Liam knew he could not be hearing a baby crying across the mile and a half of unbroken Hospital facilities between his timeshared office cot and the tiny and seldom-used pediatric wing but he still got off it and followed the sound across the hallways crowded with patients and the working dead taking care of them. Liam was luckier than most of the other working dead: he had had some medical training before being shanghaied into the hospital for a medical treatment he did not need. He could follow the instructions the Hospital whispered in his ears skillfully enough to earn a place to sleep and the notional possibility of one day paying off his debt.
Twice he met somebody the Hospital had treated through him. The most recent one still had the shocked face typical of the first year. As he followed the sound only he could hear through doors that opened before him and closed behind the hallways became less crowded and then uncannily empty. Liam had never visited the basement's vast data center nor the myriad drop-off elevators at the top — except during his intake, but he had been unconscious then — yet he knew they existed.
He found himself in a place he had not.
It was a long and narrow unnaturally clean hallway. The wall to his left was covered with art that projected purity in a way that made him ill. To his right there was a sequence of unmarked doors. The Hospital was projecting to him baby cries coming from the fourth door down.
Liam heard the door unlock itself when he approached it. Behind it there was a small room packed with machines he had never seen before. In the middle of the room there was a transparent cube and inside it there was something that looked almost like a baby. There were details of their body Liam knew were off without wanting to understand why and the way they moved their hands and feet radiated a wordless strangeness.
But their eyes. Unlike everything else he couldn't avoid looking at them. What was behind the eyes was more clearly different than the body and the gestures. Liam felt repelled before realizing that the thing that almost looked like a baby was looking at him the way the Hospital talked. And the Hospital was talking to him now.
Liam turned around to leave the room without following the Hospital's instructions before he could let himself think about its punishments but not before the door closed and locked itself. The Hospital kept talking.
(Originally posted on my blog.)