deAlberqueque
There is a kind of loss that never truly finishes. It only changes shape. From news that refuses to arrive, into a question that settles in the chest each time night falls too soon.
Months after Intern vanished without a trace, Secret Agent still holds onto a conviction that refuses to die out. That their friend's disappearance was not a closing note, but a chapter deliberately hidden. The investigation leads back to the hospital where Intern last seen. At the corridors that carry the scent of antiseptic and medicines. Secret Agent finds Head Nurse instead. An old friend, once lost to the slow erosion of time, now standing before them with eyes that hold far more than words could carry.
The city is unwell. Not an illness any medical textbook would recognize, an infection that claims not only the body, but slowly, quietly, who a person is. And the hospital, meant to be a place where people return to wholeness, turns out to keep its own liturgy beneath the emergency lights. Patients who arrive each night carrying not just common fevers or wounds, but secrets that were never meant revealed. Some of them, according to the records, have long been dead. Others can no longer be called human at all.
As Secret Agent and Head Nurse move deeper into the heart of this mystery, the closer they come to Intern's trail, the more they are forced to confront a possibility neither of them is willing to say aloud, not even to themselves.
That to disappear, perhaps, does not always mean to truly be gone.
This story is a fan adaptation inspired by the game *Animal Hospital* on Roblox. Some characters, concepts, and elements are taken from the original game, but I've developed the plot, world-building, and most of the events on my own. So, if there are parts that differ from or even contradict the official lore, just think of this as an Alternate Universe version.
I hope you enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed writing it.