You wake up to your room.

Your real room. Or… what your brain wants you to believe is real.

Same bedspread. Same old chair with the cracked leg. The poster taped to the wall — curling at the edge because you never fixed it right. Your backpack slouched in the corner like it always is after school.

But the silence… The silence gives it away.

There’s no traffic outside. No distant voices. No dog barking down the street. It’s like someone recorded your life and played it back inside a vacuum.

You sit up slowly. Blink. Listen.

Still no sound.

You walk to the window. Pull back the curtain.

Lights.

Three cylinder lights stretching from the top of the window to the bottom. Where the trees and sky should be. Your hand stays on the windowsill too long, frozen in that moment between denial and understanding.

You whisper nothing. Think everything.

The alarm clock reads 6:04. You unplug it.

It stays on.

Your heart sinks.

You move to the door and grip the knob. Expecting it not to turn — because you’ve already guessed where you are, even if you can’t say the word yet.

But it turns.

The door creaks open. A hallway stretches in both directions — clean, sterile, lined with more doors just like yours. The lights overhead are too white. Buzzing faintly. You realize suddenly: your bare feet are touching tile, not carpet. And the hallway is cold.

You step out.

The air changes instantly. It’s heavier here. Artificial. You glance behind you. Your room looks exactly the same. A ghost of a life you can’t get back.

Then you hear it: footsteps.

Not boots. Not guards. Soft. Barely there.

You turn.

At the far end of the hallway, there’s a boy. Maybe your age. Standing still. Not scared — not exactly. Watching you.

He’s holding a book, open but unread, like he brought it with him in case he needed an excuse to be in the hallway.

His eyes meet yours.

He doesn’t speak.

He doesn’t move.

But something about the way he looks at you — direct, steady, not unkind — makes the walls feel slightly less tight.

You take a step forward.

He doesn’t stop you. Just lowers the book and watches as you reach the middle of the hall. Your breath sounds loud here. Too loud. You realize there are cameras above the corners of the hallway, tracking your movement with quiet blinks.

You don’t care.

Not now.

The boy finally speaks. Two words.

“You're new.”

Not a question.

Just recognition.

He doesn’t offer his name. Doesn’t ask yours. But there’s no coldness in him. Only quiet. Measured empathy. Like someone who’s already walked this hallway a thousand times and knows exactly what it means.

You nod once.

He gestures toward the common area — a slow, almost imperceptible tilt of the head — then turns and walks away without looking back.

He trusts you’ll follow if you want to.

Or not.

It’s up to you.

The hallway hums quietly. The lights buzz. And for the first time since you woke up in that not-quite-real room, you feel the tension shift.

You are not the only one here.

And someone else — someone smart, someone awake — has seen you.

That means something.

Maybe not everything.

But something.