By day three, I couldn’t remember which version was real anymore.
I stepped.
I looked down at my bracelet. . Four more days until the tenth. Day seven: I pretended to take the injection. Hid the vial in my sleeve. In the resonance chamber, I recited the official memories perfectly—flat, obedient, dead. Dr. Venn nodded. “Improvement,” she said. 092124-01-10mu
The scratching stopped. The vent went silent. By day three, I couldn’t remember which version
The first session, I lasted twenty minutes. My mother’s voice came through the speakers, but she wasn’t saying what she’d really said. She was saying the approved version. “You were always a difficult child. The therapy is for your own good.” Hid the vial in my sleeve
My room was a six-by-eight cell with a cot, a sink, and a window that looked out onto an air shaft. The walls were the color of old teeth. I sat on the cot and waited for the assessment.
Dr. Venn made a note. “We’ll start you on a ten-mu course. That’s ten days of memory unification therapy. You’ll receive a daily injection of stabilizer and spend four hours in the resonance chamber.”