In my previous life, my newborn son was stolen on his second day in this world. My wife lost her mind. She spent six months searching for him before finally jumping off our balcony. I drank myself to death on the streets. In this life, I trust absolutely no one. When the head nurse said she needed to take the baby for a checkup, I stood up and blocked the crib. "What checkup? Which department? Where is the requisition form? Did the attending physician sign off on this?" She froze, stammering that it was just a routine hearing screening. "If it is a routine screening, why is the head nurse coming to fetch him personally?" "I do not trust anyone. Bring me the paperwork, and I will carry the baby to the examination room with you. Otherwise, this conversation is over." She stood there, paralyzed. 1 The day my son was born, I held that tiny, wrinkled little thing, my hands shaking uncontrollably. Evelyn lay on the hospital bed, her lips pale, smiling up at me. "That new commercial tower in the South District. All twelve floors are going in this kid's name." I leaned down and kissed her forehead. "And the profit shares from the land parcel we bought last year, those belong to you." "Everything I earn is for you and our boy." Evelyn chuckled weakly. "You need to calm down." I told her I would not calm down. I was too damn happy. The next day, my son vanished. Evelyn went completely mad. She searched for half a year before throwing herself from our balcony. I drank myself into an early grave in a dirty alleyway. Right before I died, all I could think about was the sound of my son's first cry. This time around, all I wanted was for my wife and child to live. For an entire day, I did not let a single person touch my son. When the nurses came to take his temperature, I stood right next to them, watching their every move. But when Fiona, the head nurse, pushed the door open with a warm smile and said she needed to take the baby for a newborn hearing screening, my shirt instantly soaked with cold sweat. "Mr. Davis, it is time for the baby's hearing test. I will take him down to the examination room on the third floor and have him back in thirty minutes." She was wearing a surgical mask, leaving only her gentle, crinkling eyes visible. The junior nurse beside her nodded in agreement. "Nurse Fiona always handles the screenings personally. She is very experienced." I stood up and planted myself directly in front of the crib. "What screening? Do you have the procedural paperwork? Did the head doctor sign it? And what hospital policy dictates that the head nurse must carry the baby herself?" Fiona looked taken aback. "Mr. Davis, please do not be so tense. This is a standard procedure..." "I asked if you have the paperwork." I cut her off. I pulled my phone out of the nightstand drawer, opened the camera, and hit record. "Please repeat yourself. Who sent you, what exact screening are you performing, which room are you taking him to, and what is the attending doctor's name? I am recording this entire process." The eyes above Fiona's mask narrowed slightly, a flash of resentment crossing her face. "You are overreacting, Mr. Davis. Newborn screenings are scheduled hospital wide. This maternity ward has been operating for over a decade, and we have never had a single incident." "I do not care about anyone else's incidents." I scooped up the swaddled bundle. My son was sleeping soundly, his little face scrunched up. "I only care about my son. Go get the paperwork, and I will carry him to the examination room myself." Fiona's smile stiffened for a fraction of a second. "Mr. Davis, do you not trust me?" "It is not about trusting you." I stared dead into her eyes. "I do not trust anybody." The room fell dead silent for several seconds. Fiona took a step back and forced a polite smile. "Please wait a moment then. I will go print the forms." She turned and walked out. The moment the door clicked shut, I looked down at the boy in my arms, then over at my wife sleeping in the hospital bed. I still remembered the way Evelyn had cried until her eyes bled in my past life. In this life, nobody was going to touch a single hair on my son's head. 2 For the rest of the day, I held my son and refused to leave his side. Feeding, changing diapers, burping him. I did it all myself. When Evelyn woke up and saw me sitting on the sofa cradling the baby, her eyes grew red. "Nolan, you have not slept in three days." "I am not tired." I replied. She reached out and touched my cheek. Her fingers were freezing. "You look terrible. I am worried you are going to collapse." "I will not collapse." I grabbed her hand, my voice coming out gravelly. "As long as you and the baby