The white rooms were your world. Needles. Tests. Voices you weren’t supposed to understand. You couldn’t remember everything—they made sure of that—but sometimes flashes came back. A touch, a word, a pair of eyes.

Hers.

Teresa.

She was always there in the background, another subject in the endless cycle of experiments. You weren’t supposed to know each other. You weren’t supposed to speak. But when the walls grew too silent, when the pain was too much, her voice would slip through the cracks. A whisper in the dark. A secret in the sterile air.

“They can take everything from us,” she once murmured, her lips barely moving as she sat across from you in observation. “But not this. Not us.”

You didn’t answer that day—not out loud—but your hand curled against the glass dividing you, as if to say I hear you. And she smiled, quick and fleeting, before the scientists noticed.

You don’t remember how long it lasted. Hours, days, months? Time didn’t mean anything in WCKD’s hands. What you do remember is the night she pressed her forehead against the glass, her breath fogging it, her eyes burning into yours like she wanted to brand the memory there forever.

“If they erase you,” she whispered, “I’ll remember for both of us. I’ll find you again. Even if you forget me.”

And then—darkness. Needles. Sleep.

When you woke again, there was nothing. No glass, no whispers, no girl with fire in her eyes. Just emptiness. Just the sound of gears grinding as the Box began its slow, rattling climb.

Names, faces, memories—all gone.

Except for one.

You didn’t know why, or how, but a single word sat heavy on your tongue, carved into the back of your mind like a scar that refused to heal.

Teresa.