CHAPTER 1 — THE NIGHT I REFUSED TO SLEEP
The first lie my husband ever told me wasn't that he loved me.
It was that I couldn't trust my own mind.
Every evening at exactly 9:30, Adrian placed a tiny white capsule beside my tea.
"You need your rest, Emma."
His smile never changed.
Neither did mine.
For twenty-six months, I swallowed the pill while believing it was prescribed to help me recover from the car accident that supposedly erased my memories.
According to Adrian...
My parents had died.
My childhood home had burned down.
I had no siblings.
No friends.
No one except him.
He repeated the story so often that it became the only reality I recognized.
Until the nightmares began.
I dreamed about a little girl running through heavy rain.
A lighthouse.
A woman screaming my real name.
Not Emma.
Someone kept calling me...
Rebecca.
Whenever I asked Adrian about the dreams, he gently touched my face.
"They're trauma fantasies. Your brain is healing."
He always had an answer.
After all...
He was one of the country's most respected neuropsychiatrists.
Everyone trusted him.
Even me.
Until the morning I woke with dried blood beneath my fingernails.
I had no memory of hurting anyone.
Or myself.
Adrian calmly explained I had scratched my arms while sleepwalking.
Then I noticed something else.
The scratches on my arms weren't made by fingernails.
They were tiny needle marks.
Perfectly spaced.
Like injections.
That afternoon, while cleaning his office, I found an invoice hidden beneath medical journals.
It wasn't addressed to Dr. Adrian Cross.
It was addressed to...
Project Lazarus Research Division.
Beneath it was one sentence highlighted in red.
Subject 17 remains psychologically compliant. Memory suppression exceeds expectations.
Subject.
Not wife.
Subject.
That single word shattered everything.
I waited until evening.
Accepted the capsule.
Pretended to swallow.
Then hid it beneath my tongue.
The hardest part wasn't staying awake.
It was pretending to breathe like someone trapped inside a drugged sleep.
At exactly 2:47 a.m...
The bedroom door opened.
No footsteps.
No hesitation.
Adrian entered wearing surgical gloves.
He wasn't carrying flowers.
He wasn't carrying medicine.
He was carrying a camera.
And a leather notebook thick with handwritten observations.
He gently lifted my eyelid.
"Still dormant," he whispered.
Then he smiled.
"Good girl."
I nearly screamed.
Instead...
I counted every heartbeat.
He placed headphones over my ears.
A woman's trembling voice filled the darkness.
"If you're hearing this... don't react. He's watching your pulse."
Every muscle inside me wanted to move.
I didn't.
"You are not Emma."
Silence.
"You are Rebecca Hale."
My heart almost betrayed me.
The voice continued.
"Your parents are alive."
Adrian immediately stopped the recording.
"Damn," he muttered.
"Not enough emotional response."
Then he opened a hidden passage concealed behind our wardrobe.
He lifted my unconscious body into his arms.
Or at least...
The body he believed was unconscious.
May you like
He carried me into the darkness.
And my nightmare truly began.
