092124-01-10mu May 2026

The basement room was round, like a well. In the center stood a mirror, floor to ceiling. But it wasn’t reflecting the room. It was reflecting me —except the me in the mirror was older, scarred, wearing clothes I’d never owned.

By day five, I stopped trying. On the sixth night, I woke up with the word burning in my throat.

I touched the glass.

“Don’t read into it,” said the intake nurse, sliding a lukewarm cup of water across the counter. Her name tag read P. Harlow . She had the flat affect of someone who had watched ten thousand people arrive with the same hollow look. “It’s just inventory.”

That wasn’t true. My mother had told me I was brilliant. She had said, “The world needs people who see what isn’t there.” 092124-01-10mu

“Patient 092124-01,” she said. “You’ve been referred for extreme semantic dissonance. Do you understand what that means?”

I looked down at my bracelet. . Four more days until the tenth. Day seven: I pretended to take the injection. Hid the vial in my sleeve. In the resonance chamber, I recited the official memories perfectly—flat, obedient, dead. Dr. Venn nodded. “Improvement,” she said. The basement room was round, like a well

“To where?”