The last words had barely faded when something shifted in the depths of the room.
Not a sound, not a clear vibration, but a change in the very feeling of the space itself. As if the place, with all its devices, walls, and wires, had adjusted its stance toward them.
Lilia stood in the center, her hand in Celine's, her eyes fixed on the man in the black coat. The dim light no longer reflected off her as it had before; it seemed to bend slightly, leaving her in a different kind of shadow.
The man spoke calmly, his tone unchanged:
_"Choice… it's a beautiful word. But more often than not, it's an illusion."
Lilia replied without hesitation:
_"The illusion is thinking you're still the ones holding the strings."
Eva said nothing. She was watching the screens. Something in the data had shifted, as if the system did not know how to process Lilia's presence now.
Celine felt it before she saw it: a faint headache, pressure behind her eyes, as though something stood behind a locked door inside her mind, waiting to be opened.
_"What exactly did you do to us?" Celine asked, this time addressing everyone. "Not just Lilia… me too."
The man turned his head slightly, then said:
_"You… were not the primary target."
_"But you erased my memory."
_"Because you were the point of balance in the experiment. We discovered you were eligible to participate through a network of scientists and doctors disguised as officials responsible for school health monitoring. The monthly examinations they conducted were confidential, and through them we learned that your mind was uniquely compatible with Lilia's, though not identical. At first, we thought we might use that to control memory, but the experiment did not succeed as we had planned."
Silence spread, even the machines lowering their hum as if listening.
_"Every experiment needs a pivot point. Lilia was the capability. And you…"
He paused for a moment, then continued:
_"You were the balance."
Lilia was the capability. She represented the axis of the experiment and the "primary objective," because they wanted to measure the experiment's effect on someone who possessed rare, specific neurological and mnemonic traits.
Celine represented the balance, the element that ensured the experiment's stability. Without her, it would become chaotic or collapse.
Celine's mind possessed traits that made it compatible with Lilia's, but not identical. When attempting to transfer or link memories, relying solely on Lilia carried the risk of system failure, since controlling her mind alone had limitations.
Celine's presence functioned as an anchor or intermediary. Her mind could "absorb" certain alterations and buffer the differences, preventing a total breakdown of the experiment.
How Celine functioned as a stabilizer:
She did not lose her memories or become directly affected; her brain measured the changes and counterbalanced them against Lilia's mind.
Every attempt to insert or modify Lilia's memories passed naturally through Celine's mind, reducing strain on the system.
Without her, the experiment would collapse, because the "axis" (Lilia) alone could not be precisely controlled or measured.
A side screen suddenly lit up. Not a full image, just a short clip. Children's voices, laughter, then an abrupt cut. Celine gasped involuntarily. Her heart recognized the sound before her mind did.
She asked in a low voice:
_"Why did you return me to my life? Why didn't you leave me here?"
The man did not answer immediately. Eva stepped forward and said quietly:
_"Because your presence here was accelerating the collapse instead of preventing it. That was not within our projections."
_"Collapse of what?" Celine asked.
_"The system, the experiment, the boundaries… all their projections about the concept fell apart. The two of you breached the limits of possible control over your minds."
Lilia tightened her grip on her sister's hand and said softly:
_"They were afraid of you as much as they were of me. That's why they erased our memories."
The man closed his eyes briefly, then opened them:
_"You had to be removed. Every link tying you to this place had to be sealed. A clean memory. A stable life. Remote monitoring.
We found you through the examinations we conducted, and we discovered that you were exceptionally suited for such an experiment. Your identification was not accidental, but the result of carefully planned work."
_"And Marcus?" Celine asked suddenly. "My father… did he know?"
No one answered at first. Then new recordings began playing from a nearby device, untouched by anyone. Marcus's voice, weaker than in the previous recording:"They told me removing her was the only way to protect her. They said Celine would forget, would live a normal life. And I… I believed them. Because the alternative was worse."
Celine felt something breaking slowly inside her, not violently.
Lilia closed her eyes.
_"And what does that mean?" Lilia asked.
At last, the man replied:
_"You were never meant to be forgettable."
He pressed a button. One of the machines moved slowly. It did not flare up or produce frightening sounds. It simply opened a small section, as if inviting rather than forcing.
_"Your memories were not completely erased. They were frozen, separated from your conscious awareness. We cannot restore them without you, and we cannot stop them if you begin."
Celine looked at Lilia, fear clear in her eyes:
_"Don't do anything right now."
Lilia turned to her and offered a faint smile, more reassuring than Celine had expected,
_"I won't reclaim them because they want me to. And not because I'm afraid."
Then she looked at the man:
_"I'll reclaim them because I want to know who I was… before you chose for me."
Eva stepped forward:
_"If this begins, nothing will return to what it was."
Lilia nodded:
_"It never was."
In that moment, one of the screens went dark. Then another. Not a malfunction, but a withdrawal. As if the system were stepping back, making room for something else.
And Celine, amid all of it, felt for the first time that the questions that had chased her from the beginning were not truly searching for answers… and now, she was no longer certain she was ready to hear everything.
But she was certain of one thing: whatever would be revealed here would not only alter their past, it would redefine who holds the right to write the ending.