Chapter Fifty: Fragments
462 Words
Mila’s POV
Sleep never came.
Every time she closed her eyes, the darkness wasn’t empty — it moved. Images flickered behind her eyelids: a room filled with bright blue lights, a metal chair, the sound of her own breathing, quick and shallow.
Then a voice — soft, female — whispering her name like a secret.
> “Mila… focus. Don’t forget who you are.”
She jerked awake, gasping. Her heart pounded like it was trying to escape her chest. The machines beside her hummed quietly, as if nothing had happened.
She looked down at her wrists — still strapped. But the buckle on the right one had loosened slightly. Maybe from her constant struggling earlier. She twisted her wrist again, testing it.
It shifted. Just a little.
“Come on,” she whispered through gritted teeth.
The sound of footsteps echoed outside. Mila froze. Two voices murmured — Lang’s, calm and clinical, and someone else’s, deeper, impatient.
> “She’s destabilizing faster than we projected.”
“She’s remembering,” Lang said. “That’s the point. The barrier’s collapsing.”
“And if she recalls everything?”
“Then we contain her. Before she remembers what Mnemosyne truly is.”
Contain her.
That word made her stomach twist.
The footsteps faded. She lay back, breathing hard, staring at the ceiling. What was Mnemosyne? What did they do to me?
Her mind throbbed — not from fear, but from something else. Something inside her head felt alive, pulsing. And then — a flash.
Blue light again. The same metal chair. But now she was sitting in it, younger — a child.
She heard crying — her own — and voices murmuring around her.
> “Initiating memory reset sequence.”
“She’s not responding—”
“Increase the current.”
A scream — hers — tore through the sound.
Then darkness.
Mila’s eyes snapped open. Sweat clung to her skin. She could feel her pulse in her temples, in her fingers, in the air itself.
“No,” she whispered. “No, no, no.”
She forced her wrist again — the strap snapped. She yanked her arm free and sat up quickly, tearing off the monitor leads. The alarms began to beep, red lights flaring across the room.
Outside, voices shouted.
Mila stumbled toward the door — locked. But the keypad beside it glowed faintly. She pressed her palm against it, desperate — and the light turned green.
The door clicked open.
She stared at her hand, stunned.
How—
No time.
She slipped into the hallway, barefoot, the cold floor biting her skin. The lights flickered as she ran, alarms echoing through the corridors.
And somewhere far below, the entire facility hummed louder — as if awakening with her.
- Writer
