**[SYSTEM BOOTING...]**
**[LOADING SIMULATION DATA...]**
**[MEMORY SYNC IN PROGRESS...]**
Trey found himself standing in the middle of an empty road. The sky overhead was a dull gray, the kind that pressed down on the world like an impending storm. The air was still, thick with a silence that felt unnatural.
He looked down. His hands were small—childlike. His body felt frail. He was wearing a tattered school uniform, a badge on his chest that he didn't recognize. A backpack hung loosely over his shoulders. He turned his head and saw an old school building behind him, its windows shattered, walls blackened by fire. The smell of burnt wood and something rotten clung to the air.
Something was wrong. He didn't remember how he got here, and yet, there was an overwhelming feeling of familiarity, like he had been here before.
A whisper drifted in the wind.
"Why did you forget us?"
Trey's breath caught in his throat. He spun around, but the street was empty. The buildings on either side stood lifeless, their doors ajar like open mouths waiting to consume him. The silence pressed against his ears, amplifying the rapid beating of his heart.
He took a step forward, and the ground beneath him squelched. He looked down—his foot was submerged in something dark and viscous. Blood. It spread outward in an expanding pool, soaking the cracked asphalt. Then, a soft squelching noise echoed behind him.
He turned slowly.
They stood there—children, their faces twisted in agony, their bodies burned and disfigured. Some were missing limbs, others had empty eye sockets that dripped black ichor. Their mouths moved soundlessly at first, but then—
"You left us."
Trey staggered backward, his breath coming in shallow gasps. His mind screamed that this wasn't real, that it was just another simulation. But his body didn't listen. The overwhelming fear was too real.
The children moved toward him in jerky, unnatural steps, their voices rising in a chorus of accusations.
"You abandoned us!"
"You let us die!"
"Do you remember? Do you?"
Trey clutched his head as fragments of memories—memories that weren't his—flooded his mind. A burning orphanage. A locked door. A small hand slipping from his grasp as flames consumed everything. He gasped, the guilt clawing at his chest like a living thing.
The children were closer now. Their hands reached for him, their fingers cold as they latched onto his arms, his shoulders, his face. Trey screamed and tried to shake them off, but they held firm, their grip tightening, pulling him down into the growing pool of blood.
His vision blurred. He couldn't breathe.
The last thing he saw was their hollow eyes staring into his soul.
**[SIMULATION ENDED.]**
**[ERROR: DATA CORRUPTION DETECTED.]**
**[SYSTEM REBOOTING...]**