are here, I can handle anything." Evelyn did not push it. She knew me too well. Once I made up my mind, nothing on earth could drag me away. That night, I pushed the crib right up against my side of the bed and locked the ward door. I left a security camera running on the nightstand and synced my phone to my smartwatch so the slightest vibration would wake me. By two in the morning, my sheer exhaustion caught up with me. My eyelids felt like lead. I do not know how much time passed, but Evelyn's piercing scream practically blew my eardrums out. "Nolan!" I shot up from the mattress. The crib was empty. Evelyn stood by the bed, her face the color of chalk, her lips trembling violently. She threw off the blankets to get out of bed, but her legs gave out before her feet even hit the floor. I caught her, my own fingers shaking uncontrollably. "Do not panic. Just lay back down." It was exactly like my past life. The exact same empty crib. The exact same suffocating despair. Evelyn had jumped. I had died in a gutter. I stood there, my knees turning to jelly. Evelyn sank to the floor and sobbed, muffling the sound against her arms. "I did not watch him closely enough..." "It is not your fault." I knelt down and grabbed her shoulders. "Look at me." She refused to look up. "Evelyn, look at me." She snapped her head up, her face drenched in tears. "Call the police." "Right." I pulled out my phone. First, I called hospital administration to lock down the building. Then, I dialed 911. Evelyn sat on the bed, hugging her knees, burying her face in her arms. The door to our room had been left wide open. More and more people were gathering in the hallway outside. Nurses, doctors, and family members from other rooms. People peeked inside, catching sight of the empty crib, and gasped. "Is the baby really gone?" "What a tragedy, he was just born a few days ago." "What kind of parents are they?" "All that money, and they can not even keep an eye on their own child." Evelyn's shoulders began to convulse. She heard them. I stood up, walked to the doorway, and pulled the door halfway shut. Some people were still craning their necks to look inside. A middle-aged woman stood in the corridor with her arms crossed, gossiping loudly. "How do you lose a baby that big? Are we sure they are the real parents?" Another man chimed in. "They probably just did not care enough. Dressed all fancy, but too lazy to watch a newborn." I looked back at Evelyn. She hugged her knees tighter, burying her face even deeper, her shoulders violently shaking. It was exactly like my past life. After my son disappeared, people whispered the exact same things everywhere we went. I pushed the door wide open and stepped out into the hall. The corridor went silent for a moment. The middle-aged woman scoffed. "Oh, here he comes. What do you want..." I stared a hole right through her. "What did you just say?" She shrank back a step. "I did not say anything. I just said..." "Say it again." She clamped her mouth shut. The man next to her spoke up. "Hey, people are just showing concern. What is with your attitude?" I turned my eyes to him. "My son is missing. What exactly are you concerned about?" He opened his mouth but could not find a single word. 3 Detective Bennett pushed his way through the crowd with his team and taped off the room. "Mr. Davis, we are here." I nodded. "Check the security cameras." The hospital guards pulled up the footage. At 4:13 AM, the feed turned to static for exactly fifteen seconds. "The baby never left the building." Detective Bennett confirmed. "Search everything." His officers started tearing the place apart. Patient rooms, supply closets, cafeterias, operating theaters, bathrooms. Room by room. The crowd of onlookers in the hallway still had not dispersed. People were whispering among themselves. "The cameras were jammed. They are never getting that kid back." "A baby that small? Whoever took him is long gone by now." "These parents are unbelievable." Evelyn sat inside the room, hearing every single word through the door. She had stopped crying out loud. She was terrifyingly quiet. I stood in the hallway, waiting. One of Bennett's officers ran up and shook his head. Another officer jogged over and shook his head. Someone in the crowd let out a cold laugh. "What did I tell you? Gone forever." I snapped my head in that direction. The person quickly ducked behind the crowd. Detective Bennett walked over and lowered his voice. "Mr. Davis, we have swept every room on this floor. Nobody." "The cameras at the exits did not catch anyone leaving." "That means the child is still inside this building. A baby does not just vanish into thin air." It was exactly like