ã€ŠFogbound Mindã€‹


 The Foggy Cathedral

    Fog. It always dwells in the worlds of dead minds. It hangs over the city like a dirty sheet soaked in smoke and ash. The town itself is blurred and half-erased, as if someone clumsy tried to clean it but only smeared it across reality. The streets drown in non-Euclidean geometry, dissolving into a gray infinity where there is neither beginning nor end. This, too, is a sign of a dying brain, maddened by its own demise.

    And somewhere in this haze, high above the ground, towers a cathedral. An impossible cathedral. Its spires soar into the heavens, resembling needles that stitch the fabric of existence. I stand in the heart of the nave, and the darkness, like the underside of a cloud, permeate the depths. The stone arches twist into spirals, columns collapse at impossible angles, and stained-glass windows fold and unfold like giant origami of ghostly light. The cathedral vaults creak and tremble like the ancient bones of an old world. Here, space bends like paper under fire, and time flows like thick syrup.

    My coat, soaked with dampness and sorrow, hangs off my shoulders like the wings of a raven. I pull on my cigarette, and the smoke I let out blends into the fog creeping through the gaps in the walls. My eyes glide over the frescoes depicting scenes from someone¡¯s nightmares.

    I sensed them before I heard them - a thin trembling of space. The walls stirred, and figures emerged from the shadows. They were barely discernible, like vague memories, but I knew who they were - psi-hunters. Mercenaries who had broken through from the collective unconscious to stop me. Criminals bring their solutions from the real world into this one. They think a crowbar to the head works the same way here as it does out there. And that makes them right. Their faces are empty, their bodies clad in Victorian suits and top hats. Our unconscious is always archaic.

    ¡°Paranoia! As if things weren¡¯t bad enough without you,¡± my voice, low and hoarse, echoes beneath the vaults.

    The first hunter steps forward, his form beginning to shift as if made of liquid metal. His hands turn into blades, his face elongates into a sharp spike. I don¡¯t flinch. I know that in this place, everything is an illusion. Even myself.

    ¡°Ladies inviting a gentleman to dance?¡± I spit out the cigarette. ¡°Let¡¯s dance.¡±

    The hunters lunge forward, their forms shifting and flowing like a painting on a wet canvas. I draw my revolvers. The cold steel comes alive in my hands. A shot. Another. Another, another, anotheranotheranother... I shoot, my arms moving in wide arcs, leaving behind afterimages¡ªphantom copies, each firing as well. I reload while my illusory hands keep working. Bullets tear through the air, spirals of smoke trailing behind them. The thousand-armed Buddha generously grants nirvana.

    The hunters shatter into fragments that pool on the floor like ink from a mad writer¡¯s quill, scribbling in mercury. Space itself tears from the bullets, inviting the dead mist to witness this shooting gallery of damned bastards. I move, spinning through the cathedral, sending enemies to the other side. This place is just right for that sort of thing.

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    "It¡¯s a piece of cake," I mumble under my breath, but my voice gets swallowed up by a thunderous roar bouncing off the cathedral walls.

    A nine-foot hunter appears suddenly, as if casted out of a crack in the collective unconscious. A true outcast of society. His figure is massive, but not crude - rather, it looks like something sculpted from marble, yet alive, moving with unnatural grace. With an ego like his, he should have a face, but it¡¯s hidden under a black sack, resembling both an executioner¡¯s cowl and a condemned man¡¯s hood. He is unlike the others. He is... more. Not just physically. His presence weighs down, as if he is the center of gravity in this warped reality.

    ¡°Agnosia! Now that¡¯s an ego,¡± I mutter, feeling my revolvers grow heavier in my hands. ¡°Pure hypercompensation.¡±

    The brute steps forward, and the floor buckles under his feet, as if space itself can¡¯t bear the weight of his self-importance. His hands, which seemed merely enormous before, begin transforming into blades. But that isn¡¯t enough - small spikes start growing from his shoulders, long and sharp like daggers forged from resentment.

    ¡°Ever heard of weight classes?¡± I say, but this time there¡¯s less bravado in my voice.

    He doesn¡¯t respond. He just moves, and his speed is incredible for something his size. I fire, but the bullets that tore psi-hunters to pieces merely glance off him, leaving shallow dents.

    I retreat, searching for cover, but the cathedral, which had been my battlefield, now feels like a trap. The walls close in, and the floor begins to collapse, as if space itself is trying to help him.

    He strikes. A blade-hand slices through the air so fast I barely see it move. I try to dodge, but he¡¯s too quick. A sharp pain lances through my side, and I feel my body crack like a mirror. There will be a psi-scar. And that was just a glancing blow.

    ¡°Catatonia!¡± I gasp, dropping to my knees.

    He raises his arm, the blade extending, ready to deliver the final strike. I twist my wrists and empty two full cylinders of bullets - and their echoes - into his head.

    The brute falls, bringing the entire space down with him. The cathedral walls groan as if invisible hands are tearing them apart from within. But the sound is strange - not like stone should sound. It¡¯s more like the creak of an old bed or the muffled moan seeping from behind a closed door. The stone slabs beneath me collapse, turning into a vortex pulling me downward. My fingers scrape against the wet stone, leaving behind streaks like bloody signatures.

    I am falling, but it¡¯s not just a fall. It¡¯s a descent through layers of something ancient, forgotten - like the dream of a half-bald ape desperately clutching a crudely whittled stick, watching a shaggy titan. Or the consciousness of that titan, fleeing those half-bald apes with pain and fire, into its own grave. Strange faces flicker around me - unfamiliar yet eerily known, landscapes both new and nostalgic. And somewhere in this slurry of light and darkness, I hear a voice. Slow, thick, muffled, as if rising from a well of damned souls who don¡¯t particularly mind each other¡¯s company.

    ¡°Recipient stabilized. Donor still in critical condition. Session terminated. Recovery progress: 84%.¡±

    My hands tremble slightly. The revolver, which had felt like an extension of myself, suddenly grows heavy, as if filled not with metal but with memories - alien, yet familiar. I lower my gaze to the barrel, and in its smooth surface, I see a room. White. Sterile. I look up again and see that I stand on the edge of something vast, infinite. It¡¯s not just a precipice - it¡¯s the boundary between worlds. I turn around and see a figure behind me.

    Tall, hunched, its outline blurred as if made of fog. A man in white. His countenance is obscured by darkness, yet I can sense his eyes upon me. No, not at me. Into me. In his hand, he holds an object - something like a key.

    ¡°This is your chance,¡± the figure says, offering the key.

 My Office

    Waking up is always a compromise with the devil. You return from oblivion, but never fully, leaving something important behind in the dark depths of consciousness. This time, it was a dream about my last unresolved case - the one that would have weighed on my conscience if I hadn¡¯t drowned it in bourbon. A week ago, but it felt like I¡¯d been coming to my senses for a century. That mind was dead now, and my investigation along with it. The psi-hunters had won.

    I opened my eyes in my office, and the world regained its edges: gray light slashed through the blinds, silence reigned, broken only by the occasional creak of an old fan, and the smell of stale tobacco had seeped so deeply into the walls that it felt like part of the building¡¯s structure - you could probably smoke them instead of cigarettes. A clock, no longer functioning, yet still audible, was suspended on the wall.

    An empty bottle of bourbon was on the edge of my desk, lying upside down like time itself. The label - ¡°Old Foggy London¡± - reminded me of something I¡¯d rather forget. A glass with a murky puddle at the bottom stared at me with silent reproach. Quite the breakfast of champions. My head responded with a dull, insistent ache, as if mocking me: Honey, I¡¯m home. Piles of papers had multiplied around me like mold. Actual mold was also present.

    The door made a sound as it opened, and she entered.

    ¡°You¡¯re sleeping on the job. As usual.¡± Her voice wrapped around my unshaven room.

    Jocelyn. I never remembered her last name, never tried. My venomous secretary and, incidentally, the closest thing I had to an anchor in this chaos other people called life. A black gown clung to her, resembling the darkness, the delicate straps merging with her skin, her lips a shade of ripe cherries, and her eyes piercing enough to shatter glass. Her heels tapped against the ground, like a metronome counting down to the next calamity.

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    ¡°I wasn¡¯t sleeping,¡± I muttered, rubbing my eyes. A bad boss has a reputation to maintain. ¡°I was meditating.¡±

    ¡°On whiskey?¡± She tossed a thin folder onto my desk. The papers looked official, all sharp corners and tight fonts. The kind that never bring good news. ¡°You¡¯ve got a new case.¡±

    ¡°No.¡± I reached for a cigarette. The smoke spiraled upward, its movements deliberate and sluggish, as if it yearned to depart this place with greater haste than I did.

    ¡°You don¡¯t even know what it¡¯s about.¡±

    ¡°But I know it¡¯s bad.¡±

    ¡°All your cases are bad. Otherwise, they wouldn¡¯t come to you.¡± She crossed her arms, and her shadow on the wall looked like a hawk, ready to strike.

    ¡°What¡¯s the case?¡± I finally relented. There''s a time of humility on the clock.

    ¡°Murder. New England. Locked room, no traces. Your favorite kind of mess - after those cigarettes.¡±

    Her words hung in the air like an omen. New England. A miserable refuge for those who had fled Old England when the Fog took it. No one really knew what it was - some climate anomaly, an experiment gone wrong, or something else, deeper, darker. People spoke of how the Fog swallowed cities, erased memories, dissolved reality itself. Those who made it to America built New London, New Oxfordshire, New New York - anything to remind themselves of what they had lost.

    I thought about my bank account. As empty as the bottle on my desk. Bad case or not, a well-fed man doesn¡¯t count pennies before bed.

    ¡°Fine,¡± I said, opening the folder, feeling the Fog invisibly creeping toward my tiny office, what others call the head. ¡°But if this turns out to be another family drama, I¡¯m quitting.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯d bankrupt yourself on severance pay, boss,¡± she said, turning toward the door. ¡°And by the way, clean yourself up. In New England, they like people to look... presentable.¡±

    She was already gone, leaving behind only a faint trace of perfume and the sinking feeling that I had just signed my own death warrant.

