The Sleep Experiment

In a top-secret bio-research facility under the Siberian ice, a team of neuroscientists launched Project Awake — an experiment to push the limits of human consciousness by eliminating the need for sleep using nanotech-enhanced stimulation.

The goal? Create perfect soldiers who never needed rest.

Five volunteers were injected with the serum. For the first 72 hours, results were astonishing. Volunteers showed heightened awareness, superhuman reflexes, and no fatigue.

But on day four, things began to unravel.

One subject, Jonas, claimed to see a second version of himself in reflective surfaces. Another, Alya, began to whisper to an unseen figure and refused to blink.

By day six, none of them could distinguish between thought and reality. They screamed about “the Shadow Mind” — a consciousness that entered when sleep was denied for too long.

Security footage showed subjects staring into corners for hours, laughing at nothing, mutilating their own skin in symmetrical patterns. Every mirror was shattered, every light dimmed.

On day seven, the facility lost power. When backup arrived, the research wing was sealed from the inside.

Inside, they found a single message scrawled on the wall in blood:

“We were never meant to stay awake.”

The volunteers were gone. The serum was destroyed. But rumors say one of them survived — and still hasn’t slept.

horror, sci-fi, psychological thriller, experiments, sleep deprivation, dystopia