my past life. Camera static, clueless nurses, and a baby evaporating from the face of the earth. Evelyn had starved herself for three days, withering away into a skeleton. She had told me that if we could not find him, she had no reason to live. I leaned against the wall, sweat rolling down the back of my neck. My brain was absolute mush. My legs felt like they were made of water. Bennett's team swept room after room, and every time, they came back shaking their heads. I clenched my fists so hard my fingernails dug into my palms. And then I saw Fiona. She was standing behind the nurses' station, her white uniform immaculate, holding a paper cup of water. She was watching the commotion just like everyone else. Her face was completely devoid of emotion. Perfectly calm. A memory from yesterday slammed into my mind. She had told me she needed to take the baby for a hearing test, and I had blocked her. I asked her a few extra questions about the paperwork, and she walked away. She never came back. But out of all the people working here, why was she the very first one to try and take my son? With dozens of junior nurses on duty, why did the head nurse show up at my door personally? "Fiona." I barely registered my own voice calling her name. She looked up, her eyes locking onto mine. I started walking toward her. The nurses' station was only a few yards away, but every step felt impossibly heavy. She took a half-step backward. "Mr. Davis..." "Where is my son?" "Excuse me?" "Where is he?" I grabbed the collar of her pristine white uniform and yanked her forward. The paper cup slipped from her hands, smashing onto the floor. "Give me my son back." "Mr. Davis! What are you doing!" Her face drained of color as she struggled and tried to pull away. Two nearby nurses rushed over and grabbed my arms. "Let her go!" "You can not just assault people!" I did not loosen my grip. "Yesterday afternoon. You tried to take my son for a test, did you not?" "I was just doing my rounds..." "I asked you one question, and you left. You never came back." "That is because you refused to let me take him!" "And the second you left, my son disappeared." Her hands clawed at my wrists, her nails digging into my skin. "I did not do anything! I swear!" The police officers rushed in. Detective Bennett grabbed me from behind, pulling my arms back. "Mr. Davis, let her go!" He managed to drag me a few steps away. Fiona slumped against the counter of the nurses' station, the collar of her uniform completely ruined. She gasped for air, her eyes turning red. "I did not do anything..." Her voice started to tremble. "I am just a regular nurse here. I came to ask a question yesterday, you said no, and I left." "What does your missing baby have to do with me?" A younger nurse patted her on the back. "Fiona has been in the breakroom this entire shift. We can all vouch for her." Another nurse glared at me. "You can not just throw baseless accusations around, Mr. Davis." The crowd in the hallway started up again. "Oh, look at that. He can not find his kid, so he assaults a nurse." "What did that poor woman do to deserve that?" "Rich people are all the same. The second something goes wrong, they find a scapegoat." 4 Evelyn walked out of our hospital room. She leaned heavily against the doorframe, her face pale as a sheet of paper, her eyes swollen shut. "Nolan." I turned to look at her. She slowly dragged herself toward me, swaying with every step. "Please stop." "Evelyn..." "Nolan, you need to calm down." Fiona stood behind the nurses' station, clutching her chest as tears streamed down her face. "Mr. Davis, I know you are desperate..." "But you can not do this to me." "I have only been working at this hospital for six months. I am just an employee. Why would I ever steal a baby?" She sobbed, her shoulders shaking violently. The hallway went completely silent. Then, someone pulled out a phone and started recording. "Look at this rich guy bullying a young nurse in public." "Loses his own kid and starts acting like a rabid dog." "Absolutely disgusting." Evelyn's grip on my arm suddenly tightened. Her entire body swayed, and her knees buckled. I shot my arms out and caught her before she hit the floor. She leaned against my chest, burying her face into my shirt. "Nolan..." "Let's go back to the room." I scooped her up in my arms and carried her back. The venomous whispers followed us the whole way. "What kind of person does that?" "Can not even protect his own child, so he blames the staff." "If I were his wife, I would have left him." Evelyn flinched in my arms. I held her tighter, refusing to look back. Her shoulders were trembling. She wasn't making a sound. Even with the