Twelve-year-old Maris Calder wakes in a sterile white room. A single steel door. A chilling inscription: "To remember, you must survive." Terrifying memories flicker at the edges of her consciousness - a needle, a scream, a cold hand. This is Room One. The first of twelve. Each designed to unlock a suppressed trauma from Maris's forgotten past.
She's a prisoner in a macabre experiment orchestrated by an unseen force. Her fractured childhood is the key to her escape.
Room One mirrors a doctor's office, triggering a primal fear. Medical charts become a puzzle, revealing a hidden code and a name - Dr. William Rojas. A sliver of memory returns: a tall man with cold, calculating eyes. Dread coils in her stomach, a premonition of the horrors to come.
Each room is a new nightmare. A playground swing set evokes the phantom scent of blood. A claustrophobic classroom resurrects the sting of public humiliation. A cozy foster home hides a broken music box playing a haunting lullaby and a diary filled with cryptic entries. A chaotic carnival assaults her senses with distorted music and fragmented photographs. With every unlocked door, another piece of her past resurfaces, each memory more disturbing than the last.
As Maris progresses, she uncovers the terrifying truth: she's part of "The Lazarus Protocol," an experimental program involving memory manipulation. Children are abducted, their memories erased and rewritten. She discovers another victim, Kevin Stewart, a silent accomplice communicating through hidden messages, their fleeting encounters in the labyrinthine corridors a fragile lifeline in the suffocating darkness.
But freedom comes at a price. With every recovered memory, the comforting blanket of amnesia is ripped away, exposing Maris to the raw agony of her past. The rooms become more sinister. A sterile hospital room. A mirrored chamber reflecting a fragmented identity. A darkened library filled with whispered voices. The line between escape and self-destruction blurs.
The bond between Maris and Kevin deepens, forged in shared trauma and the desperate fight for survival. They learn Dr. Rojas's ultimate goal: immortality, achieved by transferring his consciousness into a child's body. The Lazarus Protocol is his twisted scheme to prepare vessels for his ambition.
Maris faces an impossible choice: her memories, or Kevin's. She chooses sacrifice, her empathy overriding her instinct for self-preservation.
