The spiral stopped.
Not slowed—froze, like breath caught in winter.
Amelia blinked.
She was no longer in the cavern.
She stood in a narrow hallway, old wallpaper peeling like tired skin.
Numbered doors lined the walls.
301. 302.
She turned.
Alexis was there, her hand reaching for the same brass knob.
303.
The door opened on its own.
Inside: a sterile white room.
A single chair.
A mirror that didn't reflect.
And in the corner,
a child drawing spirals on the wall.
> "Who are you?" Amelia asked.
The child looked up,
eyes too large, too knowing.
> "I'm what they took from you.
I'm what they planted in her."
Alexis stepped inside, her voice shaky:
> "This isn't real."
> "No," said the child,
"It's true."
From behind the mirror, the spiral symbols began to twist again—
not just on the glass, but beneath their skin.
Amelia staggered.
Memories that weren't hers began to rise.
A woman screaming in a field of static.
A nursery where roots grew from cradles.
Hands sewing thoughts into wet clay.
Alexis whispered:
> "We were experiments."
The child smiled.
> "You were harvests.
And the bloom is just beginning."