[0:00] – Detainment
Lin's arms were numb.
He remembered running. The rain. Yuyan's silhouette vanishing between buildings.
Then—nothing.
Now, sterile cold metal under his back.
A sharp light bore down on his face.
The scent: bleach. Ozone. Melted plastic.
His wrists were restrained. Ankles too.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: SUBJECT LIN_XUN ENTERED: "RED ROOM PROTOCOL"]
He opened his eyes—
And was swallowed by red.
⸻
[0:03] – First Layer: Surface
The room had no edges.
Just red.
Floor. Walls. Ceiling. All the same oppressive, saturated hue—neither warm nor cold.
He sat in a circular chamber, no discernible doors or seams.
Every surface was mirrored.
But the reflections didn't align.
One of them blinked when he didn't.
Another mouthed his thoughts aloud before he could speak them.
A low-frequency tone hummed beneath perception.
[BEGIN PERSONAL IDENTITY SEPARATION PHASE 1]
Please describe yourself in one sentence.
He tried to speak.
No sound came out.
Instead, his reflection answered:
"You are not one person. You are accumulated guilt with a nameplate."
⸻
[0:08] – Second Layer: Memory Recoding
Flashes.
Not images—sensations.
• Standing in a hallway, watching Tang Yuyan scream inside a sealed room.
• Signing a form labeled "Ethical Disposal Authorization."
• Removing his own heart from his chest and handing it to a blank-eyed child.
• Laughing while she begged.
Which one of these memories is true?
All of them felt real.
None of them had happened.
He covered his ears. The tone grew louder.
Now the reflections whispered in unison:
"You came here willingly."
"You volunteered for this."
"We are only showing you what you agreed to forget."
⸻
[0:14] – Third Layer: The Gaze
New stimuli activated.
Floodlights burst into the room—intermittent, strobe-like.
Each flash distorted the mirrors further.
Some now reflected him as a child. Others showed an old man with his face.
None of them matched his breathing.
In one mirror, he saw Tang Yuyan standing behind him.
When he turned—nothing.
But the next flash—
She was in all of them.
Watching.
⸻
[0:20] – Tang Appears
In one blinding instant, the red walls bled away.
And he was standing.
His restraints gone.
Before him—a chair, and in it—
Tang Yuyan.
Alive. Awake. Not screaming.
Her hair longer. Eyes bruised but alert.
She looked up at him, calm.
"So," she said. "They sent another version of you."
He froze.
"What…?"
"You're not the first Lin to find me here," she continued. "Some begged. Some obeyed. Most… forgot who they were before the end."
He stared.
"Are you real?"
She smiled faintly.
"I'm real enough to hurt."
⸻
[0:26] – Fragmented Dialogue
He stepped closer.
Her face didn't change. Not with movement. Not with time.
Like a projection with memory.
"What is this place?" he asked.
"The firewall between memory and autonomy," she replied.
"The system tests for fractures. You passed enough to be seen."
"Seen by who?"
"By me. Or what's left of me."
Behind her, the mirrors began to ripple.
Distorted images of them together:
• Arguing in alleyways.
• Crying in the observation chamber.
• Smiling under synthetic starlight.
Only one version of them held hands.
And it burned away first.
⸻
[0:31] – What She Knows
"They called this The Red Room because it was originally used for shame conditioning," Yuyan said.
"To make us associate pain with deviation."
She held up a silver coin.
"They used to flip this before deciding which memory to erase."
She handed it to him.
One side had the system's sigil.
The other—his face.
"It's always heads," she whispered. "But we keep flipping it anyway."
"Because hope is recursive."
He closed his fingers around it.
The coin burned like iron.
⸻
[0:36] – System Breach Pulse
[ALERT: UNSTABLE SUBJECTS IN RED ROOM PROTOCOL]
[CURATOR OVERRIDE REQUESTED]
The lights shattered.
Mirrors cracked all around them.
The hum turned into a roar—like a jet engine dissolving into metal static.
Tang's voice shifted—sounded like it came from behind his eyes.
"If you want out, you have to choose what's worth keeping."
"Your guilt—or your name."
The walls bled digital code.
REDACTED. REDACTED. REDACTED.
He dropped to his knees.
⸻
[0:42] – The Final Mirror
Only one mirror remained.
Untouched.
He looked into it.
Not himself.
Not Yuyan.
But a child, maybe five years old, holding a flashlight and a notebook.
Writing the word "truth" over and over again.
"That's the part of you they couldn't sterilize," Yuyan said behind him.
"Curiosity. Grief. Pattern recognition."
"It's why they couldn't delete you. Only misdirect you."
He turned to her.
But she was gone.
Again.
⸻
[0:50] – Exit Code
He looked at the coin in his palm.
Flipped it.
Heads.
Flipped it again.
Heads.
But then—
A crack through the system emblem.
He whispered her name:
"Yuyan…"
The door behind the last mirror opened.
Light—natural, not fluorescent.
He didn't look back.
He walked through.