Dr. Lila Voss adjusted the sterile gloves on her hands, the latex creaking as she leaned over the observation table. The man lying beneath the thin sheet—Elias Mercer—had no idea how close he was to unraveling everything she believed about memory. His file was a riddle: a reclusive genius who’d vanished from academia five years prior, only to resurface as a subject in her lab. She’d tracked him through dead-end leads and cryptic emails, finally convincing the government agency funding her research to let her conduct the experiment. Now, as she activated the neural scanner, the machine’s hum filled the room, a low vibration that made her teeth ache.
“What’s your earliest memory?” she asked, her voice steady despite the tension coiled in her chest.
Elias didn’t open his eyes. “The scent of pine resin. A cabin. My father’s hands, calloused and warm, smoothing wax over a violin.” His words were precise, almost too precise. Lila noted the details—pine resin, a cabin, the texture of his father’s hands—and wondered if he was fabricating the story. But the scanner’s data told another tale: his hippocampus pulsed with activity, firing in patterns no human should possess.
She flipped through the notes on her tablet. “Name a date. Any date.”
“April 12, 2017,” he said without hesitation. “Rain on the windows. A car skidded on ice. My neighbor’s dog barked until it choked on its own leash.” Lila’s pulse quickened. She checked the calendar—April 12, 2017, had been a clear day, no rain, no accidents. Yet Elias spoke as if he’d lived it.
“How old were you?”
“Six.”
The word hung in the air. Lila’s throat tightened. She’d been six when her mother left, a memory she’d buried beneath years of scientific rigor. But Elias’s recollection felt too vivid, too raw. She forced herself to focus. “What happened after the dog choked?”
He opened his eyes then, dark and unblinking. “I ran to the window. The man in the red jacket—his name was Daniel—stood in the driveway. He said, ‘You’ll forget this,’ and walked away.” Lila’s breath caught. Daniel. The name echoed in her mind, a half-remembered face from a dream she couldn’t place.
“You’re lying,” she said, but the words felt hollow.
“I’m not,” Elias replied. “You’re the one who’s lying, Dr. Voss. You think this is about memory. It’s about time.”
The machine’s alarm blared, red lights flashing. Lila turned, heart pounding, as the scanner’s data scrolled across the screen—patterns spiraling outward, fracturing like glass. Elias sat up abruptly, his movements too fluid, too deliberate.
“You’re not from here,” he said. “You never were.”
The words hit her like a physical blow. She stumbled back, knocking over a stack of files. Papers scattered, and for a moment, she saw her own face in one of the photos—a younger Lila, smiling beside a man she didn’t recognize. The image blurred, then vanished as she reached for it.
“What did you do?” she demanded.
Elias tilted his head, studying her. “I showed you the truth. Now you’ll remember.”
The room spun. Lila gripped the table, knuckles whitening. Her mind felt like a shattered mirror, fragments of memory slipping through her fingers. She thought of her mother’s voice, her father’s laughter, the smell of lavender in the house where she’d grown up. But the images were wrong—distorted, as if viewed through a cracked lens.
“You’re erasing me,” she whispered.
“I’m saving you,” Elias said. “You were never meant to remember. But now you will.”
The machine’s lights flickered, casting jagged shadows across the walls. Lila’s breath came in short, shallow gasps. She had to stop him, had to find the key to whatever he’d done—but her thoughts were slipping, unraveling like thread pulled from a fraying tapestry.
“What’s my name?” she asked, desperation lacing her voice.
Elias didn’t answer. He just watched her, his gaze piercing, as if he could see the pieces of her slipping away. And in that moment, Lila understood: this wasn’t just an experiment. It was a reckoning.
She had to find the truth before it consumed her entirely.
