Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, buzzing like trapped flies. The walls were a pale, institutional green, scuffed and peeling at the corners.

You were told this was a routine evaluation. A simple test of cognitive function, the nurse had said, her smile too wide and her eyes too flat.

But the children ahead of you—seven of them, all in gray hospital gowns—were trembling.

He disappeared through the steel door at the end of the hall.

The silence that followed was worse than any noise. A minute passed. Two minutes. Then—

A scream. High-pitched, raw, cut off abruptly as if silenced by a hand.

The glass window beside the door frosted over from the inside, ice creeping across its surface in jagged, impossible patterns.