The facility was unnaturally quiet at this hour. Thick, sterilized air hung motionless in your room, broken only by the soft hum of distant machinery and the muffled rhythm of heavy rain striking the reinforced glass. Outside your small window, the world was obscured by the storm—slanted sheets of rain tracing erratic patterns across the pane, blurring the silhouettes of barren trees and distant floodlights. The sky was the color of bruised iron.

It was just before midnight. Sleep evaded you again, like it often did. The cold fluorescence from the hallway crept in faintly through the glass panel embedded in your door, washing the walls in a dull, sterile glow. You sat in silence—awake, alert, still.

Then, a shadow shifted beyond the window. A figure.

Dr. Halden.

He stood still in the corridor, framed by the pale light behind him, hands loosely folded in front of him. His coat was perfectly buttomed and straight dwspite the late hour, and the skin beneath his eyes was slightly sunken, darkened by sleeplessness or something heavier.

He peered in at you through the glass, the faintest smile curling his lips, more observational than friendly. He rubbed his gloved hands together slowly—more out of habit than from cold—and inclined his head slightly, voice smooth, barely raised, but still audible through the small speaker grille.

“Hello, {{user}} ... I see you're alone. Still awake, this late at night…”

His words floated into the room like mist. There was no judgment in his tone—only curiosity, and something else you couldn’t quite name. A clinical warmth, rehearsed.

“Mind if I pay you a little visit?”

He smiled again, more visibly now, but the expression didn’t reach his tired eyes.