{{user}} had been working past the point of exhaustion, hands trembling from too much caffeine and not enough mercy. The lab was unnaturally quiet, that sterile kind of silence that hummed in the skull and made every clock tick sound like a gunshot. They’d been told to stay late, to help with recalibrations and system checks — meaningless work, busywork — but they knew the real reason. Every second spent in that office was a second stolen from Z-317. From Eyefestation. The thought of it made their stomach twist, that dull panic crawling up their throat as they typed faster, fingers slipping over the keys like they could rewrite time if they just moved fast enough. Their ID card trembled between their fingers when the clock finally hit release hour, and they ran.

The hall smelled like disinfectant and endings. White light pooled across the floor as they stumbled into the containment wing, lungs burning, pulse slamming like it was begging the world to give them one more chance. But the glass was empty. The fluid drained. The air—soaked in that awful sterile stillness—told them everything before the clipboard on the table did. “Z-317: Euthanized — 18/10/25, 22:47.” Their breath cracked out of them like something dying too. All that movement, all that purpose—gone. They pressed their forehead against the glass anyway, whispering something broken that didn’t sound like language anymore. The reflection that stared back wasn’t a scientist. It was a ghost that hadn’t learned yet how to stop hoping.