The little girl got sick once.
It shouldn't have been possible.
She was trapped the same place she had been for almost her entire life, a place literally conceived for the study and curing of diseases. It was completely sterile. Cut off from the outside world except for strictly controlled areas.
The place was crawling with doctors, all those white coats filling up the space with their talk of tests and samples and theories.
And yet.
The little girl got sick.
The white coats gave her the basics first. Rest. Fluids. Then antibiotics. Then vials of who knows what, flowing into her arm through plastic tubes.
Days passed in a haze, the little girl's senses fading out bit by bit until she only caught snatches of the worried conversations going on around her.
"Incredibly weak immune system..."
"Could be a combination of factors..."
"No improvement..."
They didn't know. They didn't know what was killing her.
But she knew.
She knew a body can only go so long without friends, without joy.
Without the sun.
She knew it was bad when her mother appeared at her bedside.
Her face betraying no emotion, but her cold hands reaching out to smooth back the hair from the little girl's sweaty forehead.
"You're strong, Ada, even if your body isn't," Her mother told her, voice hushed. "You can solve anything you put your mind to. And right now, it's time to get well,"
And so the little girl did what she had always done.
She listened to her mother.