Log 01 – Day 0:
Subjects D-01, M-02, L-03, J-04, and E-05 placed in isolation. Responses within expected emotional variance.
The lights never turned off.
Derek stopped sleeping on purpose, then by accident. The ceiling hummed like a machine breathing. He began to imagine it was counting with him, whispering numbers through the vents.
Maya whispered back once and swore she heard the room answer.
> "We're being recorded," Leo muttered.
"We're being rewritten," Jordan said.
Sometimes the white walls flickered black for a second, and they would all scream because it proved the world outside the room still existed.
Log 152 – Year 2:
Subject M-02 exhibits elevated vitals when isolated from group. Internal changes detected. Proceed with non-invasive observation.
Of course. Here is a short, visceral version focusing on that apocalyptic setting.
---
The white room was not clean. Grime smeared the walls. The air stank of rust and decay.
Maya was pinned to the stained table, held fast by leather straps. Clear tubes snaked from her arms and a needle-thin one dripped crimson from her temple into a glass cylinder. It kept her conscious. It kept her feeling.
They moved around her in silence—figures in tattered lab coats, their faces hidden behind pitted silver masks. Their eyes were dark glass. They didn't speak. The only sounds were the wet, rhythmic suck-pull of a pump and Maya's ragged breath.
One of them raised a tool. It was a brutal, mechanical saw, crusted with brown residue. There was no antiseptic, no anesthesia, only the sharp, chemical burn of the fluid in her IV keeping her awake.
The whine of the saw filled the room.
Pressure, then an unimaginable, tearing pain in her abdomen. She screamed, but it was a silent, internal thing. Her body arched against the straps, a useless protest.
Through a blur of agony, she saw a mask place something into the bloody hollow. It was black, glistening, and moved with a slow, peristaltic pulse.
The feeling of it settling inside her, a cold, living stone in the cradle of her womb, was worse than the cut.
The masks stepped back. Their job was done.
Maya was left, stitched with coarse thread, the parasite nesting inside her. The tubes kept her alive. The silence was worse than any scream. She was a ruined temple, and the god within her was hungry.
Maya dreamed of movement beneath her ribs — not pain, not sickness, just other. She tried to explain it to Derek through the glass, but his lips made shapes she could no longer understand.
She pressed her hand to her chest. Something pressed back.
Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was growth. Maybe it was the lab learning to breathe through her.
Log 390 – Year 3:
Subject L-03 shows resistance to stress stimuli. Increase duration.
Leo counted heartbeats until they blurred into silence.
They wanted him to break; he decided not to give them the pleasure. But defiance turned hollow when even the screams sounded recorded.
Jordan stopped talking altogether. He carved words in the air with invisible hands, teaching the walls his own language. One day the wall answered with static that sounded like laughter.
Casual note, Technician K:
"E-05 still looks perfect. No decay, no fatigue. Creepy. The others look like ghosts."
Eva watched them through the glass. Sometimes she wept; sometimes she smiled like she understood a joke no one else did.
When Derek begged to know why, she only said,
"They're not changing you. They're revealing you."
Log 812 – Year 5:
Subject D-01 refuses nourishment. Psychological stability at 12%.
Derek began talking to his reflection. It talked back with better grammar. He laughed until the reflection stopped.
Maya started writing equations on the wall in chemical symbols she shouldn't know. The scientists didn't erase them. They added notes beside them in neat handwriting.
Log 1000 – Year 6:
Subjects M-02 and D-01 exhibit synchronized neural patterns. Observation only.
They dreamed the same dream: a vast field of white light, and a heartbeat pulsing like thunder.
They woke with identical words carved into their palms — "REMEMBER US."
No one could explain how.
Technician K (casual):
"J-04 hums the same tune every day. Creeps me out. Sounds like the elevator music we use."
Supervisor's reply: "If it helps data consistency, let him hum."
By year seven, their names meant nothing.
They moved like reflections of people they once were.
Eva remained untouched, a statue in a clean coat, whispering comfort no one believed.
When the doors finally hissed open, light burned their eyes.
Eva stood at the threshold, clipboard in hand.
>"Congratulations," she said softly and painfully like she regreted it . "You've all passed."
No one asked what the test was.
Final Log – Year 7, Day 0:
Subjects remain viable. Emotional variance corrected. Project Humanity—Phase Two authorized.