s me,” she whispered.
Elias nodded grimly. “And that’s me.” He pointed toward another chamber beside hers. His body was there too, lifeless.
“I don’t understand,” Emily said, shaking her head. “If we’re dead, how are we—”
“Alive?” he finished for her. “Because we aren’t. Not really.”
He walked to a nearby terminal and tapped the glowing screen. Data flickered—names, patient IDs, and timestamps. All twelve victims, including theirs.
Each tagged with the same project name: REVIVAL PROTOCOL: ROOM 9
“It started as an experiment,” Elias said quietly. “A program to reanimate brain-dead patients using neural mapping and synthetic memory loops. They tested it in isolation rooms. The ninth chamber was the only one that worked.”
Emily stared at him. “Worked? You mean—”
“They revived us,” he said bitterly. “But our consciousness—what’s left of it—is trapped in the simulation. The hospital, the deaths, the endless cycle. It’s all code.”
She backed away. “So… none of it was real?”
Elias looked at her, eyes dark. “It’s real enough to kill us.”
---
A voice suddenly echoed through the room, cold and mechanical.
> “Protocol cycle complete. Subjects 12A and 12B have achieved neural awareness.”
Emily spun toward the sound. One of the monitors showed two glowing red dots—one labeled VALE, EMILY, the other MORTON, ELIAS—pulsing in unison.
The voice continued,
> “Initiating memory reset for next cycle.”
Elias cursed under his breath. “They’re restarting it again.”
Emily’s pulse quickened. “Can we stop it?”
He hesitated. “There’s a manual override. I built it—years ago, when I was still alive.”
“You worked for them?”
He nodded slowly. “I helped design the Revival Protocol. I thought I was saving lives. But after the first subject died screaming in that room, I tried to shut it down. They silenced me instead.”
Emily clenched her fists. “Then we finish it. We end this.”
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They rushed to the main console. The screen flickered with encrypted lines of code, endless strings of numbers counting down from 00:05:00.
A female voice spoke through the speakers—soft, emotionless.
> “Cycle reset in five minutes. Please remain calm.”
Emily slammed her fists against the keyboard. “How do we override it?”
Elias typed quickly. “There’s a backdoor command. But I need both of our biometric signatures.”
“How?”
He met her eyes. “We have to reconnect—to the bodies in the chambers.”
The thought made her stomach twist. But there was no time.
They ran to the glass pods. Emily’s body looked peaceful, too peaceful. As she reached out, the chamber door hissed open, mist spilling across the floor. Cold air bit into her skin as she stepped inside.
Elias entered his own chamber beside hers. “When I give the signal,” he said, “press your hand to the glass. Focus on what’s real. Don’t let the system rewrite you.”
“Got it,” she whispered.
He counted down. “Three… two… one—now!”
They pressed their hands against the inner surface of the glass.
A blinding surge of light shot through the room. The monitors screamed. Emily felt every nerve in her body ignite. Memories flashed—Rachel, the hallway, the mirror, the whisper: You are.
And then she remembered everything.
The surgeries. The electrodes. The moment the needle went in and everything went dark.
She wasn’t a patient.
She was a volunteer.
Her heart stopped, but her brain was uploaded. She had chosen this.
Her scream echoed through the chamber as the white world cracked around her.
---
When she opened her eyes again, she was lying on the hospital bed in Room 9.
The lights flickered. The air smelled of metal and smoke. The monitor beside her beeped faintly, then steadied.
Across the room, Elias stood in the doorway.
“It worked,” he whispered.
Emily sat up, blinking. “We’re back?”
“Not exactly.” He looked around. The hospital was silent again—but different this time. Real. Tangible.
He reached for her hand. His skin was warm. “We’re alive, Emily. For real.”
She wanted to believe him. But then she saw it—the monitor’s reflection in the glass window.
The line wasn’t steady. It was looping.
“Elias…” she said slowly. “The heartbeat. It’s repeating.”
He froze.
The monitor flatlined for half a second, then restarted the same sequence. 02:37 A.M.
She looked at him. “It’s still running the cycle.”
He turned toward the wall. The number 9 glowed faintly beneath the plaster, pulsing like a vein.
“No,” he whispered. “We broke it.”
But then the intercom crackled alive.
> “Welcome back to St. Mercy Hospital. Revival Protocol—Cycle 13 initiated.”
Emily’s hand tightened around his. “What do we do now?”
He exhaled, his eyes hollow but determined.
“We find whoever’s running it.”
“And if we can’t?”
He looked at her, a grim smile forming. “Then we burn it all down.”
The lights above flickered one last time. Somewhere in the distance, a monitor beeped again.
Room 9 waited.
And this time, it whispered their names.
> “Emily. Elias. Stay.”
The walls pulsed red.
Cycle 13 began.
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- Writer
