The taller detective lingers at the door like he wants to say something else, something he’s decided against, while the other offers a final look that’s meant to be reassuring and misses by a mile. “If you remember anything else, please give us a call,” he slides his card onto the chair by the door, and then the door clicks shut behind them with a sound that feels far too final for a room this quiet.
And then I’m alone again.
The silence presses in, thicker without voices to push against it. Machines hum softly at my bedside. Somewhere down the hall, someone laughs, the sound distant, as though it belongs to a different world entirely. I stare up at the ceiling and start counting the acoustic tiles because it’s easier than replaying the way the detectives’ eyes slid away from mine when they didn’t have answers.
One.
Two.
Three.
The certainty creeps in anyway.
There’s something missing.
Not gone, buried.
A gap in my memory that aches.
Whatever I forgot didn’t vanish on its own. It’s pressing at the edges now, impatient, like it’s running out of time to stay hidden.
My eyes begin to blink, slow, heavy, the threat of sleep invading my senses. My body sinks first. My limbs going slack. The hum of machines blurs into a low, distant thrum, like a sound heard through water.
I count one more tile… four.
Then another… five.
Somewhere between breaths, the edges of the room soften and slide away.
I’m standing at a table. Rough wood beneath my palms, scarred and stained with use. Ledgers lie open in front of me, pages filled with neat, precise columns of numbers that make immediate sense even though I don’t recognize the names attached to them. My eyes skim the entries without effort, tracking totals, losses, margins, things I have never learned and yet somehow know.
The pages flip on their own, as if magic is weaving through the parchment.
Shipment manifests are stacked nearby, stamped with symbols that aren’t letters but feel like language all the same. The ink looks old. I trace one mark with my finger and feel a pulse of recognition that settles deep in my chest.
Maps are spread across the far end of the table. I step closer. My gaze follows thick lines drawn through mountain ranges and forests I’ve never visited, borders marked with careful intention. My fingers hover, then press down, tracing paths that feel familiar, like routes I’ve walked before, even if my feet have never touched the ground.
Something shifts at the edge of the scene.
The table fades.
The room tilts.
The sense of knowing tightens, sharp enough to hurt.
I see violence.
Blood on snow.
Bodies that don’t die properly.
Creatures that wear human faces but move like predators who have never known what it means to be prey.
I see a man with eyes the color of glacial ice, standing in the center of what might be a cathedral or might be a clubhouse, the architecture refusing to settle into either category. He’s watching something in a crystal dome, a flame that burns in impossible colors, dying slowly despite his presence.
He turns.
And looks directly at me.