"After three years in prison, I returned home expecting nothing more than to embrace my father, but my stepmother opened the door and said, “He d:ied a year ago. This house is mine now.” I quietly went to the cemetery with an old key in my pocket, never imagining that the groundskeeper would whisper something that changed everything.

The drive to Blackwood was a silent, tense journey through winding mountain roads. By the time the towering wrought-iron gates of St. Jude’s Private Care Facility appeared through the dark pines, the sun had already slipped beneath the horizon.

The facility looked more like a fortress than a hospital. High stone walls, security cameras sweeping the perimeter, and private guards patrolling the manicured grounds.

Maya pulled her car into a dark gravel turnout a quarter-mile away. She opened her laptop, connecting a specialized diagnostic scanner to her dashboard. "I managed to clone an employee access badge from a nurse who logged out of the system an hour ago. It will get us through the service entrance, but once we're inside, we have exactly twelve minutes before the system runs an automated security audit and flags the duplicate ID."

I checked my father’s notes. Room 204. Special Ward.

We slipped through the shadows of the tree line, the crisp night air filling my lungs. My heart pounded against my ribs like a trapped bird. Three years in a prison cell teaches you how to move without making a sound. It teaches you how to read the spacing of a guard's footsteps.

We reached the service door. Maya pressed the cloned badge against the scanner. The light blinked from red to a soft, humming green.