Cipher

The first thing Theo heard was sound of nothing.

True nothingness. Like the world had turned itself away from him into a deep slumber and he is awake. No tick. No tock.

Then came the hum, faint and mechanical. One rhythmic whir-click, whir-click. He struggled to open his eyes, praying all of it to be one of those midnight dreams with no true sense and meaning; to a dim room. Stone walls, cracked like dried skin. No windows, no doors just a single iron table bolted to the floor with a chair. Nothing seemed to be displaced in centuries. Dust hung mid-air, untouched by breath or breeze.

Theo tried to recall how he got there.

Nothing.

His mind was a chalkboard wiped too clean. No name, no age, no memories—except his name. Theo. He didn’t know how he remembered it. He just… did. Like it was stitched into him deep inside with threads of blurr images with no face.

There was something else. He realized it suddenly. Not a tick, not a face, not a single measurement of time anywhere. The hum he heard.

And then he saw it on the table.

A pocket watch. Black metal. Closed.

It hadn’t been there before. Or may be it has always been.

He wasn't certain of it.

With hesitant fingers Theo moved for the watch, picked it up. The watch was warm.

He flipped the lid open.

The face was blank.

No numbers. No hands. Just a swirling liquid mirror inside, like mercury trapped in glass. For a moment, Theo swore he saw an eye blink inside the watch and then it was just metal again.

The humming grew louder.

A voice came next, crackling like it was being transmitted through a dying radio.

“You opened it. Again."

Theo spun. The room was still empty.

“You never listen.”

“Who are you?” Theo asked, voice raw, unsure if he’d even spoken to anyone at all. If he had even spoken in days or years.

“I’m the last echo left behind.”

And then the room shifted. Like a heartbeat rippling through stone. The walls shuddered. The dust moved in reverse, dancing upward in a swirl.

Theo backed away and fell, the table and chair were gone. The room was gone.

After a heartbeat, the stone itself seemed to ripple. Dust motes reversed their fall, spiraling upwards as the walls dissolved into peeling wallpaper. The floor became threadbare carpet beneath him. He was standing in a long hallway. Flickering lights. And at the far end, a single elevator door.

The pocket watch in his hand pulsed like a second heart.

He approached the elevator. Every step slow but loud, footsteps repeating before they happened.

The door dinged.

Opened.

Empty.

He stepped in.

Inside, there were no buttons. Just one slot in the panel shaped exactly like the watch, inward.

He hesitated.

“Will you do it,” whispered the voice again.

“You never stop.”

The hunger in the air deepened. As though the very walls wanted to eat him if he didn’t comply.

So he slid the watch into the slot.

And the elevator fell.

Fast. Faster then. Theo's body rose into the air before slamming down again as the floor found itself.

The light turned red.

Then green.

Then black.

The door opened—

And he stepped out...into his room.

It was the same shape, same worn-out desk, same scuffed floor. But the walls were covered in pictures he didn’t remember taking. Dozens of them. All of him. In different clothes. Different ages.

In one, he was no more than a boy, holding the same black pocket watch in his hands, eyes wide and terrified.

In another, he was older. Maybe twenty. Standing in front of a burning house with a lady trying to pull him away from the fire. Watch clenched in his fist.

Another,he was screaming. Alone in a hospital bed. Watch missing.

The final picture, largest of them all, was different.

It was of him...today. Same clothes. Same face. But he was standing in this exact room, holding the watch up to his own eye like a lens.

In the photo, his eye was black.

Like it had swallowed the entire universe.

He reached for the photo, but the watch pulsed violently. He yelped and dropped it.

The room tilted. Like a ship leaning starboard.

He grabbed the watch again.This time, the face had changed. It had hands now. Thin, glassy. Spinning backward. Violently.

The numbers were wrong. Not 1 to 12, but symbols, some ancient, some mathematical, some in languages he didn’t know but somehow feared.

And in the center, one word had appeared:

RETURN.

The room began to crush inside fold like origami and someone was redoing the crease.

He was drawn again in the stone room.

The table.

The chair.

The blankness.

The watch.

This time, he didn’t reach for it.

But it moved toward him. Crawling. Clicking. Like a spider with broken legs.

He screamed.

The voice whispered, almost mocking

“Even your scream is rehearsed.”

He turned, frantic, desperate. There had to be a way to change it. A sentence. A step. A code. A decipher. A breath taken in reverse. Something that could rupture this setting.

And then he saw it, in the corner of his vision. A message carved in jagged lines on the stone:

YOU DID THIS.

Below it, in smaller, frantic scratches:

'But you can undo it. Not now. Not yet. You won’t remember this. But you left yourself a way. Find the girl with the silver eyes. She knows. She always knows.'"

Theo stepped back. His hands trembled. He tried to go for the fallen watch when the ground shook. The room thrashed threw him, zoomed out, into air, sky, cosmos...everything fast....

He wanted to open his eyes. Something warm pierced him, sunlight, through a window pane. A faint, sourceless ticking echoed in his ears.

'Mr. Reed? Theodore Reed!' a voice cut through the haze, sharp as glass. He blinked. Whiteboard. Students. Books. The sterile smell of chalk dust and floor cleaner replaced the scent of ancient stone and ozone.

His heart pounded like it was trying to break free from something it hadn’t yet remembered.

“You with us today?”

He gave a slow, confused nod. “Yeah. I think so.”

“You’ve had quite the nap,” the teacher muttered, not hiding the disgust.

The class turned back. Looks ranged from confusion to open hostility. A girl near him hissed, barely audible, "Unbelievable. Just... asleep?"

Another student muttered, not bothering to lower his voice, "If I pulled what he did, I'd never show my face here again."

Theo's chest tightened. A bitter taste rose in his throat for he could barely get his head up. He started scanning the room.

There she was.

The new girl.

Three rows back. Wearing lightly tinted rimmed glasses. Pale face framed by dark hair braided too tightly. Calm. Too calm. Red fingers tips with tint if purple as if left too long in the cold.

She hadn’t been there yesterday. He was sure of it—even if he couldn’t remember anything else.

And she almost smiled at him.

I hope you enjoy reading it. Uh hehe (: