The team made camp in what used to be the administrative wing. Dust choked the air, and every footstep echoed longer than it should have. Time felt wrong in this place stretched thin as if the building itself remembered too much.
A long table had been cleared of its scattered papers and broken glass. Flashlights and lanterns threw flickering shadows across peeling portraits of former directors. Elena stared at one of the photos — a man in a white coat, smiling with too many teeth and eyes just a little too wide.
Dr. Karpov flipped through the journal they had found earlier. "These passages suggest someone had access to restricted areas. The subject mentions personnel codes and altered floor plans. Look at this." He tapped a line scribbled along the margin of a page:
/"Room 313. Beneath the west wing. No light. No noise. Remember the mirror."/
Anna shivered. "Why would a psychiatric hospital have a room that doesn't show up on any schematic? Especially one underground?"
"Because it wasn't for healing," Karpov said. "It was for control."
Reznikov snorted. "You're reaching. This place is a Soviet relic. Old papers, old paranoia. You're all reading ghosts."
Yuri had wandered away from the group. "You say ghosts like it's a joke," he muttered, running his hand along a wall inscribed with dozens of tally marks. "But something happened here. You feel it. Like the walls are still screaming."
No one answered. Because he wasn't wrong.
*
That night, Elena couldn't sleep.
She lay in her cot in one of the old offices, the single lantern casting a dull amber glow. The journal sat on the desk beside her, open and flipped to a page she hadn't remembered reading before.
/"They changed my name first. Then my face in the mirror. But the worst thing they took was my favorite memory — my sister's voice. I hear her now, but it's not her anymore. It's something wearing her skin. Something learning how to be me."/
She read it again. Then again.
A whisper curled through the silence like smoke:
~"Elena…"
She sat up, heart jackhammering. Nothing but her own breathing.
No. Not quite. There — beneath it — another sound. Not wind. Not the groan of settling steel.
A weeping.
Soft. Distant. Coming from behind the wall.
She gathered her courage and grabbed her flashlight and followed it, barefoot and cautious. The hallway outside was empty. The light flickered. The sound grew clearer — not just crying, now, but muttering.
She looked at the other rooms wondering what her team was doing. She pressed her ear against the cold concrete.
~"Please… please, I don't want to remember anymore…"
The wall suddenly shuddered beneath her hand. Elena jerked back. There was something on the other side — moving, and it wasn't one of the team members who was inside this room?
She stumbled backward, the flashlight beam swinging wildly, catching on a rusted plaque affixed to the corner.
ROOM 312.
Her breath caught, and despite the cold atmosphere, her throat went dry.
If this is 312…
She turned, facing to her left...
To her left, the corridor ended in collapsed rubble.
To her right: an alcove. Shadowed. A metal door almost flush with the wall. Painted over in red. Forgotten.
She approached slowly. The flashlight beam revealed a number etched faintly into the steel.
313.
The door handle was gone. Welded shut.
From inside, a tap-tap-tap. Rhythmic. Measured.
Then a low voice, muffled but unmistakable:
~"Who… do you think you are?"
She turned cold in terror. The flashlight flickered once, and a shadow behind her showed up briefly, then died.