    ¡°A proper New English murder,¡± I muttered, raising my glass. ¡°What a goddamn joke.¡±

    New England was waiting. And, as always, it wasn¡¯t going to be kind.

 New London, Massachusetts

    I arrived in New London on the Blackwell Phantom - a hybrid of a gas engine and the newfangled liquid combustion system. Running on flammable liquid - how familiar. The machine looked as if it had been designed by engineers on horse tranquilizers. Its body was made of polished bronze and dark wood, with copper pipes winding along its sides like veins, floating lanterns with a faint blue gas glow, massive wheels more suited to a locomotive, and exhaust pipes that released not smoke, but a light silvery steam. It didn¡¯t smell of burning - it smelled of sea salt and something metallic.

    Inside - leather seats, a control panel littered with dials and levers. Everything one needs to pray to the new technocratic gods.

    The engine rumbled low, like a beast not fully tamed. The Phantom¡¯s hydrogen motors promised silence, but nothing in New England is ever truly silent - even the machines whisper to you that you are not home.

    The city appeared on the horizon like a shadow in the depths of a dream. Tall, narrow buildings covered in thousands of tiny lanterns cut through the sky like clawed hands reaching for the slipping light. Trees twisted, as if their roots were trying to escape from something lurking underground. Spires rose among massive port cranes that looked like giant metal spiders, ready to snatch anything that moved.

    New London was unlike other American cities. No one here built skyscrapers of glass, concrete, and ambition. The entire city looked as if it had been taken from Old England street by street and reassembled on foreign soil. Steep roofs, black brick walls, delicate bridges spanning between houses, the signs of ancient pubs still proudly promising "the finest ale in the colonies." The empire on which the sun never sets - because it never rises, not here, not anywhere on this sinful earth.

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    Every streetlamp bore a fog repeller - strange contraptions resembling skeletal spheres with fragile glass inserts. They flickered pale blue, then white, and sometimes let out a faint crackle, as if actually doing something, and people believed it helped. They also believed in leprechauns, unicorns, and honor.

    New Englanders walked fast and tense, as if prepared to bolt at any second. They wore long coats, high collars, some hid their faces behind half-masks with thin filters. Cautious, superstitious, alien.

    "Welcome to New London," my driver said without looking at me.

    Of course, he was polite. How could it be otherwise? Until now, he had been silent as a grave and looked much the same. A narrow face with sharp cheekbones, long fingers gripping the wheel like the last hope. I had started to hope he was mute, but then I remembered - luck was never on my side.

    The road to the estate felt like a dream where you move but never get closer. Narrow, framed by trees that rose to the sky like cracks in reality. The Englishman stopped the car at the massive black gates. Longford Manor stood before us - majestic, cold, utterly detached. The house had grey stone walls, heavy wooden doors, and a roof with carved gargoyles. These gargoyles didn''t stop the rain, but gave the feeling that the house was always watching.

    "Wait, I will open the door for you," the driver stepped out.

    I took a drag from my cigarette and adjusted my coat collar. The ordeal had begun.

    Stepping out of the car, I adjusted my hat and approached the gate. Distant dog barking and the wind accompanied my arrival. The gates were massive, wrought iron, their patterns resembling interwoven branches. The driver pushed them open, and I followed the path leading to the house. Cobblestone, worn smooth, as if it remembered the footsteps of everyone who had ever walked upon it. Statues stood along the way - angels with blank faces and stone wings, capable only of crumbling. In some places, the manor¡¯s walls bore ancient prayers carved into the stone.

 Longford Manor

    The manor¡¯s door was opened by a tall, gaunt man with perfect posture and a face that could have been etched onto coins. A man sculpted from strictness and rules, as if he had been stitched together from old etiquette textbooks. The dark suit was as insanely clean as if he dipped himself in liquid starch every morning. There was a spark of something in his cold eyes that I couldn''t catch.

    "Mr Rains," he nodded slightly. And of course, he was clearly not going to put a period after ''Mr''. "Lady Longford is expecting you."

    "You must be the butler?" I replied, stepping inside this den of secrets and courtesy, removing my hat.

    "Yes, sir. My name is Woodsworth."

    "Woodsworth," I repeated, placing my hands on my hips to make sure he didn¡¯t even think about taking my coat. "Well, Woodsworth, you do realize that in cases like this, the butler is always the prime suspect?"

    "I''m afraid you¡¯ve been reading the wrong author," he replied, just as composed.

    "Wasn¡¯t it Sherringford Hop and Doctor Sacker who always caught the butlers?"

    "I believe that¡¯s more Agatha Christie," he corrected me with a faint smile before shutting the door behind me.

    The smell of Longford Manor was... just right. Old wood, dusty carpets, a faint trace of cigar smoke - clearly preferred here over expensive perfume. The grand hall breathed with its own life: shadows from the fireplace stretched along the walls, the fire crackled but did not warm, antique paintings observed my every move, and the ticking of the clock sounded as though it were measuring not seconds, but the fates of others.

    "Where¡¯s the victim?" I asked, shaking the drizzle off my coat¡¯s lapel.

    "Mr Longford was found in his study. The door was locked from the outside. No windows."

    "No signs of violence?"

    "None, sir."

    "And no one heard anything suspicious?"

    "No one, sir."

    "A classic setup," I murmured, stepping forward. "Lead the way."

    "Would you not prefer to speak with Lady Longford first?"

    Behind me, I heard the quiet tapping of heels. A maid entered the corridor. Young, yet with the eyes of someone who had seen too much and learned too early to stay silent. Her skin - almost unnaturally pale, as if the sun had long since crossed her off its list of those to warm. Her fringe fell slightly over her forehead, escaping from beneath a simple cap, and her dark hair was neatly pinned into a bun, as was proper for those meant to remain unseen. But her gaze - restless, as if she always expected to be called, not to receive an order, but to hear something terrible, something that could not be disobeyed.

    She looked up - and froze. The rag slipped from her hands. Her two fingers twitched towards her shoulder, then stopped - was she about to cross herself? Orthodox-style? A northerner? Covering her mouth, she hastily disappeared around the corner. Not the rarest reaction to my presence.

    "You do know who I am, right? I¡¯m a psi-detective. The longer time passes, the more the victim¡¯s mind decays. Lead the way."

    "But, sir, you smell of alcohol," the butler noted discreetly, unwilling to offend but also unwilling to remain silent.

    "That¡¯s my personal assistant."

    "Alcohol, sir?"

    "I¡¯ve hired bodyguards before, but they were far less effective at shielding me from reality," I smirked, but his face remained as expressionless as ever. Not even a hypothesis of a sense of humor. Fine, he deserved honesty. "Alcohol does soften the boundaries of consciousness. Helps me seep into other minds when sobriety keeps me chained. But I neither drink nor smoke on the job. So let¡¯s get this case over with."

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    We approached the broken study door, yet Woodsworth still opened it for me, letting me step inside first.

    "Who discovered the body?"

    "Lady Longford, sir. She noticed the master had not emerged for some time and called me to break down the door."

    The room was just like the rest of the house - vast, grim, and full of secrets. The air was thick with layered scents: old wax, paper, varnished wood, the faint ghost of dried ink, the acrid tobacco that had seeped into the walls, and something else - metallic, weak but persistent, creeping through the other notes like rust on a blade.

    The walls were lined with bookshelves, crammed with leather-bound volumes. Some bore a thin veil of dust; others looked as if nervous fingers had recently flipped through them. A thick carpet muffled any footsteps. At the center of the room stood a massive desk, behind which sat Jasper Longford.

    Or rather, his discarded shell.

    He sat in his chair, his head tilted slightly forward, as if he had dozed off. Only his eyes remained open - still, faded, reflecting the dim light of the lamp. Confusion lingered in them. We are all bewildered by life, what to say of death.

    Jasper Longford was an ancient man, not merely touched by age but carved by it, like a sculptor shaping his work with patience and cruelty. His skin, thin as parchment, was etched with wrinkles deep as canyons, chiseled by time upon the cliffside of his face. At the corners of his mouth lingered the remnants of long-spoken words. His hair - white, sparse, carefully arranged with that fastidiousness found in those who cling to order even in the face of chaos.

    His heavy, expensive suit, now creased, still bore the faint scent of lavender and wood soap, which he must have used daily.

    "He could have simply died of old age."

    "His personal doctor has doubts. He suspects a psi-attack."

    "Well, Woodsworth, that narrows the list of suspects," I squinted, scrutinizing this paragon of composure. "Only those close can breach a mind. Or with consent."

    "You would know better than I, sir. That is why you were hired."

    "Was he found in this exact position?" I asked, stepping closer.

    "Yes, sir. A day ago."

    I examined the room. No signs of struggle. No evidence that anyone else had been here. Only death - so silent that no one had heard it come. I turned to Woodsworth.

    "And how did you know he was dead and bore no signs of violence?"

    "Oh, naturally, Mr Longford was moved by myself and Dr Graves, sir," he replied, that strange spark in his eyes again. "But then we returned him to his original position. For the police and detectives."

    Returned to his original position. Clearly, this man hadn¡¯t paid enough to buy posthumous respect.

    "What was the deceased¡¯s profession?"

    "Mr Longford was a private investor and a benefactor."

    A breeder of parasites, then.

    "His family business dealt in fog repellents," Woodsworth continued evenly, without blinking.

    A merchant of superstitious fear.

    "Did he leave any family besides his widow?"

    "Yes, sir. His son, Mr Henry Longford. He resides here."

    "The heir?"

    "In a manner of speaking, sir. The rest of Mr Longford¡¯s children live in other cities. He had little contact with them."

    "The rest? How prolific was he?"

    "Sufficiently, sir."

