Jonas didn't sleep.
He sat on the bedroom floor with the broken voice recorder in one hand and the half-burned journal in the other. His ears still rang from Mara's final words down in the blue room.
"Then prepare for the cost."
He kept waiting for her to come back with an explanation, with another lie, with a syringe, but nah she didn't. The house stayed quiet, Too quiet. Like it was holding its breath.
By dawn, his head ached from lack of rest and too many unanswered questions.
He needed to act before she did.
He opened the journal again, flipping past torn and smudged pages until he found a short entry barely more than a sentence.
Day 73: If you feel like you're waking up, you're probably not. That's just the next layer down.
It chilled him more than any photo or file.
He pushed himself to his feet, unsteady, and crept into the hallway. Mara's door was still closed.
He moved past it, careful not to breathe too loudly. Then to the living room, where the morning light spilled in through thin curtains like a spotlight exposing how little of the world outside he truly recognized.
There was something wrong with the windows, he realized.
No matter the time of day, the same still image remained: faint wind in the trees. No cars. No people. No clouds shifting.
Like a loop.
Like a simulation.
Jonas stepped back. The truth wasn't just in the basement. It was everywhere.
He grabbed a chair and walked to the front door. Propped it under the handle just in case then returned to the hallway and opened the coat closet.
Nothing inside but dust and a folded tarp. But when he pressed on the back panel, it gave a little.
Another hidden door.
He pushed. Hinges groaned.
Behind it a staircase, narrower than the basement's. This one was colder and darker.
He descended.
The air was different here. Wet. Electrical. As if the walls themselves were breathing.
And at the bottom, he found it:
A server room. Dimly lit. Dozens of humming towers lined the walls, blinking with green and amber lights. Cables snaked across the floor like roots. In the center of the room sat a single terminal screen, blue light glowing faintly.
Jonas approached it like it might bite him.
The screen displayed only one prompt:
[MEMORY RESTORATION: 23% COMPLETE]
DO YOU WISH TO CONTINUE?
[Y/N]
He hesitated.
All this time, he'd been forgetting. Letting someone else Mara, or whoever she worked for reset his mind. Hide something.
But now, he had a choice.
He hovered over the keyboard.
Y
The moment he pressed it, the screen went black.
Then another prompt appeared:
Warning: Irreversible memory restoration in progress. Prepare for cognitive dissonance.
The lights flickered. The hum of the servers deepened, almost like they were groaning.
And in Jonas's mind.
It started.
Flashes. No control. No context.
A woman screaming.
A door slamming shut.
Fire. Smoke. Blood on someone's hands maybe his.
A facility. Not a house. A row of other "patients."
Mara. In a white coat. Not smiling. Just… recording. Watching.
His voice, screaming words he didn't understand. Over and over.
And behind it all.
A shape.
Tall. Faceless. Always just out of view.
Not human.
Or maybe it was once.
His knees gave out. He fell to the floor, shaking.
The screen now read:
Restoration 47% Complete
He scrambled to his feet and slammed the terminal off. Lights dimmed. The images stopped, but not the fear. Not the knowing.
He had seen the truth.
Or at least, a sliver of it.
And it was worse than he'd imagined.