Clara no longer slept.
Every time she closed her eyes, the clinic came back for her.
Not as a place, but as something alive, walls that breathed, whispers inside the silence, footsteps that followed hers even in her dreams.
But that night was different.
Not a nightmare, a memory.
A corridor stretched out before her, narrow and dim, the emergency lights flickering like a pulse.
At the end, a door marked B-03.
When she reached for the handle, a voice whispered behind her:
"Don't open it. Not yet."
She woke up gasping.
The sheets tangled around her legs, her skin damp, her pulse too fast.
2:47 a.m.
The quiet of her apartment didn't feel like safety… it felt like surveillance.
And the voice in the dream wasn't hers. It was Adrian's.
She couldn't ignore it.
She put on her coat, slipped her badge into her pocket, and drove through the empty streets.
The clinic loomed ahead like something half-asleep, its windows dim, its corridors washed in a faint, humming light.
Every sound, the click of her heels, her own breath, seemed to echo too loudly, as if the building itself was listening.
She turned the last corner and froze.
The corridor from her dream was real.
Long, metallic, and unbearably silent.
At the far end, the same door: B-03.
Her fingers brushed the handle.
Cold. Trembling.
She hadn't even decided to turn it when a voice cut through the quiet.
"Clara."
She turned sharply.
Adrian was standing a few meters away.
The light hit half his face: pale, hollow, yet impossibly steady.
He looked both more alive and more broken than she had ever seen him.
"How did you know I was here?"
"I didn't," he said, almost smiling. "I dreamed this place. I woke up and started walking. I couldn't stop."
"You had the same dream?"
He shook his head slowly.
"No. The same memory."
They stared at each other, motionless.
The silence between them wasn't empty: it pulsed, heavy, alive.
"This is where they brought us," he said. "Before everything started."
"I don't remember that."
"Not yet."
He took a step closer.
When he spoke again, his voice was rough, almost trembling.
"But I know you were with me, Clara. I can feel it. Not as a thought… as something older. As if I've been protecting you all my life."
She felt her breath catch.
The words shouldn't have made sense and yet every part of her body recognized them.
She tried the handle. It was locked.
Adrian moved closer, his hand sliding over hers… a touch so brief it barely existed and the lock clicked open.
The sound made her shiver.
Inside, the room was dark and lifeless.
Metal beds. Cold monitors. Wires like veins torn from a machine.
On the floor, worn labels: SUBJ-M, SUBJ-V.
And in the center two chairs, still connected by broken electrodes.
Clara felt her throat tighten.
"This is where it happened," she whispered.
Adrian nodded.
"They tried to erase it. Erase us."
She turned toward him, her voice trembling.
"Why would they do that?"
"Because they knew what we were capable of," he said quietly. "They knew we could destroy each other… or heal each other."
He stepped closer.
His fingers brushed her cheek, hesitant, almost reverent.
"I won't let them hurt you again," he said softly.
"I don't know how, but I've been protecting you forever. Even when I didn't remember who you were."
Her heart stuttered.
It wasn't what he said, it was how he said it. Like a vow buried in time.
She closed her eyes. His touch wasn't urgent or desperate; it was recognition: the feeling of something finally aligning after years out of place.
"Adrian…"
He shook his head.
"Don't speak. We'll find a way out. But not here."
"Where would we go?"
"To my apartment."
"You don't remember where you live."
"Maybe not," he said. "But my body does."
He took her hand and placed it over his chest.
His heartbeat was wild and hers matched it instantly.
For a moment, they breathed the same air, two rhythms trying to remember they were one.
They left without another word.
The corridor seemed alive around them, lights flickering in their wake.
Clara didn't know if they were running away or returning to something that had been waiting for them all along.
Outside, the night smelled of rain and metal.
Adrian led her down a narrow street, turning corners as if his steps remembered what his mind could not.
He stopped at an old gray building.
He reached into his pocket, a key.
He stared at it for a moment, almost afraid.
"It's always been here," he murmured.
The door opened easily.
Inside was a small apartment: dim, dusted, but hauntingly familiar.
Two cups on the table.
A man's jacket and a woman's coat hanging side by side. An open notebook on the couch.
On the first page, written in shaky ink: If one remembers, both remember.
Clara sank onto the couch, her pulse still racing.
Adrian stood near the window, his expression unreadable, his hands trembling slightly.
"I told you everything would come back," he said quietly. "I just didn't know it would hurt this much."
She looked up at him. Not fear, not desire, something deeper. Recognition.
"What did they do to us, Adrian?"
He walked toward her slowly, the distance between them fading until there was none.
He reached out, brushing a strand of hair from her face, his hand lingering just a second longer than necessary.
"They tried to erase us," he said, his voice breaking.
"But you can't erase what was never meant to be apart."