Chapter 5: “Ward 33 Doesn't Exist"

The world returned slowly.

Eli opened his eyes expecting a room, a ceiling, a weight pressing down on his chest from the sheer strangeness of the night before.

Instead, he found silence.

Not the silence of rest, but of abandonment.

Ward 33 was… empty.

No nurse's footsteps. No buzz of overhead fluorescents. No humming from Ward 34. Just a humming that wasn’t quite mechanical and wasn’t quite real.

He sat up.

The bed he lay on was perfectly made.

That was the first thing that made no sense.

He hadn’t made a bed since his admission.

He looked around—no signs of anyone. No clipboards, no carts, no charts, no cups of pills, no other patients.

The hallway outside his room looked infinite in both directions. Clean. Sterile. Lit like a showroom floor.

And silent.

He stepped out into the corridor.

“Hello?” His voice cracked, thin in the void.

No answer.

He walked slowly down the hall toward the nurses’ station. Every door he passed was slightly ajar—and behind each one: empty beds, blank walls, nothing personal, no evidence of life.

At the station, he found no records.

Not his name. Not anyone’s.

He typed into the terminal: Elias Monroe Trager.

The screen blinked back: No results found.

He tried again: Ward 33.

Invalid query.

He backed away from the screen like it had accused him of something.

In the rec room, the old analog radio—the one no one ever touched—was playing softly.

A voice.

His voice.

Reciting one of his poems. One he’d written years ago. One no one had ever heard aloud.

“We are the bones beneath the scroll bar,

The line breaks in the algorithm,

The soul that never passed moderation.”

He stood frozen.

As the radio crackled on, the voice on the other end whispered a name.

“Eli… Eli, are you still dreaming?”

And then silence.

The radio blinked out. Dead.

He tried to turn it back on—nothing.

He spun around, heart pounding.

“Matthew?”

No answer.

He ran to the office where the staff kept patient intake logs. Searched through the drawers. Empty. He flipped through old

appointment books—every page the same: blank, blank, blank.

Like the ward had never operated. Like it had never existed.

Like he had never been here.

He checked the mirror above the sink.

Still himself.

Still Eli.

But a strange detail caught his eye—his hospital bracelet.

It now read: Property of Archive 7.

He tore it off.

Suddenly, lights buzzed overhead. The hallway lights blinked. A gentle hum surged through the vents like something waking up.

He bolted down the hallway. He had to get out. Had to find something real.

At the end of the corridor, the door to the security room was open.

Inside: glowing monitors. All displaying live security feeds.

He saw himself.

In the hallway. In the rec room. In his bed.

He rewound the footage.

Back, back, back.

On one screen, he saw himself in the rec room at 2:33 a.m.

Sitting. Staring at the radio.

Alone.

But then…

One frame.

A glitch.

A cat.

A large black cat behind him, standing perfectly upright—its head cocked, its paw mid-lick.

Its eyes glowing.

And—God help him—it was smiling.

Then the feed broke. Static.

Every monitor blinked off.

Every light died.

And in the darkness, a soft meow echoed from the hallway.