…The light was no longer alone in the room.
Something else had begun to take shape. Something unseen, yet felt in the chest, in the heaviness of the air, in the way silence had grown deeper than the mere absence of sound.
Celine spoke, her voice barely holding together:"
_If you begin… you may not return as you are."
Lilia turned to her and replied:"
_And you?" Then she sighed and asked, "Do you think I am who I am now?"
The words struck Celine in a painful, precise place.
She, too, was unsure of herself.
The man in the black coat finally moved. He stepped closer, then stopped. He did not want to appear as though he were imposing anything. This moment, he understood, could not be governed by force.
"There is something we did not say," he said with measured calm "What was erased from your memories was not only to protect you… but to protect us."
Eva slowly raised her head:"
_From what?"
The man did not look at her:"
_From the outcome."
Then he pressed another button. A single screen came back to life, and an old text appeared: disordered lines, fragmented reports, truncated sentences.
*Synchronization exceeded expectations.
*The link between subjects A and B is inseparable.
*In the event of forced separation, an unexpected side effect appears.
Celine stepped closer without realizing it and said:"
_This… this is me and Lilia."
_"Yes," the enigmatic man replied.
_"And what is the side effect?"
He fell silent. Then he said:"
_Shared consciousness."
Lilia felt a shiver run through her arm:"
_What does that mean?"
Eva answered this time, as if she already knew:"
_It means that some memories no longer belong to a single person. They are shared. Felt from two sides. Seen from different angles."
Celine stepped back:"
_That's why I was feeling things I didn't understand. Fear that wasn't mine. Sadness with no cause in my life."
_"And that's why we couldn't keep you together," the man said. "The closer you got, the stronger the phenomenon became."
Lilia looked at the machine, then at Celine, and asked:"
_And if I recover my memory?"
The man answered with blunt honesty:"
_You will not return alone. And you will not remain alone."
A long moment of silence.
Then something unexpected happened.
One of the lights went out. A small spark, then darkness in a corner of the room. The devices emitted a short tone, not an alarm, but closer to an admission of failure.
Eva clenched her fist:"This isn't us."
The man turned sharply:"
_Shut down the secondary system."
But the system did not respond. Lilia felt a powerful pulse in her head. A fleeting image crossed her mind. Not a full memory. Just a sensation: another room. A child crying. A hand reaching… and not reaching.
To be continued...