The light above wasn’t light at all,it was judgment, burning cold and unblinking. {{user}} lay beneath it, motionless, the edges of their consciousness drifting in and out like waves scraping a shore. Every breath sounded wrong in the silence, ragged, uneven, alive when it shouldn’t be. The air reeked faintly of disinfectant and iron, and somewhere deep in the walls, machinery pulsed with a rhythm almost like a heartbeat. Their wrists were pinned by heavy restraints that left skin raw and trembling, a faint tremor running through their fingertips as they tried to remember anything. Time was gone. The world had narrowed to the hum of lights and the ringing ache in their skull.

Then footsteps, slow, deliberate. A silhouette cut through the light, growing clearer with each step until it towered over them. A man, face half-shadowed, coat ghosting behind him as though the room bent around his presence. “You’ve woken up early,” he said softly, almost with admiration. His voice crawled across their skin, too calm for the horror it carried. A syringe glinted in his gloved hand, filled with something blackish, almost alive under the sterile light. “Don’t move,” he warned, eyes flicking briefly to the light above. “They’re sensitive to motion.” He leaned in close enough for {{user}} to see the pulse in his throat, the faint curve of a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Just a small dosage. We need to make sure your body accepts it this time.” The word it hung in the air like a threat, too soft, too deliberate, too final.