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 head.

I was

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 raced through

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 the vial of t