    "I take it Mr. Henry hasn¡¯t built a financial empire, given he still lives with his parents."

    "He is sixteen, sir."

    "A curious situation. An elderly father and a child son. Were they... close?"

    "They lived under the same roof, sir," Woodsworth evaded.

    Just then, a figure flickered past the doorway. I turned, but only caught the edge of a black hem and slender fingers gripping the doorframe.

    The maid. The curiosity of a cat catching a new scent in the house - or the anxiety of a criminal watching an inquisitor leaf through their journals?

    I slowly drew my revolvers.

    Zakhar and Danil. Two steadfast anchors that kept my mind from slipping into the abyss, without which I might never return. Smooth steel, black blued metal, reassuring solidity. I traced the intricate engravings on their grips like a map through the chaos of foreign minds. Their weight reminded me who I was - and what I was.

    Revolvers made in the arms factory of the Russian Empire. Jocelyn still held that purchase against me - whether for its lack of patriotism or the sum I had spent on them, I couldn¡¯t say. But she didn¡¯t understand.

    "I''m coming. Enough time has been wasted," I said to the butler, sat down in the chair opposite the dead man, crossed my arms over my chest, guns in hand, and took a slow breath.

    A dead mind can be opened anywhere. The body no longer resists; the consciousness lies before you like an open book of filth and regrets. But the closer you are to the dead, the easier it is to convince your own mind that taking a stroll through the chthonic depths called the human psyche is a simple matter.

    I looked at Longford. His body still held the posture of a man who had merely fallen asleep at his desk. His eyes, wide open, stared into the world and saw nothing but emptiness. I could only agree.

    I closed mine.

    And stepped inside.

 Emptiness

    Fog. That damned fog again. Thick, heavy, like the breath of a swamp. It creeps everywhere, obscuring everything that might have once been here. It stretches toward me, pulls me into itself. I step through an empty space that is neither a room nor a street, nor even a thought. No sound, no movement, not a flicker of an idea. Only cold. Only the clinging silence. Only the gray haze, endless and heavy, as if someone had poured an ocean of ash straight into my skull. Longford¡¯s world had collapsed, no longer capable of life.

    I tried to take a step, but the space resisted, viscous and unreal. The fog wrapped around me, chilled my skin, seeped into my lungs as if trying to take the place of air. Longford wasn¡¯t that old, couldn¡¯t have lost all traces of humanity so quickly for his mind to disintegrate into this dust. Even decrepit old men leave behind fragments - shattered faces, whispered regrets, something human. But here, nothing. Only emptiness, like a bottomless pit, and the fog, its senseless guardian.

    Could Woodsworth have had a hand in this? Dressing him, sitting him at his desk - a helpless old man spoon-fed his meals, his thoughts long drowned in senility. The image formed before my eyes: Longford in a ridiculous robe and nightcap, his gaze frozen while someone else moved his hands like a puppet. But no, he had been alive when he died. Or was he? The body was found yesterday, but what if time or the butler lied? If he had been dead for far longer, his mind could have decayed, broken apart like rotten wood, leaving only this gray haze. A dead mind doesn¡¯t hold its shape - it melts, dissolves, vanishes into nothing.

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    Or perhaps Longford had always been this way - a small-minded fool with a head full of emptiness, just as his pockets were full of gold. A hollow man in an expensive suit, whose inner world had never known depth. But that didn¡¯t add up. Wealth and power breed labyrinths - greed, paranoia, cunning. Men like him never have clean minds. Unless...

    Unless the killer had scraped it all away. Left no trace, no hint - only the fog, a perfect veil. Only a psionic as strong as me, or stronger, could do that. That meant an unconscious attack by a close relative who had suddenly awakened their gift and resentment was out of the question. No, this was deliberate. The killer had left no clues in the mind.

    I wrenched myself away, feeling the haze cling to me like a spider¡¯s web to a fly. With effort, I pushed myself out, and Longford¡¯s mind let me go. The dead cannot resist. Any hope of a quick resolution drowned in that gray filth. The case was growing murkier by the second. Dementia!

 Reality

    I opened my eyes, and the world around me slowly coming back into focus. The head was buzzing, as if I had just leaped from the depths of the ocean onto Mars. My hands were still gripping the revolvers. My mouth was dry, like I had just dined on the contents of a writer¡¯s ashtray, one whose deadlines were burning. My temples throbbed. A drink would have helped, but I was already on the job.

    "Mr Rains," came Woodsworth¡¯s voice. He stood beside me, his hands tense behind his back. His face was as impassive as ever, but in his eyes - there was a shadow of worry. "You... have returned."

    "Not the word I''d use," I muttered, slowly rising from the chair. My legs trembled, I was no longer the young man who could take a morning jog through hell and back.

    "Mrs Longford is expecting you, sir. If you are ready, I shall take you to her."

    I got up. My fingers still didn¡¯t quite feel like part of me, but in my head, a familiar warning was already sounding: never leave a mind too abruptly. I had done it before and lost a part of myself. I can''t remember which.

    I nodded to the butler.

    We walked down the corridor. The silence in the house was thick, sticky, trailing behind each step. The windows were drowning in twilight, but outside, it seemed as if the day itself was imitating the night. Woodsworth stopped before a door and opened it.

    She sat in the dimness, like a forgotten portrait on the wall of an abandoned mansion. A black veil hid her face, leaving only a vague outline. Her long mourning dress faded into the room, giving the impression that she was simply dissolved into the shadows. Her hands rested upon her lap, her back held straight as if her spine were a pillar holding up the heavens. The black widow in her lair.

    "Lady Longford," Woodsworth announced, "this is Mr Rains."

    The scent was subtle but persistent - a faint aroma of jasmine, old paper, and something cold, like silver left overnight in the rain.

    "Detective," she said, her voice quiet, lifeless, like the echo of thoughts that had repeated themselves in the void for far too long.

    "May I activate the light, ma¡¯am?" I asked. I needed to read people, their expressions, their movements. Such job. Right now, I was looking at a woman without shape, without rhythm, without motion.

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    "I¡¯m afraid if you want this conversation to take place, you¡¯ll have to be content with the current atmosphere."

    "My condolences," I said, sitting across from her.

    "You are not here for them," she replied without a shadow of reproach. There weren¡¯t many shadows in this half-light.

    "Correct. I¡¯m not here for them. You know why I¡¯m here. Who was your husband behind closed doors?"

    "Oh, behind closed doors," she whispered, as if the words themselves meant something. "He was... ordinary."

    "Ordinary?"

    "For a man who lived with the fog beyond his window," her voice was quiet, but there was uncertainty in it.

    "What do you mean?"

    She still depicted an ancient sphinx:

    "The Fog enters our minds before it reaches the streets, detective."

    I didn¡¯t look away.

    "Your husband built the repellers, didn¡¯t he?"

    "If they worked, we would still be living on the land of our ancestors."

    "I need to enter your mind."

    "What must I do, detective?"

    "Nothing. But I must warn you, my mind is not a surgeon¡¯s scalpel. It is more like a rusted needle. It can leave contamination. Changes in your psyche. For example, an inexplicable craving for bad whiskey."

    "You mean you might leave a part of yourself inside me?"

    "Yes. But not only that." I ran a finger along the handle of my revolver. "I might take something of yours with me. Foreign thoughts stick like wet ash. Sometimes they stay longer than you¡¯d like. It¡¯s... an exchange that cannot be undone. If I die in there, inside your mind, then a dead cynical detective will remain there forever. So do try to keep your demons on a leash."

    She didn¡¯t answer. I drew my revolvers.

    "Weapons?"

    "They¡¯re my anchors. I often forget where the shore is."

    "Isn¡¯t it dangerous - to fall asleep with guns in your hands?"

    "The body locks itself in sleep. Have you ever had that feeling? When you¡¯re asleep, but suddenly realize your body won¡¯t move? You open your eyes, you see the room, you hear the sounds... But something¡¯s wrong. Something is standing next to you, breathing into your ear, tugging at your sheets. That¡¯s sleep paralysis. When the mind has already woken up, but the body is still asleep. And while you¡¯re helpless, your own fears take shape. Dark entities. Only for me, they are real. That¡¯s why I need the guns."

    "I¡¯m ready," she finally said.

    "Then let''s begin," I crossed my arms over my chest, the revolvers resting against me.

    At that moment, the door creaked open and the maid entered, carrying a tray. On the silver tray sat a porcelain cup of dark tea, a teaspoon at the perfect angle, a thin cloud of steam rising into the air, blending into the scents of the room.

    "Madam..." she murmured, "I brought tea."

    "Not now, Mary," Lady Longford replied, not turning her head. Her voice was soft, like a towel wiping a kitchen knife.

    The maid hesitated for a moment, her eyes flicking to me and the revolvers in my hands. She bowed quickly and careful, to not let the tray rattle, turned and disappeared into the shadows.

    I sighed.

    Closed my eyes.

    And stepped inside.

 Cocytus

    Cold.

    I felt it before I saw anything. It arrived before the light, before my consciousness fully gathered itself in this new place. Not the chill of a winter morning. Nor the biting wind off the ocean. It was an eternal cold - the kind that clings to bones, seeps beneath the skin, freezes blood in the veins, and locks all life into stillness.

    I opened my eyes.

    Before me stretched a white wasteland, dead, endless, without edges or borders. Ice cracked beneath my feet but did not break. The horizon was lost in a dense and swirling blizzard. The wind howled and the sky was so empty, so dark, that the stars seemed like false memories. The universe itself had turned away from this place.

    Mourning her husband? Or is she simply the Snow Queen? There¡¯s a certain idiot detective whose job is to figure these things out. Only right now, he¡¯s more concerned with keeping all his body parts intact.

    I walked, not knowing where I was going. There were no landmarks. No signs of life. Only snow. Only wind. I kept moving, feeling the cold sink deeper with every step. But I knew I had to survive. My brain had to believe I could survive. And if I wanted to return, I would have to convince this world that I deserved to.

