Nicholas Michael Matiz

Allister is a sixteen-year-old boy who has endured years of harrowing trauma, physical abuse, and profound isolation. Conditioned to shrink himself into invisibility, his survival instincts eventually culminate in an explosive, desperate act of self-preservation that lands him in the Adolescent Stabilization Unit at the Greenwood Ridge State Psychiatric Facility. On the surface, the institution operates on a sterile rhythm of mandatory therapy groups, strict behavioral protocols, and the watchful eyes of unyielding staff members like the cold Dr.
Keene and the deceptively friendly Bram. However, beneath this clinical veneer, a terrifying reality breathes. Refusing to be broken or rewritten by systemic abuse, Allister makes a dangerous and unprecedented choice: he will not fight the building with violence, but with radical awareness. He must map the psychological and physical labyrinth, confronting the very fractures of his own mind to turn the institution's dark architecture against itself.
It is a dense, raw exploration of what it truly means to endure trauma, highlighting the fragile line between madness and understanding, and celebrating the ferocious power of reclaiming one's identity from the shadows.