The name clung to Nero's mind like blood on tile.
He knew it. Not in a memory — but in a *feeling*, like a scream you never heard but still haunts you.
The voice from the recorder looped again as if mocking him:
> "Nero Kavanagh… Remember Room Zero…"
He picked it up, clicking it off with a sharp snap.
The girl across from him — the one with one green eye and one cloudy one — was no longer calm. She looked like she'd heard that voice before. Recently. Too recently.
"Who recorded this?" Nero asked.
She didn't answer.
He took a step closer. "You're not just another experiment, are you? You were with him longer than you said."
She hesitated, then nodded, slow and small.
"My name is *Sarai*. I was with him for one year, seven months, and four days. He called it *The Calibration Period*."
"Calibration?" Nero echoed.
She sat back on the rusted chair as though the weight of the words aged her. "He doesn't just experiment with trauma. He tunes it. Like a violin. Stress, fear, joy, grief — he tests which emotion makes the mind most... *pliable*."
A metallic crash echoed from somewhere in the observatory's upper levels. Both of them froze, waiting for footsteps that never came.
Nero leaned against a cracked pillar, his eyes sharp. "Room Zero. What is it? Where is it?"
Sarai's voice dropped to a whisper. "That's the problem. *It doesn't exist on paper*. It's the first room, the prototype. No files. No key. It was sealed before the facility ever opened to the public. That's where he started his earliest trials. And that's where I was taken after I stopped responding to standard methods."
Nero's pulse spiked. "You *remember* it?"
She nodded again, visibly shaking.
"There's no light in Room Zero. Not even a bulb. You hear sounds before you realize they're in your head. You think someone's in the corner until you understand that *you're the corner*."
He let that sit in silence.
Then he asked, "And what about *me*? Why is he after me?"
Sarai looked up, her good eye filled with a strange mix of fear and regret.
"You were his last success, Nero."
---
He didn't drive home. He walked — fast, through alleys and empty blocks, letting the city wash over his mind while it screamed inside.
He didn't remember ever being in Room Zero.
But how would he?
The Weaver didn't just erase memory — he rewired identity.
Nero had always chalked up the gaps in his past to the foster system, moving from institution to institution after his parents died. But what if the foster system was just a curtain? A well-written lie?
He reached his apartment and immediately went for the shelf above the kitchen — pulled down an old shoebox.
Inside were the items he never showed anyone:
* A photo of himself at age eight with two people whose faces had been burned off with acid.
* A plastic hospital bracelet with no name, just the number **#000**.
* And a sketch — crude, shaky — of a room with no windows, only tally marks.
He used to believe he'd drawn it during a panic attack.
Now he wasn't so sure.
---
The next morning, the city felt louder.
The air was buzzing. As if something was preparing to break.
Nero went to the only person who might still owe him honesty: **Detective Lin Arden**, an old contact, half-retired, but still with fingers in all the right files.
He met her at a run-down diner on 5th Street. The bell above the door squeaked like it was dying of old age.
"Room Zero?" she repeated, raising a brow as she sipped her black coffee. "Where the hell did you hear that name?"
"I need answers, Lin. Real ones."
She stared at him for a long moment. Then she slid a napkin across the table and began to write.
> *ROOKRIDGE ASYLUM – FILES CLASSIFIED UNDER PROJECT: MINDGLASS*
> *Access via Sub-Basement, north elevator shaft.
> Red door. Always locked. Key is biometric.*
Nero blinked. "You knew?"
"I knew rumors," she said coldly. "I knew some kids from the foster system vanished. Some came back changed. Others… never came back at all. The ones that did were told they'd had breakdowns or suffered 'delirium trauma.'"
She looked him in the eye.
"I never believed the stories, Nero. But you... you're the only one who still hears echoes."
He stood. "Then I'm going to Rookridge."
"You won't make it in," she warned. "The place is sealed. Has been since the fire."
Nero's reply was sharp, certain.
"Seals only work on people who believe in locks."
---
That night, just past midnight, Nero stood before the broken gates of **Rookridge Asylum**.
The building loomed like a cathedral of regret. Half its windows were boarded. The rest reflected nothing.
No stars. No sky.
Only black.
He found the elevator shaft — abandoned, rusted, but still accessible.
He climbed down manually, hands aching by the time he reached the sub-basement.
And there it was.
**The red door.**
No handle. No keyhole. No sign.
Only a smooth black panel.
He pressed his hand to it without knowing why.
It scanned. Beeped.
Then clicked open.
Inside was a long corridor. Walls lined with two-way mirrors. Echoes of static whispered from unseen speakers. The air smelled of cold metal and antiseptic.
And then he saw it.
A door at the end. Stamped with one single mark:
> **ROOM 0**
As he reached for the handle, he heard a voice behind him — distant but clear.
> "You came back… just like I knew you would."
Nero spun around.
There was no one there.
Only the sound of faint ticking.
And somewhere deep in the walls — the beginning of laughter.