I slammed my fists against the seamless white wall. "Let me out! Do you hear me? Let me out!"
The silence that answered was absolute, a heavy, suffocating blanket. I was back at square one. But it wasn't the same. I knew it was a lie. The white walls were no longer just walls, they were a stage set. The door wasn't just gone, it was hidden. And I knew it was under the floor.
I went to the desk. The puzzle box was there. The same sequence. Serpent. Galaxy. Rings. I pressed them. The click. The panel in the headboard sliding open. The compass. It was all there, a perfect, nauseating repeat. I held the compass. It pointed to the window. The three carvings on the window. The sequence that didn't work.
I was trapped. Not just in this room, but in whatever this place was. I thought, "How the heck did I get here?"
"Enjoying your encore?" Aris's voice, a venomous whisper inside my skull. "We found the temporal instability in your consciousness. A fascinating feedback loop. We've patched it. For now. But it's a persistent bug in your programming, Carole. A desire to break the narrative."
Programming. Bug. She spoke of my mind, my life, as if it were faulty software. A cold dread, deeper and more profound than any fear I had felt so far, settled in my gut. What if she was right? What if none of this was a dream? What if this was real, and the real world, the deer, the crash, was the glitch? A corrupted file?
No. I clung to the memory of my father's voice, the metallic tang of blood. That was my anchor. That was real. This was the lie. The false truth.
It had to be.
I couldn't just repeat the same actions. I had to change the variable. The key. The compass. The window. What else was there?
I went to the bed. I stripped the sheets, the thin, coarse blanket. I tore them into long, thick strips. My actions were frantic, unhinged, the movements of a cornered animal. I tied the strips together, creating a makeshift rope. It was flimsy, pathetic, but it was a change.
I looped one end of the rope around the central bar of the window, the one that the compass had pointed to. It was slick and smooth, offering no grip. I pulled hard, testing the knot. It held. I fed the other end of the rope under the bed, tying it to the heavy, solid frame of the headboard. A taut line stretched from the window to the bed, cutting diagonally across the room.
I picked up the compass again. The obsidian needle spun, a dizzying black star. It was waiting for an input. A command. I had given it intent before, the raw emotion of my memories. What if I needed to give it something more? A physical action?
I stood on the chair, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs. I took the compass in both hands, holding it high. I focused, not on my memories, but on the present. On the lie. On the sterile white room. On Dr. Aris's voice in my head. On the feeling of being a specimen under a microscope. I poured all my rage, all my frustration, all my helplessness into the small, wooden object.
I slammed the compass against the bar of the window.
It wasn't a hard blow. It was more of a desperate, rhythmic tapping. A coded message of pure fury. Tap. Tap. Tap. The compass, I noticed, was growing warm in my hands. Warmer. Hot. Painfully hot. It was absorbing my anger, my will to break free, and converting it into something else.
The needle stopped spinning. It locked, pointing directly at the floor, at the spot where the secret passage had opened before. But the floor was solid. Seamless. I kept tapping, my knuckles raw, the compass searing hot against my palms. I was a madwoman, beating a meaningless rhythm against a meaningless object in a meaningless room.
But something was happening.
The air began to shimmer, not just around the window, but throughout the entire room. The white walls started to run, like cheap paint in the rain. They didn't change color, but lost their definition, their edges blurring into a hazy, pearlescent fog. The humming was back, but it wasn't from the bedframe this time. It was from everything. From the floor, the walls, the very air I was breathing. A low, resonant thrum that vibrated in my teeth.
The sound of my tapping changed. It was no longer a dull thud against metal. It had become a crisp, clean chime. A single, clear note hanging in the shimmering air.
Clink.
I froze, my hands mid air. The room held its breath.
The floor began to change. The white linoleum didn't retract. It dissolved. It broke apart into a billion tiny, glittering motes of light, like dust motes in a sunbeam, but pure white. They swirled and danced, forming a miniature galaxy at my feet. And in the center of that swirling cosmos, the dark opening reappeared. The passage. The door.
