A male doctor and a female doctor walked down a sterile hospital hallway, briefly pausing as they passed a specific door. A small, clinical sign next to it read: Bed Space 17.
Without a word, they continued walking. The man took a slow sip from his paper coffee cup.
"Mrs. Cain is in there, right?" he asked.
"That's right," the female doctor answered. "You didn't know about—ah, you're new here, aren't you?"
The male doctor nodded, giving a slight shake of his head. "Well, new... I've been here for a few months now."
The female doctor looked surprised. "That surprises me. But you do know that she is the mother—"
"—the mother of Noen. Yes, yes, I know that."
"I wonder if she'd know where he disappeared to..." she murmured quietly.
The man took another sip of his coffee. "I just didn't realize she was here, of all places."
They continued walking further down the brightly lit, quiet corridor.
"But didn't the doctors give up on her a long time ago? Back then, the reports said she was in 'terrible condition'." He casually tossed his empty coffee cup into a hallway trash can. "She's basically already dead in there."
The woman in the white coat nodded slowly, her expression turning purely clinical. "She is brain-dead. The damage is irreversible. We've been trying to withdraw life support for ages at this point."
The man frowned, stopping in his tracks. "Trying?"
She glanced back down the hall toward Bed Space 17. "Every time we attempt it, something stops us."
"A malfunction?"
"That's what we thought at first." She paused, a faint shiver running down her spine. "It isn't."
With a heavy sigh, she softly closed the office door behind them.
Inside Bed Space 17, the only sound was the steady, mechanical hiss of the ventilator and the faint, rhythmic beep of the heart monitor. The room was cast in the sterile, dim glow of the hospital machinery. To the medical staff, the woman in the bed was already a corpse, kept breathing solely by the hum of technology.
But sitting quietly in a chair pulled right up to the edge of the bed, a lone figure rested in the shadows. He leaned forward, the pale blue light finally catching the sharp, unmistakable contours of his face.
It was Kaelin Cross.
"Don't worry Noen," Kaelin whispered, his voice calm, yet carrying a weight that felt heavier than the room itself. "As long as you are gone, nothing will happen here."
He stood up slowly from the chair, his gaze drifting downward. Hovering just inches above the cold linoleum floor, a faint holographic projection pulsed softly in the dark. It displayed a simple, static message:
>>>Will be back soon>>>
Kaelin stared at it for a moment before speaking, his voice commanding and absolute. "Enhance: Last Authority.."
He looked back down at Annabelle's pale, motionless face. "Take me to Noen."
Instantly, a system window flared to life in front of him, bathing the room in its light.
[Statement denied ❌]
The screen shattered into digital dust and closed just as fast as it had appeared.
Kaelin exhaled a long, heavy breath, the tension visibly rolling off his shoulders. A dry, ironic chuckle escaped his lips. "So this also counts as: doing something good for humanity, huh?"
He fell silent. His gaze rested gently on Annabelle's motionless form. "Don't worry, Luna. He will come back, I promise you that."
As Kaelin stood up fully, the very atmosphere inside Bed Space 17 violently shifted. A brilliant, terrifying light ignited within his eyes, glowing with unfathomable power. The air around him warped, the physical pressure of his aura bending the space in the tiny room.
And then, he moved.
He accelerated past the point where matter could even register his existence, his body fundamentally decoupling from physical reality so he could pass through concrete and steel as if they were thin air.
But before he fully departed, he acted.
In less than half a Planck time, Kaelin reinforced the protection he had placed over Annabelle long ago. He flooded every system sustaining her body with a fresh, unbreakable surge of his own energy. He didn't need to check mundane cables or underground generators. He had severed the machines from the hospital's electrical grid weeks ago, replacing it with a perpetual, self-sustaining source of his own power.
Now, he locked those life-support functions into a divine, absolute stasis, ensuring that no doctor, no power outage, and no human interference could ever touch Annabelle Cain again until Noen returned.
And in the next immeasurable fraction of a second, Kaelin Cross was gone. Bed Space 17 was completely empty once again, leaving behind only the quiet, steady, and now entirely unstoppable rhythm of a perfectly preserved sanctuary.
⸻
Noen: W-What?