Data That Was Never Recorded
Lira wasn't sure how long she had been walking.
The streets felt too quiet. The air was too still. Even the birds seemed to be holding their breath.
She had made a choice... at least, that's what she kept telling herself.
But now, the silence that followed felt like punishment.
Back in her room, she locked the door behind her. Not to keep someone out… but to keep herself in.
---
2:43 AM.
Lira sat up in bed, gasping. No sound had woken her. No movement. But something, some buried instinct, had pulled her out of sleep like a thread snapping in her chest.
She stared at the ceiling for a while, her breath slow, fingers cold.
Then, like it had a will of its own, her body moved toward the desk.
She opened the old book.
A page near the back had changed.
There was no explanation. No title. Just two words, scrawled in a sharper hand:
"LUX RECORDS."
The desk lamp flickered.
Lira frowned. That name... it rang in her bones like a memory that had never belonged to her.
She opened her old laptop.
Typed in:
lux psyche lab
lux experiment 04
lux realignment memory
Nothing.
The screen stayed blank. Search failed.
Then suddenly, without her pressing anything...
The screen turned black.
And a single line appeared, centered in white:
"Access denied. Subject not recognized."
Lira stared.
No network. No connection. But someone... something... was watching.
She tried to power off the laptop.
The screen shut down.
But her flip phone lit up instead.
One new message:
"There is data about you. But it was never recorded."
And below that:
"Backup Storage Room. 03:33."
She looked at the wall clock.
03:08.
She had twenty-five minutes.
---
She walked in the dark. The sky hadn't started to change yet. The wind pressed at her back like quiet urgency.
Her feet carried her beyond the school, toward the old science building, abandoned years ago, the one no one talked about.
The side entrance was rusted shut.
But the moment her hand touched the handle…
Click.
It unlocked.
Lira stepped inside.
Everything smelled of dust and metal. The walls peeled in places, wires like veins protruding from the ceiling.
She moved downward, past a broken stairwell, toward the lower levels.
And then... she saw it.
A small room. Half-lit. One glowing screen. A table. Racks of closed files.
On the screen, one file name pulsed:
[SUBJECT: LIRA – ALINA_R_4]
She stepped closer.
The screen flickered.
And then changed.
"YOU WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO SURVIVE."
***
Lira nearly dropped the phone.
The screen still glowed in cold blue.
"YOU WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO SURVIVE."
The sentence stayed frozen. Waiting.
Her fingers trembled as she pressed the only lit button beneath the screen.
A voice played through a hidden speaker. Mechanical. Genderless. Like the system itself had finally decided to speak.
"File accessed. Subject LIRA – ALINA_R_4. Status: incomplete.
Log: Experiment Four of the Lux Psyche System terminated outside protocol.
Final clone displayed anomaly: resistance to memory synchronization."
Lira's breath caught in her throat.
Clone? Synchronization?
The voice continued.
"Subject LIRA_4 failed to fully erase prior identity.
Side effects: dual personality, reflection distortion, memory bleed, temporal misalignment."
She staggered back.
The screen changed again.
A neural map appeared... spiking waves, unstable activity.
Underneath, scrolling text:
"Early signs of self-awareness detected."
"Data realignment failed. Flip device activated before scheduled phase."
"Estimated cross-consciousness drift: 78%."
The voice tone shifted. Clipped. Faster.
"Subject 1 – Failure.
Subject 2 – Lost.
Subject 3 – Deleted.
Subject 4 – Active, uncontrolled."
Lira's heart pounded. Her ears rang.
A new line appeared:
"Do you wish to continue experiment log?"
She didn't hesitate.
Pressed yes.
The screen blinked.
Then, a video began to play.
---
The image was grainy. Unstable. But it came into focus.
A girl sat in a chair, hands bound, eyes open... but hollow. Blank.
Lira stepped closer.
The girl looked exactly like her.
Same scar under the chin. Same slouch in the shoulders. Same face.
But something was off.
The eyes weren't hers.
"Subject ALINA_R_4 shows stable brain activity."
"Memory transfer to begin at 11:11. Flip device has been calibrated to offer two routes: MEMORY or REALITY."
"Upon choice, reality will adjust accordingly."
Lira's stomach twisted.
Her choices… weren't really hers?
The video cut.
Now the girl was trembling, pulling at the bindings.
"Anomaly detected. Subject questioning existence prior to scheduled sync."
"Flip device activated early."
"System lost control."
Then... black screen.
Final line:
"Current subject displays potential for autonomous consciousness."
"If not terminated, system failure imminent."
---
Lira stood frozen.
No tears came. No screams.
Just silence.
Then... her flip phone buzzed violently.
One line:
"You're the only one left. But you're not the only one awake."
***
The hallway outside her room felt colder than usual.
Lira had locked the door behind her, but it didn't feel like a boundary anymore. Not when something else, someone else... might already be inside.
She stood in front of the mirror.
Her own face stared back. Same hair, same expression, same tired eyes.
But the moment she blinked…
Her reflection didn't.
It just kept staring.
A beat too long.
Then... it turned its gaze slightly.
Not at her. But at the desk behind her.
Lira slowly turned.
Her flip phone was glowing again.
She picked it up.
The screen didn't show a message this time.
Just a symbol:
∞
It pulsed once.
Then vanished.
New text appeared.
"You are in Extension Protocol."
Lira frowned. The term felt clinical. Like she was reading someone else's diagnosis.
The screen updated again.
"Current subject has exceeded predicted lifespan."