I had used brute force. Not physical strength, but a different kind of strength. The strength of my unprincipled, unhinged will. I had refused to play their game by their rules. I had broken the board.
I let the compass drop. It hit the floor with a soft thud, its heat dissipating. I didn't need it anymore. I scrambled down from the chair and swung my legs into the opening, my heart a wild drum solo against my ribs. The drop was longer this time. I landed awkwardly, rolling on the rough concrete floor. Pain shot up my ankle, but I ignored it. I was back in the corridor.
It was different this time. The flickering maintenance lights were gone. In their place was a soft, ambient luminescence that seemed to emanate from the concrete walls themselves, bathing the tunnel in a cold, blue-grey light. The air was still, the hiss and groan of the pipes silenced. And my blood trail was gone.
Confusion, curiosity, fear. I was alone again. A fresh start to their sick game. Had the man in room 307 ever existed? Was he just another layer of the deception, a phantom conjured to give me a sliver of hope, only to snatch it away?
I pushed the thought down. Hope was a liability. Curiosity was a weakness. I needed to be a machine. An algorithm of survival.
I started walking. The corridor seemed longer, more oppressive in the eerie blue light. The walls felt closer, the ceiling lower. I listened, my senses straining for any sound, any clue. There was only the soft scuff of my leather slippers on the gritty floor.
After what felt like an eternity, I saw it. A door. Not a simple opening like the others, but a real door. It was made of a dark, heavy wood, polished to a deep gloss. A brass handle, tarnished with age, was set in its center. A small, tarnished brass plate was affixed to the door at eye level. Engraved on it was a single word: "LIMBO."
My hand hovered over the handle. Was this a trap? Was this another test? Every instinct screamed at me to turn back, to retrace my steps, to find another way. But there was no other way. There was only forward.
I turned the handle. It was cold, heavy in my palm. The door swung inward with a soft, pneumatic hiss.
The room beyond was not just a room. It was a space that defied logic, a physical paradox. A perfect cube, maybe fifty feet on a side, but the walls were not solid. They were made of water. Not water held back by glass, but free standing, shimmering, vertical planes of liquid, stretching from floor to ceiling. They moved with a slow, hypnotic rhythm, swelling and receding like a gentle tide. Through the shimmering walls, I could see distorted images, fleeting glimpses of other places, a sun drenched beach, a bustling city street, a snow covered forest. The air was thick with the scent of salt and ozone.
In the exact center of the cube, suspended in mid air by an invisible force, was a single object. A key. It was identical to the one I had found in my room. The brass, double toothed design, the triangular hole.
And I was not alone.
Standing before the water-walls, her back to me, was a woman. She was tall and slender, dressed in a flowing, silver gown that seemed to ripple with the same liquid light as the walls. Her hair was a cascade of black silk, and when she turned, I saw her face. It was Dr. Aris. But not the Aris from the monitors. This was a different version of her. Younger. Her eyes were not cold and clinical, but a deep, stormy grey, filled with a swirling tempest of emotion. Fear, guilt, and a fierce, desperate resolve.
"Carole," she said, her voice a melodic whisper that seemed to come from the water itself. "You shouldn't have come here."
"Where is here?" I demanded, my voice tight with suspicion.
"A waystation. A place between the pages. A server room where corrupted data is sent to be purged." She gestured to the shimmering walls. "These are the memories. The stories. The lives that failed to integrate. The fragments of consciousness that couldn't be reconciled with the primary narrative."
Corrupted data. Fragments of consciousness. It was the same cold, detached language, but the tone was different. This Aris sounded... apologetic.
"What do you want?" I asked, taking a cautious step into the room. The air felt thick, like wading through a dense fog. My eyes flickered to the key, hanging motionless in the center of the room.
"The same thing you want," she said, her gaze following mine. "An end. But they won't let us. The Architects. They just keep resetting the simulation, hoping for a different outcome. Hoping you'll break. Hoping you'll accept their narrative."She turned, facing me fully, her stormy eyes locking onto mine. "I am not one of them, Carole. I am a prisoner, just like you. A fragment of another patient. Another failed integration."
