The rain pressed against the tall glass windows of the Crescent Psychiatric Institute, rhythmic and unrelenting, as if the sky itself wanted in.
Dr. Elena Voss stood motionless before her office mirror, her reflection blurred by the gray morning light.
Her eyes were rimmed red from a sleepless night; fatigue clung to her like another layer of clothing.
On her desk lay the file that had stolen her rest Damian Blackwood, male, thirty-two, former special-operations officer. Found wandering near the desert perimeter with partial amnesia, violent episodes, and recurring dreams of confinement.
The words no longer looked medical. They looked personal.
She ran her fingertips over the name as if tracing an old wound.
"Dreams," she whispered, the word catching in her throat.
But the case summary described more than dreams; it hinted at experiments, black-site interventions, and neural conditioning long buried under government secrecy.
Her phone buzzed.
Agent Reeves: Session begins today. Record everything. Send audio by 1600 hours.
She locked the screen and exhaled. The Bureau's leash was tightening.
The office door creaked open.
Her assistant, Tara Nguyen, stepped in, clipboard pressed to her chest. "Your ten-a.m., Doctor. He's early."
Elena's pulse jumped. "Send him in."
Tara hesitated. "He refused the standard restraints."
Elena looked up sharply. "Who authorized that?"
"He said you did."
A chill ran down her spine. She hadn't but before she could respond, the door widened and Damian Blackwood stepped through.
He didn't enter like a patient. He entered like someone who already owned the room.
His movements were slow, precise, and deliberate. The gray sweater he wore contrasted against the sterile white walls, and though his wrists were free, the weight of his gaze felt like chains.
"Good morning, Doctor," he said.
"Elena," she corrected before realizing she had.
He smiled faintly. "Then good morning, Elena."
She gestured toward the chair across from hers. "Please sit."
He did, studying her with unnerving calm.
"You read the file," he said finally.
"Yes."
"Then you know what's wrong with me."
"I'd prefer to hear it from you."
He tilted his head, voice quiet. "That's what they used to say too."
"Who are they?" she asked.
"The ones before you. The ones with the masks and the needles."
Her pen hesitated above her notepad. "You mean medical staff?"
He chuckled without warmth. "If that's what you want to call them."
She steadied herself. "You've mentioned dreams during intake. Tell me about them."
"They're not dreams," he said.
"What are they, then?"
"Recordings."
Elena frowned. "You believe your dreams are recordings?"
"I don't believe it." His eyes lifted, electric with conviction. "I remember it."
Outside, the rain intensified, blurring the glass until the world beyond looked like melted silver.
"In them," he continued, "I'm not me. I'm… someone being built. There's a hum like electricity under my skin. Cold light overhead. Voices all around."
"What do the voices say?" she asked softly.
He looked straight into her eyes. "They say, 'Subject One ready for neural sync. Commencing Phase Dante.'"
Her heartbeat stumbled. That exact phrasing existed only in the Project Dante classified logs documents locked away since before she ever joined the Institute.
"How could you know that?" she whispered.
He smiled again, deliberate and unsettling. "Because one of the voices… was yours."
Her instinct was denial. "That's impossible."
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Then explain why I wake up with your face in my head every night."
"You're projecting," she said, forcing professionalism. "Trauma can"
He cut her off. "Don't insult me with textbook answers, Doctor. You know what I'm talking about."
Elena's hand trembled as she wrote a note anything to stay grounded. The letters came out jagged, foreign.
"You look frightened," Damian observed. "I don't remember ever seeing you frightened in the lab."
"I wasn't in any lab."
He smiled again, almost pitying. "If you say so."
The intercom crackled, making them both flinches.
Tara's voice broke through: "Dr. Voss, you have a call on line two. Urgent."
Elena pressed the button. "Who is it?"
Static, then a man's low voice: "Dr. Voss, this is Agent Reeves. Do not confront him. End the session immediately. He's not supposed to be there today."
She froze. "What do you mean he's not"
The intercom went dead.
When she turned back, Damian was standing. "Who's listening, Elena?" he asked quietly.
"No one."
He took a step closer. "You shouldn't lie to me. You used to be better at it."
"Session over," she managed.
He smiled faintly, turned toward the door, and paused.
"I'll see you in the next dream, Doctor."
Then he was gone.
Elena sank into her chair, trembling. On her notepad she had scrawled the same phrase again and again:
Subject One ready for neural sync.
Her pen rolled from her fingers, landing beside the recorder pen its tiny red-light blinking.
