The alarm reads 6:14 a.m., Thursday. Maren already knows the rain starts at 6:51. She has watched it begin forty times now. Ward C smells like cleaner and cold coffee when she clocks in. Same chart. Same silent man in Bed 9 who hasn't woken in two years. She is wiping his arm when his fingers twitch and grab her wrist, hard. He has never moved before. "Day forty-one," he whispers. "Don't let it reset."

Maren yanks her wrist free and steps back. This is just an exhausted brain playing tricks, she tells herself. She has slept badly for forty days. She won't play along. She marches to the nurses' station to log the incident and prove she is still sane.

At the station, Maren opens the incident log and freezes. Yesterday's entry is already there, in her own handwriting: "Bed 9 spoke. He warned me. I didn't listen. Day 40." Her hands go cold. She has written this before and forgotten. She runs back toward Ward C.

Maren reaches Bed 9 at 6:48. Sol is sitting up, waiting. "You read it," he says. "You always do, eventually. Forty times." He hands her a small key. "This opens the panel behind my bed. Inside is a red switch. That's the only way out. Hurry."

Maren hesitates with the key in her hand. "What if the switch hurts the others?" Sol's face falls. "Then we don't risk it tonight." The rain starts at 6:51 before she can decide. The ward resets around her. She wakes to the 6:14 alarm again, but she remembers the key, the panel, and the red switch waiting behind Bed 9.