Chapter 3 The Spiral

The hum had faded from her ears, but the silence it left behind was heavier than any sound. Siya Ndlovu leaned against the hood of her car, staring out at the sweep of Cape Town's cityscape.

Below, the world went on, sirens howled in the distance, buses grumbled along the Main Road, and the hospital staff bustled in and out of the emergency wing. Everything above ground remained alive, and yet, Siya could feel it.

She could feel that whatever lived in Echo Ward hadn't stayed behind.

Marks stood a few steps away, his arms folded tight across his chest. His usually sharp demeanor was dulled now, haunted. She knew he was trying to rationalize it, chalk it all up to trauma, or some experimental hallucinogen wafting through the vents, but the mark burned on his chest said otherwise.

Siya pulled out the photo again, the one from Echo Ward. Five patients staring straight into the camera. One with her back turned. The spiral inked on the wall behind them like a brand. Her fingers traced the spiral's curve for the hundredth time, hypnotized by how it always led inward, never out.

Marks broke the silence. "What do you think it means?"

Siya didn't look up. "A warning."

"A warning?"

"Or a key. Either way, someone didn't want us to forget it."

She showed him the Polaroid. "Look here." She pointed to the barely visible smudge of ink.

It was a sspiral within spiral. "It was on the wall behind her. And now it's on you."

Marks pulled his shirt collar down again to look. The spiral, faint but undeniable, was burned into his skin like a brand. He winced as he touched it. "It stings now."

"It wasn't just in the photo," Siya said. "It was drawn everywhere in Echo. Scratched into the paint. Written in blood on the underside of a drawer. It's a pattern, Marks. Someone was trying to document it, or contain it."

Marks dropped his hand. "And what about that voice in the speakers? What about the guy screaming in that locked room?"

Siya looked up at the grey sky. "I think he was already gone. Just echoing."

Marks didn't argue. He just pulled a cigarette from his jacket and lit it with shaking fingers.

"What now?" he asked. "We go back down?"

"No. We go deeper," Siya said. "There's someone still alive. Someone who knew Asanda. He was transferred out of Valkenberg in 2021. His name came up in the Threnody file. And he's still in the psych wing. Ward C room 3."

Marks gave her a sidelong glance. "You're serious? You want to talk to another one of them?"

Siya pocketed the photo. "I want answers."

Back in the Psych Evaluation Wing, it was just a little after 4 PM

Room 3 had the dull antiseptic smell of institutional decay, cleaned often but never fully clean. The lights overhead flickered faintly, like everything else in the hospital was running on backup power even though the generator hadn't tripped.

Patient 1642. Jacus Meyer. Transferred from Valkenberg after a failed suicide attempt. Diagnosed with late-stage paranoid schizophrenia, though the file notes were inconsistent. Some labeled him as delusional and unstable; others described him as "controlled," "nonverbal but compliant," and strangely "reverent."

Siya stood in the doorway, observing him before stepping in.

Jacus sat on the floor, cross-legged, rocking gently. His arms were thin, bones jutting out beneath translucent skin. He wore no restraints, no IVs. Just a loose hospital gown and an expression of absolute stillness.

But the walls, they were covered. Floor to ceiling. Every surface was lined with spirals. Some were drawn in ink. Others gouged into the paint with fingernails or the edge of a spoon. They varied in size, in shape, but never in design. Each spiral began from the outer edge and wound inward, leading to a central point.

The longer Siya looked, the more they seemed to move. She blinked trying to refocus.

Jacus turned his head, slowly, like he hadn't noticed them until that moment.

His eyes were wrong, too calm, and too clear.

"Jacus?" she said gently.

He didn't respond.

Marks stepped in, staying by the door. "Not talking?"

"He hasn't spoken in over three years," Siya murmured.

She knelt beside Jacus, pulled the Polaroid from her coat, and placed it gently in front of him.

"Do you know her?"

Jacus's eyes flicked down to the image, then to Siya. He extended a hand, frail and trembling, and pointed, not at the girl, at the spiral in the corner of the image, then, almost imperceptibly, his mouth opened and he began to hum.

The hum started soft. Barely audible. Just a tremor of sound from Jacus's throat, low, throaty, and continuous, then it grew, not in volume, but in density.

Siya felt it more than she heard it. Like it was pressing in through her skull, bypassing her ears. A resonance. A vibration. Her stomach turned with a creeping nausea.

Marks flinched and backed toward the door. "Siya, I don't like this."

She couldn't respond. She was locked in place.

The humming shifted and it became layered. Beneath it, there were faint harmonics, like other voices were joining in, humming just below hearing range. Hundreds of them, were singing the same note.

The air seemed to warp.

Siya grabbed the metal bedframe to ground herself. "Stop," she whispered. "Please, stop."

Jacus opened his eyes wide, then he spoke.

"She walked through." His voice was raw, like dry paper scraping against itself, but it was clear.

Siya's breath caught.

Jacus turned his face toward her. "She didn't come back."

Siya leaned forward. "Who? Who didn't come back?"

Jacus's lips trembled. "The twin. She sang for them. They opened the way. The door swallowed her."

"Asanda?"

Jacus blinked. "She remembered too much."

Marks stepped back in, gripping his gun, though he clearly didn't know why. "Siya, we need to move. This place is wrong."

But Siya couldn't tear her eyes away. Jacus wasn't finished.

"She left a part of herself behind. That's what they follow. That's what calls them."

"Calls what?" Siya asked.

