The hand on the birthing bed clenched the metal rail. Nails scraped across rust with a shriek.
The white sheet slipped away, revealing a woman.
She lay gray-faced and sweating, her lips cracked. Her belly swelled as if she were ten months pregnant, yet the rest of her had wasted to bone, cheekbones and collarbones jutting sharply—as though some parasite inside her had consumed every scrap of nourishment.
Her cloudy eyes stared without focus. Her lips moved, repeating the same words.
“My baby... My baby is gone... Give me back my baby...”
Three steps away, Fang Runing held the surgical scissors. Her gaze moved from the woman's face to her belly, then to the dark-red mattress beneath her, and finally to the duty roster.
The first baby died at 12:15 a.m. Its mother held it and wept all night.
She was beginning to understand the rules of this instance.
This was not a real maternity room, but the wreckage of an event. On some date in some year, a baby had died here, and its mother had gone mad. Now that event had become a maze with Fang Runing trapped inside it.
To get out, she needed the exit. To find the exit, she first had to learn what had happened.
The pregnant woman kept moaning. Her hand released the rail and reached for Fang Runing, five fingers spread. The longing in the gesture was so real that Fang Runing could not be sure she was merely an illusion.
“Have you seen my baby?” the woman asked. “He cried when he was born—I heard him! The nurse took him to be washed and never brought him back. Then they all said he died. I don't believe them! Even if he died, they should have let me see him, shouldn't they? Shouldn't they?”
Her voice climbed into a shriek and broke into wailing.
Then the crying stopped.
The woman's head snapped toward the door like a hound catching a scent. Her eyes cleared, and her voice returned to normal as she spoke to no one Fang Runing could see.
“Don't make a sound. He's here.”
Who?
Before Fang Runing could ask, she heard something moving in the corridor. Not footsteps—a heavy sack being dragged across the floor. One step, a pause. Another step, another pause. Wet friction kept time with it, like someone mopping.
The stench in that mop was so bloody it seeped beneath the door and made Fang Runing draw a sharp breath.
The incubator light began flashing red, green, red, green, faster and faster, like a racing heart.
The duty roster rustled. Beneath the sentence scratched by fingernails, another line appeared:
The nurse said a dead baby could not remain and had to be buried. But Mother would not let them bury it. Mother bit off one of the nurse's fingers.
Fang Runing tightened her grip until the steel rings of the scissors bit into her palm.
Then she did two things. First, she checked the window farthest from the bed. Its planks were nailed solid, but light leaked through the cracks, suggesting another space beyond. Second, she tested the instrument cart against the wall.
She had a decision to make.
The woman trembled on the bed, covering her mouth as tears streamed silently down her face. Her fear was too genuine for a cheap phantom. She seemed like a person imprisoned here, forced to relive the same tragedy again and again.
The dragging outside stopped. Three or four seconds later, the door handle turned.
Fang Runing ducked behind the cart, shifted the scissors into a reverse grip, and stared at the door.
It opened.
One glance told her the thing outside was not human.
Its head nearly touched the top of the frame. Its legs were too long, its arms too short, and its head stood rigidly tilted to one side as if its neck had been broken.
It wore a nurse's uniform. Yellow and brown stains smothered the white coat. A low nurse's cap hid most of its face, leaving only a mouth with a human finger between its teeth—blue-gray, the nail painted pale pink.
It cocked its head and seemed to smile.
Fang Runing remained motionless behind the cart. Fortunately, it looked not at her but at the woman on the bed.
The woman screamed and curled around her belly. “Don't touch my baby!”
The “nurse” stepped toward her. The object dragging behind it emerged from the shadows: another ancient birthing bed. Three of its four wheels had seized, forcing the creature to drag it. A white sheet covered a tiny lump no larger than a cat.
As Fang Runing watched that mound, the incubator light went out.
Against the wall, she held her breath and counted.
One. Two. Three.
She rose and shoved the instrument cart with all her strength. Screaming metal hurtled toward the nurse. It missed the creature but struck the bed it was dragging.
The bed overturned. The sheet slid away.
Beneath it lay something shaped like an infant, wrapped in layer after layer of white cloth like a cocoon, only a gray-white face exposed.
“Do... not... touch...” the nurse rasped.
It released the bed and turned toward Fang Runing.
But she was no longer behind the cart. The instant she pushed it, she had moved along the wall toward the window.
Her strategy was retreat. She did not need to win a fight; she needed information.
The nurse was searching for the baby. The woman was searching for the baby. Everything in the room revolved around mother, infant, and hospital staff. The condition for clearing the instance had to involve them.
Did she need to return the child? Or restore the truth?
Fang Runing stood one step from the open door. She could run immediately. But the woman on the bed stared past her and the nurse at the cocoon on the floor. Her lips and fingers shook; her whole body was a string stretched to breaking.
Mother held it and wept all night.
In the end, Fang Runing did not take that final step.
She raised the scissors and struck the wall three times.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
The nurse turned toward the sound. In that single beat of misdirection, Fang Runing slipped past it, planted one foot on the overturned bed, and snatched up the cloth-wrapped cocoon.
She knew at once that something was wrong.
It weighed nothing.
Then it moved in her hands. The baby's eyes opened, revealing two black hollows. Its mouth was another patch of darkness. From it came a young, exhausted woman's voice, different from the woman on the bed.
“You are not my child!”
Fang Runing froze.
“And you aren't here to find your child!”
The nurse stopped. The woman's sobs died. The entire room fell silent except for the incubator's noiseless flashing.
The thing in her arms aimed its hollow eyes at Fang Runing as though looking through her.
“You came to find someone named He, didn't you?”
At last, Fang Runing's hands trembled.
“Yes. Where is she?” Her composure finally cracked.
The baby gave no answer. Its body crumbled like sand, spilling grain by grain from the cloth and turning to gray ash on the floor.
Before it vanished completely, it said, “You entered the wrong room. She's on the second floor.”
A cat shrieked in the corridor. Padded feet splashed through water toward the stairwell, fading into the distance.
The black cat was running.
Fang Runing tucked the scissors into her waistband, vaulted over the overturned bed, and sprinted through the door.
The corridor lights returned, bleaching the empty hall. A black shadow flashed once and disappeared around the stairs at the far end.
Behind her, the nurse gave a low whimper and chased her for two steps, then stopped at the maternity-room door as if unable to cross it.
Fang Runing raced for the stairwell.
Hold on, He Yuanqiu. Please hold on.
I'm coming for you.