The fifth floor of the hospital was the intensive care ward. Protective bars had been installed outside the windows, and the ward doors had been specially reinforced.
"It's twelve thirty in the morning. Our treatment session will begin at twelve forty-four." Doctor Gao opened a pill bottle on the table. "Before we begin, please each take one pill."
There were only four pills in Doctor Gao's bottle. With two doctors not needing to take medication, that left exactly one pill short by the time it reached Chen Ge.
Setting the empty bottle on the floor, Doctor Gao produced a new one from his pocket.
Visually, the two bottles were indistinguishable.
As Doctor Gao opened the packaging, Doctor Sun—who was sitting next to Chen Ge—took a bottle from his own pocket. "I still have some left here."
He poured a single pill from his bottle. The pill's surface was pure white, but through its center one could faintly make out a dense web of fine black threads.
When Doctor Gao saw this, he reached out to intervene. "Chen Ge's condition has improved somewhat. He only needs half a pill."
"Half a pill?" Doctor Sun gave Doctor Gao a puzzled look. He should have been briefed on the treatment steps in advance.
"That's right, only half." Doctor Gao seemed to have his reservations.
"That's not what the director prescribed." Doctor Sun shook his head, his expression flat. "You may be his attending physician, but some matters are still the director's call."
He stood up and pushed the pill toward Chen Ge's mouth. Chen Ge could feel the pill brush against his lips, but what struck him as odd was that Doctor Sun didn't actually feed him the pill—he merely covered Chen Ge's mouth with his hand while the pill remained pinched between Doctor Sun's fingers.
Doctor Sun withdrew his hand, and Chen Ge instinctively made a swallowing motion.
Chen Ge knew full well that the drug with the fine black threads could drive a person mad and strip away their reason. Now Doctor Sun didn't want him to take it and had secretly deceived Doctor Gao and the other patients.
This was something Chen Ge found very significant. Doctor Sun, sitting right beside him, appeared to have no intention of harming him.
"Ever since I entered the hospital, someone has come knocking at my door every night. The number of knocks corresponds to the number of days I've spent here, as if they're worried I'll lose my way—coming each night to remind me."
"Yesterday it was five knocks. Tonight the knocker should knock six times. Coincidentally, the moment Doctor Sun entered the room, there were exactly six knocks on the door."
"Is he using this method to tell me that he's the knocker?"
Outside, lightning crackled and thunder rolled, yet the ward was eerily silent. Seven people sat in a circle. Apart from Chen Ge and the two doctors, all the other patients had their heads bowed, as though they were asleep.
"The pills they took were probably the normal white ones. The bottle Doctor Gao has placed on the table now is the swapped one—the one laced with black threads." Treatment hadn't even started yet, and Chen Ge had already sensed something was wrong.
According to what Doctor Gao had said earlier, if a patient had an episode, the others were supposed to work together to force-feed him the pills from the table.
But obviously the bottle on the table wasn't normal white pills—it was the kind laced with black threads. The more of those pills a patient consumed, the more out of control they would become.
If the treatment continued this way, the likely outcome was that the patient driven into a frenzy by the pills would end up killing everyone in the room.
Chen Ge narrowed his eyes, suddenly recalling a detail. When Doctor Gao had entered the ward, he'd casually hung his keys on the hook beside the door—as if practically encouraging the patients to take them.
"A patient who consumes a massive dose of the black-threaded pills and completely loses control, after killing everyone in the ward, would pick up the keys by the door and leave…"
The more Chen Ge thought about it, the more horrifying it became. If Doctor Sun hadn't intervened, the very first pill Doctor Gao fed him would have been the black-threaded kind, and Chen Ge would almost certainly have been the first to lose control.
Lose control first, then get restrained by the other patients, fed even more of the black-threaded pills, and spiral into greater madness.
The end result: Chen Ge would kill every patient in the room, then grab the keys by the door and go on a frenzied hunt through the hospital.
If Chen Ge actually did that, his humanity would be completely stripped away. Every conviction he'd ever held would become an indelible stain upon him, and he would no longer be the person he once was.
"All patients have taken their medication. Next, please remember the number on your chair—that number is your name." Doctor Gao removed his watch and placed it beside the pill bottle. "Treatment officially begins at twelve forty-four and forty-four seconds."
All the patients and doctors fixed their eyes on the metal dial. The room was utterly quiet, until gradually all that remained was the ticking of the clock hands.
"Tick, tick…"
The instant the hands swept past a certain number, Chen Ge felt an indescribable wave of drowsiness flood his mind.
His eyelids grew heavy. His eyes closed of their own accord, but he quickly realized he absolutely could not fall asleep—he had to stay awake.
The moment his eyes shut, he opened them again. The whole process took less than a second.
Yet in that single second, something in the ward seemed to have changed drastically.
He couldn't pinpoint exactly what was different. He only had a vague sense of unease, as if the ward they were in now was no longer the same ward they'd been in moments ago.
"It is twelve forty-four and forty-four seconds. Treatment officially begins." Doctor Gao's voice seemed different from before—stiff and cold, like a lifeless corpse devoid of all emotion.
"Every one of you suffers from severe delusional disorder. I've brought you all here today because I intend to conduct your treatment simultaneously."
"Don't be nervous. I'm going to play a small game with you. All you need to do is make choices based on your true inner thoughts."
Doctor Gao's voice carried no trace of emotion. He first looked toward Doctor Fang, who was seated in the chair marked number one. "On April first, you were on night duty at Xinhai Central Hospital. For the past few days, you've been restless, constantly feeling as though someone was watching you. At twelve forty-five in the morning, you rose from your seat for the seventeenth time and walked to the window to look outside."
Doctor Gao suddenly fell silent. After a long pause, he pointed toward the ward's window. "Go see what's outside."
Having taken the pills, his gaze somewhat unfocused, Doctor Fang rose from the number-one chair. Supporting himself against the wall, he made his way to the window.