    My eyes, starved for color, immediately picked out a silhouette against the whiteness. A figure, blurred in the snowstorm, swaying as if unsure whether to move forward. Jasper Longford. Twenty years younger, yet still an old man. Dressed entirely inappropriately for the weather, a suit fit for shareholder meetings and visits of Ghosts of Christmas. But I wasn¡¯t one to judge fashion.

    The deceased walked into the storm, and I followed. A glimpse of direction in the investigation warmed me from within, for there were no other sources of heat in sight. We moved through eternity, and I clawed seconds out of frozen time with every step.

    I didn¡¯t see it at first. The wind, the snow, and my tunnel vision shielded it from my notice, while my reason shielded me from madness. But sooner or later, the mind¡¯s comforting fictions of our mind crumble under reality¡¯s weight. A mountain of white fur, over which the wind waves crashed against each other. Longford approached it and placed a hand upon it. Instantly, a long, ragged slit opened along its surface, revealing a colossal eye. A fiery pupil focused on the widow¡¯s husband, then latched onto me with its full, crushing gaze. The mountain began to awaken.

    ¡°Agnosia,¡± I managed to mutter, stepping back.

    A colossal wolf loomed before me. Rabid, unkempt, shaggy, unnaturally elongated, like a shadow trying to slip away from the light. Its twisted maw, warped into a grin, spewed steam, saliva, and the stench of all the dead of Hell. Longford, unfazed, strode between the beast¡¯s massive legs and vanished into the storm, leaving me alone with the monster. I drew my revolvers.

    Even when they allow entry, minds resist intruders. And I am an intruder, seeking their secrets. The worst kind of intruder.

    ¡°Did you sleep through Ragnar?k, little wolf?¡± I asked.

    The beast lunged.

    The huge claws tore the ice, leaving deep fractures. The breath erupted in clouds of vapor that froze midair, forming glittering ice crystals. The maw gaped open, revealing fangs like shards of a glacier. My hands moved of their own, they knew what to do even as my mind hesitated. Naturally, Zakhar spoke first.

    My arms left behind ghostly trails, blurred shadows, each one firing as well. I created a wall of smoke and fire, as if I were not alone, but an entire squad of spectral gunslingers.

    Thunder. Fire. Bullets shredding through the air. Another motion - three more copies. My body moved faster than my thoughts could process. But the monster kept coming. Bullets struck its flanks, tearing away chunks of fur and frost.

    I leapt aside, slipping free from death¡¯s grasp. She¡¯d have to wait a bit longer for my company. The beast twisted mid-motion, kicking up a snowstorm that swallowed everything around us. Stepping back, I felt the ground vanish beneath me. A slope. Aphasia. The world spun, snow slammed against my face, fingers clenched around the revolvers. Rolling onto my back, I stretched out my arms and unleashed another storm of gunfire. The revolvers burned hot in my grip. The wolf leapt after me.

    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

    I tumbled downward, ice chilling my spine, while the beast slid after me, its paws barely touching the surface. I fired at it, at the sky, at the ice, anywhere to slow the monster. The roar of gunfire blended with the wailing wind, and the flames before me felt almost warm, as a reminder of life.

    The slope ended abruptly, and I fell into a world that felt even stranger than the frozen wasteland above. Ruins. Fragments of something ancient, destroyed yet still grand. Stone columns coated in frost, collapsed arches that once held up the heavens, walls bearing remnants of frescoes depicting faces long lost to time. The lower layers of consciousness.

    I landed on my back, shattering the ice slabs, but sprang to my feet immediately. The wolf, without slowing down, slid after me, its orange eyes burning in the darkness that lurked between the falling snowflakes.

    "Well, that warmed us up, little wolf," I muttered, raising my revolvers. "But let''s finish this."

    I leaped to the side, dodging its claws, and dashed behind a broken column. The wolf struck the stone, shattering it into pieces, but I was already elsewhere.

    We moved through the ruins, circling each other, using as covers columns and crumbling walls. The revolvers fired in rhythm with my steps, their thunder filling the void, while the wolf flickered between the debris, vanishing and reappearing, changing its trajectory at the last moment. Stone blocks collapsed under gunfire and the beast''s strikes. Dust, rubble, snow, it all blended together, swirling around us as we pursued each other like a predator and its reflection.

    "You''re not real," I said, emerging beside the creature¡¯s head, driving my heel into the cracked floor, and firing point-blank. "You''re just her fear."

    And if I stayed here too long... it would become mine.

    The wolf recoiled, leaping back, its eye closed, but still began to generously irrigate the snow with blood. And then it made its final jump, lightning-fast, all-consuming, like the end of days.

    I managed to grab a sharp fragment of stone from the ruins, broken loose by time, and brace it against the ice. The wolf couldn¡¯t stop its flight and impaled itself on the jagged point. Movement ceased again in this kingdom of winter, only the wind toyed with my coat and its fur.

    The fury in its eye gave way to acceptance. It faded away, dissolving into a reality that no longer needed it. Only deep claw marks remained in the snow, untouched even by the storm. It had lost. I had survived. Now I had to find out why.

    I exhaled slowly, my breath swirling in the air before vanishing after Eleonora¡¯s protector. The wolf was gone, but the cold remained. The silence had changed. Not oppressive, but watchful. This world hadn¡¯t let me go yet.

    I holstered my revolvers but left the straps unfastened. Intuition is a living man''s best friend.

    The ruins, covered in frost and snow, stood before me, sinking into the ground, jutting out crookedly as if neither earth nor air wanted them anymore. But amidst the wreckage, a silhouette flickered. It moved in the distance, nearly invisible in the snowstorm and the remnants of memory. Longford. He wore the same suit. Looked even more worn, even older. And so was his suit.

    I followed him, keeping to the shadows. If the widow had fixated on this memory of her husband, it meant it was important. Longford walked through the ruins with the weight of a man who had lived in this place for too long. The wind, like a slighted ghost, faded away, leaving behind only a hollow silence that wrapped around us like a shroud.

    He was heading toward his office, or what remained of it. Once majestic, now it stood half-ruined, its walls crumbling as if reality itself had decided to erase them from memory. A massive desk, charred at the edges, loomed among the wreckage like the last unconquered fortress. Heavy, like an unrepentant past, a monument to stubbornness and power that refused to yield to time or destruction.

    Longford approached the desk and sat down, absently running his fingers over the cold, cracked surface. The motion was reflexive, the gesture of a man accustomed to giving orders, even as his world collapsed around him. But in this world, he was still its master.

    And then the darkness appeared. At first, it was just a blot in the air - dark and motionless, as if light itself had changed its mind. Then the blot began to take shape. A figure, like a shadow draped over emptiness. Black mourning fabric, slowly unfolding, as if wrapping around an invisible presence. A vague silhouette, shifting in the air. Someone outside Lady Longford¡¯s memory.

    Longford spoke first:

    "The project must be completed," his voice carried through the stone ruins, seeping into their cold. "I can''t wait any longer, you know that."

    "We¡¯ll have only one chance," the second voice rasped, dry and charred, like coal cracking in the fire. It didn¡¯t belong to something alive, it sounded like an old film reel stuck on a single phrase.

    I pressed myself against the cold stone. Ambition and schemes. Haste and risk. A perfect cocktail for catastrophe. I listened, trying to catch the meaning buried in undertones and pauses. But the words crumbled before they reached my ears, like ancient spells that refused to be understood by outsiders. Yet I grasped the essence. Longford was no victim of circumstance - he was the circumstance.

    He leaned forward, laced his fingers together, then, suddenly, his head snapped up, and his gaze locked onto mine.

    "Eleonora!" Longford roared, his voice splitting through the dead halls like shattered glass. "Are you eavesdropping?"

    The walls cracked, collapsing into the abyss. Floors buckled like storm waves. The sky tightened into a single point. Reality itself was tearing apart, like an old photograph in the hands of a scorned lover. I had overstayed my welcome.

 Dark Tower

    I opened my eyes, and the world roared. It did not merely speak, nor groan - roared, like a cornered beast-machine running at full throttle. The air was thick, heavy, as exhaled from the lungs of some ancient monster. It reeked of soot and ash, yet something in it had no scent at all, pressing against my chest like a stone tied around my neck. Above, a crimson sky tossed and turned, scattering the land with flakes of ash and black snow.

    Cyclopean spires of the fortress stabbed the heavens and looked like scars on a mutilated face. They drowned in the ashen haze, their grotesque silhouettes of twisted towers, gnarled like broken fingers visible only in glimpses. Shadows flickered across their stone surfaces, and when the wind drove the ash away, it became clear - these were no ordinary shadows. These were ancient runes, scratched into the walls as if clawed onto a charred skull. Somewhere within these walls, in the heart of this stone colossus, its master awaited.

    I turned my gaze beneath the fortress walls, and before me, the abyss unfolded before me. The clashing legions. From the stronghold, knights in flawless formation stood, clad in armor that glistened with cold steel. They moved with mechanical precision, each step measured to the inch. Their blades did not merely strike down enemies, they carved through space itself, like scalpels performing surgery on living flesh.

    Against them raged the demons - chaotic, grotesque, creatures seemingly pulled from the fevered nightmares of Hieronymus Bosch on steroids. Their bodies convulsed like prisoners in the throes of agony, their mouths gaping in silent screams, yet their voices vanished into this world like dreams and hopes in the real world. Graves didn''t allow himself to be them. Primal emotions, like fears and desires. He had severed them, rejected them, and now they were losing.

    I ran my tongue over my dry lips. Ash has already found them.

    "Schizophrenia. His consciousness is vast and powerful."

    I stepped forward, and ash crunched in the cracks of stones, like long-burning hopes. The fortress looms - a monolith black mass, more than just a structure, it''s a petrified idea that was torn out of the subconscious and frozen in time.

