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Elizabeth emerged from the turnstile into a narrow south corridor that felt more like an arterial line than a hallway. Plain white walls, low acoustic ceiling, and institutional LED panels buzzing faintly overhead. On either side, glass-front offices formed a tidy row of work-spaces for psychiatrists, senior nurses, and administrative staff. Most doors were ajar, revealing cramped desks piled with case files and the flicker of fatigued monitors.

The corridor ended after only thirty paces, depositing her at the foot of a cruciform junction. Three identical steel doors, each fitted with a key-reader and a matte-black icon above the frame. To the left (the western arm of the cross), a minimalist Stick emblem marked the private patient dormitories . . . a quieter wing where wealthy families discreetly housed problematic relatives with soft voices and deep pockets. Straight ahead, the Leaf symbol designated the Rehabilitation Wing: group-therapy halls, art studios, and the carefully curated comforts designed to soothe Sunny Meadow’s more delicate donors. At its farthest rear corner lay Elizabeth’s office . . . along with the caretaker Mr. Black’s . . . tucked away from the clinical centre of gravity. Officially, there had been “no space” for her in Acorn Wing. Unofficially, she suspected the absence was more deliberate. Her colleagues had made little effort to conceal their discomfort with her research, and even less effort to welcome her among them.

Finally, the door to the right bore a Cactus silhouette, a thorny icon for a thornier truth. The high-security wing. The place where madness had teeth. Behind that door were the rooms not reserved for wayward aristocrats but for those whose crimes had been committed under the protection of an insanity plea. Criminally insane. The ones the courts had deemed too dangerous to be trusted with liberty, yet too compromised to be sentenced outright.

She drew a little closer to the door which displayed the matt black Cactus emblem.

Her hand hovered over the card clipped to her coat pocket, curiosity nudging the boundary between protocol and indulgence. She knew her clearance didn’t extend beyond that steel door. But there was no harm in trying.

The card met the reader.

Nothing.

Not a buzz. Not a blink. Not even the curt flash of a red LED to confirm her denial. Just silence.

She frowned, about to try again . . . 

The lock clicked.

The door opened.

A nurse passed through, offering a small nod. “Dr. Malone.”

“Good morning, Ms. Patel,” Elizabeth said, straightening her posture and adjusting her blouse cuffs. The nurse looked tired . . . they all did . . . but her smile was warm enough before she disappeared down the hallway, clipboard tucked beneath her arm.

Elizabeth took half a step forward, trying to peer past the open door before it closed, but another figure approached from the interior . . . a patient escorted by two orderlies, their arms linked not with kindness but control.

The patient was young. Early twenties. His head twitched at irregular intervals, eyes fixed upon his own feet. His fingers flexed against his own palm, grasping for something no one else could see.

Victor Langley.

She recognised him.

His name had appeared in one of the case articles circulated internally. Paranoid schizophrenia. He had killed his step-father during a psychotic break. His mother, unharmed, had locked herself in the bathroom for three days. Neighbours finally called the police when she stopped responding to knocks. She never testified. Never spoke to the press. Too scared . . . maybe.

Victor hadn’t laid a hand on her.

But his mother had said that for three days she had heard him . . . he whispered to the walls.

Elizabeth watched him pass. His lips were moving again.

Then . . . 

A sharp cry.

A crash.

Her attention snapped to the end of the hallway. A door burst open. An orderly stumbled out, his hand pressed hard against his face . . . his eye.

Red.

A thick smear of it leaked between his fingers, trailed down his neck, and bloomed darkly across the front of his uniform. Behind him, panic unfurled in waves. A nurse ran forward with a radio in hand, already calling in the incident, sounding the alarm.

Elizabeth moved instinctively toward the commotion . . . through the door.

A second figure emerged.

The patient.

