A translucent phantom had lain sprawled across the mattress like a discarded hallucination. A naked creature released from leather restraints. She had not moved. Total stasis filled the room. An amplified, high-definition silence that pressed against the walls. Maggie had crossed the room with the hard purpose of a process server stepping into a lion’s den, ignoring the door behind her and the steady electronic hum of the life-support machinery, that expensive chorus of chirping devices designed to delay the soul’s exit. She had dropped to her knees on the unforgiving floor and taken the impact without hesitation, moving with the cold, fluid efficiency of a predator closing distance. There had been no pause in her will. She leaned forward into the neon spill of the apparatus until her lips met the shimmering void of the hologram’s mouth—an act carried out in the dead air of a room crowded with ghosts, a calculated gamble executed without ceremony.