The rain fell like static.
By the time Layla reached the outer district of Zürich, her coat was soaked through. She stood at the corner of Rue des Verites, facing the building that shouldn't exist.
No sign.
No lights.
Just five stories of gray concrete behind a rusted gate. The Asyl Éphémère, once a mental health clinic for high-risk memory trauma patients, had been officially decommissioned ten years ago.
But the coordinates embedded in the metadata of Moreau's video pointed right here.
She wasn't sure what she expected — an ambush? Answers? Another flickering ghost?
Instead, she found silence.
And an unlocked door.
Inside, the walls were clean.
Too clean.
No peeling paint. No dust. No decay. It wasn't abandoned — it was maintained. Like someone wanted it to appear abandoned while secretly keeping it pristine.
She moved through the lobby slowly, her boots silent on linoleum that still gleamed under broken light.
No signs of life. But not death either.
Something in-between.
Her neural tracker began to buzz.
There — a faint signal in the east wing. Encrypted. Analog-locked. The type of code used in private research facilities from decades ago. She followed it, step by cautious step, until she found a steel elevator hidden behind a folding panel.
The call button still worked.
That was the first bad sign.
The second? When the elevator opened, it didn't lead down.
It led sideways.
A hallway behind the shaft, lit by dull green lights and lined with what looked like observation windows, stretched ahead. Through the glass she could see empty hospital beds, old restraints, and blank TV monitors still plugged in.
This wasn't a clinic.
It was a lab.
And someone had been watching people in these rooms.
Recording them.
Studying them.
One room caught her eye.
It had a nameplate.
Subject 7: L. Rami
Her blood froze.
She stepped closer.
The bed inside was empty — neatly made, in fact. On the table beside it, an old-fashioned voice recorder sat in a sealed case.
Her name was scrawled across the label.
Shaking, she broke the seal, pressed play, and waited.
"This is Subject Seven. My name is Layla Rami. Today is... day 0. I've been told I volunteered for this, but I don't remember it. They say I'm helping map something called the recursion. They won't let me leave until I 'stabilize.' If I hear this message later, I need to remember — this is not a hospital. It's a trap."
She staggered back.
Her own voice.
From years ago.
But she had no memory of ever being here.
Suddenly, her commlink crackled.
A signal breach.
Encrypted message: "You're not supposed to be awake yet."
The lights above her flickered.
Then died.
She drew her sidearm.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor.
Slow. Deliberate.
Layla dove into the nearest room, locking the door behind her. She crouched under the observation table, heart hammering, eyes fixed on the hallway window. A figure passed — white coat, surgical gloves, face blurred by a visor.
It wasn't security.
It was a technician.
Still working here.
Still running experiments.
And she'd just triggered an alarm.
She checked the signal logs. The voice recording hadn't been accessed in nearly six years. But there were dozens more — subjects with initials she didn't recognize. Some had notes:
Subject 3: Memory fractured after phase loop.
Subject 5: Unstable recursion; possible mirror event.
Subject 9: Removed from timeline. No external trace remains.
Layla wasn't the first.
And she wouldn't be the last.
A hiss behind her — gas vents.
The room was sealing.
She had seconds.
She shot out the observation window, diving through glass and onto the corridor floor. Alarms rang. Lights flashed. But there were no guards rushing to her.
Just that technician.
Still walking.
Still watching.
She turned and ran.
Back through the green-lit hallway, past the elevator shaft, through the lobby — only this time, the doors were no longer unlocked.
Metal shutters had dropped.
She pulled a signal disruptor from her belt and blasted the seal. Sparks flew. The door groaned open.
As she escaped into the cold night, one final message buzzed through her neural core:
"Recursion confirmed. Subject 7 has remembered. Initiate Phase II."
Outside, thunder rolled across the lake. Her hands trembled.
She looked back at the building.
It was gone.
Not physically — but every window had gone dark. The gate had re-sealed. The light she'd seen?
Extinguished.
As if it had never been there.
Like someone had closed the memory of it.
She pulled out the old analog journal she'd hidden in her boot.
Inside, one phrase was circled in shaky handwriting she didn't remember writing:
"If you find this place again… don't trust yourself."
She needed answers.
There was only one person who could help her now.
Sera Talib.
If she was still alive.
If Layla could convince her to help, after everything that happened between them — the betrayal, the blackout in Istanbul, the lost years neither of them talked about.
And if Sera hadn't already sold Layla's memories to the highest bidder.