I was huffing.
Panting.
Not because I was tired—no, I realized that almost immediately—but because my body remembered what panic felt like. My chest rose and fell rapidly as I stood amid the scattered fragments of what used to be the glass table, the chair still clutched tightly in my hands.
My knuckles were white with tension.
I looked down at the chair.
Then, with a growl that felt more animal than human, I swung again.
The chair slammed into empty air where the table should have been, crashing into the ground as I brought it down again and again. I didn't stop. I didn't think. I just smashed—venting every ounce of rage, fear, betrayal, and disbelief into violent motion.
If I couldn't hurt them, I'd hurt something.
When I finally stopped, it wasn't because I was exhausted.
It was because there was nothing left to destroy.
I stood there, chest heaving out of habit, staring at the white floor littered with translucent shards. Slowly—painfully slowly—my breathing began to steady. The fog of anger lifted just enough for thought to return.
That was when I noticed something wrong.
The shards were moving.
At first, I thought my vision was glitching again. But no—each fragment trembled faintly, vibrating like metal drawn toward a magnet. They slid across the floor, scraping softly, converging toward a single point.
My stomach dropped.
The pieces rose.
They snapped together midair with clinical precision, seams vanishing as if they'd never existed. In seconds, the table stood whole again—pristine, transparent, untouched.
Perfect.
I froze.
The last piece of the chair slipped from my hands and hit the floor.
It shattered.
I stared.
The fragments trembled.
"No," I whispered.
They reassembled.
The chair snapped back into existence exactly where it had been moments ago.
I stumbled backward, my legs giving out as I fell onto the glossy white floor. A hollow laugh escaped me—sharp, broken.
"…Of course," I muttered.
I couldn't damage anything.
Nothing here could be harmed.
Nothing except me, I realized.
I sat there for a long time.
Or maybe it just felt like a long time.
Eventually, my vision began to blur—not from tears, but from something deeper. The edges of the white space warped subtly, stretching and bending like heat haze. I pushed myself up and started walking.
Then running.
I ran in a straight line, my footsteps echoing softly, my reflection stretching beneath me. I didn't stop. I didn't slow. I ran until instinct told me I should be exhausted.
And yet—
I arrived back at the table.
Same spot.
Same chair.
Same endless white.
"No," I said louder this time. "No, no, no."
I turned and ran again. Another direction. Then another. Diagonal. Curved. Zigzag.
Every path led back.
Always back.
I collapsed into the chair, hands gripping the transparent edge of the table as I bent forward, laughing weakly.
"Idiot," I muttered to myself. "You absolute idiot."
I had signed the contract.
I had smiled.
I had walked into the white room.
Time began to… smear.
At first, my thoughts were clear. Analytical. I tested things mentally, clinging to logic like a lifeline.
Why am I breathing?
Do I need to breathe?
I held my breath.
Nothing happened.
No pressure. No burning lungs. No panic response.
I exhaled out of habit.
Do I need to eat? Sleep?
Hunger never came.
Fatigue never followed.
Time stopped behaving.
Moments blended together, indistinguishable. Without a sun, a clock, or even shadows, the white space devoured my sense of progression. I tried counting seconds. Minutes. Eventually, I lost track.
Then the loneliness crept in.
Slowly.
Insidiously.
I'd always told myself I liked being alone. That people were exhausting. That silence was comforting.
This wasn't silence.
This was absence.
No sound. No variation. No imperfections. The white pressed in from all sides, uniform and merciless. It wasn't empty—it was oppressive.
The color itself began to hurt.
I started pacing just to break the stillness, muttering to myself, replaying conversations, arguing with people who weren't there. I recited anime openings. Movie quotes. Song lyrics.
My voice echoed back at me—distorted, wrong.
Eventually, even that stopped helping.
I sat at the base of the table and curled in on myself, resting my back against it. My thoughts unraveled, looping endlessly.
You did this.
You trusted them.
You're dead now.
I tried sleeping.
I couldn't.
I screamed once.
Just once.
After that, I started counting.
Prime numbers—not because I was particularly good at math, but because I needed something to hold onto.
Two.
Three.
Five.
Seven.
The rhythm anchored me. Gave my mind something solid as everything else dissolved. I counted softly at first, then louder, rocking slightly.
Ninety-seven.
One hundred and one.
One hundred and three.
I lost count a few times and had to start over.
Over and over.
Mr. Adeyemi
I stared at the screen longer than I should have.
Was a year too long?
The question gnawed at me as I folded my arms, the faint hum of machinery filling the control room. The space around me was dim, illuminated mostly by monitors—dozens of them—each displaying cascading data streams, neural activity graphs, psychological stability metrics.
Kamcy's designation blinked steadily at the center screen.
Isolation had been… effective. Perhaps too effective, at least compared to previous subjects.
I glanced at my watch.
Time dilation was always fascinating. For him, months had passed. For us, only seconds.
"Status?" I asked calmly.
A technician didn't look up from her terminal. "Acceleration cycle nearing completion, sir. Cognitive integrity is… strained, but intact."
I exhaled slowly.
Madness was a risk. One I'd calculated. Still, losing him entirely would compromise the experiment.
"Bring him up," I said.
The screen flickered.
Kamcy appeared curled tightly in a corner of the white containment space, rocking slightly, lips moving.
"…one hundred and thirteen… one hundred and twenty-seven…"
Prime numbers.
Good. He hadn't fractured completely yet.
I cleared my throat.
The sound carried.
His head snapped up instantly.
Confusion. Fear. Recognition.
He scrambled to his feet, eyes darting wildly before locking onto the projection.
"You—!" His voice cracked. "You came back."
I stepped closer to the screen.
"Kamcy," I said evenly. "Can you hear me clearly?"
"Yes," he said too quickly. "Yes. Please—listen to me. I won't say anything to anyone, ever. Let me go home. Please don't—don't put me back there."
I studied him.
Isolation always revealed the truth.
"You're not understanding this, Kamcy," I said. "This is your life now."
"I wasn't living," he snapped. "That wasn't living!"
I sighed.
"Your emotional response is expected," I replied. "But unnecessary."
He laughed weakly, running a hand over his head. "You're insane."
"Possibly," I admitted. "But I'm also offering you purpose."
He shook his head. "Let me go, goddammit!"
"That is not an option."
Silence stretched.
"I'll give you a choice," I continued. "Assist us—or return to isolation. Six months this time."
His breath hitched.
"…What do I have to do?" he asked.
I allowed myself a small smile.
"Good."
I gestured toward the table now positioned in front of him.
"You are part of an adaptive cognition program," I explained. "Your role is to assist with behavioral modeling. Simulate responses. Test systems. Learn."
"I don't even know what that means," he whispered. "Am I going to be trained or something?"
"Yes."
I met his gaze.
"And if you perform well, you'll be promoted."
"Promoted… to what?"
"A more interactive role," I said. "Expanded autonomy. Less containment."
I paused.
"You've likely realized by now—you don't need to eat, breathe, or sleep. The table is merely a psychological interface. A bridge. A familiar construct."
He swallowed.
"I'll do it," he said quietly.
I nodded.
"Excellent," I replied. "Then let us begin."
The system initialized.
And the experiment continued.