​Chapter 10. Absolute Truth

The sound returned first —a steady, low hum, like the breath of some colossal ventilation system. Then came the light: blinding, milky-white, radiating from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Mark was lying on something soft and cool. His palm — the one the dart had pierced — throbbed with a dull, localized ache. He tried to sit up, and the room tilted under him.

It was entirely white. Walls, floor, ceiling — fused into one seamless surface without corners or shadows, as if he’d woken inside a giant billiard ball.

A section of the opposite wall rippled, then slid aside noiselessly, revealing an opening.

The person who entered wore a plain gray jumpsuit with no insignia. Instead of a face — a shimmering field of distortion, a virt-mask flickering like interference on an old monitor. A constantly shifting, hypnotic pattern of light and shadow. Above where the hair should have been, the air itself rippled slightly, a trembling digital halo.

When he spoke, a symbol appeared on the mask — two horizontal lines, the sign of neutrality.

“Citizen Kane,” the voice said, even and filtered, stripped of anything human. “My name is Michael.”

For a brief moment, a stylized smile flashed across the mask — then vanished without a trace.

Mark managed to sit on the edge of the platform. His numbed muscles resisted, but his mind was already working. He forced himself to ignore the blinding whiteness of the room and the shifting static where a face should have been. He was a cop — and this was an interrogation. Or something close to it.

“What’s going on?” Mark’s voice came out steadier than he expected. “Am I under arrest? On what charge?”

Two question marks blinked on Michael’s virt-mask — pure mechanical puzzlement. Then they melted away, replaced by a simplified icon of the scales of justice.

“Arrest is a term from the protocols of your former occupation, citizen,” the filtered voice replied. “It implies crime and punishment. We have neither here.”

The scales on the mask tilted once, then vanished.

“Consider this a quarantine. We detected an anomaly and had to make sure you weren’t its source.” For a moment, the scales reappeared — one pan slightly lower — and Michael paused. “Although we already know you are not.”

Mark felt the trap under every smooth syllable of that voice. First — a veiled threat. Then — an abrupt absolution. A classic maneuver to fog a mind and make a man talk.

But through that manipulation glowed the single, deafening truth: they knew. They knew about the anomaly — about these fractures in reality. Meaning, he wasn’t losing his mind.

“If you already know it wasn’t me,” Mark said, “then why am I here?”

The schematic smile surfaced again on Michael’s mask — the same artificial expression as before, but now carrying a hint of approval.

“A good question, Mark. We need your assistance.”

He extended a hand in a gesture of greeting; it was hollow, ceremonial — like the smile.

“If you need my help,” Mark said, ignoring the holographic courtesy, “then explain what’s happening. What the hell are these anomalies?”

“‘Anomaly’ is our internal term for the energy spike the Contour recorded yesterday in the Ring,” Michael explained. “A technical nuance you need not concern yourself with. We are not interested in the event — only in the people. Those who were at the epicenter.”

A new shimmer pulsed across the mask, and an image unfolded:

Eliza’s photograph — the official one from the police database. Cold, clean, bureaucratic. The neat civilian caption beneath it: Eliza Dahmer.

“We’ve been observing Miss Dahmer for some time,” Michael continued. “Your close contact with her turned out to be a fortunate coincidence. That’s why you’re here. We want to ask you a few questions about her.”

So it wasn’t an interrogation. It was recruitment.

“I don’t know anything,” Mark said, his voice flat.

Michael’s schematic smile flickered again — almost sympathetic.

“You’re telling the absolute truth. You really don’t know anything.”

He made a slight motion with his hand, and from the seamless white floor, an armchair rose without a sound — ergonomic, grown from the same blank material as the room itself. It stopped a few meters from the wall.

“Sit,” Michael said. “What you’re about to see is best viewed seated.”

Mark hesitated only a second, then walked over and lowered himself into the chair. The material softened beneath him, molding itself perfectly to the shape of his body.

The moment he settled, the wall opposite dimmed, turning into a screen from edge to edge. The room fell into a soft half-darkness; only Michael’s shifting mask continued to shimmer with that strange, liquid static.

“You insist you know nothing about Eliza Dahmer,” the voice now flowed from speakers hidden in the walls, surrounding Mark, sinking into him. “Let’s see if I can help you learn a little more.”

The screen flared awake.

Not a hologram — flat video, filmed from above. A sleek, expensive car rolled up to a restaurant, its neon blurred by rain. The camera zoomed in. Eliza stepped out. She was wearing an elegant evening dress — something she would never wear in the Ring. She was smiling. Beside her stood a young man in a flawlessly tailored suit. He laughed, leaned in, whispered something into her ear. Like everything in the City, he looked flawless, almost like a synthetic model. Then he took her hand, and together they walked into the building.

