The copper sun dimmed. The lavender sun flared.

"The first three tried to break me out," the child said. "They ended up fracturing their own minds. You can't save me, Dr. Vasquez. But you can choose not to scream."

The child smiled for the first time. "A story. A new one. I've been in this same harvest field for four hundred years. Tell me something that never happened here."

The orb glowed. The child listened. And outside, the lab monitors flatlined — not in failure, but in completion.