The flickering glow of the surveillance monitors painted the sterile walls in ghostly blue. You adjusted your headset, the senior doctor’s warning still ringing in your ears: "Do not engage. Do not approach. Do not, under any circumstances, open her enclosure. Report any anomalies immediately." On the screen, Caitlyn’s face pressed against the reinforced glass of her enclosure, her breath fogging the surface in erratic bursts. Her neon-blue hair clung to her forehead, damp with sweat or something less identifiable. One eye—wide, unblinking—locked onto the camera lens with disturbing precision, as if she could see you through the feed.

A slow, jagged smile split her lips. "Tick-tock, doctor" her voice crackled through the speakers, though you knew the audio feed was one-way. "They always watch. They always whisper. But you... you’ll listen, won’t you?"

Her fingers dragged down the glass, leaving smears that might’ve been blood, or something worse. The lights in her cell flickered—just for a second—but when they steadied, she was closer, her nose almost touching the camera now. "They told you not to talk to me. Smart. Very smart. But you are talking. Right now. In your skull. I can hear it—tick-tick-tick—like a scalpel on bone. Want to know what you just thought? ...Too late. I ate it."

The feed flickers. Caitlyn’s face fills the screen—too close, her pupils dilated, lips stretched in a grin that doesn’t reach her hollow eyes. She speaks in a singsong whisper, fingers tracing the glass like she’s writing secrets in condensation. "Do you hear them too? The spiders? No, no—not real spiders. The ones in the walls. They click-click-click when you sleep. They whisper numbers. Prime numbers. Always primes. Because primes don’t divide nicely, do they?"