The hospital room was quiet, almost painfully so. Sunlight slipped through the blinds in thin, lazy lines across the floor, cutting across the sterile white tiles and the slow rhythm of a ventilator that wasn't Harper's.
Her body lay still in the bed, pale and fragile, wires snaking from her arms and chest like delicate veins of silver. A heart monitor ticked steadily, monotonous, each beep marking time she hadn't counted in months.
And then it skipped.
Harper's eyes fluttered.
At first, nothing happened. No memory. No recognition. Just the weight of emptiness pressing down on her chest, making every breath feel like inhaling lead.
Then—fragments.
A flash of red light. Mirrors. Faces she didn't know… or maybe she did. A tunnel, a staircase, screams, and someone falling. A shadow in white.
She gasped, jerking against the restraints as if the memories themselves were chains. Her hands, trembling, pressed against her temples.
Her voice barely escaped her throat: "No… not real… it can't be real…"
But it was.
The doctors hadn't noticed yet. The nurse had stepped out for a moment. The machines monitored vital signs but not consciousness of this kind—the kind Harper now carried inside her mind: a fractured, dangerous memory that refused to stay buried.
And then her eyes focused.
At the door.
Someone—standing quietly, watching.
Not a doctor. Not a nurse.
A figure draped in shadow, tall, still. Their face obscured by a hood. Their presence radiated recognition—as though they had been waiting for her.
Harper's pulse raced. She wanted to scream but couldn't. Her mind reached for the words, for reason, for logic—and found nothing.
The shadow stepped closer.
A whisper, soft, almost inside her own head:
"Welcome back."
Meanwhile, in the city, Matthew, Rin, and Sora moved through their ordinary lives, oblivious.
Matthew brushed past the same store window again, his reflection just slightly off—but he didn't notice.
Rin paused at the corner, something pricking the edges of her mind, a sense that today was wrong, that everything was just a little too perfect—but she forced the thought away.
Sora, in a quiet apartment, stared at her tea and traced the rhythm of four beats, pause. Her fingers tingled, a strange familiarity she could not name.
All three lived in safety. All three lived without memory.
And yet… the world around them had not forgotten.
Back in the hospital, Harper's lips moved soundlessly, forming words she did not know she could speak:
"I remember you… and you… and the others…"
The shadow nodded once, then turned. Before Harper could move, it had vanished.
She sat up in bed. Alarmed nurses rushed in, but her eyes were different now—alert, sharp, and searching. Searching for something beyond the sterile white walls. Searching for the truths her mind had hidden, truths that refused to be forgotten.
In the weeks that followed, Harper's recovery was too perfect. She could walk without aid, her motor skills flawless, her cognition sharp—like she had absorbed knowledge far beyond the hospital's records. But the doctors were puzzled. No one knew how she had survived the coma, how she could remember things she had never learned.
Only Harper did.
And in the quiet moments, when no one else was looking, she closed her eyes and saw the tunnels, the mirrors, the falling shadows, and the voice of the system whispering just beyond comprehension.
She remembered Sora. She remembered Matthew. She remembered Rin.
She didn't remember the games.
Not fully.
But she remembered enough to know…
They were not safe.
Something waited.
And it knew they were awake.