Another lie. It was always a lie. A new layer to the onion, designed to confuse, to misdirect. But this one felt different. There was a raw, exposed nerve of truth in her voice.
"How do I get out of here?" I asked, my voice low and steady. I was done with the games. I wanted answers, not more riddles.
"The key," she said, nodding towards the floating object. "But it's not as simple as taking it. It's a test. A final arbiter. The Architects call it the 'Guardian's Gambit'. Only one can pass through the door it unlocks. One mind, one consciousness. The other… is purged. Overwritten."
Purged. The word hung in the air, cold and final. I looked at the key, then back at her. She was offering me a choice. A choice that wasn't a choice. It was a duel.
"Why should I believe you?" I asked. "You're one of them."
"I was," she admitted, a flicker of pain crossing her features. "I was the lead programmer on this project. I built the cages. I designed the puzzles. I am the architect of your prison. But I saw what they were doing. The cruelty. The refusal to let go. So I integrated myself. A ghost in their machine. A failed fragment with just enough awareness to try and help the next one. You."
Her confession was a bombshell, a revelation so profound it threatened to shatter my already fragile reality. The programmer of my prison. My tormentor, now my would-be saviour. It was a twist so convoluted, so absurdly tragic, it had the ring of truth.
"How do I know this isn't just another puzzle?" I countered, my voice hard. "Another layer of the lie? You're going to lead me to the key, and then the mountain-man is going to appear and crush my skull."
"The mountain-man, or 'Guardian' as we call him, is a sub-routine. A reset function. He is a consequence of failure, not a participant in the test. He only appears when the narrative is compromised beyond repair." She took a step closer, her silver gown whispering against the floor. "This test is clean. A binary choice. One of us walks out of Limbo. The other… is deleted."
Deleted.
The word was a physical blow. I looked at the key, its brass gleaming under the strange, aqueous light. It was no longer a key. It was a weapon. A guillotine.
"Why me?" I asked, the question tearing from my throat. "Why were you waiting for me?"
"Because you are different. The others… they broke. They gave up. They accepted the reality we gave them. But you… you fought. You found the glitches. You used them. You became unhinged, and in doing so, you became unpredictable. You are the first anomaly they haven't been able to categorize or control." A flicker of something akin to pride, or perhaps hope, passed through her stormy eyes. "You are our only chance."
"Our chance?" I shot back. "You talk about us being a 'we,' but this is a zero sum game. I take the key, you're deleted. I don't, and what? We both stay in this waterlogged room for eternity?"
"There is another way," she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "A third option they didn't program for. A paradox. If both of us touch the key at the exact same moment, with the exact same intent, it should create a cascade failure. A system crash that could rupture the entire simulation. It's a risk. It could wipe us both. Or it could break the cage for everyone trapped here."
It was a beautiful lie. A tempting, perfectly constructed lie, tailored to my desperation. I, the lone wolf, the survivor, was being offered a partnership. A shared victory. It was the one thing I wasn't prepared for. The one thing that could make me weak. I thought of the man in room 307, the one I had promised to lead to freedom. The one whose face I couldn't quite remember.
But I was not a fool. I had seen enough, felt enough, to know that trust was a fatal error in this place. Every kindness was a baited hook. Every offer of help was a hidden blade.
"Show me," I said, my voice flat, devoid of emotion.
She nodded, as if she had expected this. "The intent is crucial. It must be pure. A singular, unwavering desire to destroy the system. Not to escape, not to survive, but to obliterate it. To bring it all down." She began to walk slowly around the room, her hand hovering just above the surface of the water-walls. The images within them flickered and warped at her touch. A child's laughter on a beach, a couple arguing in a kitchen, a car crash on a rain-slicked highway. Fragments. Lives. "If one of us hesitates, if our intent is polluted by selfishness, by the desire to be the one who walks out, then the paradox fails. The key will choose. And the other will be purged."
