Chapter 16: The Bone That Remembers

The bone shard in Maya's palm was no longer still.

It twitched.

Bleeding from the etched code like it remembered what had been done to it. Not blood—but wet data, dripping symbols in black-red strings down her arm.

Dev moved quickly, pulling out an old analog device from his satchel—a bone scanner. It looked almost medieval: part surgical tool, part relic. He placed the shard in it and activated the small screen.

The scanner vibrated.

The bone screamed.

Not audibly—but in their spines. The kind of scream your body remembers from the womb. A scream that makes you forget you were ever human.

> "What the fuck is that?" Kiran snapped, backing away.

Dev's voice was low, steady.

> "A scream of recognition. It knows where it came from."

Elias leaned closer, the words glitching in his vision.

The scanner finally decoded the symbols:

CONSCIOUSNESS INDEXED: 7

CAGE NODE: Θ-1 [EXTRACTION PROTOCOL ACTIVE]

PASSWORD FRAGMENT: "Deliver Me From The Flesh"

INITIATING DREAMHOOK...

Suddenly the walls shifted. Not physically—but visually. The basement folded, revealing a staircase that shouldn't exist, curling downward into black fluid and copper veins. The bone shard crumbled in the scanner—its job done.

Kiran stared into the new passage.

> "What… the fuck is Dreamhook?"

Dev didn't answer immediately.

He looked… haunted.

Then finally:

> "Dreamhook is the bridge. A corridor between the soul fragments and the core. It's where the machine stores awareness. Not people. Pieces of them. It's a maze made of memory, grief, and betrayal."

Elias touched the wall—it rippled like skin under a knife.

> "Will we find answers there?" he asked.

Dev turned slowly.

> "Maybe. But it's not answers you need. It's… the original failure. And to get out of this… trance, this collapse, you have to sever the echo that started it."

Maya narrowed her eyes.

> "And how do we do that?"

Dev's silence lingered.

Then finally, softly:

> "I came here to find someone. My sister. She was one of the first test subjects they used after the death-row program became... civilian intake. She was taken in for what they called 'neurological empathy testing.' Just another way to say: rip her mind open and record her agony."

---

🩸 [Flashback: Subject Theta-1]

A girl—sixteen. Bound to a rotating wheel. Electrodes piercing her nerves, not skin. The machine pulsed with a dull green glow as it extracted her ability to feel. Not pain. Other people's pain.

Her eyes leaked blood.

In another room, five men screamed and begged for mercy—she felt all of it. Lived it. It tore at her synapses like fire licking through wires.

> "They called it The Empathy Cross," Dev whispered. "She broke. And then… she stopped screaming. That was when the machine said: soul fragment isolated. Subject successfully indexed."

---

Kiran collapsed to the floor, his face pale, lips trembling.

> "We're in hell. This is hell. I can't—"

Elias knelt next to him.

> "We're all in this together. I didn't ask for this either. But we don't stop. We don't fucking stop."

Kiran stared at him, then at Dev.

> "Can we come out of this? If we sever the echo—will we wake up? Escape?"

Dev inhaled.

> "If you destroy the core fragment—maybe. But the Dreamhook has rules. If you see your own death, don't look away. If someone calls your name in a voice you love, do not follow. And if the machine offers you a deal—don't speak."

Maya gritted her teeth.

> "And if we fail?"

Dev looked her dead in the eyes.

> "Then we join the others. Fragmented. Screaming. Looping inside a system that doesn't forget. Not ever."

---

The staircase yawned open.

The air thickened. Smelled like wet rust and something older—like ancient grief, rotting pride, and forgotten innocence.

The passage pulsed… like it was waiting.

> "We go now," Elias said. "Before it closes."

And one by one, they descended into the Dreamhook.

Into t

he belly of memory.

Where guilt had teeth.

Where the code wept blood.

Where death wasn't the end.

It was the entrance.

---

TO BE CONTINUED…