Older. Gaunt. Eyes bulging wide and rimmed with a raw, furious red. His wrists were already bound by two other orderlies, but he writhed like a thing possessed, twisting violently against the orderlies trying to restrain him. His breath came in sharp, fast bursts. His lips peeled back into a grimace.

The air shifted.

Not temperature . . . pressure.

The hallway had changed.

She felt it before she saw it. A crackling energy beneath her skin, the primal lurch of the brain recognising danger before the body could react. Elizabeth had studied the theory . . . she knew how quickly the limbic system overtook the rational. She had watched it happen in others.

Now she felt it herself.

Fight or flight.

More staff poured in. An orderly dragged the injured man out of reach while another lunged forward to aid in the restraint.

Then, behind her, a calm voice spoke.

“If we can’t contain or control him, we have permission to administer ECT.”

Elizabeth turned.

Dr. Adrian Clarke stood beside her, arms folded. His expression was unreadable. His hair was slicked back with clinical precision, and his presence was unsettlingly still. He resembled an undertaker more than he did a physician.

“If necessary,” he said again.

Electric shock therapy.

The term dropped into her mind like a stone into water. She knew the protocols. The thresholds. The justifications. She had read the data, seen the ethics waivers. But hearing it spoken in that tone, as if someone were merely discussing whether to swap a bandage . . . 

Her stomach turned.

Her fingers curled into tight, invisible fists at her sides.

But then her eyes returned to the scene . . . the blood-slicked tiles, the manic thrashing, the patient’s teeth gnashing through a guttural growl, saliva dripping from his chin like venom.

Her body remained perfectly still.

Her mind, however, began to turn.

A mind like that . . . needs to be tested!

Elizabeth blinked, suddenly reminded why she’d come to the institute so early this morning.

Yesterday’s data.

She hadn’t had a chance to analyse it . . . her mother’s birthday had taken priority. And though Elizabeth often balanced emotion and obligation with machine-like efficiency, the guilt of missing that data set had gnawed at her all night.

She turned on her heel, not bothering to say goodbye to Dr. Clarke, and briskly exited the corridor.

Her sneakers squeaked against the linoleum, faster now, with purpose.

As she passed the common spaces, she cast only a cursory glance toward the television room . . . then stopped.

Something felt . . . off.

Too still.

The television room was filled with patients, their eyes glued to the glowing screen, faces slack, bodies almost inert. They twitched now and then . . . an occasional jerk of a limb or the slow blink of glassy eyes . . . but otherwise, they were statues. It was unnatural.

Elizabeth stepped back to the door.

Then inside.

The furniture was the usual medley of misfits . . . old armchairs and sagging sofas, all donated, all rescued from local charity shops. Their upholstery bore stains too stubborn to be forgotten and springs that creaked like floorboards in a haunted house. But none of that mattered to the patients.

Today, they were unusually quiet.

Focused.

The television showed a documentary . . . something about space. An astronaut spoke directly to the camera, his voice calm and measured, his face lit with that rare blend of authority and weariness unique to those who’d been further from Earth than most would ever dream.

She sat gingerly on the edge of a nearby sofa.

Watched.

It wasn’t often she saw the patients like this.

A small, cool hand slipped into hers and gave a squeeze. The skin was nearly translucent, peppered with liver spots and criss-crossed with veins as delicate as rivers on an old map.

“Mrs. Baldwin,” Elizabeth murmured, recognising the familiar grip.

One of Sunny Meadow’s longest-standing residents. Her children never visited. But they paid the bills on time. Their mother had been reduced to a line item . . . an inconvenient expense with good accountants.

“That poor man’s little boy died,” Mrs. Baldwin murmured, her voice papery with age. “He was up there in outer space, far, far away, doing something important… and his little boy died. He must have felt like the loneliest man in the whole world.”

Elizabeth turned toward her, brows gently knitting.

“And what was the important thing he was doing in space?” she asked softly, her tone both curious and precise. “We mostly use probes for deep space exploration these days. Manned missions have been limited to low Earth orbit for over a decade. The last shuttle flight beyond that was Atlantis, back in 2011.”