When she pressed play, static hissed… and then a faint whisper her own voice, low and clinical:
"Subject One confirmed. Neural link active."
The breath left her lungs.
Outside, the rain stopped suddenly, completely as if someone had flipped a switch.
For a long time, Dr. Elena Voss didn't move.
The sound of her own breathing filled the silence, shallow and uneven. The office lights hummed faintly overhead, casting long, sterile shadows across the walls.
She stared at the recorder, its red light fading to black. Whatever had whispered from within that device that voice was not a glitch. She knew her own cadence, her tone, the precise clinical calm she used in every lab report. Only this time, she didn't remember saying those words.
Subject One confirmed. Neural link active.
The phrase repeated in her mind, slow and deliberate, each syllable a blade turning in her chest.
A memory no, more like an impression flickered at the edge of her thoughts. A cold light above her, a table beneath her back, voices murmuring from somewhere beyond the dark. She blinked hard, forcing herself to breathe.
"No," she whispered. "It's not real. It's just suggestion. Post-session stress."
Her reflection in the window didn't agree. It looked back at her pale, hollow, unfamiliar.
By the time she left her office, the Institute had grown quieter. The corridors, lined with polished steel and reinforced glass, reflected her movements like a funhouse of fading doubles.
A security officer passed her in the hall and gave a polite nod. "Evening, Doctor."
"Evening," she murmured.
The sound of rain returned faint now, a whisper beyond the roof. For a moment she thought she heard another sound behind it, buried deep in the rhythm like someone breathing in sync with her own steps.
She quickened her pace.
In her quarters, she made tea she didn't drink. Her hands were too unsteady to lift the cup. Instead, she stared at her laptop screen, the words of her session notes blinking back at her.
Patient exhibits clear signs of trauma-associated dissociation.
Persistent delusional system linked to experimental terminology.
Subject references "Project Dante," a defunct military neuroscience initiative.
She stopped typing. The cursor blinked like a pulse.
Defunct. That was what the Bureau said. That was what they'd told her when she'd accepted this post. But the phrase Damian had used "Phase Dante" wasn't public knowledge. It never had been.
Her access clearance had once brushed close to those archives, back when she was a junior researcher under Dr. Holloway, the same man who later vanished after a classified audit.
And yet Damian had spoken of the lab as if he'd been there.
A soft knock startled her.
"Elena?"
It was Tara, her assistant, holding a small data cartridge in one hand. "Security found this near the therapy suite. It's coded to your terminal."
Elena frowned. "Mine?"
"Yes, ma'am. But the label's blank."
Tara placed the cartridge on the desk and left without waiting for a reply.
The moment the door closed; Elena slipped it into her console. The system hesitated flickered then displayed a single encrypted folder:
PROJECT DANTE — SEQUENCE 01
Her breath hitched. She hesitated for only a second before entering her credentials.
ACCESS GRANTED.
A black screen. Then static. Then an image blurred, but unmistakable.
A room flooded in white light.
A man strapped to a metal chair.
Electrodes on his temples, restraints at his wrists.
And standing behind him her.
Her younger self.
White coat. Gloves.
Expression unreadable.
The camera panned closer. Her voice clinical, detached filled the speakers:
"Neural induction commencing. Subject One ready for synchronization."
The man in the chair Damian.
He was screaming.
Elena slammed the laptop shut, heart hammering. The air in her quarters felt too thin.
This couldn't be real. The footage could've been fabricated deep fake simulation, archival test data, something designed to manipulate her.
Still, the sound of her voice steady, professional, hers echoed in the room.
She turned off the lights, but the afterimage lingered in her vision: Damian's face twisted in pain, her own silhouette framed in white light.
Outside, thunder rolled.
She sat on the edge of her bed until morning light crept in through the blinds.
By dawn, Elena looked like a ghost wearing a lab coat.
When she entered the observation suite that morning, Tara glanced up from her console. "Rough night, Doctor?"
Elena forced a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "I've had worse."
The intercom chimed softly.
Agent Reeves, voice crisp and clinical: "Dr. Voss, report to central lab after your 0900 session. Bring the subject's log."
"Understood."
But her voice trembled, and she knew he heard it.
Damian was already seated when she entered the session room. No restraints this time. No guards. Just him calm, waiting, eyes too sharp for someone still under psych evaluation.
"Elena," he said with quiet certainty, as if greeting an old friend.
"Mr. Blackwood," she replied, though the title felt wrong.
He smiled faintly. "You didn't sleep."
Her pen paused above her notepad. "How would you know that?"
