The door burst open.
“What are you doing?!” a nurse shouted.
Noah flinched. Security rushed in. Voices overlapped. Hands grabbed his arms as he cried and apologized, his fingers shaking, smeared with dirt.
Doctors reacted instantly. Protocols violated. Contamination risk. They wiped Thomas Caldwell’s face clean.
That’s when the heart monitor spiked.
“Hold on,” someone said. “Did you see that?”
Another spike. Then another.
Thomas’s fingers twitched.
The room went dead silent.
They ran tests. Brain activity—localized, responsive, not random. Reflexes followed. Pupil response. A reaction to sound.
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