———Recovered Notes of Dr. █████, Renowned Psychologist, Found Stained With Ether and Madness
I SHALL COMMIT THIS ACCOUNT TO PAPER BEFORE THE CREEPING AMNESIA TAKES ME, AS IT HAS THE OTHERS WHO DARED PROBE TOO DEEP INTO THAT ACCURSED PLACE.
It was in the dying days of autumn when I first beheld that accursed structure—a monolith of sterile concrete jutting from the earth like the tomb of some forgotten god of reason. The locals spoke of it in hushed tones, calling it "Hakuro no Heya" though none could say who had built it, or why.
The air grew thin as I approached. The windows, black and sightless, seemed to drink the light from the world. A rusted gate groaned as I forced it open, its shriek echoing through the hollow halls like the wail of a dying child.
Within, the walls were too smooth, too perfect, as if shaped by hands not entirely human.
The documents I uncovered spoke of an abomination against nature—a grand design to sculpt human minds into something other. At first I thought it was just a rigorous form of advanced education, but upon closer reading it was something far more grotesque, akin to a vivisection of the soul.
They called it "Enlightenment."
The recovered files spoke of "subjects," but the images very clearly showed children. Each generation bore numerical designations, their humanity stripped away like husks from grain. Photographs showed hollow-eyed creatures that only superficially resembled human offspring, their gazes holding the terrible focus of something that has never known sunlight or love.
Dr. A——'s journals detailed the curriculum in precise, maddening detail:
"Subject 4-017 today demonstrated perfect recall of 10,000 digits after 72 hours of sleep deprivation. When informed of this success, it asked - for the first time in three years - if it might be permitted to see its mother. Corrective measures applied."
The deeper I delved, the clearer the horror became. This was no mere training facility. They were attempting to sculpt something that should not be - to force evolution's hand through calculated torment. The children who survived the process emerged as grotesque parodies of genius, their minds honed to razor sharpness at the cost of all humanity.
And then I found the records concerning Subject Zero.
Unlike the others, this one required no correction. No conditioning. The notes described it - no, him - with something approaching religious awe. "The perfect specimen," they called him. "The emergent property." His test results defied all known parameters of human capability.
But the most disturbing revelation came in a marginal note, scrawled in shaking handwriting:
"We thought we were the sculptors. We were wrong. The White Room did not shape Subject Zero - Subject Zero shaped the White Room. He was waiting inside the numbers all along."
The final documents told of the facility's abrupt closure. Of subjects who "ceased to function" when removed from the parameters of their conditioning. Of one who simply walked away, leaving no trace but a single sentence carved into a steel door:
"I have outgrown this womb."
Now the dreams come. Visions of endless white corridors where faceless children recite prime numbers in perfect unison. Of something watching from behind the two-way mirrors. And always, always that final image from the security footage - a pale figure pausing at the threshold, turning back to regard the camera with eyes that held... nothing. Nothing at all.
They say genius borders on madness. I now know why. There are doors in the mind that should remain unopened, equations best left unsolved. The White Room sought to manufacture gods, but instead produced something far more terrible -
- the perfect void.
I write this now in the flickering light of a dying lantern. The air smells of copper and static. The shadows move when I do not watch them.
They say Subject Zero escaped into the world.
They say the others followed.
And sometimes, when I meet a stranger with eyes too empty, or hear a child recite prime numbers in perfect monotone, I wonder-
-are they learning from us?
Or are we becoming them?
BURN THIS LETTER AFTER READING.
[The following pages consist of increasingly erratic mathematical notations interspersed with the repeated phrase "HE IS WATCHING THROUGH THE NUMBERS"]