Chapter Fifty Nine: The Fractured Mind
453 Words
Mila’s POV
The first thing she felt was cold.
Not the kind that nipped the skin — the kind that lived inside the bones.
Then came the light. Blinding, white, sterile.
And voices. So many voices.
> “Memory thread 07A — incomplete.”
“Cognitive link unstable. Increasing neuro-sync frequency.”
Mila gasped as if surfacing from deep water, lungs burning. Her fingers clawed at the air — metal restraints held her wrists down.
“Wh—where am I?” she choked out.
The room around her blurred. Machines hummed. Monitors pulsed with lines of her brain activity. Each flicker felt like a heartbeat that wasn’t entirely hers.
A man in a white coat stood nearby, typing rapidly into a tablet. “Subject M-07 is conscious. Neural reconstruction holding at eighty-one percent.”
Subject.
The word cut through her fog.
“I’m not a subject,” she rasped, trying to move. “My name is—”
But the word Mila refused to come. It caught in her throat, half-swallowed by static.
The doctor didn’t look up. “Verbal recall is fragmented. Keep her sedated until the Mnemosyne protocol completes.”
“Protocol?” she echoed weakly.
Then—
A memory.
Laughter.
The sound of waves.
Someone calling her name—
“Mila!”
And a boy turning toward her, sunlight in his hair.
Xavier.
The image flickered like a broken film reel before vanishing, replaced by darkness and the low hum of machines.
She thrashed suddenly, breaking one wrist free. The doctor shouted, alarms blared, red lights flashing across the lab.
“Contain her! Now!”
Hands grabbed her shoulders — too many — and yet her mind was miles away, searching the void for something solid.
> “You’re not real,” a voice whispered in her head.
“You’re data.”
“No!” she screamed. “I’m me!”
The lights flickered, and one of the screens exploded in a shower of sparks. The restraints snapped loose, and she stumbled off the table, bare feet hitting the freezing floor.
“Mila, stop!” someone shouted — but not a doctor.
A familiar voice.
Rough. Frantic.
She turned — just for a second — and saw a blurry figure in the doorway, security lights flashing behind him.
> “Xavier?” she whispered.
But then a needle jabbed her neck.
The world tilted.
Her vision fractured into shards of light and sound.
> “Sedate her. We can’t let her regain full memory yet.”
And the last thing she heard before the darkness swallowed her again —
was her own voice, echoing softly through the speakers:
> “Project Mnemosyne — Memory Module 07… system rebooting…”
- Writer