"You talk in your sleep," he said simply. "You used to."
She froze. "Used to?"
He tilted his head. "When we were in the facility."
"There was no facility," she said firmly.
He laughed softly not cruelly, but with an almost childlike ache. "You really don't remember, do you?"
Her pulse raced. "Remember what?"
"Project Dante," he whispered. "The day they switched us on."
The words fell like a verdict.
Elena's throat tightened. "That's enough for today."
She rose too quickly, the chair scraping the floor. Damian didn't move. His eyes followed her with a strange mixture of sadness and amusement.
"You think you're the observer," he said, voice barely above a whisper. "But you were the first experiment."
The recorder on the desk clicked on by itself its red-light blinking.
Her voice came through the speakers again.
"Subject One confirmed. Neural link active."
Elena's breath caught.
The same words. The same tone.
Damian smiled softly. "See? You still remember."
The lights in the room flickered once, twice then went dead.
For a moment, the only sound was the rain returning outside.
When the backup generator kicked in, Damian was gone.
Only the restraint band lay coiled neatly on the chair as if no one had ever used it.
For several seconds, Dr. Elena Voss stood frozen in the half-lit therapy room.
The faint hum of the backup generator buzzed somewhere above, filling the silence left behind by his absence. The air smelled faintly of ozone and disinfectant and something else, faint but metallic, like the echo of burned circuitry.
Her gaze dropped to the chair. The restraint band sat neatly folded where Damian had been seconds ago, its magnetic clasp still humming faintly with residual current. There was no possible way he could have left without triggering an alarm.
Her hand trembled as she reached for the door panel.
"Security, this is Dr. Voss," she said into the intercom. "Confirm subject Blackwood's current location."
A burst of static answered, then a distorted voice. "Subject… not registered in holding… all sensors normal."
"Normal?" she repeated sharply. "He's missing from Session Room Two!"
Another pause. Then the voice softened, filtered and uncertain. "Doctor… we don't have a Session Room Two on record today."
Elena's breath caught. "What are you talking about? I'm standing in it"
The line went dead.
The panel light turned from green to red.
And then, very faintly, the recorder on her desk clicked again.
Subject One confirmed. Neural link active.
Her knees almost buckled. The voice wasn't coming from the recorder this time it was coming from the room itself.
She stumbled backward, colliding with the desk. A stack of files slid to the floor.
When she looked down, one folder had landed face-up Patient: VOSS, E. Clearance: Restricted.
Her name. Her file.
The seal stamped across it read: Project Dante Level 7 Authorization.
For a long moment, she simply stared at it, chest heaving. Her fingers hesitated before opening it, the motion slow, like peeling away a wound that hadn't healed.
The first page was a test transcript.
Neural response calibration complete.
Subject demonstrates stable empathy suppression threshold.
Recommend paired activation sequence.
Overseer: Dr. Holloway.
Secondary Technician: Dr. Elena Voss.
Subject Identifier: D. Blackwood.
She turned the page. The next document was worse.
Post-sequence feedback:
Neural tether between Subject One and Subject Two achieved 72% resonance.
Memory overlap detected.
Subject Two (Control) unaware of implant synchronization.
A small photograph was clipped to the corner.
It showed her again standing behind Damian in a bright white lab. Her eyes were blank. Her hands rested on his shoulders; the gloves streaked with light. In the background, monitors displayed overlapping brainwave patterns — two signatures perfectly aligned.
Subject One: D. Blackwood.
Subject Two: Voss, E.
Her own mind felt like it was splitting open.
"No…" she whispered. "That's not possible."
But the tremor in her hands betrayed her.
She didn't remember leaving the room, but somehow, she was already halfway down the corridor when she came to her senses. The walls around her flickered with intermittent power surges, light pulsing in sync with the pounding in her chest.
The hallway cameras above her blinked red recording. Always recording.
She passed a nurse on duty. Tara who gave her a startled look.
"Doctor? Are you all right?"
Elena forced composure into her voice. "Fine. Just… running a diagnostic."
Tara hesitated, her gaze flicking to the ID folder still clutched in Elena's hand. "That's a restricted file. Should I"
"I said I'll handle it," Elena snapped sharper than intended.
Tara stepped back quickly, murmuring an apology.
Elena hurried toward the restricted wing.
The sublevel elevator loomed ahead a polished metal door with biometric access. She pressed her palm to the scanner.
ACCESS DENIED.
Again.
ACCESS DENIED.
