Chapter 3: The Procedure Room

The moment Mara stepped into the operating theatre, the air changed.

It was colder. Not physically—but mentally. Like walking into someone's last thought before they died.

The others followed, reluctantly. Jack kept looking behind them, but the doors had sealed shut the second they entered. There was no going back. Not anymore.

The walls were ribbed like a ribcage. Surgical lights hung overhead, but their glow wasn't white. It was jaundiced—sickly, like something growing under skin.

In the center of the room was the table.

Steel. Restraints. Dried blood.

And something worse.

A second book.

Not like Mara's. This one was bound in skin, stitched with black thread. It pulsed faintly, like it was breathing. No title. No author.

Just a single line carved into its cover:

"You Signed the Consent Form."

Tom took a step forward, staring at it like it was a snake. "What the hell is this?"

Ella was frozen. "We need to leave. We're not supposed to see this."

"No," Mara said quietly. "We already did."

She reached out and touched the book.

The world lurched.

Flashes. Images. Searing into her skull—

• Herself, younger. Strapped to the table.

• Doctors with faces blurred by static.

• Needles. Screaming. Silence.

• A door labeled Recovery, but no one ever came out.

Then—her own voice, echoing from inside her head:

"We died here. But the town wouldn't let us go."

Mara yanked her hand back, gasping. "This isn't just a hospital. It's a holding cell."

Jack looked pale. "Holding for what?"

"For us," Mara said. "The ones who weren't ready to die. The virus didn't kill us. It… trapped us here. Between."

Ella backed up until she hit the wall. It was soft—flesh-like. She screamed.

Then the lights cut out.

Total black.

A heartbeat echoed through the theatre. Not from a speaker—from beneath their feet.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Then the Doctor's voice, smooth and scalpel-sharp:

"Ah. You've made it to the theatre.

Excellent. The others failed.

But you…

You were always my favorite patient, Mara."

The lights snapped back on.

The Doctor was right beside her.

Mask gone. Face stitched in a permanent smile.

And in his hand—

A scalpel carved from bone.

Mara didn't scream. Not because she wasn't afraid—but because something deeper than fear took over.

Recognition.

She knew this Doctor.

Not the face—it changed. The stitched smile, the hollow eyes, those were masks. But the presence? The voice? The cold, precise way he moved?

She had met him before.

And she had trusted him.

Jack lunged forward with a rusted tray from the corner, swinging it at the Doctor's head. It passed through him like fog—and slammed into the wall, clattering to the floor.

Tom dragged Mara back. "Run."

But the Doctor raised one gloved finger.

And the room obeyed.

The door sealed. The floor shifted. The light above the table flared red.

"You were all patients once," he said, pacing around them slowly. "You came here willingly. You signed the forms. You begged for the treatment."

Ella was shaking. "We didn't know what it was!"

"Oh, but you did," the Doctor said softly. "Everyone does. What do you think the virus really cured?"

He turned to Mara, head tilted like a curious child.

"You came to forget. You asked me to take it out. The memory."

Mara's lips parted. Her knees almost gave out. "What… what memory?"

The Doctor smiled wider. "That's the question, isn't it?"

The lights dimmed again. The table behind him began to twitch. Something was rising from it.

A body. Half-wrapped in surgical cloth. The skin around the mouth was sealed shut with thread. The eyes were open.

And staring directly at her.

Mara.

The body was her.

Jack backed up fast. "This is impossible—"

"No," the Doctor whispered. "It's memory."

"Then let us go," Tom snapped. "We don't want to remember."

"But you already have," the Doctor replied. "The procedure is done. You're not here to escape."

He leaned in, eyes black pits now.

"You're here to accept."

The room plunged into darkness again.

But not silence.

Now there were whispers.

Coming from the second book.

The skin-bound one.

It flipped open on its own. Pages riffling, revealing more and more entries. Patient records. One for each of them.

But the final page wasn't written yet.

Just a blank space.

Waiting.

Then a line appeared in black ink:

Final Admission: Mara.

Status: Incomplete.

And underneath that, scrawled slowly like it was being etched in real time:

Prepare for the second procedure.

The air thickened like congealed blood.

They couldn't breathe it. Not fully. It felt like every breath was permission.

Mara stared at the blank page in the second book—the one with her name, her fate, written in ink that bled like veins.

