They stepped through the door.
It wasn't a room.
It wasn't a place.
It was a pulse, rhythmic and ancient. The space around them flickered, not like light—but like breath. Fungal filaments hung from the ceiling. The walls oozed with sap that shimmered like memory.
In the center, a table of roots, shaped like a map. But the cities were hollow. The rivers, dried veins. And spiraling outward from the center—Room 303.
"Why is it always this room?" Alexis asked, her voice strangely small.
"Because we were planted there," Amelia replied, her hand brushing over one of the root-lines.
Suddenly, her eyes widened.
She saw herself—no, not herself. A version of her, younger, standing in a lab. Needles. Vats. Glass chambers. Spirals carved into the bone of something not quite human.
It wasn't a vision. It was a recording. And Alexis was seeing it too.
Then the voice returned.
> "You were never meant to remember. But memory... spreads."
The table of roots pulsed. One tendril slithered toward Amelia's hand, curling around her fingers.
It was warm.
And it whispered her name.