Her patience snapped. She glanced around, then reached into her pocket for the spare access key she'd taken weeks earlier Dr. Holloway's old clearance card. She pressed it against the reader.
ACCESS GRANTED.
The doors slid open with a hollow hiss, releasing a rush of cold air that smelled faintly of rust and disinfectant.
The elevator descended with a mechanical groan. She watched the floor indicator tick down L1… L2… B1.
The sublevel lights flickered on automatically as she stepped out. The floor stretched long and sterile, flanked by heavy metal cabinets and sealed observation chambers. Dust hung in the air, disturbed only by the hum of dormant machines.
She walked until she reached the far end of the corridor. A placard on the wall read:
PROJECT DANTE ARCHIVE – RESTRICTED ENTRY.
The lock clicked open when she swiped Holloway's card.
Inside, the air was colder older somehow.
Rows upon rows of black storage drawers lined the walls. Each bore a simple tag: DANTE PHASE I, PHASE II, PHASE III.
Elena found herself drawn to one labeled PHASE 01: ORIGIN PROTOCOL.
She slid the drawer open.
Inside lay stacks of lab notes, photographs, and a single glass capsule filled with faintly pulsing blue light. The label on the side read: Neural Link Prototype Resonance Sample.
As she reached for it, the lights dimmed.
A sound echoed through the room a low, rhythmic tapping, like footsteps on tile.
She turned sharply.
"Who's there?"
No answer.
Another step. Closer this time.
Her voice faltered. "Damian?"
Silence then a whisper directly behind her ear.
"You shouldn't be here, Doctor."
She spun around nothing.
Only the reflection of her own face in the glass panel beside her, pale and trembling.
Then the reflection smiled.
Panic flooded her. She stumbled backward, knocking over a tray of instruments. Metal clattered to the floor, echoing in the silence.
From somewhere deep in the corridor came the sound of a door opening slowly, mechanically.
She froze.
The air pressure shifted, cold air rushing past her as if something massive had moved.
"Elena…"
His voice again. Calm. Familiar.
She turned and there he was, standing at the far end of the hallway, half-shrouded in shadow. His hospital uniform was gone, replaced by a dark coat that looked military or ceremonial.
"How did you get down here?" she whispered.
He didn't answer immediately. His gaze drifted toward the capsule still glowing faintly on the counter.
"You found it," he said softly. "The heart of it."
"What is this?"
"Our connection," Damian replied. "The first link they made."
She shook her head. "None of this makes sense."
"It will," he said, stepping closer. "When you stop running from the truth."
The fluorescent light above them flickered once, twice then steadied.
Damian's eyes caught the glow, and for a brief second, they reflected the same electric blue as the capsule.
She felt something shift in her chest a pulse that wasn't hers.
Her vision blurred, and a rush of memory slammed through her like a current: the white room, the hum of machines, his heartbeat syncing with hers.
Her knees buckled.
Damian caught her before she hit the ground. His touch was cold but steady.
"Breathe," he whispered. "You used to tell me that. Breathe."
Her voice trembled. "What did they do to us?"
He didn't answer.
Instead, he placed the capsule in her hand. "Find out," he said. "Before they erase what's left of you."
When she looked up, he was gone again like he'd never been there.
Only the capsule remained, faintly pulsing in rhythm with her heartbeat.
The elevator doors sealed behind Dr. Elena Voss, cutting her off from the cold silence of the sublevel.
For a heartbeat, she just stood there, clutching the capsule to her chest.
Its faint blue pulse still throbbed against her skin like something alive.
When she stepped into the main corridor, the hospital felt different.
Too quiet.
No hum from the ventilation system. No echo of footsteps.
Only the distant tick-tick-tick of the fluorescent lights above, flickering in uneven rhythm as if even the building was holding its breath.
Elena moved fast toward her office, keeping to the shadowed edge of the hallway.
Every camera she passed blinked red, recording.
She tried not to look directly into the lenses.
In her hand, the capsule glowed faintly through her fingers. The label's print had begun to smear, but one word still burned clear beneath the glass: Resonance.
She reached her office door and keyed in her access code.
ACCESS GRANTED.
The door slid open and she froze.
Someone was already inside.
Agent Reeves stood by her desk, one hand resting on the recorder pen she'd used during Damian's session.
He didn't look surprised to see her only tired, like a man who'd been expecting this confrontation for a long time.
"Dr. Voss," he said calmly. "You weren't authorized to enter the sublevel."
Her throat felt dry. "You were watching."
He nodded once. "We watch everything."
Then, a beat later: "Where's the capsule?"