"Extension Protocol triggered."
"Side effects include memory accumulation, identity overlap, and visual distortion."
She swallowed hard.
Memory accumulation?
Is that why she remembered things she'd never lived?
The screen continued:
"Reflection dissonance.
Residual self reactivation.
Merged cognitive pathways detected."
Suddenly... her reflection smiled.
Only her reflection.
Not her.
The screen blinked once more.
"Proceed to Origin Terminal. 11:11."
Her wall clock read: 10:12.
Less than an hour.
And this time, there was no map. No coordinates.
Just certainty.
She knew where to go.
A place she'd seen in flashes.
White walls.
One chair.
A mirror that wasn't a mirror.
And a voice that never answered.
She grabbed her coat. Her phone. The book.
But as she reached the door...
Three knocks.
She froze.
Not fast. Not frantic.
Just… deliberate.
One.
Two.
Three.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
She didn't move. Didn't speak.
The knocks returned. Louder.
And then... nothing.
Silence.
She waited. Breath held. Hand tight on the knob.
And then her phone buzzed again.
"Too late."
She turned toward the mirror.
There were now two reflections.
Hers.
And someone standing behind her.
***
Lira's throat tightened.
She turned fast...
No one there.
But the mirror still showed two.
Her reflection… and a figure behind it.
Tall. Faceless. Standing far too close.
She backed away from the mirror, heart pounding. Her skin crawled, even though the air in the room hadn't moved.
Then...
Her phone vibrated violently in her hand.
The screen flickered once. Then displayed:
"∞"
Same symbol.
This time, it didn't fade.
Instead, it began to distort. Glitching in and out.
Then a new message:
"You are in Extension Protocol."
"Unauthorized duration detected."
"Consequences escalating: Shared perception. Reflection bleed. Conscious leakage."
She stared.
"Conscious leakage"?
Her mind reeled, trying to form sense from the chaos.
The system wasn't just failing to control her.
It was warning her:
She was overflowing into herself.
And maybe… someone else was overflowing back.
She moved to the window, but the sky looked wrong.
Too still.
Like the world was being held on pause.
The phone buzzed again.
A new directive:
"You must reach the Origin Terminal by 11:11."
No map. No reminder.
But she knew now... it was real.
The white room.
She had never been there.
But something inside her had.
Her fingers tightened around the book.
She opened it again.
A new line had appeared, scrawled in frantic ink:
"She's inside now. She's not just a memory."
"And if she gets to you first… you won't remember ever being you."
Lira didn't wait.
She grabbed her coat. Shoved the book into her bag. Opened the door.
The hallway was silent.
But something in her gut screamed... run.
So she did.
All the way down the stairwell. Out into the cold morning air. Her legs felt too light, her breath too fast.
The street seemed longer than usual. Buildings blurred.
She kept running.
As if something unseen was matching her steps.
---
The Origin Terminal wasn't on any map.
But her feet knew where to go.
The path curved behind the old storage hall.
Past a locked fence.
Beneath a service tunnel.
And then...
A door.
Smooth. White. No handle.
But as she stepped close, it hissed open.
Inside:
A sterile hallway.
Cold light.
Silence.
She walked in.
At the far end was a room of glass.
And inside it… someone was waiting.
Lira froze.
It was a girl. Sitting calmly.
Same face.
Same eyes.
Same posture.
But older.
And smiling like she already knew the ending.
***
The girl in the chair looked exactly like her.
Not just similar... identical.
Same mouth. Same scar beneath the chin. Same sharp, anxious eyes.
But her posture was different. Relaxed. Like she had been here for years.
Lira stood at the edge of the glass chamber, frozen.
Then the girl opened her eyes.
"Finally," she said softly. "You took longer than I thought."
Her voice was Lira's voice. But steadier. Deeper. More practiced.
Lira stepped forward. "Who are you?"
The girl smiled faintly. "I'm the first. The original version... Alina_R_0."
Lira's stomach dropped.
"I thought… the others were deleted."
Alina stood from the chair, her movements deliberate. Graceful, like someone walking through a memory.
"They were. But I wasn't. The system failed. And when you activated Extension Protocol… it left a crack."
She walked slowly toward Lira.
"And now that I'm here… we have to choose."
Lira's flip phone buzzed again.
It displayed a simple screen:
[PRIMARY CONSCIOUSNESS SELECTION REQUIRED]
[STAY AS CURRENT SELF]
[RESTORE ORIGINAL VERSION]
Lira felt her breath catch.
"What happens if I stay?" she asked.
Alina paused.
"Then I disappear. And you keep living in whatever version of the truth you've built."
"And if I restore you?"
"Then you go under. You sleep. I wake up. And everything you've lived, your memories, your choices, become my shadows."
The timer blinked above them:
11:10:42
Lira stared at the screen.
Two choices. Two fates. One version of her, of them... would vanish.
She looked at Alina. At the girl who was supposed to be the beginning.
And then... at herself.
At everything she had become.
The girl who questioned.
The girl who broke the system.
The girl who chose memory, even when it hurt.
She raised her thumb.
And pressed one option.
Black.
---
When she opened her eyes, the world felt lighter.
Not better. Not fixed. But still hers.
She was alone in her room. The mirror showed only one reflection. Her own.
She tried to turn on the flip phone.
It didn't respond.
No light.
No pulse.
It was over.
But as she sat down on the edge of her bed, something lingered in the back of her mind.
A whisper.
Are you the one who made the choice?
Or just the one left behind to believe you did?
***