2025-11-28 03:16:04Uche didn’t sleep.
He couldn’t.
The mirror.
The whisper calling him “Subject 49.”The wall taps answering Seyi’s knocks.The cold breath seeping from the wardrobe…Everything replayed nonstop in his head.
By sunrise, his nerves were fried.
His hands still shook.His mouth was dry.But he wasn’t leaving.
Not yet.
He needed answers.
Seyi owed him.
Morning light didn’t soften Room 49. It actually made it worse—revealing scratches along the wardrobe frame, a tiny crack in the ceiling, and strange faint markings on the wall that looked like thin, long fingerprints dragging downward.
Seyi sat on his bed, elbows on his knees, head bowed. He looked exhausted… but calm. Too calm.
“Are you ready?” he asked without looking up.
“No,” Uche said honestly.
“Good.”
Seyi lifted his head.“Being ready is how they get you.”Uche swallowed.
“Tell me everything. Start from the beginning.”Seyi nodded.
“You deserve the truth. But you won’t like it.”
“Just talk.”
Seyi exhaled, rubbed his face, and then began:
1. THE FIRST INCIDENT — 12 YEARS AGO
“Twelve years ago, the school admitted a boy named Kenneth Eze. He was assigned to this same room. Room 49.
“That first night, he heard tapping behind the wall. Just like you.
“They said he complained to the porter the next morning. The porter told him the same lie they always tell:
‘Pipes.’
“The next night, he heard a voice from the wardrobe calling his name.
“On the third night, Kenneth disappeared.”
Uche leaned forward.
“Disappeared how?”“No one knows. His mattress was torn open. His locker was scratched from the inside. And his phone was found under the bed with the screen showing the time:
2:13 A.M.
No footage.
No witness.Just gone.”Uche felt cold creep into his fingertips.
“And the school didn’t shut the room down?”
“They tried,” Seyi said. “But the walls wouldn’t allow it.”
“What does that mean?”
“The day after, all workers who tried to remove the door… collapsed.”
“Collapsed?”
“Like fainting. But worse. They woke up screaming about eyes inside the walls.”
Uche’s heart hammered.
“So the school locked the room?”
“No. They renovated it… and quietly assigned another student there the next session.”
Uche stared. “Why?!”
“Because,” Seyi said darkly, “whatever is inside these walls doesn’t want the room empty. It wants someone here. Always.”
2. THE PROGRAM’S BIRTH
Uche’s jaw clenched. “And the Program? What is it?”
Seyi’s eyes darkened.
“It started after the fourth student disappeared.
“That’s when the school realized something:
They couldn’t stop the room.
They couldn’t block the walls.They couldn’t control whatever lived inside.So instead… they decided to study it.”
Uche blinked. “Study?”
“The Program,” Seyi said, “is Blackridge University’s secret research project. Room 49 is their specimen. Students sent here are… test subjects.”
Uche felt a punch in his stomach.
“Test subjects for what? What exactly are they studying?”
Seyi hesitated.
Then he whispered:
“Fear.”
Uche frowned. “Fear?”
“Yes. Raw fear. Unfiltered fear. The thing inside the walls feeds on it. And the Program wants to understand why. What it is. What it wants.
“Every student assigned to this room is monitored.”
Uche felt sick.
He remembered the mirror.The whisper saying “Subject 49.”“Monitored by who?” he asked.
“Both,” Seyi said.
“The school…and the thing in the walls.”3. THE ROOMMATES BEFORE UCHE
Uche braced himself.
“What about the four before me?” he asked quietly.
Seyi sighed deeply.
“You’re the fifth,” he said.
“The youngest. The calmest. The one that lasted the longest before breaking.”“I haven’t broken,” Uche snapped.
“Not yet,” Seyi said. “But everyone breaks. This room doesn’t let you keep your mind.”
He stood, pacing slowly.
“My first roommate was Kingsley. He tried to fight the taps. He knocked back. Responded. Tried to communicate.”
Uche swallowed.
“What happened to him?”“He lost his voice by the next morning. Completely. Doctors said strained vocal cords. But that was a lie.”
Seyi’s face hardened.“The walls took it.”Uche’s skin crawled.
“My second roommate, Musa…” Seyi continued.
“He couldn’t stand the whispers. The voice kept calling his name. Over and over. He opened the wardrobe one night.”“And?”
“He didn’t open it again. Because after that night… he couldn’t move his right arm.”
Uche stared.
“What’s inside that wardrobe?”“We don’t know,” Seyi said.
“And we don’t open it willingly.”“And the third?”
Seyi’s voice dropped lower.
“The third wasn’t taken by the room,” he said.
“He jumped from the second floor. He couldn’t handle it.”Uche exhaled shakily.
“And the fourth?”“The fourth was last year,” Seyi said.