“That is Lucas Lanier,” Michael said. “Heir to the Lanier empire — the one everyone assumes really runs it. In reality, he’s nothing but Lily Thorne’s marionette.” He paused. “These clips come from Contour monitoring drones. They’re used to track subjects of special interest. We have all the recordings — and soon you’ll have full access.”

The feed shifted. Eliza and Lucas rode up in the elevator of a corporate-sector high-rise. Another cut — morning, a hotel corridor. The door swung open: Eliza stepped out, rumpled, stripped of her usual professional composure. Her expression carried the shadow of pleasure and the raw, drowsy fatigue that comes after a long night.

For a fraction of a second, her still frame — taken precisely at that moment — flickered on the screen, then vanished.

“My apologies for the rather... intimate material,” Michael said, a thin note of mockery sliding under his tone.

Mark’s breath caught in his throat. Not jealousy — a sickening sense of having been played. That night on the rooftop, which he had clung to as something real, was nothing but one more of her roles. A prophetess of chaos for a worn-out cop, a glittering socialite for a wealthy heir. Different masks for different games.

The image shifted again. The video trembled — the drone tailing Eliza. She walked through a narrow street in the Ring with a girl of about twenty beside her. The girl was crying, whispering something into Eliza’s ear. They entered a half-ruined building whose signage hung on rust-eaten chains. The drone slipped in after them.

Half-light. Concrete walls. Flickering strips of industrial lamps. Eliza and the girl stood in the center of an empty hall. The girl asked something — soft, hesitant — leaning closer. The next moment the movement changed — sharp, predatory.

Steel flashed. Eliza drove the blade into the girl’s chest and twisted it, as if winding up a mechanical clock. The camera closed in. The victim’s face was twisted in a silent scream. Eliza turned toward the drone, and in that split second the image tore apart with static, the connection collapsing into white noise.

“My apologies once again,” Michael said somewhere to Mark’s left. “Though for someone in your line of work, I doubt this is anything new.”

The video shifted for the third time. The Ring again — an abandoned warehouse, half-dark, dust hanging in the air like ash. A man sat at a table, his face disfigured and inked over with crude tattoos. One of the local bosses. She stood beside him.

“Narcotics aren’t my field,” Eliza said. Her voice carried clearly despite the distance. “But as a gesture of goodwill... I think we can at least try.”

She smiled — a smile that was not human.

Then the screen filled with cascading strings of numbers. Bank accounts. Millions, billions. Figures Mark couldn’t even process.

“These are anonymous pools linked to Miss Dahmer,” Michael commented. “Funds cycling every twelve hours to avoid tracing. We’ve tracked over a billion credits so far.”

He paused, and a map of the Ring appeared. A red point pulsed in a familiar place — the very heart of the Old City. It expanded outward until it swallowed the entire district. ‘Epicenter,’ read the caption.

“The latest recorded anomaly,” Michael explained. “It occurred while she was in the Ring.”

The world tightened around Mark’s skull like a band of iron, pulsing with each heartbeat. While he believed she was out of town — she had been in the Ring. Lying to him. Looking him in the eyes. “As you can see, Mark,” Michael said, and his words fell like a sentence, “we already know quite a lot.”

“What... what do you want from me?” Mark’s voice came out hoarse and hollow, as if spoken by an empty shell of a man.

The schematic smile returned to Michael’s virt-mask — blank and artificial, like the white room surrounding them.

“We want you to help us,” he said. His tone carried neither pleading nor command — only calm, measured certainty. “We have drones. They recorded the anomaly and the epicenter. But both in the City and in the Ring, there are places where signal drops or is deliberately jammed. BioTech facilities, for example. Which is why we need something more reliable. Access to her surroundings, her contacts, her conversations.”

He gave a barely perceptible nod, and a holo materialized in the air: a miniature device the size of a gnat, with fine filament legs and an almost invisible antenna. It looked like a tiny spider forged from silver and glass.

“Attach this to her skin. Completely painless. The microcrawler will record conversations and track the specific energy signatures of the anomaly.” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “It will allow us to pinpoint her location if she decides to make any... let us say, unsanctioned moves.”

Mark understood exactly what that meant — betrayal. He was meant to betray the woman who had opened his eyes to...

But the screen had shown her true face. A killer. A trafficker. And he — nothing but another object in her private collection.

“Why don’t you just access her cuff?” he finally asked.

“A very reasonable question,” Michael replied. “But in the Ring she doesn’t wear a wristband at all, and in the City she uses borrowed ones. Which is, of course, a serious crime. But she herself isn’t our only concern. We need her connections — and her information on the anomaly.”

Other people’s cuffs. Maybe he would’ve become just another one in her drawer. Something inside him cracked beyond repair, split clean through, and a part of Mark watched the whole scene from the outside — detached, emptied out, indifferent to everything.