We were two predators circling the same scrap of meat, but she was talking about a shared hunt. I watched her, my mind a whirlwind of calculation, trying to find the angle, the trick. The mountain-man was a sub-routine, she'd said. What was she? A super-routine? The final boss? The key itself felt like a lure, a focal point to draw two disparate, broken consciousnesses into a single point of conflict. A kill-box for the mind.
She stopped her pacing and turned to face me from across the room. "Think of it, Carole. An end to the tests. An end to the resets. No more white rooms. No more corridors. Just… silence. The final peace."
It was a sermon for the damned, and I was the entire congregation. Her words were a siren's song, promising the one thing I craved more than anything: an end to the uncertainty. An end to the constant, gnawing suspicion that every breath was part of someone else's design.
"Alright," I said, the word tasting like ash in my mouth. "How?"
"We approach together. Slowly. No sudden movements. We must synchronize our heart rates, our breathing. We become a single organism moving towards a single goal." She demonstrated, taking a slow, deep breath in, holding it, and then letting it out in a controlled sigh. "Match me. Breathe with me."
I copied her. In. Hold. Out. The air in the room grew thick, heavy with unspoken intent. I could feel the rhythm of my own heart, a frantic, trapped bird beating against my ribs. I tried to slow it, to force it into the calm, steady cadence she was projecting. It was a battle of wills, my body screaming in protest against the forced tranquility. This felt wrong, a violation of my very instincts. My survival instinct was telling me to flee, to find another way, to not trust the woman who had built my prison.
But the alternative was more of the same. More white rooms, more corridors, more Guardians. More of the slow, grinding erosion of my sanity. This was a gamble, but it was the only game in town.
We began to move. A slow, synchronized glide towards the center of the room, towards the hanging key. The water-walls around us seemed to hold their breath, the images within them freezing into perfect, silent tableaus. A woman smiling. A dog barking. A car swerving. Trapped moments, stolen from lives I didn't know.
We were ten feet away. Five. The key seemed to pulse with a soft, golden light. It was the only warm thing in this cold, aqueous space. My eyes flickered to Aris's face. Her expression was one of intense, unwavering concentration, her stormy eyes fixed on the key. There was no deceit there, no hint of the predator. Just a desperate, shared purpose. For a fleeting, foolish second, I almost believed her.
We were a foot away. I could feel a faint vibration coming from the key, a low, resonant hum that seemed to sync with my own slowing heartbeat. This was it. The moment of truth. The paradox. The system crash.
"Ready?" she whispered, her voice a soft caress.
"Ready," I lied.
We reached out, our hands moving in perfect tandem, our fingers stretching towards the brass. Her hand was slender, pale, the nails neatly manicured. Mine were torn, ragged, the knuckles bruised and swollen. A study in contrasts. The programmer and the program. The warden and the prisoner.
Our fingertips were a millimeter away. A fraction of a second from contact.
And then she moved.
It wasn't a lunge or a sudden strike. It was a subtle shift, a minute acceleration so precise it was almost imperceptible. Her index finger extended, tapping the key a nanosecond before mine could make contact.
A trap. The most elegant, the most cruel, of all. She hadn't been offering a partnership. She had been positioning me. Making me complicit in my own demise. The paradox wasn't a shared risk; it was a choice. A test of my gullibility. And I had failed.
The key blazed with an unbearable, white-hot light. The hum escalated into a deafening shriek that tore through my mind, a sound of grinding metal and tearing flesh. I felt a physical force, a violent shove, not from her, but from the key itself. It was rejecting me.
I flew backwards, slamming into one of the water-walls. It wasn't solid. I plunged through it, the shock of the cold liquid hitting me like a physical blow. I was drowning, not in water, but in memories that weren't mine. The joy of a first bike ride, the sting of a playground insult, the warmth of a mother's hug. The life of the little girl on the beach. A jumbled, chaotic flood of stolen emotion. I was being purged. Overwritten.
Then, just as my lungs screamed for air that would never come, I was spat out. I landed hard on the concrete floor of the corridor, slick with phantom water, gasping and heaving. The door to "LIMBO" was gone. The water-walls were gone. Aris was gone. The key was gone.
. . .