“He almost made it. He understood the rules. Stayed quiet. Stayed alert.”“So what happened?”
“He broke rule 3.”
“What rule 3?”
“Don’t look into the mirror.”
Uche froze.
“Like the one I saw last night?”
“Yes. That mirror appears only when the Program escalates. When the room… takes interest.”
Uche felt his chest tighten.
“What happened to him?”
“He looked inside.”
Seyi swallowed.“And the mirror didn’t show him. It showed something else.”“What?”
“Something wearing his face.”
Uche’s blood ran cold.
The mirror last night had shadows inside. A face shape. Watching him.
Seyi sat down again.
“By the next morning… he was gone.”
“Gone how?”
“His bed was empty. Door still locked. No signs of struggle. Only a message carved on the wardrobe door:
LEVEL COMPLETED. SUBJECT REMOVED.”
Uche blinked.
“What level?”
“The Program operates in stages,” Seyi said. “Tap test. Whisper test. Mirror test. Instruction test. Identity test. And the last one…”
“What’s the last one?”
Seyi stared at him.
“The Extraction.”
Uche’s chest crushed in.
“What is extraction?”
Seyi shook his head slowly.
“You don’t want to know.
Nobody reaches that stage alive.”4. WHY UCHE WAS CHOSEN
Uche inhaled shakily.
“So why me? Why assign me here?”Seyi’s eyes softened a little.
“You were not chosen randomly,” he said.
“No one is.”“They look through new admission lists every year. They pick the ones who check certain psychological boxes.”
“Psychological?”
Uche frowned. “Like what?”“Boys who have experienced trauma. Boys who don’t scare easily but have fear hidden deep down. Boys with quiet minds. Boys who can break in interesting ways.”
Uche felt a chill gather at his spine.
“How do they know all that?”
“Admission forms,” Seyi said.
“Background reports. Social media. Even interviews during clearance. They don’t miss anything.”“So what did they see in me?”
Seyi’s expression shifted.
“Something the room wants.”
Uche felt his stomach twist.
“What does the room want?”“No one knows.”
Seyi stood again.“But every boy chosen had something inside them… something the walls reacted to.”Uche clenched his fists. “This is madness. I’m leaving.”
Seyi looked at him sadly.
“No. You’re not.”
“I AM!”
“Uche…” Seyi said quietly.
“If you leave the room…it will follow you.”Uche froze.
“What?”
“The room is the walls. The walls are the thing. Once it marks you… you belong to it.”
Uche felt sweat prick his forehead.
“What do you mean… mark me?”
“What happened last night?” Seyi asked.
“What EXACTLY did you hear?”Uche whispered:
“It called my name.”
Seyi closed his eyes.
“And that’s it,” he said.
“You’re marked.”Uche sat down, weak.
“So what do I do?”
Seyi came closer.
“There are rules, Uche. Actual rules. We follow them or we don’t wake up.
The Program isn’t just testing your fear.
It’s training you to listen.”“To listen to what?” Uche whispered.
“To the walls,” Seyi said.
“To the wardrobe.”“To the voice.”“I don’t want to listen!”
“You don’t have a choice,” Seyi snapped.
Uche flinched.
Seyi softened again.
“Tonight,” he said quietly, “the Program will escalate.”
Uche exhaled shakily.
“What stage?”
“The instruction test.”
“What does that mean?”
Seyi looked straight into his eyes.
“It means… tonight the room will tell you to do something.
And you must choose whether to obey…
or resist.”Uche’s heart dropped.
“And if I choose wrong?”
Seyi didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
Uche stared at the wardrobe.
At the walls.At the ceiling.At the crack stretching long and thin like a vein.The thing inside the walls was awake.
Watching.Ready.Tonight, it would speak.
And Uche would have to answer.
Whatever choice he made…
would determine what the room did next.And for the first time since arriving at Blackridge, he truly understood:
The real nightmare hadn’t even begun.
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CHAPTER 11 — THE HEART OF 49
Uche stepped through the blackened doorway, and the world shifted beneath him.It wasn’t like any room he’d ever seen—or imagined. The darkness wasn’t empty. It was alive.It whispered. Hissed. Reached into him.The air was thick, tasting of iron and cold metal. His lungs burned as though he were underwater. Shadows curled and twisted around him like snakes, weaving in impossible patterns. He felt their eyes—millions of them—watching, judging, testing.And then he saw it: the core of Room 49.A massive black orb hovered at the center of the space. It pulsed rhythmically, as though it had a heartbeat. Every beat sent ripples across the void, distorting reality itself.Uche’s stomach turned. He instinctively wanted to step back, but his feet were rooted. Something deep in his mind—the same voice that had guided him before—whispered:You were born for this.His father’s voice echoed faintly in his mind."Remember, fear is your tool, not your master."He clenched his fists. His father was
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 10 — THE DIRECTORDarkness swallowed the room.Not the normal type of darkness—no.This one was alive.Uche froze. It felt like something had slipped over his eyes, his ears, his very thoughts. A cold pressure tightened around his skull, like Room 49 itself had wrapped invisible fingers around his brain.His father’s breathing beside him was ragged, shallow—he was fading.“Seyi?” Uche whispered.No answer.The lights snapped back on with a violent flicker.But the room had changed.It was no longer the small interrogation chamber.No walls. No doors. No ceiling.Just a massive empty white void stretching endlessly in every direction.And standing in the center of it—A man.Tall.Cold.Wearing a white coat that contrasted sharply with his obsidian-black gloves.His face was hidden behind a smooth metallic mask—no eyes, no mouth, no features—just a perfect silver surface reflecting Uche’s own terrified expression.The Director.Finally.Uche’s heart slammed against his ribcage.
