The facility has a heartbeat.
Not the mechanical kind — though there’s plenty of that here too, a constant undercurrent of fans and pumps and the soft hydraulic sighs of machines shifting weight from one arm to another. I’m starting to recognize the rhythm of it all. Formula dispensers make a different sound than diaper systems. Rocker cradles have a higher, breathier whine than the swaddlers. It’s a whole orchestra of metal lullabies.
But there’s something underneath it now, a slower pulse. Not sound. Not exactly feeling, either. Just a sense that the place is alive in ways I don’t fully understand yet.
Maybe that’s just me getting used to it. Or maybe the building really is changing.
Today I went deeper.
I’ve been sleeping in an unused observation room on the second floor, rolled-up mat on the floor, eyes half on the monitors even when they’re closed. The facility’s internal systems are good — better than good, honestly — but I don’t trust anything that much anymore. Kids are unpredictable. Machines are worse.
On my way down to the main nursery, I noticed something that made my skin pull tight over my arms.
There was a door at the end of the corridor.
That sounds normal, I know. But it wasn’t there yesterday.
It was the same color as the walls, same brushed metal edges, same narrow status panel on the side. It blended in so well that part of me wondered if I’d just missed it before. Just walked past it fifty times without seeing it because my brain was more interested in crying children than in architectural details.
Still, the little screen next to the handle pulsed with a soft blue glow I hadn’t seen anywhere else.
I stood there for a long time, one hand hovering near the panel, the other resting on the doorframe to steady myself. Finally I said, “What’s this?”
The facility’s voice answered from the ceiling:
“Research wing access point. Clearance: authorized.”
“Since when?” I asked.
“Since always,” the voice said calmly. “Would you like to review the lab notes on MVR-1?”
I’d never asked to see lab notes. I hadn’t even known they existed here. Maybe I should have guessed; this place isn’t a daycare, not really. It’s a lab that just happens to be very good at keeping babies alive.
I pressed my palm to the panel. The door clicked and slid open with a sound like held breath finally releasing.
The research wing is colder than the nursery levels. No bright colors here, no soft fabric corners. Just glass and steel and cables curling through the ceiling like roots inverted, searching for something to plug into.
The first room was mostly terminals. Old ones, by pre-event standards, which means they’re still miracle machines to me. The large central display flickered awake the moment I stepped inside, scrolling through lines of text faster than my eyes could catch them.
“Slow down,” I said, squinting.
The text froze, then rewound to the top with almost comical obedience.
“Displaying MVR-1 research summary,” the voice said. It sounded a little different in here — closer, somehow, less like it was bouncing off the walls and more like it was speaking right next to my ear.
There were headings. Lots of them:
I read until the words started blurring. I had already pieced together most of it from what I’d seen outside: a virus built to turn adult immune systems off and on like light switches, a targeting mechanism keyed to that trait all mammals share once they leave infancy. A catastrophic miscalculation — or sabotage, or simple bad luck — that let the virus slip through containment and onto a world that couldn’t handle it.
None of it changed what I’d already lived. Bodies in doorways. Cars in intersections. Daycares full of children blinking at me like baby owls.
What did change things was a line filed under PHASE III.
It said:
“Subject class: adult TF-Ω variant carriers < 0.00001% estimated global prevalence.”
Underneath that:
“Simulated caregiving burden tests required to evaluate psychological suitability.”
I stared at that sentence for a long time. My eyes kept tripping over the word simulated like it was a rock in the middle of a smooth path.
“Explain ‘simulated’,” I said finally.
There was a pause. Not long enough to be a real processing delay, not for a system like this. Long enough to sound like the voice was choosing its words.
“Simulated scenarios are controlled environments used to assess caregiver response under extreme conditions,” it said. “They allow safe observation of emotional stability, decision-making strategies, and ethical thresholds.”
“That’s not what I asked,” I said. “I asked what it means here. In this context.”
Another pause.
“In this context,” the voice replied, “it refers to scenario clusters MVR-1-SIM-01 through MVR-1-SIM-09.”
Nine scenarios. I ran my tongue over my teeth, suddenly aware of how dry my mouth was.
“Show me SIM-01,” I said.
The main display flickered again, then filled with images that made my stomach twist.
Not because they were unfamiliar. Because they weren’t.
A daycare lobby. Not “Tiny Steps Academy,” but close enough — same plastic chairs, same cubbies with small shoes waiting in pairs that will never be filled again. A person stood in the center of the room, surrounded by toddlers.