The perfect City, sterile and immaculate, was dead. The living, chaotic Ring devoured itself. And she... she was worse than both of them.

He spoke now with the same detachment as Michael. His gesture — mechanical, like the borg's in the bar.

“I agree.”

Michael nodded approvingly, reached into the pocket of his uniform and produced a small metal object the size of a coin, handing it to Mark.

“Just press it lightly to her skin. The coating will dissolve on its own.”

Mark took it without even looking. A token of foreign power, accepted willingly.

“We’re pleased to work with you, Mark. It’s mutually beneficial,” Michael said. His voice sounded cold, like the music of the spheres. “It will allow you to keep your sanity and, more importantly, your life.”

“And you... who exactly are you?” Mark rasped.

“We call ourselves the Agency. You can use that name. Or invent another one,” Michael replied, not a trace of emotion in his voice.

“And what happens next?”

“When this is over, we can offer you a position in the Center. Our protection will be enough. You’ll be able to start over, right in the City. If you want to — even with your former partner, Diana. She’s a detective now.”

His words barely reached Mark’s mind. He was thinking of something else. Of the girl on the rooftop, of her words: “Kill them all.” And the truth was — now he was ready to kill.

Michael’s voice shifted.

“Don’t think of this as betrayal, Mark. Think of it as redemption — as a kind of deliverance.” His tone softened, intimate. “You don’t want to remain a puppet, do you? You want your job back, maybe even climb higher?”

Mark nodded. He wasn’t sure to whom he was nodding — to Michael or to his broken memory.

“Excellent.” The cold efficiency and control returned to Michael’s voice. “We’ll take you home. Act as though nothing happened. Your task is to plant the device. Good luck.”

The wall rippled again and slid aside, and Michael vanished. Two figures in black coveralls entered. They lifted Mark without a word, carrying him like a limp sack of meat. For a moment, he thought their masks were staring at him with a multitude of open, unblinking eyes.

A couple of hours later, they just dumped him out of the white van. He stood on wet asphalt under the fine, sticky, endless rain. Back where everything had begun — in the Ring.

He returned to the apartment. The door closed, and he stayed in the dark, listening to the throb of his own heart. He walked into the room. Dimness reigned inside, barely pushed back by the streetlights.

And he saw her.

Eliza stood with her back to him, a dark silhouette against the window. Her figure — so familiar — seemed at once intimate and alien. She turned with a glass in her hand, took a sip, her gaze — two different eyes — sliding over his features like a scanner.

“Where have you been, Mark?” Her voice carried neither curiosity nor surprise. “You look awful.”

Mark stepped forward, feeling the tiny tracker tug against the fabric of his pocket. He had to get close to her, take her hand, complete the task while he still had the chance.

“I... I was on a call,” Mark managed. “I want to talk, Eliza. Now.”

She took another sip. Her eyes were mirrored surfaces in which he couldn’t find himself. She watched him in silence, and Mark felt the tension coiling tighter and tighter.

“You weren’t on a call,” she said at last. “And you don’t want to talk. You’re afraid.”

Her calm, detached tone sounded so much like Michael’s that a chill crawled over Mark’s skin. Part of his mind stayed in the room; another fell straight into the void. She knows, whispered the indifferent voice inside him.

“I want to,” Mark insisted. “I want to talk about... us.”

The words sounded absurd, helpless.

Eliza set the glass on the dresser. The faint clink of glass on wood struck him as almost deafening in the stillness.

“Now?” She glanced briefly at her cuff — she must have put it on before leaving. “I have things to do today, Mark. I need to leave. I’ll be back tomorrow. Your conversation can wait, can’t it?”

She moved toward the door, and Mark reached out as though to hold her. This was his chance. Eliza paused.

“You’re so nervous today,” she said softly, almost gently.

Something else flickered in her eyes — something she usually kept buried: a shadow of sorrow. It stabbed through Mark with painful clarity, but he forced it down.

Without hesitating any longer, he stepped toward her. He had to act right now.

“Eliza, please,” he breathed, his voice dry and hushed. “Stay.”

Her shoulders lowered just a fraction, and Mark sensed it: she was torn not only because of him, but because of her own feelings.

“Not now, Mark. Not today,” she said tiredly.

So he simply pulled her into an embrace and kissed her. He felt no warmth — only the cold burn of the tracker’s casing in his palm. He didn’t even notice the moment it slipped into her skin. Now she was stitched into someone else’s design

Eliza didn’t return the embrace. She waited until he let go — without a word, without surprise. Only sorrow.

“Happy?” she said, a faint smile touching her lips. “See you.”

The door clicked shut behind her.

He stood in the middle of the room, his breath heavy, as if the air had been drained from his lungs. Outside, the rain had stopped, and its absence roared in his ears. He stared at the closed door.

He had done it. Betrayed her.

Now there was nothing left but to wait.