Clara returned to the clinic before dawn.
She had spent the night staring at the words in her notebook: Find the door, without remembering when she had written them.
The security guard let her in without a word. Her badge worked again, as if the restrictions from the past days had never existed.
Everything looked the same, yet the light, the walls, even the air felt distorted, like the building had forgotten itself.
She had promised she wouldn't go back downstairs, but her feet decided otherwise.
Each step echoed like a heartbeat, and her pulse began to match the rhythm of the metal beneath her shoes.
The Cognitive Synchronization Lab was untouched, yet colder, as if it had been waiting for her.
The central monitor was already on.
Across the screen blinked a message: ARCHIVE – Access granted.
Clara hesitated, then reached for the keyboard.
The system opened, displaying a list of numbered files: dates, codes, sterile precision.
One caught her eye: Subject M. – Observation Log 00. Pre-experiment phase.
There was no such thing as a "pre-experiment phase."
She clicked.
The screen flickered, then filled with light. It wasn't the lab she knew, it was brighter, more like an interview room.
In the middle sat Adrian, calm, composed, maybe a little younger. Across the table, a figure with her back to the camera. Tied hair. A white coat.
And then the voice: calm, professional, perfectly steady.
"My name is Dr. Clara Voss. I'll be guiding you through the cognitive mapping sessions."
Clara felt her own words as if they belonged to someone else, to a woman she had forgotten she once was. On the screen, Adrian looked up. His eyes seemed to recognize something beyond the moment.
"We've already met," he said quietly.
"Not here. But I don't think you remember."
Clara's heart slammed once in her chest. Then the recording froze and cut off.
No sound. No end. Only silence.
She opened the metadata tab. The file was dated three months before the official start of Project MNEMOS.
Three months before she had even joined the clinic.
And yet her name: Dr. Clara Voss was there, already registered.
How could I be in the project before I arrived?
She scrolled through the archive, but most of the files were corrupted or locked under ACCESS RESTRICTED – RINALDI OVERRIDE.
She opened one at random, a short test transcript.
"Subject M.: Response latency null. Emotional resonance detected."
"Observer: Voss, C. Notes: Inexplicable anticipation to stimulus. Possible prior exposure."
She stopped at that line.
Possible prior exposure.
Clinical language, meaning only one thing: they knew each other.
A voice behind her made her jump.
"Clara. You shouldn't be here."
Rinaldi stood at the doorway, a dark folder in his hands. He didn't sound angry, only tired, as if he knew he was too late.
"What are these files?"
"Nothing you need to see."
"You're lying."
"I'm protecting you."
She turned fully toward him.
"Protecting me from what?"
He didn't answer.
He set the folder on the table, eyes shadowed and unreadable.
"You know how easily memory deceives us," he said softly.
"The brain fills in the blanks with what it wants to find."
Clara's voice trembled, but her words were sharp.
"And what if it fills them with what someone else took away?"
A flicker crossed his expression: not anger, but guilt.
"Adrian isn't improving. The more you see him, the worse he gets."
"Why?"
"Because you're part of his disorder."
He left before she could speak again.
The door closed with a softness that felt cruel.
Clara stayed still for a long moment. Then the monitor blinked again. A new file had appeared, untitled.
She opened it.
A still image, grainy and colorless: two figures connected to a machine, electrodes on their foreheads, hands nearly touching.
The faces were blurred, but her body knew before her mind did.
It was her. It was him.
Then a synthetic voice, mechanical, monotone: "Synchronization successful. Emotional parameters exceeding threshold. Advise termination."
The clip froze on a single frame, a hand brushing another.
Clara stared until her vision blurred. She closed the file, saved the image to a flash drive, slipped it into her coat pocket, and walked out.
From that moment on, nothing she remembered could be trusted.
Outside, the clinic was bathed in orange light. Everything looked ordinary, but the world had lost its weight.
As she passed Rinaldi's office, she heard his voice through the half-closed door.
"She wasn't supposed to find it this soon. Increase the control sessions. We can't lose them both."
Clara moved quietly down the corridor, the flash drive burning against her palm.
Her reflection in the glass looked like another woman.
A woman who remembered too much.