    The gates were huge, made of black iron, covered with formulas and ancient writings, as if brazenly saying: "If I lay these secrets bare upon the gates, what awaits beyond them?¡± Above, bas-reliefs twisted - interwoven Kabbalistic symbols merging with scientific diagrams.

    Something stirred. They emerged from the stone without a single sound, as if they had not moved, but had simply always been there, but only now decided to show themselves. Two colossi, carved from ancient basalt, draped with parchment sealed with wax stood before the entrance. Their armor fused with their bodies; instead of heads, burning lights flickered - eyes scorched by endless calculations. One of them stepped forward.

    "You do not belong here," a seismic force reverberating through my skull, invading my mind unbidden. "Return to oblivion."

    Returning so soon was not part of my plan.

    "I am a guest, invited by your master himself," I said, stepping forward as well. A little less mightily.

    The flames in their hollow visages flickered as if caught in a draft.

    "You are an outsider."

    "You are a guardian," I narrowed my eyes. "Do you guard his will, or only his fear?"

    A sound, like the snapping of a thick thread. The lights dimmed and their shapes stiffened. The gates started to creak as they opened, spilling a black rust onto the ground. Experience dealing with bouncers proves useful in minds far more often than one might expect.

    The gates sealed behind me, in complete silence, as if it had chosen to be my jailer itself. The corridor stretched deep, narrowing like the gullet of a serpent burrowing into a skull. The walls were lined with unusual stone, smooth in places, scarred with scratches and carved symbols in others. In the darkness of the passage, where the shadows thickened into something viscous, dry metallic sounds rang out.

    They emerged from behind the columns without haste, tall figures in black armor, dull as void itself. Their movements were precise, their steps more akin to the ticking of wind-up toys than the stride of warriors. Their faces remained hidden behind visors, smooth as mirror lenses.

    The closest among them leveled a spear at me, its shaft widening near the hand to guard the wielder. Many monsters of the mind and weak psionics could not wield weapons separate from their bodies, and I had forcefully completed my close-combat training with a solid B+.

    I drew my revolvers and freed the bullets. They struck armor, but the knight did not flinch. I raised my aim higher. The visor shattered. There was no face beneath - only a smooth void, as though he was already prepared to sign legislation in Congress. The knight did not fall. He merely tilted his head, as if analyzing the situation. I cursed and stepped back, recalling with nostalgia the near-empty world of the widow.

    The emptyheaded knight hesitated, allowing the second to step forward. Reaching a precise distance, he extended his spear and lunged. I dodged, throwing myself to the ground and the wall that took the blow meant for me exploded into shards and dust. Still lying, I aimed my revolvers at the enemy and shattered his mirrored visor. This, too, slowed him.

    The third knight emerged from behind a column, repeating the exact movements of the second, launching himself at me. When I leapt aside from his thrust, he instantly withdrew the spear and struck where I had landed. I was only saved because I had jumped slightly farther than before, and the spear shattered the floor between my feet.

    "Hey! That¡¯s not very knightly!" I scolded him, springing back to my feet.

    The first faceless one reached me and tried to skewer me on his oversized toothpick. But his movements became less precise, as if he had lost part of his algorithm. I dodged and, without waiting for them to adjust, sprinted forward, diving deeper into the corridors, into the heart of the castle, all the while firing at the knights. Break their defense. Expose the void. They knew how to kill. But they didn¡¯t know what to do when they were being killed. Leaving enemies at my back was foolish, but I had no intention of retracing my steps. I needed an answer. Or even more questions.

    The castle had noticed me. Up until now, it had been just a place, a backdrop to the war raging below. But now, as I delved deeper, it began to change: the walls shuddered, shifted, as if the stone itself was digesting an intruder in its guts, the corridors grew narrower, ceilings dropped lower, squeezing me forward, as if space here was being rented by the hour.

    Step.

    The stone slabs trembled.

    Step.

    The walls convulsed with a peristaltic spasm.

    Step.

    And then came the voice.

    "You will get lost," it said, low and hollow, echoing from everywhere at once, as though the castle itself spoke. Uncanny self-awareness. "Here, we research. We do not shoot."

    I clenched my teeth and pressed on. Graves was wrong. It''s both here. I emerged into a vast hall, and the first thing I saw was the undead. Rows of corpses ¨C skeletons and zombies, draped in tattered robes and rusted armor, as if they had once been warriors, rogues, healers. Now they were merely reborn flesh and bone, straight out of pulp fiction and comic books about some half-naked barbarian in fur underpants.

    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    The laboratory was drowning in jars with little freaks, alchemical stills filled with murky liquids, books covered in cryptic symbols, instruments that looked more like torture devices than scientific tools. This was a place where science and magic had intertwined in a grotesque dance.

    I didn''t wait, but pulled out my revolvers and pulled the triggers. The bullets shattered bones, blew out kneecaps, took heads clean off, yet the dead kept coming, crawling, grasping at existence.

    "Science lacks patience, detective," the walls murmured. "But I am working on that."

    Skeletons crumbled under my fire, but their bones thickened in the air, reassembling themselves, as if the world itself refused to accept their deaths.

    Fine, Doc. Let¡¯s use a head.

    A shot - an alchemical flask shattered, splattering acid over the nearest undead.

    A lunge - I shoved a heavy bookshelf down, burying a cluster of skeletal minions.

    A kick - one of the zombies stumbled into a bubbling cauldron, and its flesh swelled like overripe fruit before bursting apart.

    The air thickened with smoke, poison, and rot. But I broke through. And that¡¯s when I felt the steps. The ground shuddered like a ribcage beneath a scalpel. They emerged from the laboratory¡¯s shadows, and I knew instantly, my usual tricks wouldn¡¯t work.

    They were tall, hulking, clumsy at first glance, yet disturbingly efficient in motion. Their bodies were stitched together from metal and dead flesh, every seam sealed with glowing sigils. An unnatural blend of matter. Their heads - glass vessels filled with murky, viscous fluid, inside which pulsed living brains. Conscious, still trying to understand, even now, as their hosts advanced with the cold determination of a mechanism.

    Zakhar and Danil sang the aria of fire and iron. Liquid, sluggish silver ¨C mercury - spilled from the wounds, but they did not fall. Their blood was alive, like a snake shedding its skin, and as toxic as a doctor¡¯s lie when he promises, "This won¡¯t hurt." I shot him in the head, the glass went through deep webs of cracks, but did not break. Its owner froze for a moment, running its fingers over its fractured skull, struggling to recall what pain meant.

    The first golem moved towards me, its huge hand raised to strike. I dodged, and its massive fist crushed a workbench, scattering flasks and instruments. I fired into its knee; the leg buckled, sending it crashing down. But it didn¡¯t stop. Its hands still clawed toward me, this sack of mechanical flesh incapable of understanding defeat.

    The second golem struck, I ducked, and its fist shattered a massive glass tank with a thing inside, I could only describe as a centaur embryo, spilled onto the floor in waves of viscous, transparent liquid that reeked of dampness and something too sweet to be harmless. I didn¡¯t stick around to analyze it. My hand grabbed the nearest glass sphere from the table, its core swirling with dark green fire, a toxic whirlwind coiled inside.

    "Scientific method, Doc," I muttered, tossing the sphere. "Let¡¯s experiment."

    It shattered at the feet of the nearest golem, and the liquid on the floor ignited like it had met something it despised. Green flames shot up, engulfing the golem. Fires usually tend to go out, but not this one - it was devouring. It was eating through metal, skin, the brain in the jar, writhing in living tongues of flame. Roar. Rumble. The golem writhed, its form convulsing, the mercury inside trying to stitch it back together while steel and skin argued over which would die first.

    But for every fallen one, another took its place. There were too many. I couldn¡¯t win this fight, but I could win some time. With a sharp motion, I toppled a nearby shelf. Books, papers, and alchemical research crashed into the flames, and the laboratory erupted in fire. A wall of flame now separated me from them, but it also separated them from me. Now they had something to deal with besides me.

    I turned and dashed down the corridor, deeper into the castle¡¯s bowels. The fortress allowed me to leave, but its walls laughed with a deep, guttural sound without parting lips.

    A vast hall unfurled before me, ribbed columns rising like the flayed bones of a titan. The ceiling dissolved into shadows, where something wrong stirred, with angles that refused to align with logic. The geometry itself was sick. Living eyes spread across the walls like mold, blinking out of rhythm, watching me not as an intruder but as a specimen. And in its heart stood something - Doctor Graves. Or rather, what wore his body like a surgeon¡¯s glove.

    He was larger, heavier than any man should be. His coat was torn, stained in places with ink and something thicker that had soaked into the fabric, as if he had used it not for protection from dirt, but as a tablecloth on the altar on which he sacrificed books. His hands were long, precise instruments, moving with the chill efficiency that sent ice down my spine. His face was hidden by a hood, but inside I saw eyes. Hundreds. Thousands. Spinning in chaotic discord, each fixed on a different point. They saw more than they could comprehend. And a voice. The voice that contained dozens of voices. Voices he had studied. Voices he had buried inside himself.

    ¡°You¡¯ve come to study me?¡± the sound struck the walls, echoed from the columns, returning distorted, as if the castle itself took offense. ¡°No, detective.¡± Graves tilted his head, every eye tracking me. ¡°Here, you are the subject.¡±

    Graves pulled a sword from the wall. Only the size of a steel beam, crude, monstrous, not made for ordinary combat, but for slaughter. The slaughter of a cavalry troop by one person. He moved as no man should. One moment he was motionless, the next his massive silhouette was gone, leaving only the sensation of shifting space.

    I fired. Zakhar and Danil roared, spitting lead, but the bullets struck into the air that was no longer where it should be. Graves moved not like a fighter, but like an equation that knew the solution in advance. Like a function of my kill. He wasn''t dodging, he was just getting in places where bullets made no sense.

