The door slammed shut behind them.
Amelia turned—too late.
The hallway was gone.
The white room stretched endlessly now, and the child had vanished.
Instead, a voice echoed:
> "Test sequence: memory integrity."
Alexis clutched her head.
> "They're inside us again."
Screens blinked into existence along the walls, flickering with images—
Amelia's first case.
Alexis's mother's smile.
A snow-covered swing set.
Then: static.
The images bled together,
memories rewriting themselves.
In one clip, Amelia wasn't a detective—
she was holding a scalpel.
In another, Alexis wore a lab coat, instructing faceless nurses.
> "This isn't what happened," Amelia said, breath tight.
> "It's what they want you to believe," the voice replied.
"Spirals grow forward, but their roots grow backward."
The mirror in the center of the room cracked.
From it, dozens of eyes opened—human, animal, alien. Watching.
Alexis whispered:
> "We're not real."
Amelia shook her head.
> "No. We're more than real.
We're what escaped the spiral."
The screens shut off. The voice stopped.
A door appeared ahead. Just one word etched into it:
AWAKENING.