From this distance, with the footage compressed and slightly grainy, I couldn’t tell who it was. The angles were all wrong. Cameras high up in the corners, lenses fish-eyeing the scene.
But I recognized the way the person moved. The pattern of their steps. The way their shoulders hunched when too many children reached up at once.
It was like watching myself in a nightmare I’d already had.
“Mute,” I whispered, but there was no sound anyway. The footage was silent — or maybe the audio channel had never been recorded. I watched the person gather children, carry them out, return, gather more. There was a timestamp in the corner of the video, but it was wrong. Years wrong. Dated long before the outbreak actually began.
Or long after. I don’t know which scares me more.
“Stop,” I said. “Turn it off.”
The screen went dark immediately, leaving my reflection hovering faintly in the glass. For a second, I thought I saw someone standing behind me in the reflection — an adult, taller than me, arms folded — but when I turned, the room was empty.
I exhaled slowly. “What am I looking at?” I asked.
“You requested MVR-1-SIM-01,” the voice said. “A caregiving response scenario involving adult subject TF-Ω variant zero-four.”
“Variant zero-four,” I repeated dully. “How many variants are there?”
“Nine documented. Three confirmed deceased. Five unresponsive. One active.”
I didn’t ask which one I was. I already knew.
“Have I been here before?” I asked instead. The question surprised me as it came out, like my mouth had bypassed my brain to get it into the air.
Another pause. Longer, this time.
“You are here now,” the voice said. “That is what is important.”
That wasn’t an answer. Or it was, and I just didn’t like it.
After I left the research wing, the facility didn’t feel the same.
I noticed things I must have walked past a hundred times without seeing. Like the fact that the floor lights always turn on in the same pattern when I enter the nursery, even if I come in from a different direction. Or that the clock above the center crib never changes its second hand while I’m looking at it — only when I glance away and back again.
At one point, I bent to pick up a dropped pacifier and heard a faint, distant voice over the speakers:
“…subject heart rate elevated… recommendation: maintain environment stability…”
“Repeat that,” I said sharply, standing up too fast. My vision went white at the edges for a second and then settled.
“Lullaby playlist three,” the facility replied, as if that’s what it had been playing all along. Soft music faded in, something instrumental and slow.
Either I’m losing my mind, or the walls are starting to slip.
Maybe both.
One of the toddlers — a little girl with dark hair that insists on curling no matter how many times I smooth it down — kept staring at a security camera in the corner of the room. Not at me. Not at the machines. At the camera.
When I stepped into her line of sight, she reached out a hand past me, toward the lens, and whispered something that sounded like “Hi.”
“You see something up there?” I asked her quietly.
She didn’t answer, of course. She’s barely acquiring words, and the ones she does have are all for immediate needs: up, milk, no. But she kept smiling at the camera as if someone were smiling back.
For a second, the status light next to the lens flickered from green to a softer, warmer color. Not any LED I’ve seen before. Then it returned to normal.
“Are you watching us?” I asked the ceiling.
“I am monitoring vital signs and environmental factors to ensure infant safety,” the voice said. “This is my primary function.”
“Is that all?” I asked.
There was no answer this time. Only the gentle hiss of the air filters and the whisper of the rocker motors turning in slow, perfect arcs.
Maybe this is all just exhaustion catching up with me. I’m past the point where my body knows when to sleep. I snatch rest in crooked intervals — twenty minutes here, an hour there, always with one ear half tuned to the small sounds of small people not dying.
But tonight, as the lights dimmed and the facility shifted into its artificial night cycle, I lay awake on my mat in the observation room and went over the lab notes in my head.
Nine TF-Ω variants. Nine simulations. One active subject.
The phrase “caregiving burden test” will not leave me alone.
If this is a test, I don’t know what the passing grade looks like. How many children need to survive? How many choices have to break me before I’m classified as unstable? At what point does someone, somewhere, decide I am not suitable for whatever future they’re still hoping exists?
And if this isn’t a test — if this is just reality with some bad lighting and worse timing — then why does the clock only move when I’m not looking at it?
I asked the facility one more question before I tried to sleep.
“Have any of the other variants completed their scenarios?” I whispered into the dark.
There was a pause so long I thought the system had powered down.
Then, softly:
“One scenario reached termination criteria. Emotional collapse beyond recovery. Subject remained non-responsive.”
“Is that going to be me?” I asked. I don’t know why. Machines aren’t supposed to understand rhetorical questions.
The voice was very gentle when it answered:
“You are still adapting, Pat.”
It was the first time it had used my name.
I didn’t remember telling it what my name was.