    ¡°Why the hostility, Doc?¡± I asked, sidestepped. There was no point in shooting blindly. I needed to get him out of rhythm, to make him talk, not just cut.

    ¡°You still think answers will help?¡± he lifted the blade, and the world warped in its reflection. ¡°Both detectives and scientists seek answers. But answers are not always helpful. They are always irreversible.¡±

    He slashed and the air screamed. Not air - the very order of things. The cut opened a wound in reality opening a void. I barely had time to pull back, feeling something cold and foreign pulling me into the slit.

    ¡°Oh, I¡¯ve heard that one. Philosophy, right?¡± I fired again, but not at him, but at the floor beneath his feet. The stone cracked, breaking his stride. I lunged forward, slipping beneath the next arc of his blade. ¡°How well you''ve studied me, if you haven''t already learned that I¡¯m just a dumb thug with guns.¡±

    ¡°A dumb thug cannot use guns inside minds, detective,¡± he parried, sweeping a hand. The space shuddered and the hall shifted, changing and reshaping itself, forcing me to stumble backward. ¡°We are only looking for patterns, fitting reality into a convenient version. But has it not occurred to you that truth can be haphazard?¡±

    I swore and rolled, firing into columns. Dust billowed, cloaking me.

    ¡°What are you hiding so desperately, Doc?¡± I waited for his next move, trying to anticipate his trajectory in the cloud.

    ¡°Excellent investigative methods,¡± Graves''s silhouette in the cloud was not distorted, as it should have been. It was fixed, real in the world of illusion. ¡°Ask people what they are hiding. Believe me, detective, everyone hides something. And everyone believes their secrets matter most.¡±

    ¡°Give me something,¡± I pressed, stepping back. ¡°So we don''t pollute each other''s brains for nothing.¡±

    ¡°Was there ever a time when you were happy you got to the truth, Detective?¡± he said, and the sword snapped down.

    ¡°So make me the unhappiest detective ever. Happiness isn''t my specialty anyway.¡±

    I didn¡¯t meet the blow. I dove aside, feeling the air split behind me. The castle shook as if its insides were trying to regroup. A hidden passage yawned open - a door that hadn¡¯t existed before. Chance or trap, it made no difference.

    I sprinted through, and Graves didn¡¯t follow. He watched, eyes writhing independently. This wasn¡¯t just a fight. It was a test. And I didn¡¯t know if I was passing or had already failed.

    I found myself in a narrow room lined with cabinets filled with files and papers. An archive. Almost all the drawers were closed, except for one. Inside lay a single medical file. There was no text on it. Instead of words, there was black and white light flickering, like newfangled moving pictures on celluloid.

    ¡°Longford was old,¡± Graves'' voice sounded muffled, distant and hollow. He spoke not here, but from the edges of perception.

    On the sheet, Mr. Longford sat on an examination couch. His face calm, yet something deeper flickered beneath. His fingers trembled as he adjusted his cuffs, not from the cold but from something deeper.

    ¡°Old age is not merely a disease, detective. It is nature¡¯s preordained degeneration. Loss of neuroplasticity, gray matter shrinking, tau protein accumulation, the unraveling of myelin sheaths. Years erase memory through neurotransmitters, slowing impulses, weakening synapses. Eventually, the mind loses its grip on reality.¡± Graves¡¯s voice was cold. ¡°It cannot be cured. It cannot even be understood, until you are caught inside it.¡±

    Longford¡¯s lips moved, but the sound didn¡¯t carry. Only his fingers tensed on the armrests. Only his eyes clung to the empty air. He wasn¡¯t just old. He knew he was old and he knew it couldn¡¯t be stopped.

    ¡°He was afraid,¡± I muttered without meaning to.

    ¡°Everyone is afraid,¡± Graves¡¯s voice was closer now. ¡°But Longford did not fear death. He feared there was no time left. That knowledge devoured him before anything else could.¡±

    ¡°Time for what? His project?¡±

    The picture jerked, the film stuck in the invisible projector. Longford¡¯s gaze snapped directly at me, seeing me, here, now. His lips whispered something silently, but before I could make it out, the world turned inside out. I was hurled out of Graves¡¯s mind as if pushed out a door into the night by a fierce gust of wind.

 Theater of Good Manners

    Click. Candles flared up, licking the edges of reality.

    I stood in the very heart of a vast, old theater. The ceiling was lost in darkness, velvet curtains as a stormy sunset hung from unseen heights, their golden patterns shimmering in the candlelight. The smell of dust, wax and old curtains hung in the air, scratching the lungs. In the distance, muffled, as if from another dimension, an alarming, slowly dying melody sounded. And they. The spectators.

    They sat in their seats, dressed in impeccable tuxedos and gowns. Their silhouettes shrouded in shadow. Their faces were hidden, but I could feel their gazes. Hungry. Appraising. Hundreds of eyes filled with silent judgment.

    In front of me, standing within a circle of light, was Woodsworth. His figure was as rigid as ever, but now he looked... different. His face is a white mask, with no slits for real eyes, just a smooth surface that reflects the light.

    "You need to learn some manners, detective," he said with a hint of reproach, like my arithmetic teacher disappointed in me. He snapped his fingers.

    My clothes were gone, replaced by a tailcoat, a white shirt and a bastard bow tie. The perfect image of a proper gentleman, except for two things. My revolvers. Gone. I felt a cold emptiness where their familiar weight should have been.

    "Hey!" I grabbed at the holsters that aren''t there either. My fingers trembled like a drunkard¡¯s without his bottles. "Give them back, you scum!"

    Darkness swallowed me again. Then the flames burst back to life. The stage. The light. In the air, like movie subtitles, words appeared:

    "The Detective enters. He must introduce himself."

    I stepped forward.

    "Hell no! My revolvers - now! Fast!" I had no intention of switching careers this abruptly. The emptiness on the sides itched like a fresh wound.

    The words flickered to "Incorrect!" before crumbling into ash, hissing like writhing snakes as they touched the stage.

    "He does not respect the art."

    "He lacks proper etiquette."

    "Mind your posture."

    "His manners... are insufficient."

    The voices rolled in, whispering, snickering, muffled, wet and slippery laughs, like someone running a wet palm over glass. I took another step, and now I could see them.

    Grotesque figures, dressed with exquisite elegance, lounged in the seats, but their postures were unnatural. Their necks bent under the weight of their heads, fingers twitched like worms in agony. Red-skinned men with horns and monocles. Bloated toad-like creatures in evening gowns. Oozing slimes in top hats, holding wine glasses filled with darkness. Swine-faced aristocrats in tuxedos, lowering their opera glasses from their flesh masses, watching with lazy disdain. A panopticon of the in-between. Neurosis!

    "You must do better, detective," Woodsworth¡¯s voice rang out, cold and merciless.

    The snap of fingers. I returned two steps back, as if time had moved backwards, but the memory remained in place.

    "The Detective enters. He must introduce himself," the floating letters insisted.

    I said what I had learned while working undercover as a dockworker. Good thing Jocelyn wasn''t here.

    "Incorrect!"

    Snap.

    "He is a degenerate."

    "Look in the eyes."

    "Does he despise beauty?"

    "You disappoint us."

    Some demons started rising from their seats. One spectator had an indignant flame erupt in the missing top half of his head. Instinctively, I grasped at the emptiness on my hips. Obsession!

    "Do not disappoint our esteemed guests, detective," Woodsworth''s voice came. "They are rather short-tempered."

    "Fine," I said, straightening up and sensing the collective hatred towards me, which is deadly in these realms. The stares of a variety of eyes pierce me, and for a moment I think the walls of the theatre are breathing heavily. I feel the dusty curtains shudder, as if the stage itself were judging me. In the royal box on the mezzanine, someone entirely cloaked in darkness slowly, menacingly tapped a claw against the armrest of their chair. The tension swelled like distant thunder. "If that''s what you want..."

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    I took a step forward, raised my head, and said:

    "I am detective Decart Rains. And I am here to find the truth."

    "Correct!"

    I caught myself bracing for another "Incorrect!" Damn that butler and his mind. Well, I''ll be a fool on strings, I''m used to it. The demonic theater begins its performance.

    Darkness thickens again, then dissolves, and I find myself on the same stage, but in a new scene. Before me stands Longford. Alive, if that word applies. His eyes lack the glassy, lifeless stare I had seen in his office. He looks younger, if such a thing can be said about him. His tall, slightly hunched figure seems even more fragile, the dim stage light peeling away pieces of him.

    "Woodsworth," his voice is dry, but it holds that familiar authority of a man accustomed to speaking, not listening. "You need to carry these crates."

    He gestures toward several wooden boxes at his feet. They look new.

    "Where to?" I ask dumbly.

    "To the new room," he replies.

    The letters appear in the air, burning like embers: "Be silent and obey."

    Silence thickens. It presses against my ears, my chest, my mind. I feel the audience shifting in their seats, their whispers rising, gliding over my skin like icy fingers.

    "Be silent and obey."

    The audience waits for my reaction. I do what I must - I nod.

    "As you wish, sir."

    I bend down to lift the crates, feeling their weight press against my arms. They are heavy, as if filled not with objects but with old sins.

    "Woodsworth," Longford says again, his voice carrying a warning. "Not a word to anyone."

    "Not a word to anyone," I repeat, and my words sound like a vow.

    "Correct!"

    The demonic theater continues its performance. Darkness thickens again, and I feel the floor beneath my feet change. It kicks me in the ass, forcing me to sit. Now I am seated at an iron table, illuminated by a single lamp, its light cutting through the darkness and into my eyes. And in front of me is myself.

    Yes, me. The same coat, the same hat, the same revolvers at my sides, but now missing. A square face, graying at the temples. But his eyes - my eyes - stare at me with unclouded rage, with not a shred of humanity left in them.

    "You are a criminal. You must confess."

    "What did you do to Mr Longford?"

    "Did you kill him?"