Final Admission: Mara.

Status: Incomplete.

Prepare for the second procedure.

Her body screamed to move, but her legs wouldn't. Something in the room—maybe the Doctor, maybe the town itself—held her still.

"I never agreed to this," she whispered.

But the Doctor shook his head. "You did. You signed."

He reached into his coat and pulled something out. A clipboard. Yellowed. Faded.

He turned it toward her.

Mara's signature.

Scrawled at the bottom of a document labeled:

LARCHWOOD NEURORECONDITIONING & MEMORY DISSECTION UNIT

Voluntary Admission – Deep Neural Erasure Consent Form

DO NOT WAKE DURING PROCEDURE

Ella was crying now. Tom stood stone-still.

"What the hell is this?" Jack whispered. "What does that even mean?"

"It means," the Doctor said gently, "she came here to forget something. Something catastrophic. And she did. We helped her."

"But it came back," Mara said. Her voice cracked. "The memories are waking up."

"No," he said. "You are."

He turned toward the table where her stitched double still lay. It was decaying now. Curling at the edges like a burned photograph. And as it did—

So was the hospital.

Tiles peeled. Lights flickered. Walls trembled like lungs exhaling their last breath.

"The procedure failed," the Doctor said, stepping back into the dark. "And when it fails…"

Behind him, something rose.

A figure taller than the Doctor. Unformed. Featureless.

Like a human-shaped hole cut from reality itself.

"…we have to cut deeper."

The scalpel in the Doctor's hand lifted on its own.

Floated.

Spun.

Then pointed directly at Mara.

The lights burst. The walls began folding inward, not collapsing but closing—like the hospital was a womb, and the surgery was a birth.

A memory surged.

Mara, running down these same halls, years ago. Holding a syringe. Blood on her hands. Screaming for help.

And in the room behind her—a body.

Not hers.

Not Jack's.

But someone no one had remembered until now.

A girl with long black hair.

Strapped to a chair.

Eyes wide open.

And stitched across her chest:

DO NOT REVIVE.

The moment the memory slammed into Mara's mind, she collapsed.

Not from pain—but from recognition.

The girl. The one strapped to the chair. The one whose eyes stayed open, even in death.

She had a name.

Seren.

Mara whispered it aloud, and the whole hospital shivered.

The others looked at her, terrified—not of what she said, but how she said it.

Like a prayer.

Like a curse.

Like a secret that should've stayed buried.

Jack moved to her side. "Who was she?"

Mara shook her head. "She's why we came here. All of us."

Tom blinked. "I've never seen her before."

"No. You forgot her," Mara said. Her voice was cold now, detached, as if some deeper part of her had been unlocked. "The hospital made sure of it. That was the treatment. She was cut out of every memory. Every photograph. Every record."

Ella whispered, "Why?"

"Because she never died," Mara said. "Not really."

A scream rang out from the hallway.

Not human.

Something long and wet, like metal being dragged through lungs.

The Doctor stepped back into the light. His stitched smile was gone.

Now he looked afraid.

"She's waking," he whispered.

Jack turned. "Who?"

The Doctor didn't answer.

Instead, he looked at Mara with something close to pity.

"You were supposed to forget her. That was the contract. That was the cure."

Mara rose, blood trickling from her nose.

"But I didn't," she said. "Did I?"

And from deep within the walls—something moved.

The hospital groaned. The tiles on the floor cracked open. From the dark seam beneath, fingers began to rise.

Too many.

Thin. Blue. Like drowned vines with nails.

The table in the center of the room flipped violently. The stitched corpse version of Mara slid off, crumpling like tissue. Useless now.

"She's not coming back," the Doctor whispered.

"No," Mara said. "She never left."

The lights shattered.

A girl stepped into the room.

Soaked. Pale. Her black hair clung to her face. Her lips had been sewn shut—but the threads were unraveling.

And behind her trailed something… alive.

Tubes. Organs. Screens that blinked with unreadable code. Every step she took, the walls changed—like they were rearranging themselves to remember her.

Ella backed up into the corner. "Oh my god. It's her. That's Seren."

"No," the girl rasped, voice finally breaking through her ruined mouth.

"It's what's left of her."

Then she looked at Mara.

And smiled.

"Time for your turn on the table."