Dissociation

Unreliable Memory

July 26, 2058 — Friday

Dário woke with the strange sensation that time had passed without asking permission.

He remained still for a few seconds, trying to recognize the room. The silence was denser than it should have been for that hour of the morning — no footsteps in the hallway, no distant voices, no clatter of dishes from the kitchen.

He sat up in bed.

His body felt too light, as if he had slept longer than necessary… or less than he remembered.

He looked at the clock.

Friday.

He frowned.

He had lain down for a nap on Wednesday afternoon, at 1:20 p.m. He remembered it clearly — sunlight had slipped through the curtains, and a faint smell of coffee still lingered in the air.

Now, the coffee had died in time.

He tried to pull up any memory between lying down and waking.

Nothing.

No dreams.

No images.

It was as if someone had cut two entire days out of his life.

He took a deep breath.

The air felt too clean.

Almost new.

Where is Luci?

He stood and walked toward the bedroom. The bed was made — too perfect for someone who had slept in it the night before. He touched the sheet.

Cold.

He opened the wardrobe.

Some clothes were missing.

Manu.

Carlito.

He grabbed his phone with sudden urgency. The family photo still smiled back at him from the screen, oblivious to the disorder of the world.

He called Gabriel Arcanjo School.

No signal.

Not even a failed connection — just absence.

The silence began making noise inside him.

He swallowed hard and pressed the intercom button.

A brief hiss.

Then a voice:

— Cerberô Valente. How may I assist you, sir?

Dário slowly pulled the device away from his face.

Cerberô? The doorman’s name was Mário. It had always been Mário.

He hung up without answering, leaving the receiver slightly off its base.

An unsettling thought crossed his mind:

He’s coming up.

He threw on the first clothes he found. His fingers trembled without the cold to justify it.

He opened the door.

And the world tilted a few degrees.

This was not Academic Brothers.

The corridor was too wide. Curving to the right, it vanished before his eyes could reach its end. The light was dim, a tired yellow that seemed incapable of fully touching the walls.

He stepped outside.

Then another step.

No doors.

No rugs.

No numbers.

Nothing but the silent curve.

A slow certainty began to form — the kind the body understands before the mind:

It wasn’t just the apartment that was wrong.

It was the place.

Perhaps time itself.

A noise echoed ahead.

Dário felt the chill rise at the back of his neck and slide down his spine.

He thought about running.

But running where, if there were no doors?

Then something worse occurred to him:

What if this floor existed only for him?

A low sound began spreading through the space — too deep to be merely heard, strong enough to be felt.

Dário’s chest yielded beneath the invisible pressure.

It wasn’t a sound.

It was a weight.

His mind tightened along with the air around him. He frowned and ran — without direction, without a plan — he simply ran.

His footsteps echoed briefly, swallowed by the endless curve of the corridor.

Then he realized.

He was circling.

The space bent him back toward the same place, as if the floor itself breathed and rearranged him with every attempt at escape.

He stopped.

The silence after the low frequency felt even more violent.

He began walking slowly.

Waiting.

Waiting for his apartment door to appear.

It didn’t.

For the first time, a thought existed without asking permission:

I want to be dreaming.

Then he saw them.

Doors.

They had not been there before.

He was certain.

The air changed first — an aggressively clean odor, like alcohol and freshly spread chemicals.

A smell that did not belong anywhere people truly lived.

He approached the first door on the left.

Raised his hand.

Stopped.

Something inside him — an ancient instinct, older than thought — whispered:

no.

He stepped back.

That was when he noticed the voices.

Distant.

Blurred.

A language spilling without form.

His heart pounded.

— Is anyone there?! — he shouted. — Please!

The corridor swallowed his voice.

No answer.

Not even an echo.

Another door appeared ahead.

He hadn’t seen it emerge.

It was simply there.

He closed his eyes before touching the handle — as if chosen darkness were safer than seeing whatever waited on the other side.

He turned it.

Locked.

He kept walking.

The light was too white now.

It didn’t illuminate — it invaded.

The thought came dry:

I need to get out.

He began testing every door he found.

One after another.

Locked.

All locked.

Until he saw the symbol.

He couldn’t say where he knew it from.

But his body recognized it before memory did.

He opened it.

Eight faces turned toward him at the same time.

White upon white.

Eyes far too attentive.

Dário didn’t think.

He ran.

The footsteps behind him came immediately — coordinated, precise.

It wasn’t pursuit.

It was procedure.

The oval corridor worked against him.

When he realized it, four were already coming from the front.

He stopped.

Air refused to enter his lungs properly.

They spoke — rapid, technical words, incomprehensible.

They approached like people who already knew exactly what to do.

Then something struck the back of his neck.

A white flash tore through the world.

And everything went dark.

⸻

When he returned, the world was still white.

Opening his eyes demanded more strength than it should have.

Mouth dry.

Mind unable to anchor itself to a single thought.

An ID badge swayed before him.

AstraBio Experience.

— Patient John has presented a new dissociative episode.

Dário tried to say his name.

But he was no longer sure what it was.