Mrs. Baldwin leaned closer.

“Can I whisper it in your ear?”

Before Elizabeth could decline, she moved with surprising speed. Her toothless mouth pressed to Elizabeth’s ear, breath warm and close.

“He was looking to see where all the fucks have gone,” she hissed.

Elizabeth jerked back.

Surely she’d misheard.

But Mrs. Baldwin was already grinning, a wide, wicked grin. “Because there damn sure ain’t no fucks to give around here any more!”

She burst into a cackle that rattled through her thin chest like gravel in a teacup. A few of the other residents echoed her laughter . . . high, fractured howls like caged chimpanzees at the zoo, in a shared hallucination.

Elizabeth stood quickly, bumping into someone behind her. She spun, startled.

Mr. Omnia.

“It’s okay, Doc,” he said, holding up a hand. “Just me.”

He looked tired. Paler than usual. Eyes ringed with shadow, like he hadn’t slept. And yet, Elizabeth felt a surprising wave of relief at the sight of him.

Stability.

A single sane face in the swirl of madness.

He motioned toward the screen. “That’s Max Orpheus. Astronaut. He’s built some kind of machine… I didn’t catch all the science bits, sorry. But it’s supposed to read the universe. Explain what happened at the beginning of time.”

He yawned mid-sentence, rubbing at his eyes. “Apparently there’s some kind of fight. About how old the universe is. He’s going to fix that. And some other stuff.”

Elizabeth tilted her head. “The Hubble Tension?”

“Yeah, that’s it.” He nodded. “They said something like that.”

“There are several competing measurements for the age of the universe,” she said thoughtfully, her voice softening. “None of them align. It’s… contentious.”

“Max Orpheus thinks he can settle it,” Mr. Omnia added, then lowered his voice. “Mrs. Baldwin was right, though. About his son. He died.”

Elizabeth felt a stab of guilt for letting that part drift past unnoticed.

Before she could respond, the television volume surged.

The program had cut to a commercial. Music thumped. Graphics flashed.

A boxing match.

She recognised the fighter immediately.

Ozzy Ox.

Of course.

All swagger and spray tan, a living meme in boxing gloves. He was loud, cocky, shameless . . . and to Elizabeth, sacrilegious. A pop-culture brat with a flair for spectacle and a complete disregard for the dignity of the sport. He sold out arenas, but to her, it felt like watching someone carve graffiti into a cathedral.

She told herself her disdain was rational, evidence-based.

But truthfully? It was emotional.

Her father had loved boxing. And in her eyes, Ozzy Ox wasn’t a fighter . . . he was a fraud.

Then the siren came.

Faint at first.

Then growing.

It screamed closer and closer until it became a banshee howl just outside the facility.

An ambulance. Of course. For the injured orderly. How had she already forgotten?

The effect was instantaneous.

The entire room erupted.

Patients screamed, shouted, spun in place like malfunctioning toys. One began running in frantic circles. Another mimicked the siren’s wail with chilling accuracy. A third dropped to the floor, hands behind his head, frozen in mock-arrest.

A fourth stood in the corner, face pressed to the wall, whispering.

Elizabeth moved without thinking, trying to calm them, trying to speak above the chaos . . . when suddenly . . . Children’s music . . . From the television.

The chaos stopped.

Like someone had flipped a switch.

Heads turned. Voices stilled. Limbs dropped to sides like puppets with cut strings.

Mr. Omnia stood by the TV, remote in hand.

The screen now showed an animated children’s show . . . soft colours, looping animations, nursery rhyme melodies piped through sugary voices. A musical lullaby wrapped in pixelated smiles.

The patients watched.

Slowly, almost dreamlike, they returned to their seats.

Mr. Omnia placed the remote back beside the television, and walked calmly back toward her.

He offered a tired smile. “Music makes everything better, doesn’t it?”