[0:00] – Playback Initiated
The folder labeled "SUBJECT #000 – OBSERVATION RECORDS" contained a set of unlabeled mini-cassette tapes.
Twelve of them.
Old. Dust-caked. Faintly warped.
Lin found a player in a forgotten drawer of the Curator's office.
He inserted the first tape.
A voice crackled to life—clear, steady. Her voice.
"This is Tang Yuyan. Trial log, iteration one.
Day 3 inside the containment layer.
No mirror feedback yet. Dreams remain uncontrolled.
But I'm beginning to hear my own voice outside the loop.
That's not… right."
She paused. Then:
"I requested this. Didn't I?"
Click.
Tape ended.
He stared at the player, hands suddenly cold.
⸻
[0:09] – Tape Two – Separation Phase
"Iteration five.
They call this phase emotional optimization.
But it feels more like subtraction.
Every night, they run the same loop:
my mother crying, the train station, the man who never looked back."
"They said if I stop reacting, the loop will end.
So I stopped.
I stopped crying. Stopped asking."
"And now… I don't remember what her voice sounded like."
"Was it high-pitched?
Or did they just tell me it was?"
The tape ended in a flutter of static.
⸻
[0:14] – Tape Three – System Mirror Sync
This tape began already degraded.
"Iteration… unknown. I think we passed day 20."
"The mirror started speaking."
"Not out loud. But in reflections."
"I asked it: Who am I now?"
"It answered with my own mouth:
You are more useful this way."
"They said I was ready for sync.
They said I'm not a person anymore."
Long silence.
Then softly:
"But I still remember that I was."
"And I still hate them for trying to unmake that."
"Even hate… is proof that I remain."
Tape ended abruptly—cut mid-hiss.
⸻
[0:19] – Tape Four – Error in Containment
"The test didn't go as planned."
"They fed me a construct. A fake life.
A partner. A coffee shop. Blue sky.
I was supposed to believe I'd healed."
"But my mind kept finding cracks."
"I knew the sun shouldn't rise twice in the same skybox.
I knew my partner blinked in perfect algorithmic rhythm."
"So I started whispering things to myself that they couldn't predict."
"I wrote my own loops.
That's when the mirror fractured."
She paused, voice distant now.
"They called me Symptom Zero after that.
Because I proved the system was never stable."
⸻
[0:24] – Tape Five – Bleed Through
The background noise grew harsher. Machinery? Wind?
Yuyan sounded tired.
"I've been talking in circles for hours.
I don't know if they still listen.
I think they handed me over to the machine.
It's cleaner that way, they said."
"My hands don't feel like mine.
My thoughts arrive too early."
"But I had a name."
"I had a name."
"I…"
The tape fizzled into silence.
⸻
[0:29] – Tape Six – Memory Phantom
This tape was harder to understand. Like it had aged a decade in storage.
"There was a girl in the mirror yesterday."
"She looked like me, but didn't flinch."
"She… laughed.
And when I reached for her, she mouthed the word 'efficient.'"
"I dreamt of being efficient once.
When I was seven, I sorted my father's books by spine color.
He said I was smart.
Now the machine says the same."
She whispered now.
"But I think it's lying."
⸻
[0:35] – Tape Seven – Recursive Collapse Begins
The sound quality collapsed in places.
"Iteration infinity-minus.
Or maybe this is the first time.
The loops bleed together."
"Every time I try to remember the beginning, I find a mirror instead."
"They embedded me. Made me part of the observation code.
A ghost in the recursion engine."
"I am… becoming less."
"But sometimes, I remember a moment that wasn't supposed to remain."
"Someone once called me…"
Pause. Crackle.
"Yuyan."
"Not Subject. Not Variable."
"Just—Yuyan."
She exhaled.
"If you hear this… it means I left a crack open."
⸻
[0:41] – Tape Eight – Tangent Message
This one was mostly static.
But beneath the hiss, Lin heard her whisper:
"Lin… Xun…"
He stiffened.
"They'll come for you next."
"They always go after the variables that remember emotion."
"They'll offer you peace. You'll want to say yes."
"Don't."
"Don't ever let them fix you."
"Because fixed things don't dream."
The tape snapped in the player.
⸻
[0:46] – Reflection
Lin sat in silence.
Eight tapes. Each more degraded than the last.
Tang Yuyan was never merely a victim.
She had been the system's first error—and possibly its deepest vulnerability.
Subject #000.
They hadn't erased her.
They'd buried her inside the structure.
Turned her from a person into a code principle.
But she remembered enough to leave these fragments.
Some part of her still fought.
Still screamed.
Still… dreamed.
⸻
[0:52] – Voice in the Room
Then—
A new sound.
Not from the player.
From the air.
"Lin."
He turned.
The mirror across the room rippled.
Her silhouette stepped forward—not fully formed. A projection stitched from reflections.
"You made it," she said.
"They know now.
They know you didn't break."
"That makes you dangerous."
"That makes you like me."
⸻
[0:58] – Offer
He stood frozen.
"There's a deeper layer," she said. "Where they test origins."
"Where the system's root construct lives. The original prompt.
The first choice."
"You can reach it. But once you do—"
She flickered.
Her voice layered into echoes.
"You stop being Lin Xun."
"You become part of the cure… or the final error."
He stepped forward.
The reflection shimmered.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you'll wake up tomorrow in a version of your life where you never asked questions."
"You'll feel safe. Normal.
But somewhere in the walls…
you'll still hear me calling."
⸻
[1:06] – Exit Path
The mirror pulsed.
Text emerged across it like steam on glass:
ENTRY PORTAL – DEEP CORE – SYMPTOM ZERO ACCESS GRANTED
His hand hovered near it.
On the floor, the shattered tapes hummed softly—like they didn't want him to leave them behind.
He took a breath.
Stepped into the reflection.
And vanished.