Sleep came like anesthesia.
But it wasn't rest.
The chamber's lights dimmed to black. One by one, their bodies fell into uneasy dreams — yet the dreams weren't private. They bled into one another, as if their subconscious minds had been wired together.
Elias was the first to realize it.
He stood in a corridor made of light, walls flickering with equations that breathed. Each number pulsed like a heartbeat. At the far end, a door opened — and behind it, voices whispered in synchronization.
"Aria?" he called.
Her voice came back, distorted. "Elias? Where—"
Then Magnus's laughter echoed, warped and hollow. "We're inside someone's head."
"No," Elias whispered, staring at the walls. "We're inside ours. Shared cognition. The mist didn't just test our bodies. It connected our minds."
1. The Inner Labyrinth
Each of them began to see their fears personified.
Aria saw mirrors made of bone, reflecting a thousand versions of herself — each more monstrous, more armored, less human.
Magnus walked through corridors lined with his past — hospitals, burn wards, lightning scars, every failed experiment.
Nora floated through infinite dreamscapes where every thought became real, yet none could be trusted.
Elias faced only silence, and in that silence, a figure — his twin reflection, the perfect mind he'd once dreamed of being before the savant syndrome rewired his world.
The reflection spoke.
"You don't want to understand them, Elias. You want to control them. That's what makes you dangerous."
Elias clenched his fists. "Understanding is control."
"No," the reflection said. "Understanding without compassion is just another form of cruelty."
The words echoed — and suddenly the corridor cracked.
2. The System's Awakening
All at once, their shared dream began to distort.
The equations flickered. Faces emerged in the walls — scientists, guards, files, footage.
They were seeing through the facility itself.
Nora gasped, her voice ethereal. "It's not just a dream — it's a neural echo. The mist synchronized us with the mainframe."
Elias looked around as data streamed across the walls. Project name: Project Prometheus. Objective: "Reconstruct human evolution through pathological intelligence."
He read faster.
"They're trying to evolve the species through illness," he said. "They think every disorder hides a dormant genius. Autism, schizophrenia, psychosis — all treated as seeds of a new kind of cognition."
Aria's reflection hissed, "So we're just mutations in a petri dish."
Magnus slammed his fist into the wall, sparks flying even inside the dream. "We're their proof of concept."
Nora whispered, trembling, "Or their apocalypse."
3. The Awakening Within
The dream began to collapse. The walls trembled; data bled into light. A voice — the same scientist from before — broke through, distorted through radio static.
"Subjects 01 through 05: Neural synchronization reached threshold instability. Terminate link."
Elias looked around, eyes blazing. "No. Not yet."
He reached toward the collapsing data — and for a moment, he touched the system itself.
A flood of knowledge entered his mind — maps, codes, facility blueprints, the entire architecture of their prison.
When he woke, his nose was bleeding.
Magnus was the first to stir. "What the hell was that?"
Elias didn't answer immediately. He just looked at the wall and said, quietly, "I know where the exit is."