Echoes Beneath the Silence

As I sat in the empty room, the psychologist’s final question looped in my mind like a strange echo.“If someone else’s survival depended on how deeply you regret… would you regret more?”Of all the therapy sessions I’d been dragged through blank smiles, soft-spoken professionals, recycled wisdom about "processing pain". This was the first time someone asked something that didn’t feel like it belonged in a pamphlet. It wasn’t a question for healing. It was more… functional. A calibration tool.What did it even mean?Did the Lucent Project's machines feed off regret? Would the procedure become more "effective" if I felt worse about myself? Was there a mathematical value assigned to emotional pain?I didn’t know. And more importantly, I didn’t care.If it meant I could die quicker, I’d regret every breath I’ve ever taken.Shortly after, a pair of emotionless faculty members—clipboard carriers with badges instead of names—arrived to escort me to the next phase of the program: music therapy.I’d been to dozens of these. Rooms designed to mimic calm: beige walls, soundproofing, ocean waves, pan flutes. “Scientifically proven frequencies to relax the nervous system,” they claimed. The only thing they managed to do was make me drowsy—never enough to sleep, just enough to hate being awake.This room was different.It was darker than the others. A low, clinical blue light spread like fog across the floor. The scent of antiseptic clung to the air, mixing with something faintly sweet and unnatural—like artificial lavender, overcorrected.Rows of pods lined the walls. Not chairs. Not beds. Pods—like futuristic coffins, each one holding a silent occupant. Their bodies slumped, faces hidden behind sleep masks. Headsets wrapped around their skulls like restraints. A soft hum vibrated from each unit—biometric readouts pulsing on thin digital strips. Heart rate. Brainwave activity. But also stranger metrics… symbols I didn’t recognize.Some of the masks were wet. I could see it. The dark patches where tears had soaked through. Their bodies trembled gently, almost imperceptibly. Some were crying. Others had crossed into that numb fugue where you forget what crying even feels like.Emotionally vulnerable, I thought.Then again, maybe that was the point.I was led to a pod set apart from the rest. It wasn’t just slightly different—it was deliberately different. Cleaner. More advanced. The metal wasn’t scratched or dulled like the others. A silver arm curved over the top, embedded with small rotating lenses and soft blinking nodes. The padding felt new, like it hadn’t been used before. Or maybe it was sterilized after each subject.This wasn’t for therapy. It was for observation.They lowered me gently inside and began attaching things without speaking. Electrodes to my temples. A pulse monitor clamped to my finger. Something cold slid into the crook of my arm—an intravenous line, or maybe just a sensor. I couldn’t tell. Everything was too smooth, too choreographed.I closed my eyes. The eye cover was lowered, plunging me into darkness.At first—nothing.No sound. No hum of electricity. No static. Not even the muted shuffle of the staff.It was absolute silence.The kind that made you feel like the universe itself had been unplugged.Then, a note—single and slow—slipped into the silence like a cracked whisper. A low, melancholic tone that vibrated deep in the chest rather than the ears. The kind of sound that didn’t comfort or soothe—it remembered something.Then another note. And another. Each slightly sharper, more urgent. As though a sadness was trying to shape itself into music but kept losing the thread.The rhythm began to emerge—irregular, almost like a failing heartbeat.Then the voices came.Not words at first. Just shapes—murmurs that rode under the melody, indistinct, almost imagined. But as the frequency rose, they began to speak. Not clearly, not all at once—but enough that, if you were paying attention, you could feel the meanings coil beneath the surface.Regret. Guilt. Worthless. Sink. Sink. Sink.They didn’t scream it. They whispered it—like a memory you forgot was yours.The music shifted again. Louder now. Sharper.The instruments were gone. This was no longer music. This was a pattern. Mechanical, deliberate. A kind of rhythmic compression, like being pulled deeper and deeper underwater. You could feel it in the ears, the lungs. A subtle simulation of drowning, layered beneath a tonal manipulation.Then—a break.Profound silence returned, but this time it was suffocating. Like your ears had imploded. Then came the sound of water—churning, swallowing, drowning. You could hear someone struggling, their breath caught mid-scream. Then cut off. Then again. Over and over.A loop of suffering.A breath. A cry. A fall.Help. Help. Regret. Hell. Help.It was too surreal to be real, too methodical to be random. And yet it wasn’t affecting me. I felt nothing. I simply lay there, listening. Recognizing the pattern. Guessing what came next. Waiting for the next programmed despair.Until it came.A sound that shouldn’t have been there.Laughter.Not joyous. Not human.Thin, high-pitched. Like someone laughing through their own choking.No. Not someone.Her.My heartbeat spiked. Something in my chest jerked upward, like a string being pulled taut. I tore the headset from my ears and ripped off the eye cover.I gasped like I’d surfaced from black water.The room around me was dim. Monitors flashed softly. The others were still inside their pods, unmoving. The staff hovered at their stations, murmuring, taking notes. Some glanced at me—just long enough to show they’d been watching, then looked away.I stared at the monitor nearest to me.A name blinked on the screen, only for a moment before it vanished.worm1That was the name of the clip. Worm1.Someone rushed to shut the monitor off. Too late.The door slid open. Kurose-kun entered, carrying his usual clipboard and polite detachment.“Great work today, Tsukihara-kun,” he said, with a calm smile. “It’s already three in the afternoon. You can have your lunch in the mess hall and return to your quarters. We’ll continue tomorrow.”“Three…?”I looked around. No clocks. No sunlight.“I was in the pod for five hours?” I asked. “It felt like… half an hour.”He nodded, slowly. “Yes, Tsukihara-kun. You were there for five hours.”His eyes lingered on mine. Something unreadable shimmered behind them.“You just didn’t notice it.”