They called it the Chamber of Clarity.
A joke, if you had any sense left. No one came out clearer. Only quieter.
The door hissed shut behind me, sealing me into the heart of the Ministry's neural facility. Cold metal walls pulsed with a faint blue light, sterile and precise. There were no screens, no buttons—only smooth surfaces and embedded tech designed to monitor brainwaves, heart rate, neural activity.
I was led by two silent aides—black-suited, expressionless, like everything else the Ministry trained. They didn't speak, didn't acknowledge me. Just moved like extensions of the machine.
At the center of the room stood the Calibration Chair.
It wasn't just a chair. It was a throne for the Dominion's gods of thought. A high-backed, spinal-linked interface system with over sixty contact points, each one meant to pierce through mental defenses and extract everything. Memories, emotions, thoughts I hadn't even formed yet.
"Please sit," one of the aides said flatly.
I hesitated, then obeyed.
The moment I made contact, the chair came to life. Cold metal shifted against my back, clasping my arms and legs in a vice-tight grip. Electrodes slithered from the armrests and latched onto my forearms and temples with a soft click.
A sharp prick behind my ear told me they'd activated the direct neural tap.
> Neural latch engaged.
Cognitive stream sync at 84%… 92%… 100%.
Everything blurred.
A soft hum filled the chamber, vibrating deep inside my skull. My thoughts felt suddenly heavy, like I was thinking underwater.
I could hear my own heartbeat. Loud. Wrong.
Then: static.
Faint at first, like a forgotten voice in a crowd. Then louder. Sharper.
> "Elian."
The voice echoed in the chamber of my mind.
> "You're not supposed to forget me."
I flinched, but the restraints held me still.
The technician monitoring my data didn't react. He was a slender man with sunken eyes and long fingers tapping across a floating interface. Pale and detached.
"Subject is exhibiting irregular emotional spikes," he murmured into a comm. "Could be a fragmented memory anchor. Requesting deeper probe."
A second voice—calm, authoritative—came through the speaker. "Approved. Engage Phase Two."
The hum shifted. I felt it in my teeth.
Suddenly, my mind was no longer my own.
Images exploded across my consciousness—some mine, some not. I was walking through corridors I didn't recognize. Screams in the distance. A child's laughter warped into something shrill. Hands reaching out through light—blinding, white, endless.
I tried to breathe, but it felt like drowning in air.
> "Elian… you promised…"
My pulse spiked. I felt the machine recording every spike, every fear.
Then came the memories I knew were mine.
The first time I passed calibration. Age twelve. Three hours of screaming, then silence. They said I had a "clean mind." They said I would do well.
The first time I met Seren. Her voice was soft, gentle. Not like the others. She asked questions. She listened. She told me I was more than numbers.
The first time I questioned her.
That was the mistake.
They rewrote her. Softly. Slowly. I didn't notice at first. But she stopped asking questions. She stopped being curious.
She just started reporting.
And now she was gone.
I came back to myself with a jolt. My hands were shaking, but still bound. My vision swam with afterimages of light.
"She's not supposed to be in there," I gasped.
The technician looked up. For the first time, there was emotion in his face—confusion.
"Who?" he asked.
"The girl. From the memory core."
His expression hardened.
"There was no girl in the core. The data flagged a corrupted archive. You were supposed to have purged it."
"I did," I said. "But she's still here. Inside. Like she left something in me."
> "Find me, Elian…"
The voice again. Realer now. Not a hallucination. A presence.
The screen in front of the technician blinked red.
"Cognitive sync failing," he snapped. "Emotional resistance nearing critical."
Then, a new presence entered the chamber.
Veras.
I knew his name before he said a word. Everyone in the Memory Division did. Head of Emotional Integrity. Ruthless. Precise. Always wore black gloves, even indoors.
He stepped into the room like he owned it.
"Fascinating," he said softly, eyes scanning the data stream. "You're not breaking. Most do, by now."
"I've been through calibration before," I managed, voice hoarse.
He smiled. "Not like this."
He circled the chair, studying me like I was a puzzle. "Tell me, Elian—what do you think memory is?"
"A record," I said. "Of experience."
"Wrong. It's weight. And some memories… aren't yours to carry."
I stared at him. "What was in that core?"
He leaned in. His voice dropped low, almost a whisper.
"We think it was a ghost."
I frowned. "You don't believe in ghosts."
He shrugged. "No. But belief has nothing to do with reality. What we know is that the data didn't come from any public or private source. It didn't even come from the system. It injected itself into the network. Into you."
I shook my head. "That's not possible."
"Exactly," he said.
He tapped a control on the interface. The hum changed again—deeper, sharper. Pain stabbed through my temples as if someone were drilling into my thoughts.
> Memory stream disrupted.
Emotional resonance destabilizing.
"She left something in you," Veras said calmly. "A fragment. A message. Maybe more. And we're going to find it."
I gritted my teeth. "You don't understand. She wasn't just a memory. She knew me."
"Which makes you valuable," he replied.
The restraints loosened suddenly. I slumped forward, breath ragged.
Veras leaned in close. "You're not a technician anymore, Elian. You're a subject. And if you want to survive the next phase… you'll start remembering everything."
He turned and walked away, leaving me trembling in the Calibration Chair, staring into the dark space where the machine had drilled into my soul.
And somewhere deep inside me, a voice whispered:
> "They buried me once. Don't let them do it again."