8.Wipe her. Start over.

The chain cut through the air, colliding with Dr. Crane's shoulder. He staggered back with a grunt, his face twisting in pain.

Claire—no, Anna—pressed forward, her muscles burning with adrenaline.

This was it.

The moment she took her life back.

She swung again—

But Crane ducked.

In a flash, he grabbed the chain and yanked it hard. Claire lost her balance, crashing onto the cold floor.

Pain shot through her ribs, but she barely had time to react—

Crane was on her, hands closing around her throat.

"You think you can fight me?" His voice was low, furious. "I made you."

Her vision blurred. Air—she needed air.

But then—

A sound.

Soft. Familiar. A whisper.

"Find me."

The shadows in the room shifted.

And suddenly—Claire wasn't alone.

Figures emerged from the darkness. Dozens of them. The missing. The forgotten.

Adam Lorne stood at the front, his hollow eyes locking onto Crane.

And then—they spoke.

"You took us."

"You erased us."

"You don't get to win."

Crane's grip slackened, his face turning pale. "No," he whispered. "No, no, no—"

The shadows surged forward.

They didn't touch him. They didn't need to.

Because he saw them.

And he started screaming.

His hands clutched his head as he stumbled back. "You're not real," he gasped. "You're—"

His eyes darted around wildly, panic consuming him.

And then—

He turned and ran.

Claire gasped, coughing as precious air rushed back into her lungs. Her vision swam, the world tilting—but she didn't let herself fall. Not now.

Crane's footsteps pounded against the concrete, desperate, frantic. He shoved past the figures, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

But the missing did not move....only watched.

Watched as the man who had erased them, who had twisted their existence into nothingness, now ran from ghosts he could never outrun.

Claire—pushed herself to her feet, her entire body trembling. The chains still hung from her wrists, cold and heavy. The air around her hummed with something electric, something ancient.

Adam Lorne turned to her, his hollow eyes searching.

"You remember now." His voice was barely a whisper.

Anna swallowed hard. "Yes."

The others tilted their heads, whispering among themselves, voices blending into a haunting murmur.

"She remembers."

The words sent a chill down her spine.

Because for the first time, Anna wasn't sure if she had survived.

Or if she had simply joined them.

The walls began to disappear.

The basement wasn't a basement anymore.

It was a hospital room.

The cold concrete floor melted into white tile. Rusted chains became IV stands. The flickering light overhead was replaced with fluorescent hospital bulbs.

And Anna—was gone.

Claire's heart pounded. She turned, her head spinning.

Where was she?

A voice crackled over an unseen speaker.

"Patient 024 is destabilizing. She's breaking the simulation."

A door opened. Footsteps.

And then—a woman in a white coat appeared.

Not a doctor. A scientist.

Her name tag read: Dr. Evelyn Crane.

Dr. Crane.

But she wasn't Elias Crane.. Maybe his sister?

Claire's stomach twisted.

Dr. Evelyn Crane tilted her head, studying her like a specimen under a microscope.

"Well," she said, amused. "I must say, you lasted longer than the others."

"The others?" she asked surprised.

Dr. Crane smiled. "You didn't think you were our first experiment, did you?"

The fluorescent lights above buzzed softly, casting an artificial glow over the stark white room. The scent of antiseptic and something metallic—like blood, like steel—hung thick in air.

The walls were pristine, almost unnaturally clean, their smooth surfaces broken only by the monitors lining the perimeter. Screens pulsed with unreadable data, flickering between graphs and jagged brainwave patterns. The rhythmic beeping of machines filled the space, steady and cold, like a heartbeat that didn't belong to her.

And then—the beds.

Lined up in eerie precision, each identical, each occupied. Women lay motionless beneath crisp white sheets, their faces pale under the harsh lighting. Faces that were all too familiar.

Her face.

Claire—no, Anna, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps. Her mind refused to process it, but the truth stared back at her from every unmoving figure. Their chests rose and fell in perfect synchrony, as if they weren't human at all—but copies, dolls, experiments trapped in an endless sleep.

In a trapped state of induced coma of cognitive awareness... A state of neural stasis

IV drips hung beside each bed, clear tubes snaking into their thin veins, feeding them something she didn't want to name. Electrodes clung to their temples, wires slithering into machines that hummed softly, whispering secrets she couldn't yet understand.... But something moved... Among all those bodies... Her fingers twitched... No one saw... Claire did... That Clone was prolly trying to wake up

But then—

It hit her.

She wasn't Anna Prescott.

She was just one version of her.

A failed version.

Dr. Evelyn Crane sighed. "It's a shame. We were so close this time."

She turned to someone out of sight.

"Wipe her. Start over."

"Wipe her ???? Start over????

What!

So... it wasn't only her body... but In this life... Nothing was real. Not Claire's life, not the visions, not even her own identity.

She wasn't Claire.

She wasn't Anna.

She was Patient 024

For years, she had existed inside a fabricated world—a meticulously crafted neural simulation, designed by Dr. Evelyn Crane. Every memory, every whisper, every shadow lurking in the corners of her mind had been fed into her consciousness like a story on repeat. But why?

Because Claire—Anna—was the control subject in an experiment meant to erase and rewrite identities.

The Life She Lived—Was A Lie

The bedroom she woke up in every morning? A pre-programmed memory loop. A digital projection wired directly into her brain.

The people she knew? Simulated figures, ghosts of real individuals—fragments of data from past subjects, used to build her world.

Every whisper she had ever heard?

The buried memories clawing to the surface?

They weren't hallucinations. They were corrupted files—glitches in the system.

Because Claire—Anna—wasn't meant to remember.

Then How Did She Break Free?

The simulation was built on neurological conditioning, forcing her mind to accept the reality projected into it. But trauma left cracks—small breaks where her subconscious fought back.

And Adam Lorne?

Adam was different.

He was real.

Unlike the rest of the missing, Adam hadn't been erased—he had died inside the experiment. But his consciousness, his presence, was too strong to delete. Instead of being purged, his data became self-aware, trapped in the simulation with her.

He was a ghost in the system.

And the others?

The missing weren't just bodies locked away somewhere. They were failed experiments. Test subjects whose identities had been ripped apart and rewritten over and over again—until they were nothing but digital echoes.

They had tried to reach her through the only way they could—through the errors in the system. The whispers. The flickers of the truth buried in the corners of her mind.

They weren't just hallucinations.

They were remnants of erased lives.

But...but...

her real body ?