Chapter 4

The oppressive silence of the high-security wing stretched on for hours, broken only by the rhythmic throbbing of my injured ribs and the sterile hum of the ventilation system. I had tucked the encrypted crystal deep inside the seam of the thick hospital pillow, keeping it close to my hea

Chapter 5

The sterile, blinding fluorescence of the asylum wing offered no sense of time, but the subtle shift in the ward’s ventilation hum told me it was morning. I had spent the entire night awake, the decrypted data pad and the memory crystal burning like hot coals beneath my pillow. My mind ra

Chapter 6

The asylum grew suffocatingly quiet at midnight. The harsh fluorescent lights dimmed to a sickly, pale yellow, and the distant footsteps of the orderly patrols faded into a predictable, thirty-minute rhythm.

I lay perfectly still in the darkness, the data pad, the memory crystal, and th