Forty Pages to Fracture

The ward cycled like broken code: two out, one in. Change was coming. I could feel it in the air recycling, in the way shadows moved.

The new arrival in Bed 4 was a stark, unsettling paradox. Death lived in her smile—every tooth charred black as burnt offerings—yet she radiated frenzied, chemical joy. Joy. I named her that. I couldn't reconcile her condition—a recent suicide attempt—with her almost delirious happiness. The irony burned. How do you try to die and wake up this happy? What broke in her that I couldn't see? She’d tried to erase herself just days ago. And there they were: the very pills, rattling loose in her unzipped bag beside a cheap plastic lighter.

“Nurse!” My voice cracked the sterile air. “She tried to die swallowing these. And you left them with her? With a lighter?”

Her arrival triggered an impossible awakening. The Catatonic Woman, silent for two years, spoke. Her words, disjointed but clear, revealed a past connection with Joy, a shared history veiled in fractured memory.

One day, words spilled from the Catatonic Woman: "Fire. My boy. Three years old. They said I couldn't... couldn't keep him safe." Then silence. Back to the void of catatonia. Fire. Joy. Two broken women in the same place. Coincidence felt impossible.

For a couple of days, Joy became my temporary anchor. She was consumed by an improbable love, infatuated with a guy less than half her age, her conversation a ghost-lover haunting her derailed mind.

“He sees me” she whispered, ash trembling on her lip. “Really sees me.”

We shared music from her phone, and the illicit comfort of her cigarettes.

Nearby, a slouched teen—a self-declared 'professional dropout'—watched us. He preached about the purity of transactional love, his words slick and rehearsed. When I asked for a cigarette, he smirked. “Nah. Give you one, you’ll just want another.” His friend silently passed me a smoke. The unexpected kindness from a stranger hit harder than the calculated cruelty of someone who knew me.

White coats swarmed. “You’re stable. Ready for discharge.”

Cold dread pooled in my gut. The village. "They’ll use me again" I pleaded. Blank stares. Clinical indifference.

Think. Adapt. “I need to see a friend. Lend me fare—bus, train. I’ll post it back.”

The doctor’s pen froze. “No release without pickup. New policy.”

3. I had to find 3. But his number… gone. I borrowed Joy's phone, her social media account a lifeline. A message, brief and urgent, to 3's profile: It’s me. Send digits. Come get me. A leap of faith. His reply flashed: Stay put. I’m coming.

Relief bled into unease. This place—this cold, fluorescent cage—had become my sanctuary. How fucked was my life that a psych ward felt safe?

The nurses… some watched me with knowing eyes. Guardians. One pressed a book into my hands that night: “Read the first forty pages” she urged, her thumb brushing the cover—The Hive Protocols.

I devoured it. The pages felt different under my fingers. Urgent. Like they'd been waiting for me. Page 40 burned with revelation:

We move at night.

We repair broken systems.

We are the Children.

Nurse 11 lingered, casual as death: "Oh, by the way—virus hit Geneva last night. Containment failed." He said it like weather.

The words detonated in my chest—Geneva, virus, containment failed. My blood. My work. My ignorant hands building their weapon.

What have I done?