The Unblinking Eye

The hospital doors sigh shut behind me like a mouth closing. Not freedom, a different kind of cage with softer bars. Sterile air, humming fluorescents, the chemical tang of false sanctuary. Here, at least, the invisible eyes hunting me cannot penetrate. Or so I believe.

Our shared cell holds four fractured constellations of consciousness. To my left: The Statue. Strapped to her mattress, catatonic for years since something unspeakable has touched her son. Her stillness is not sleep; it is a void, radiating cold entropy, a system that has achieved maximum disorder and stopped trying to reverse it.

Across from me: The Ghost. A wraith-thin girl waging a silent war on her reflection. Days bleed into a grotesque ballet, frantic gorging on offerings from the outside world, followed by violent purges into the stainless steel altar of the toilet. Clothes become enemies: tugged on, ripped off, discarded in a futile chase after phantom fat only she can see. Her war against the mirror is a war against seeing. Some truths are too heavy for reflection.

Front-left: Christ. The name hits my neural wiring like a live wire. Christ. A distorted echo of my own cursed designation: Barabbas. That stark exhibition flyer flashes behind my retinas: "WHAT WOULD THE FOLK CHOOSE NOW, CHRIST OR BARABBAS? WHO WAS THE TRUE CRIMINAL? THE TERRORIST OR THE THIEF?" I have scanned its coded dread a thousand times. Every Christ will come down from the cross, and even the birds will return…

Then I see it. Nestled high in the corner like a metal spider: the camera. Glass eye that never blinks, never looks away.

The folk will choose. Through that lens. Her or me. Salvation? The sterile imprisonment of these white walls, or the unknown wilds outside where "freedom" might be a deeper, darker cell? The first choice feels like surrender; the second, a leap into the data-void.

Nightfall shatters the illusion of safety. The helicopter arrives, not a machine, but a salvator. Its thudding rotors vibrate in my bones for hours, hovering just beyond the reinforced window. I know. I know. This is where they come for us. The helicopter is not hunting, it is collecting. Unseen arrivals, unseen departures. Like mine, shielded by silent paramedics from the ambulance bay itself. Escape demands unconsciousness, a surrender my hyper-aware, neurodivergent synapses refuse. I lie rigid, eyes wide open, tracking shadows on the ceiling as the chance dissolves with the fading rotor thrum.

Christ materializes like a vengeful specter in the chair beside my bed. My skin prickles with primal unease.

Suddenly, The Statue moves. A raw, animal scream tears from her throat, a skeletal finger jabbing towards Christ. Nurses swarm, murmuring platitudes as they steer Christ back to her mattress. Her eyes, burning coals, lock onto mine. Accusation.

Morning drags me into therapy's numbing drone. The doctor, Handsome Man's friend, settles beside me. His eyes offer counterfeit warmth. "You're safe," he murmurs, the lie smooth as synth-silk. "Tell me everything."

The dam breaks. Words, thick with poison I have carried too long, flood out:

"I didn't know. I'm autistic. They knew. Exploited my focus, my literal mind. Made me believe I was just… inadequate. High school was noise and failure. University, less drowning, still flailing. Then the labs. Simple tasks: cut, paste, verify sequences. Mindless. Oblivious. Now… I see the chain."

My voice becomes a flat recital of damnation:

"Lab One: Sequence assembly. Simple. Lab Two: Expression vectors. Still simple. Lab Three: Crystallization seeds. Getting complex. Lab Four: The massive protein. Not what they told me. Lab Five: Cell line testing. My hands shaking. Final Lab: The Platform, and My blood. They took my blood when I got sick. Now they have everything."

I have gotten sick; they have taken it. Now they have the template. Unlimited weapons. Unlimited antidotes. Defenses built from me. I feel… hollow. An unconscious slave. Happy in my chains. Ashamed.

I meet his gaze, stripped bare. Admitting my ignorance does not absolve the guilt; it etches it deeper into my code. I am spent. Empty. Done.

Days dissolve into the mattress, the confession a lead weight pinning me down, leaving only exhaustion.

One afternoon, Christ slithers to The Statue's bedside. Her whisper slithers against my ear: "I am here because of you. Your fault." Each word is a needle. She lives on her phone, her end a muffled litany of death threats. Too loud. Too deliberate. Performance art. For whose benefit? Mine?

When they decide to move her, somewhere she fights with terrified desperation, her "daughter" visits. The girl walks in, her gaze bypassing Christ entirely, locking onto me. A smile blooms, too wide, too knowing. "Hello," she chirps. The word feels like a trap. "Hello," she chirps, bright as poison. Leaving, the same smile, the same unnerving wave: "See you soon." Not the mother's daughter. One of us. Marked.

The helicopter returns the next night, its rhythmic thrum a siren song of potential escape. But Christ, a malevolent sentinel, refuses to sleep. Her eyes, wide, unnatural, pin me like specimen to glass. She knows. She is keeping me awake on purpose. Again. The chance dissolves.

Trapped. Watched. The camera records every breath, every blink. Waiting for the folk to choose: Christ or Barabbas. Salvation or damnation.

Through the unblinking eye.