When I return, I’m in a dark hallway with a dead man in my arms. Strangled, I presume, although I don’t remember doing it. I had disappeared. Time stopped. I had lost all sense of self and become less a thing than a sick emotion. I felt soiled. Abused. I released the man and slumped back against the wall. My insides scooped out.

There was no way to take that back, and it had happened without my consent. My body had been hijacked somehow and forced to conduct the most heinous of acts. The ultimate sin. Even if it had been in self-defense, which I do believe it was, that didn’t change the fact that I was now, and would forever be, a killer. Tainted for having taken a life. All for what? Why was this happening?

Data? That’s what the woman had told me while I’d been stuck in that head. Was this an extension of Professor O’s perverted research?

The thought of continuing on, of actually trying to find my way out of this place, was overwhelming. I just wanted to sleep and wake up somewhere else. Wake up someone else. Start over again. Do it all differently. Every bit of it, even Cassie. Even Rox. Erase it all from history.

Or was this remnant thinking from the pall that had overcome my mind? Had maybe possessed my mind. That effervescent hate.

They weren’t just going to let me out of here, that much was clear. So, what? Was I just going to give up and die? No, I was the victim here. I hadn’t asked for any of this, even if I had been warned it could happen. I hadn’t believed it. But it was happening, and it would continue happening to me and others unless I could get out of here and expose it somehow. Besides, my family was still being watched. I couldn’t let them become part of this in any way.

I checked for the man’s pulse. His skin was still warm, his head limp in my hands. Not like I’m some fucking EMT or anything. In fact, the only pulse I’d ever checked was my own after almost overdosing on coke. He was flatlined, as far as I could tell. Wasn’t breathing. Nothing more than decaying meat, same as I had felt while under the influence of his hypnotism, or whatever. A pointless bag of squishy things.