    The subtitles in the air burned like the ears of a saint in a brothel. They trembled, overlapped, as if they were trying to sear their words into my brain. Suppressing the primal impulse to reach for Zakhar and Danil, I try to get comfortable, but the chair beneath me offers neither peace nor support, just like my ex.

    "SPIT IT OUT, YOU STINKING BASTARD! ARE YOU A KILLER?" I roar at myself, clearly overdoing it. No one should encounter their own projections in someone else''s mind. And especially not in their own. And "stinking bastard"? The best a butler''s mind can come up with. His mind is less mature than the rest of him.

    "I need to collect my thoughts," I reply to myself. "And talk to the smart me."

    I get what''s happening. With my job, you involuntarily pick up the basics of psychology. They unfold right before your eyes and often try to kill you. If a person''s ego is destroyed, it gets replaced by the ego of the psionic who wormed their way into their mind. I understand that I''m standing in Woodsworth''s place. These demons - his environment, his judges, his caretakers. Childhood trauma. Lovely. My daily bread. And Woodsworth didn''t kill his master, otherwise, this theater would have shown the corresponding scene. An emotional imprint like that can¡¯t be suppressed. This scene, where I¡¯m being accused, is the result of my own dumb joke that the butler was the killer.

    "SPEAK, STUPID DEGENERATE!" I break my own pause. A dumb, aggressive brute.

    I take a deep breath.

    "I didn¡¯t kill Longford," I say.

    "What a beautiful lie!"

    "Actor!"

    "Horrible performance!"

    "Incorrect!"  The letters settle into my eyes like hot ash. I blink, but they are still there, burned into my retinas like splinters, and my temples start throbbing with their usual crappy symphony. Darkness engulfs me again, the noise of the underworld in the theater growing louder.

    "Alright," I say, straightening up. "If this is what you need... I killed him," I say, and the words are forced out of me like rusty nails from a board.

    "Correct!" The subtitles disappear. The audience falls silent.

    "Correct," I say, and my voice sounds like praise.

    I vanish into the darkness, and I remain alone on the stage.

    The darkness does not subside. It thickens, clinging to my body as if it wants to become my second coat. No, thanks. The air is heavy and stagnant, like old wine that has neither smell nor taste, only poison. No one has breathed in this place for a long time. Centuries. And it feels like I''m not here to breathe either.

    I stand in a circle of light and beyond its edge is the rest of the world. The subtitles appear in the air, burned onto film:

    "Defendant: Detective Decart Rains."

    I clenched my fists. Alright, if that¡¯s how it is, then let¡¯s play.

    "Your crime: failure to obey order."

    "Sentence: whatever the audience decides."

    Silence. Dead, yet all-consuming. Then the first rustle. They begin to rise. The spectators. The judges. The executioners. One by one. The whisper of fabric, the crunch of joints, the gliding sound of footsteps. Slow, calm, savoring the inevitability.

    "So that¡¯s how it is... The show is over," I say, sliding my gaze over their grotesque faces. "Where¡¯s my round of applause?"

    A sound. Something between a snake¡¯s hiss and the rustle of dry leaves scattering under boots. Their many mouths do not open, but I hear them.

    "You didn¡¯t bow."

    "You didn¡¯t watch your posture."

    "You didn¡¯t know your lines."

    They take a step. I take a step back.

    "He wants to run."

    "Like a cowardly rat."

    "Your parents are gone."

    I tense up.

    "I don¡¯t run," I say. "And I sure as hell don¡¯t run from damn theatergoers."

    They take another step. Slowly, with grandeur, they ascend onto the stage, as if crossing a threshold transforms them into actors. In the scene "Lynching the Detective."

    "Give me back my revolvers, damn butler! You¡¯re not the killer, I got it!" I shout, but my voice holds no power.

    "Defense against just punishment is denied," Woodsworth explains calmly.

    They take another step. I try to widen the space between us, but with every passing moment, it shrinks. And beyond the light, the darkness thickens into a viscous mire. A manifestation of nightmare logic!

    Cold seeps into my bones. Around me, only blackness, hostile, suffocating, and the inhuman, hellish figures. Their drowsy stupor from before is gone. Their eyes widen like those of the insane, lips peel back to reveal predatory fangs, and fingers stretch into claws.

    "The verdict is final."

    They lunge forward. The demonic theater ends its performance.

 Animal Hell

    Cotard''s syndrome! I guessed it, but I didn''t want to admit it. I''ve been in a similar mind before. In the mind of a psychopath!

    The world exploded into a pile of slime and rot. I found myself in a place where reality bends and tears apart, forming an inhuman fabric of horror. The landscape in front of me was alive, like a massive organ whose rhythm beats in unison with cracks tearing through space. Like I was being inside an endless giant. The sour smell of decomposition and sweet, as if sugar mixed with blood were melting in the air. This place wasn''t just as decent places should be - it breathed and stirred according to its own laws.

    Animal eyes bored into me from the inhabitants of this amalgam animal hell. Predatory teeth, intertwined paws, distorted muzzles - all this merged into monstrous creatures that hissed and writhed in the pulsating darkness. Blood flowed through their bodies, as if life itself were tearing through their pores, creating bloody rivulets. They mingled with the inner flesh, like old moisture that had not dried out over decades, but had only continued to grow in the shade.

    Some of these creatures were moving along the walls. Their claws dug into the soft meat of the world. Their every step was a guttural, vicious rustle, and the air rang as they rubbed against the biomass, merging into a single vile biome. And I was a part of it all.

    Before I knew it, a wave of black wings covered me. Crows with dog heads. They twitched and leapt with broken paws and wings. Every movement, every leap was unnatural, unbearable to the eyes.

    I pulled out my revolvers without thinking and started shooting. Bullets exploded in their bodies, destroying bones and feathers, but they still continued to jump like possessed, squeaking their paws on the disgusting, wet ground.

    Suddenly, a crow-headed dog jumped out from under my feet, its legs also broken. I pushed it away with my foot and ran without turning around. In front of me appeared the body of a skinny raccoon with a rabid fox head with a huge mouth stretched to the back of its head that looked like it wanted to swallow the whole meaty world. Its gaze pierced through me, its body twitching like a toy tossed in a corner.

    I rushed past, but the world didn''t stop moving in its nightmarish dynamism. The bridge I found myself on wasn''t just any bridge. It was made of veins and hung over an abyss, pulling me into its dark depths. I sped up, hearing everything around me begin to tear as the destruction raced toward me.

    I lurched forward. The white fabric beneath my feet grew weaker and more elastic. At times, it felt like the bridge had disappeared beneath me and I had fallen. My legs were almost unstable at the last few steps towards the end of the bridge. I jumped, managing to grab the edge. As soon as I landed in this place, a string of the bridge burst behind me and the abyss claimed its harvest.

    I stood in this tower of meat and gristle, feeling its living walls moving around me. The darkness shrank, and every rustle in the corner seemed a harbinger of a new threat. I breathed heavily, trying to guess what awaited me around the next corner, but I wasn''t ready.

    Teeth gnashing, slapping the ground as if someone had just crawled out of the water. Something was coming. I instinctively drew my revolvers, but before I could prepare myself, the creature slipped out of the shadows.

    It was huge. The size of a bear, but damn it, it wasn''t a bear. It was a nightmare assembled from torn up bad ideas. It was crawling, and its paws were bending in all directions except natural ones. And they moved with a delay, as if its skeleton stepped first and then the bones caught up with the meat. Its head was the upturned head of a cat, glassy eyes staring at me with deep displeasure, with a fury no human could understand. Aside from gnashing its teeth, did not open - it was coming apart like an old seam, and a wheeze like dripping grease oozed from inside.

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    I fired, the bullet sinking into the flesh as if he were made of mud. Just then, belatedly, a wound opened in that spot. It was as flexible as reality itself, and the bullets dissolved into its body, their new home from this creeping nightmare.

    I took a step back. It didn''t lose speed. One of its paws swept into the air, and I felt everything around me shrink. I managed to jump aside, barely dodging a blow that could have sent me into eternity.

    But it didn''t slow down. Its eyes were full of hatred. I fired again, aiming for the neck, but this beast was too fast. At that moment, its paw pierced the air and struck me in the chest with a terrible clatter. I felt a glass crack, but despite the pain I did not fall. I recoiled, clutching my revolvers to my chest. The smoke from them wrapped around me like clouds around a mountaintop. This creaking creature was coming toward me.

    I fired countless more shots. This time the bullets were accurate. I slammed them into its legs, and the creature tangled miserably in its limbs. But I didn''t give it time. In one swift movement, I leaped to its back, pressed the barrel of Zakhar into its spine, and fired. The creature exploded into pieces, clots of meat and blood slurping into the air. It''s hellish outside, a light bloody rain.

    I stood over the mess as it settled into decay, becoming part of this place as if it had never existed apart from it. The last shards of the creature fall wetly to the ground. But I knew one thing: I had won. I had survived. I lived, just like the world.

    But something was keeping me in suspense. If Henry had consciously killed his father, there would be people here. The guilt of killing one''s own kind, especially patricide, is far greater than killing our lesser brethren. And here it''s just twisted, mangled animal bodies.

    I sighed, feeling my lungs fill with a vile stench. It made sense to leave this nightmare behind. I took a step, and the world shuddered as if it sensed my intention. A moment later, I realized: this mind wouldn''t let me go. I could break free by force. But after the butler went a little insane because of me... No. Repeating that with a boy was not my style. Even with such a sick bastard.

    I had to find a way out. By the rules of this place. I went forward, walking along the twisting ground. A passage opened right in front of me, dark, pulsing, contracting coherently like the giant esophagus of this mad organism.

    Beyond the passage, a labyrinth awaited me. Walls of flesh, mold, and rot piled upward, lost in the darkness. Their texture was alive: their skin shuddered at the slightest touch, in places it was covered in fur, in some places it was smooth as a snake''s, in other places it trembled like muscles twisted outward. Eyes followed me, blinking, watching. Claws twitched occasionally, as if trying to grab air. Somewhere beneath the thin layer of flesh I could see hearts beating, redundant, unnecessary, but still working.