Jacus tilted his head. Then reached out slowly, grabbing the corner of the photograph with frail fingers and flipped it over. On the back, in pencil, he drew a single symbol:

A rectangle, with jagged lines across the edges and a door, and below it, one word: "Threshold."

Then another word, shakier: "Song."

And then: "Gate."

Siya stared at it, heart racing. "This... this is what Project Threnody was trying to open."

Jacus gave a slow, jerking nod.

Marks frowned. "And you're saying Asanda went through this gate?"

Jacus's hands began to tremble violently. He curled into himself, pulling at the collar of his gown. Thrusting his palm towards them.

Burned into his skin, red and cracked, was a door. The same one he'd drawn.

Siya staggered back. "He's branded."

Marks grabbed her arm. "That's it. We're done here."

But Jacus suddenly looked up and shrieked. Not in fear. In warning. "They're coming-"

The lights burst overhead,alarms wailed and somewhere down the corridor, a door slammed open with inhumane force.

Jacus began screaming, tearing at the walls, ripping spiral after spiral into the paint with his nails. The humming returned, louder now, flooding the room like a rising tide.

Siya and Marks ran to the service corridor, on the lower east wing and continued running until they hit a locked security door.

Marks slammed his fist on the control panel. "Override it!"

Siya hacked into the keypad, fingers flying. "This section's not connected to the main power, it's manual lockout only."

The humming followed them. Not as sound now, but in the walls. In the pressure of the air. The temperature dropped sharply.

Siya got the door open just as the lights behind them flickered red.

They slammed the door shut and silence returned, but not for long. On the other side there was a soft knock tap, not one but two.

Then a voice whispered, low and guttural:

"Return. Return. Return."

Siya backed away, breath shallow.

Marks pulled her down the hallway.

"This place is infected," he said. "It's not just Jacus. Something inside the hospital is leaking out."

Siya held up the photo. "It's already out, and whatever Asanda left behind, it's calling them back."

Marks stared at her.

Then her phone buzzed. An unknown number.

One new text: You were warned.

Followed by another: She sings again.

Siya's hands trembled as she looked at Marks, then down the hallway.

There was only one path left. They had to go back to where it started.

Ut was 5 PM by now Siya and Marks would be clo king out, bt now they were headed back to the basement archives.

They moved quickly. No more than whispers between them. Siya led them through back corridors, down a maintenance stairwell, and into the sublevel storage rooms of Groote Schuur's east wing-long-abandoned file archives sealed since before the hospital went digital.

Dust coated everything. It muffled their footsteps. Even the buzzing fluorescent lights overhead seemed to avoid this part of the building. It was as if the hospital forgot this place existed.

But Siya remembered, this was where she'd first seen Dr. Louw take files from the Valkenberg patient transfer program, when she was still a junior detective working a missing persons case that had nearly cost her her career.

That case was about a nurse who vanished mid-shift.

She now suspected that that woman had been an early test subject of Project Threnody.

Marks glanced around, his hand near his holster. "Why are we here again?"

"Because this wing isn't on the hospital's official floorplan," Siya said, brushing aside cobwebs from a file drawer. "Which means it's not under surveillance."

"And?"

"And that means it's where Louw hid the originals."

She yanked open a rusted drawer. Inside, folders had melted together with age and neglect, but tucked behind the front panel was a manila envelope, newer than the rest, she slid it free and opened it carefully.

Inside the file - Contents:

A patient transfer form with the Valkenberg crest.

A psychiatric chart marked "CONFIDENTIAL: THRENODY."

A black-and-white security photo dated 2019.

And a spiral, drawn in pencil, copied again and again in the margins.

But it wasn't just the symbol that made her stop, it was the face in the photo, the face of a girl in a hospital gown standing in a white room.

"Asanda," she murmured.

She was older than Siya remembered. Paler. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her hair had been shaved unevenly, but it was her.

Behind her, the spiral was painted across the floor in what looked like rust or blood.

Marks leaned in. "Jesus..."

Siya's voice broke. "She was a patient."

"And not just any patient." He pointed to a handwritten note in the file's margin.

Phase III subject. Memory displacement successful. Entity containment achieved, partial. Recommend isolation. Gate resonance unstable.

He looked at Siya. "Your sister was the gate."

They sat in silence for a few moments. The low buzz of electricity flickered overhead, barely holding.

Siya pieced together what she could.

Phase I-whatever it had been-started in Valkenberg. Early attempts. Echo Ward was part of it.

Phase II-experiments in containment, sound frequency, and memory suppression.

Phase III-Asanda. A living conduit. A vessel for something that had crossed over.

Marks exhaled slowly. "This isn't about mental illness. They were experimenting with the limits of consciousness."

Siya nodded. "Opening minds to something else."

Marks looked grim. "And now that something is coming back."

Then Siya saw it. Tucked in the corner of the file: A map. A map to Groote Schuur's lower tunnels. One room was circled in red. "E.W. Chamber – Locked Access. Former Isolation Suite."

She tapped the page. "Echo Ward's buried here."

Marks blinked. "Wait. You mean Echo isn't just a wing-"

"-It's a system. It runs beneath the hospital. Groote Schuur and Valkenberg are connected by tunnels, and Echo sits right in between them."

Marks stared. "That's how the files moved. How they transferred patients off the books."

Siya folded the file and stood. "We're not done yet. We find that chamber. Tonight."

Marks stood too. "You really want to go under the hospital? After what just chased us?"

She looked him dead in the eye.

"If my sister's still in there-so am I."