heavy hospital door shut, the muffled gossip from the corridor seeped through the cracks. I held her hand tightly. She did not squeeze back. "Evelyn." No answer. "Trust me." Her shoulders twitched. "I will find him." The police tore through all three floors of the maternity ward and found absolutely nothing. The tech department was working on the security hard drives, trying to recover the corrupted data. Evelyn had been given a mild sedative. she had finally fallen asleep, tears still clinging to her eyelashes. I squatted alone in the hallway, smoking a cigarette. The third floor, the fourth floor, the fifth floor. Every conceivable hiding spot had been turned inside out. Storage closets, breakrooms, operating theaters. They even opened the toilet tanks. Nothing. A three-day-old infant had simply evaporated. I stared blankly at the cigarette butt on the floor. It was not until a drop of sweat rolled down my neck and stung my eye that I finally noticed something completely wrong. The heat. The fifth floor was boiling. This was the VIP ward. The central air was strictly maintained at seventy-two degrees year-round. But right now, it felt closer to eighty. The air was thick and suffocating. I stood up and walked down the length of the corridor. Every single ventilation grate was pushing out air, but the airflow was incredibly weak. There was almost no chill to it. It was not like this last night. When I was changing my son's diaper hours ago, the room was so cold I had to put an extra blanket over Evelyn. Something was deeply wrong. I sprinted to the stairwell and ran down to the third floor. The moment I pushed the fire doors open, a blast of freezing AC hit my face. The central air on the third floor was working perfectly. It was freezing cold. I checked the fourth floor. Same thing. Icy. Only the fifth floor felt like a sauna. I called the hospital's engineering department. "Who manages the HVAC for the fifth floor?" The guy on the phone hesitated. "Mr. Davis, we do not handle that floor. The VIP section has a standalone HVAC system. Gary from maintenance holds the master keys." "Give me Gary's number." I called him three times. It went straight to voicemail. The sickening knot of anxiety in my gut pulled tighter. I found the maintenance room. It was locked. I kicked the door, but it held firm. I turned to a passing janitor. "Where is Gary? Is he working today?" The older woman thought for a second. "I think he got here super early. I saw him pushing his tool cart toward the East Wing, but I have not seen him since." The East Wing. The eastern edge of the fifth floor was a row of abandoned storage closets. When I rented out the VIP suite, I had checked the floor plans. The room at the very end of the hall was practically pressed against the main AC turbines. The noise was so bad they had stopped using it years ago. It did not belong to any specific medical department. And the hallway cameras did not cover that deep into the corner. It was the only blind spot on the entire floor. I sprinted toward that abandoned storage room. There was a heavy brass padlock on the door. It looked brand new, completely out of place on the rusted door handle. I hammered it with my fist three times, but it did not budge. I grabbed a heavy metal fire extinguisher from the wall box, swung it over my head, and brought it down on the lock with everything I had. The brass shattered, and the heavy door groaned open. The room was completely empty. Nothing but a few boxes of expired surgical gauze and an overwhelming smell of dust. Nothing. I stood in the center of the room, my jaw clenching so hard my teeth ground together. This made no sense. If there was nothing in here, why was there a brand-new lock on the door? Why secure an empty room in a camera blind spot? I tilted my head and looked at the ceiling. The heavy metal screws on the ventilation grate were stripped and shiny. Someone had just unscrewed them. I dragged an old desk over, climbed on top, and twisted the loose screws off with my bare hands. The shaft was pitch black. A rush of stale, stiflingly warm air blew into my face. I pulled out my phone, turned on the flashlight, and shoved my head and shoulders up into the duct. The metal tunnel stretched inward for a few yards before taking a sharp turn. From deep inside the metal darkness, I heard a sound. It was incredibly faint. Like a stray kitten. Or like a baby who had cried until his vocal cords were completely shredded. My scalp exploded with pure terror. "Son!" The tiny noise in the duct stopped for a fraction of a second, and then escalated into a desperate, heartbreaking wail.
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