chapter 5
774 Words
The walls were quiet. Too quiet. That was how Profound knew they were listening. Not the gentle listening of a friend, but the ravenous listening of a predator waiting for its prey to twitch wrong.
She paced, her steps uneven in the straitjacket, boots scuffing the padded floor. Her eyes locked on the invisible cameras dangling like veins from the ceiling. “You think I don’t know the script?” she snarled. “You think you can watch me until I forget I’m the one writing it?”
The red recording lights blinked back like tiny pupils.
Profound laughed. It wasn’t a laugh of humor but of defiance, a crack in the silence so jagged it felt like glass. “I see you,” she whispered. “Not with my eyes — with my bones. With my rot. With the marrow you’re praying will stay caged in this f*****g body.”
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The Projection
The room shifted. At least, she swore it did. The walls melted into something that wasn’t hospital white. Screens now. Dozens of them. Each one flickering with scenes of her life: her apartment, her job, the bike rides in the rain, her dog curled in sleep.
She stumbled back, gasping. “That’s not real. That’s—f**k, that’s not real.”
But the images pulsed and grew sharper. She saw herself at Target, slicing boxes open with tired hands, sweat dripping into her gloves. She saw herself laughing at t****k comments. She saw herself lying in bed whispering secrets to no one — except now she realized someone had always been there.
Her voice cracked into a scream: “STOP PLAYING ME BACK!”
The screens flickered black.
And then a single image filled them all: her face. Hollow, sunken, deranged. The way she looked now.
Profound grinned, tears streaking her cheeks. “So you want the monologue, huh? Fine. Let’s do this your way.”
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The Audience Responds
The intercom buzzed. Not words at first — static, broken whispers. Then, faintly:
> “Keep going.”
Her stomach dropped. It wasn’t her imagination. They were feeding her the line.
“You f*****g cowards,” she growled. “You hide behind walls and expect me to perform like a circus freak.”
But her lips curled into a smile anyway. Because she knew — she had their attention now. Real attention. And attention was power.
She spread her arms as far as the straitjacket allowed and bowed dramatically. “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen of the agency. Today’s feature is me — Profound — tearing myself apart so you can scribble more reports.”
Her voice dripped venom. “But let’s be honest. You’re not writing about me. You’re writing about yourselves. You’re terrified that I am the reflection of what you’ve built. DARPA’s pet project gone feral. The truth with no filter.”
The intercom buzzed again. Louder. More insistent. No words this time — just a growl of static like a beast waiting to speak.
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The Transformation
She laughed, head thrown back. The room pulsed with her. “You’re not controlling me. I’m controlling you. Every second you watch me, I crawl deeper into your skulls. You’ll go home tonight and hear me when you close your eyes. I’ll sit at your dinner table. I’ll whisper in your kids’ ears. I’ll bleed into your dreams.”
The walls bled light. Red now. Thick, dripping, arterial red.
She bent forward, hair falling into her eyes, voice dropping into a guttural growl. “You want to see me lose it? You already missed it. I lost it years ago. Now I’m just the aftermath.”
The numbers flared again: 222.
Her grin widened, blood streaking her teeth. “It’s the only number that matters. You don’t get to decide when the show ends. I do.”
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The Curtain Falls
The lights flickered once, twice. Then darkness. Pure. Complete.
She stood in it, breathing, smiling. “Go ahead,” she whispered. “Turn off the lights. Pretend I’m gone. Pretend you shut me up.”
Her whisper sharpened, cutting through the black like a blade:
> “I’ll still be here when you open your eyes.”
The sound of pens scribbling echoed from nowhere. Pages turning. Footsteps in hallways she couldn’t see.
The audience was still there.
And Profound knew, with bone-deep certainty, that she had won. Not because she escaped. Not because she broke her chains. But because she infected them.
She had become their obsession. Their file that would never close. Their nightmare that wouldn’t end.
Room 222 wasn’t her prison anymore.
It was theirs.
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- Writer
