Chapter 22: The Room That Wasn't There anymore

The server room had gone silent again.

Not the peaceful kind — the kind that comes after something breaks. The kind that waits, loaded with breathless expectation.

Arwa didn't get up right away.

Her eyes were still on the screen, now dark again. She half-expected her face to flicker back into it, smiling that eerie, not-her smile — the one that had ruined any comfort she had left in her own reflection.

Zayaan was pacing now.

Not frantic. Just tight, controlled steps — the kind that only barely kept the panic from spilling out. She could feel it in the air between them, humming like static!.

He finally stopped...crouched beside a locked cabinet, jist near the back of the room.

"There's something I haven't told you," Zayaan said without turning around.

Arwa didn't answer.

He opened the cabinet. Pulled out a folder — thick, overstuffed, bent at the edges like it had been shoved there in a hurry.

When he brought it over, he didn't hand it to her. Just placed it on the table between them like a confession.

"I found this a week before your trial. I wasn't supposed to be in the Archive, but... I followed someone in. They didn't know I stayed."

She flipped the folder open slowly and carefully.

Names. Notes. Diagrams that looked like floor plans. Observations in clipped handwriting. A list of subjects labeled "Primaries".

Her name was there.

So was his.

Along with timestamps. Locations. And beside each — one final column marked Outcome.

Hers said "Incomplete – under active study".

His said "Unstable – watched".

Arwa looked up, voice low. "They've been doing this to us before we even knew each other."

Zayaan nodded once.

Then, after a pause:

"There's a room on that map that doesn't exist anymore. Room 317. It was wiped off all official layouts two months ago."

"Why?" she asked.

"That's where the original footage came from," he said. "The one that showed me before my Delta trial. It's where they test memory manipulation before it's approved for use."

"You've been there?"

"No," he said. "But you have."

She froze.

That pull in her stomach again. That feeling of déjà vu with teeth.

"I think whatever version of you smiled at that camera... it started there."

Silence stretched again...

Then Arwa exhaled, slow and shaky, like she was bracing for preparing awful.

"Then let's go."

"To 317?"

"To whatever's left of it."

Zayaan hesitated. Just for a second. Then nodded.

"We'll have to go after lights-out," he said. "They monitor the main halls after 2200."

She stood, legs stiff but steady.

"If they're watching us anyway," she said, "might as well give them something to see."