Elena hesitated. "You mean this?" She held it up, the light pulsing faintly between them.
Reeves' expression hardened. "Put it down. Slowly."
Her fingers tightened around it. "Tell me what it is."
"You don't want that answer."
"I do," she snapped. "I need it."
For a moment, he just looked at her weighing something unseen. Then he sighed.
"Seven years ago," he said quietly, "you were part of a classified cognitive-synchronization trial. Project Dante. Two subjects linked through artificial neural resonance one host, one monitor. You know that part."
"I was the monitor," she whispered.
"You were supposed to be," he corrected. "But the system didn't hold. The loop reversed. You became part of the circuit."
Her stomach turned. "Meaning?"
"Meaning that every time he loses control, you feel it first. Every time he dreams, you hear the echo. You don't just observe him, Doctor you stabilize him."
Elena shook her head. "No. That's not possible. He's alive. He's"
"Alive because of you," Reeves interrupted. "If your neural signature collapses, so does his."
The words struck like a blade.
"Mutual dependency," he continued. "The board called it a design flaw. I call it negligence."
Elena stared down at the capsule still glowing in her hand. "Then what is this? Some kind of key?"
"It's the core sample from the initial sync test," Reeves said. "A residual imprint of both your frequencies. It shouldn't even exist."
"But it does," she murmured.
"And now you've reactivated it," he said grimly. "That pulse you feel? It's not power, it's memory trying to reconnect."
Her mind reeled. "Memory of what?"
Reeves hesitated. Then, slowly: "Of what you erased."
The room seemed to tilt.
She reached for the edge of her desk, gripping it to keep her balance. "You're lying."
He met her gaze. "If only I were."
Outside, thunder rolled, low and distant though the night had been clear only moments ago.
Reeves stepped closer, lowering his voice. "Listen carefully, Elena. You've opened something that was never meant to wake. That capsule it's broadcasting again."
"To where?" she asked.
He didn't answer right away. The lights above them flickered.
"Elena," he said quietly, "where did you leave him?"
"Damian?"
"Yes."
She swallowed hard. "In the lower archive. He shouldn't have been there. He just appeared."
Reeves' jaw tightened. "Then it's already started."
"What has?"
"The recall," he said. "He's being pulled back to the source. Phase One protocol."
She frowned. "That project was terminated."
"Officially," Reeves said. "But neural constructs don't obey paperwork. They obey command signals and you just re-sent one when you opened the archive."
Her pulse thundered in her ears. "What command?"
He looked her squarely in the eye. "Wake up."
The capsule pulsed brighter, almost painfully now.
A high-pitched whine filled the air, vibrating through the furniture. The window glass trembled.
"Elena, drop it!" Reeves barked.
But she couldn't. The light spilled between her fingers, threads of blue arcing up her wrist like veins of lightning.
Her body locked, muscles rigid. Images flashed behind her eyes fragments of the lab, Damian strapped to the table, her own voice shouting commands.
Then his voice softer breaking through the noise.
You promised you'd stay with me.
"Damian!" she gasped.
Her knees buckled. Reeves caught her before she hit the floor, yanking the capsule from her grasp. The light snapped out instantly.
For a few seconds, the only sound was her ragged breathing.
Reeves crouched beside her. "You see now why we buried this?"
She looked up at him, eyes wide. "It's not just a memory. It's him."
He didn't deny it.
Instead, he pocketed the capsule and stood. "Go home, Doctor. Pack a bag. You're being transferred to a secure site for your own protection."
"Protection?" she echoed. "From who?"
Reeves paused at the door. "Not who," he said. "From what's left of you."
Then he was gone.
Elena stayed there for a long time after the door shut, her mind spinning.
The office felt colder now, hollow like something unseen had been scraped out of the air.
On her desk, the pen recorder's light blinked again, slow and steady.
She pressed play.
At first, only static. Then her voice, faint but clear.
"Subject One stable. Synchronization achieved.
Begin emotional mapping."
Then a second voice Damian's layered beneath hers, almost blending.
"Elena… can you hear me?"
Her throat closed.
The lights flickered once more and for an instant, his reflection shimmered in the glass pane beside her.
He was standing behind her again.
But when she turned, the room was empty.
Outside, the storm finally broke.
Rain lashed against the glass, lightning strobing the corridor beyond her door.
Elena sank into her chair, whispering to herself, "What did we create?"
The only answer was the echo of her own question, distorted through the intercom as if the building itself was learning to speak.
"What… did we create?"
The voice wasn't quite hers anymore.