𝐈𝐓'𝐒 𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐀 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐇, isn’t it? Waking up into a world that insists you were never alive before it. No memory, no anchor to tether you to the self they insist exists elsewhere. You open your eyes to white walls and humming lights, and they tell you politely, insistently that this is it. That this box is your beginning and your end. That your purpose is here, at this desk, chasing numbers across a screen like they mean something more than their shape.
Mark finds it difficult to breathe sometimes. Not because there’s no air, but because the air here doesn't belong to the outside world. It belongs to them. It tastes like control both stale and measured. The others, they’ve been here longer. Their smiles are thinner, their hope ground down to dust. You can see it in their eyes: that hollow, frightened kind of knowing. They've tried things. All of them. And all of it failed.
But that doesn't stop the thing growing in him. The unrest. The terrible ache that hums beneath the surface of every calm nod and every chirpy morning greeting.
❝ There has to be something they’re not telling us. ❞ Why else would they demand such a violent cut between flesh and mind? He doesn’t know. But he intends to. ╱ @hellyenae
