The Stillness Protocol

They say evil has no face. That's the first lie they teach you in the stillness rooms. Evil has a face. It wears mine, and I've grown quite fond of it. You don't survive thirteen recalibrations and six coma trials without developing an appreciation for symmetry.

There's a crack above my bed that shifts when the ship tilts, which is how I measure time. Not in hours or days-- there are no clocks here-- but in the slow contractions and breaths the walls take. The crack is shaped like a smile now, faint and arched like something waiting for me to notice. I think I've been here for four hundred smiles.

Unit Grey floats in international waters, drifting on the bones of old law. We were sent here because there was nowhere else to go. A facility for the untreatable, the forgotten, the inconvenient. My chart reads "Patient 019-G: antisocial subtype, harm fixation, institutional nonresponse." A polite way of saying I don't play well with others, and I never will.

The staff are ghosts, seen only when sedation fails or violence flares. Mostly, we govern ourselves. Meals arrive in steel drawers with no sound. Lights dim on a schedule I've stopped trying to decode. But lately, something's changed.

Patient 087-B is gone.

Not released. Not dead. Gone. One day her room was locked. The next, it was open and empty, mattress stripped, drawers clean, her favorite wall scratches painted over.

They said nothing. They always say nothing, but this time it felt louder.

So, I've been watching.

The hallways carry sound in strange ways. Footsteps echo from rooms no one enters. Laughter with no speaker. Doors hiss open for no one. And this morning, I found a towel folded differently-- triangular, not square. That means hands. Human ones. Not ours.

I've been moved five times in Unit Grey. This ward is different. Here, you're punished not for what you do, but for what you notice.

I've started keeping notes. Tiny journals made from gauze, stitched with IV thread. The ink is a pilfered pen refill hidden in my mattress seam. They haven't found it. Yet.

Today, I tested the Smile Protocol.

It's simple. I ask a question that has no joke in it: "Do you think the lights hum because the ship is alive?"

If the other person smiles-- really smiles-- I know they see it too. The pattern. The eyes behind the walls. The breath behind the stillness.

I asked it to Patient 074-J. He looked confused. Good. He's real. Probably. I asked it to 092-C, and she smiled. Too quickly. Too knowingly.

I didn't report her. That's not how this works. No one here reports anymore. It's too late for that. Instead, I watched her. She started sleeping at odd times. Kept her windowless curtain closed. Stopped eating on Thursdays. I think she's been meeting with someone during the music cycles, when the hallway cameras blink off.

I believe there's a group forming. Not staff. Not patients. Something in-between.

They move differently. Their steps don't echo. Their smiles last half a second too long. And they fold their towels into triangle.

I left a message today. Three lines, written on a sheet of surgical tape.

"I know. I see. I am still."

I left it under the vent in the central corridor, the one that whistles at 3AM. I chose that time carefully. That's when the humming stops for 45 seconds. I don't know why. But I suspect it's when they listen.

The next day, I found a folded note in my meal drawer. No words. Just a triangle drawn in pencil. I kept it.

I started sleeping less. Watching more. The others act the same, but I've seen the hesitation in their movements-- like they're syncing to a rhythm I don't know yet.

I want the learn the rhythm.

I want to be part of the stillness.

But the truth is: I don't think they'll let me join. Not fully.

So I escalated.

I picked the newest transfer-- Patient 122-K. Fresh scars, hadn't spoken in days. I introduced myself as the night orderly. I told him his recalibration was scheduled early.

He believed me. They always do when you speak with authority.

I walked him to the disused laundry ward. Left him there with the door open. He never came out.

The next morning, his room was empty. Stripped clean.

No alarms. No sedation team.

Just a single triangular towel placed neatly on my mattress.

I've earned their attention now. They know I'm serious. They know I'm compatible.

Stillness is the absence of resistance. That's what one of the old manuals said. We found it once, Patient 010-M and I, in a busted locker. A phrase scribbled in the margin like a prayer.

"Stillness is the absence of resistance."

So I've stopped resisting.

I stopped brushing my teeth. I stopped speaking unless spoken to. I mimic the triangle. I hum when the vents go quiet. I fold. I wait.

And last night, it happened.

A door opened without a hiss. Footsteps that didn't echo. A figure entered my room. No mask, no uniform. Just a man in gray, face like every other I've half-forgotten.

He didn't speak. Just placed a hand on my chest and nodded.

I think it was approval. Or calibration.

When he left, the crack above my bed had shifted again-- now it looked like a keyhole.

I wrote my final entry on a strip of gauze and swallowed it. Let them find it during the autopsy, if they ever bother.

Then I laid back. Closed my eyes.

And the speaker, for the first time in 400 smiles, spoke my number.

"Patient 019-G. Initiating transfer."

No location. No destination. Just the transfer.

I am not afraid. I am the stillness in your design.

If you are reading this, then you already understand. Or you will soon.

I used to believe I was broken. Now I know I was only unfinished.

The triangle folds inward. The light disappears. The rhythm slows.

I am not the patient anymore.

I am the protocol.