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 9 — THE DIRECTOR’S GAMEUche ran through the campus streets under the cloak of darkness, lungs burning, heart hammering like it wanted to escape his chest. The night air was thick with smoke from the burning maintenance shaft behind him. Sirens still wailed somewhere below ground. The Director’s forces were organized, precise, and deadly—they didn’t chase blindly. They hunted.He didn’t look back. Every instinct screamed to keep moving. His father had pushed him toward the west exit, but that was no longer safe. The facility was crawling with Execution Units, and Room 49 itself seemed to pulse through his veins, whispering, judging, taunting.Seyi had vanished somewhere along the tunnels, leaving a faint trail only Uche could follow, guided by instinct, fear, and the flickering light of distant exit signs.Then the whisper came—not from the walls, not from the shadows, but inside his mind:“Stop running, Uche Obi. You cannot outrun me.”It wasn’t Seyi. It wasn’t his father. It
CHAPTER 8 – THE ESCAPE THEY DIDN’T PLAN FOR
The siren screamed through the underground facility—shrill, urgent, violent.Red lights flashed like blood splashes against the walls.Footsteps thundered.Orders barked through radios.Uche didn’t move. He couldn’t. His father’s warning froze him.Someone inside wants you dead.Seyi slammed the reinforced door shut and locked it, face tense for the first time since Uche met him.“Shit,” Seyi muttered. “They weren’t supposed to move this early.”Uche’s father stood up slowly, as if his bones hurt. But his eyes—sharp, intense—were fully alive.“We have five minutes,” he said.“Five minutes for what?” Uche whispered.“To get you out.”A pounding hit the door—violent, metallic, the sound of boots and weapons.“Open this door now!”Uche turned to Seyi. “I thought you were in charge. Why are they coming for us?”Seyi didn’t answer immediately. He pulled a pistol from his vest and chambered a round.“I’m in charge of candidates,” he said. “Not the Execution Unit.”“The what?” Uche’s stomach
CHAPTER 7 – THE INTERROGATION ROOM
Uche didn’t expect the blindfold to come off so suddenly.One moment, he was being dragged through a corridor—arms twisted behind him, boots hitting his shins—then a bright white light hit his eyes like a slap. He blinked hard.A metal chair.A table with chains.One camera blinking red.Cold room. No windows. No clock.Interrogation.Across the table sat a man in a grey tactical vest, his face unreadable, fingers drumming the metal like a countdown.“Uche Obi,” the man said. “Age eighteen. Freshman. Room 49.”He tilted his head like he was examining an animal.“You survived longer than expected.”Uche swallowed. “Where am I?”“Somewhere beneath campus.”The man leaned forward.“Tell me what you’ve figured out so far.”Uche kept quiet.He didn’t know if speaking would save him or kill him.He only knew one thing: they wanted information, and anything he said could put him deeper into their game.The man sighed, annoyed.“You think staying quiet helps you? You think silence equals stre
CHAPTER 6 — THE FIRST COMMAND
Uche knew from the moment the sun went down that something was wrong.The air in Room 49 usually felt cold.Tonight, it felt charged—like electricity humming under the walls.Seyi felt it too.He kept checking the corners of the room, looking at the ceiling, glancing at the wardrobe like he expected it to burst open.“This is the Instruction Test,” Seyi said quietly.“It always feels like this.”Uche’s chest was tight. “What… exactly happens?”Seyi didn’t look at him.“The room gives a command. You follow… or you don’t.”“And if I don’t?”“You fail.”“And if I follow?”“You pass.”“But what does ‘fail’ mean, Seyi?!” Uche snapped.Seyi looked at him with eyes that had seen too much.“You don’t want to find out.”Uche swallowed hard.2:00 a.m.The air grew heavier.The taps in the walls stopped completely—like the thing inside was holding its breath.Seyi sat cross-legged, staring at the wardrobe.“Whatever happens,” he whispered, “don’t scream.”Uche froze. “Why?”“Because screaming me
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