Zayaan didn't sleep.
Not that night. Not the next.
Sleep came with sounds — sounds he didn't want to hear again.
So instead, he stayed awake.
He ran laps around the east track before dawn. Took double shifts at the infirmary. Folded sheets in the storage room until his hands cramped.
Still, his brain wouldn't slow down.
There was something about the video in 308 that had lodged deep — not just the footage itself, but how it had been waiting. Not archived. Not accessed. Just… waiting for someone like her.
And then Arwa vanished for two days.
She wasn't at morning check-ins. She didn't respond to pings. Even her roommate said she hadn't seen her, and when she did finally show up—she looked fine.
Too fine.
Same voice. Same walk. But Zayaan had seen too many masks to mistake that look in her eyes.
Not confusion.
Distance.
Like she was watching herself from somewhere else.
He thought maybe he was being paranoid. Until the server pinged.
A soft blue flicker on his tablet — one of the leftover admin privileges from his Delta days.
USER: NASEEM, ARWA
LOCATION: LAB 9
TIME: 04:12 AM
Zayaan frowned.
That building didn't even run at night.
He tapped in a security request for confirmation, but it bounced. No camera footage available.
The system logged her keycard entry. But not her exit.
By 6 AM, he was standing outside Lab 9.
It was quiet, abandoned-looking. A bit of dust in the corners. The keypad blinked red like it didn't expect visitors.
He hovered his old ID over the panel.
It buzzed once.
Then unlocked.
Click.
Inside, the lights flickered on — late, like the room wasn't ready to be awake.
Desks. Monitors. A faint hum under the floor.
But no Arwa.
No recent traces of her.
Just one terminal logged in.
Still running.
He moved toward it, fingers hesitating above the touchpad. Then tapped into the active window.
SESSION: OBSERVER 0
VOICE RECORD #045
AUTO-TRANSCRIPTION ENABLED
A single line at the top of the screen:
"Subject 02 has stabilized. But something stayed behind."
For a moment Zayaan stopped breathing.
Lights dimmed.
And... behind him, somewhere in the dark....a chair scraped gently against the floor.