    I went through this maze, step by step, each movement making it harder and harder for me to breathe. There was no logic here, no human forms. I searched for a way out, but instead found myself falling into dead ends of fleshy mass again and again. I stopped for a moment, giving myself a break. This place of flesh and meat, was filling me to the brim. The throbbing of the walls, the rustles, the moans that merged into one overall cacophony.

    I pulled out Danil, clutched it in my hand, and took aim at the nearest wall. The bullets exploded in the flesh, leaving deep holes from which black liquid immediately began to flow, hissing and eating away at everything around it. But the walls didn''t stop. They shrank, curved and hunched like a whole beast ready to respond to an attack. I pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced the meat again.

    Desperate as Jonah in the belly of a whale, if he had guns, I fired without stopping. My movements became faster than my thoughts. I was tearing up the world, the bullets ripped holes in the flesh, the black slurry sizzled. I kept firing. Bones cracked, meat tore. Closer, farther, fire and pain. I could hear the bones bursting, like hopes, the living structures being torn apart. But here, at the end of the corridor, I saw a white void.

    It beckoned to me, promising that I was about to get out. This was no ordinary exit. It was pure emptiness. Pure nothingness. A place where there is no flesh, where reality does not exist. I stepped into it. And as soon as I crossed the threshold, everything disappeared. In the blink of an eye, I slipped out like light from the night and into the real world.

 Wards of Humility

    I hate places like this.

    The first thing I feel is not the floor beneath my feet or the smell, but some deafening, detached realisation that there is no way out. I''ve been trapped in minds before. Minds that wanted to kill me. Minds that wanted to erase themselves from the inside out. In minds that were mere remnants of the human mind, clinging to existence itself. But this place... It doesn''t want to kill or distort or break. It doesn''t want anything. It just is. A trap for no one.

    I''m stood in a corridor stretching into infinity. The floor is tiled, the walls are covered in pale wallpaper with a geometric pattern, but the pattern seems to shake and distort, as if something is moving beneath the thin layer of paper. The light is unnatural, no shadows, no source. It''s just there. Dead, cold, eternal. And the voices. They won''t shut up. Puzzled little whispers, varying in timbre, tone, or speed, echo from behind the walls, or is it the walls themselves communicating.

    "You know what you have to do, don''t you?"

    "You don''t have to be here, but you will be here. We''ll all be here."

    Psychosis.

    Doors. Endless doors on either side of the corridor, like soldiers on parade, ready to reveal another piece of someone else''s madness before me. I open the first one. There is no furniture in the room. Only the maid herself. She stands, a watering can in her hands, water running from it onto the wet floor. I don''t immediately realise what she''s watering - nothing. Or maybe it''s something I can''t see.

    ¡°What are you doing?¡± I ask, even though I already know I won''t like the answer.

    She doesn''t turn round.

    ¡°I''m watering the flowers," she answers, and there''s no doubt in her voice, only exhaustion.

    ¡°There are no flowers here.¡±

    She shakes her head.

    ¡°They''re just invisible. If you don''t look at them, they''ll rot. I hope they''re still here.¡±

    She hopes they are. Doesn''t know. She doesn''t believe. She just hopes.

    I stare at the empty room, at the droplets dripping down her clothes. The water goes into the cracks in the floor as if they were the capillaries of a huge creature. I close the door.

    "Where are you? You''re already here. You''re lost, you''ll never be lost."

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    Another room. It has only a narrow, high window. There''s no furniture under it, nothing to climb on. Just the maid. She stands beneath the window with her head tilted back, looking up.

    "What are you doing?"

    "Counting clouds."

    "How?"

    She''s silent. Only her fingers curl. I can''t see the sky. Only a narrow strip of light that seems as artificial as this world.

    "You promised to be humble, aren''t you humble? Why aren''t you humble?"

    A queue. Of her alone. Shes are standing in a looped line, occasionally moving a step.

    "Do you want to be humble? Tell me what you want. You can''t say it. You must be silent."

    All of the rooms have the same wallpaper of sharp geometric lines, but in each room the wallpaper differs in texture or changes shades from normal to dirty.

    Dust. There is dust everywhere. Mountains of dust. It''s impossible to clean, but she keeps on cleaning. Her hands are in the dirt, a layer of ages, and she swipes at the dust and it takes off like a swarm of flies, but immediately settles a little farther away, mocking her hands. The air is whipped, dry. It presses on me like all the worlds I''ve visited today.

    ¡°You know what you need to do, don''t you?¡±

    "Don''t do it... You can''t do it. Tell me, do you want it? Do you want this?"

    A room full of clocks. The hands move jerkily. Some go forward, some go backward. Others just wobble in place.

    "I have to keep track of time," she whispers. "I should."

    "But it''s going wrong."

    "I know it is.

    " I look at the nearest clock face. The time is 25:81. The hands begin to spin faster, as if they can sense my gaze.

    A sharp shout interrupts the voices, but then they continue as if nothing had happened.

    Occasionally there is furniture. Chairs too high, tables too low. Mirrors reflect things, people, and actions with slight differences. Some appliance makes a pulsing, ominous sound and exhales smoke as if its purpose is to torment.

    I keep walking. The corridor stretches again, like an unwinding reel of film. A draft flows along the walls, carrying the smell of damp paper and rusty iron. And then there''s the door. Heavy, wooden, with a dark iron ring instead of a handle. I push it open.

    Inside is the other maid. She kneels in a mountain of garbage - shreds of yellowed papers, broken pocket watches, pieces of cloth, old keys, the remnants of someone''s life piled there. Her hands are digging through the junk, but her eyes are blank, not seeing, just looking.

    "What are you looking for?" I ask.

    She doesn''t answer right away. Only after a few moments, without stopping digging, she mumbles:

    "Truth."

    "Any luck?"

    "It must be here somewhere..." her fingers fumble for something. She pulls out a thin metal key and hands it to me. It''s cold, like it''s just been pulled from the grave.  "This way.

    All but one of the corridor doors open at once. They come out of every room. All at once. All the same. All her. Hers footsteps are quiet, synchronized, but hers don''t look at me. Just move like blind actors following an unknown script. If I follow them, I''ll never come out again.

    The key comes to a closed door. Behind it is me. Younger, about twenty-something. The square face has not yet cut through the gray, the posture is straighter, the gaze clearer, without the heaviness I carry now. He - me - walks into Longford Manor.

    I take a step forward. The young me lifts his head. We say:

    "Where is that room?"

    I am snapped back to reality.

    I hate places like this.

 Monstrous Reality

    There''s a maid standing in front of me, but I can''t see her. No, not like that. I see her, but I don''t perceive her. The world is shaking, squirming, shrinking, folding like a book whose pages I suddenly remember. Like a red-hot nail, an insight flashes through my mind, and the rust of oblivion crumbles away, revealing the blade of truth.

    Ganser syndrome!

    I leap from my seat. The corridors of the mansion squeezed me like snake holes, but I raced forward, toward Longford''s office. The door, already broken, was smashed to splinters with a thump of my foot, and the books flew off the shelf like birds startled by a gunshot. One of them is not a book. I pull it towards me.

    A click. A muffled rattle. The ticking of time intensifies. There was a rustle behind me. Mary stood in the passage, peering at me worriedly.

    The bookcase gave way, revealing the entrance to the secret room. Whiteness crashes down on me, pure, unadulterated, inhuman. I know this place - the operating room. Two beds. One spotless, the other a body imprint. The past has not dissolved here, it lurks, awaiting my return.

    I sank down on my bed. Memories came flooding back, merging with reality.

    Inhale. The smell of sterility. The smell of metal. The rotten smell of truth.

    Exhale. My throat constricted as if someone had tightened a belt around my neck.

    Something inside resisted, clinging to the cozy darkness of the lie where I hid like in a mother''s womb. But the mind never forgets anything, it only hides in the lithospheric slabs of our unconscious. But now my continents had come into motion, and the end of the existing world was irreversible. My pulse beat in my temples with the dust of time, my blood hummed like a distant Fog, my skin''s sense of space felt the salty melody of the white room.

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    They put on the belts. The eyelids flutter. The clock ticks. The voice. The voice I know. Familiar, like an old scar I''ve stopped noticing.

    A rejuvenated Dr. Graves in a white coat is leaning over me. In his hand was an object - something like a key. Not a key. A needle. A lobotomy needle.

    "This is your chance," Graves said, preparing the instrument.

    I recognize it. I recognize it too well. I''ve gotten to know her much more intimately than I''d like. It stormed my gateway to my soul.

    "Who else will pay all your debts, Mr Rains?" Graves continued with the same lazy intonation with which he might discuss the choice of wine for dinner.

    Money. I was indebted to fate and serious people because of my addiction. I''d agreed to be a lab rat. Psi abilities transfer. It went the same as always - I almost died receiving and signing psi scars, and the memories of it were cemented into the sarcophagus of my subconscious.

    Longford. He was afraid of death. To the point of madness, to the point of obsession. He tried to transplant his trembling consciousness into the bodies of his children. Probably broke their psyches, Henry''s definitely a broken toy. When that didn''t work, he remembered his old rat from this room. That I was once part of his experiments. I''m his last hope.

    We still had a mental link, and Longford had taken advantage of it - a week ago, he and his retinue of psi-hunters had penetrated the dead mind, trying to kill my "self" and take possession of my body. Not the healthiest and youngest, but better than an old man who had already seen the setting sun. I killed him there, amidst the fog he so feared. Woodsworth and Graves carried the body from here to his office, and summoned me, not knowing who would come to them, me or their master.

    It all coalesced into one nasty blur of realization. Fregoli delusion!

    The killer is a detective.

    Me.

    The case solved.