​Chapter 14. Forget Her

Her question was simple, direct — and utterly impossible. After everything he’d told her about shifts and erasures in reality, she hadn’t asked about any of that. She went straight to the core — to the one thing at the heart of his pain and his obsession.

“What is she like?” Mark repeated, staring into his empty cup as if the answer might be hiding in the pattern of leaves at the bottom. “She showed me the world was a lie — and turned out to be the biggest lie of all. She’s a killer, as far as I know. A drug dealer. A billionaire. She lives double, triple lives — God only knows how many at once. For her, I was just a stone thrown into water. A tool she used.”

There was genuine bewilderment in his voice, as if he himself had only now realized he didn’t know the answer.

“Do I love her? I don’t know. Can you love a ghost on a rooftop who talked to you about... things? Can you love a nightmare if it’s the only reality you have left? I got attached to her the way a prisoner gets attached to his cell. She was the only key to my madness, and now I have neither key nor door.”

Mari’s visor caught the dull light of the lamp; her face remained unreadable, like a page torn from one of her ancient books. When he fell silent, she took a sip of tea.

“But you betrayed her,” she said. “Isn’t that why you’re here, in the Ring? You could have tried going back to the City, starting over. But you didn’t. You stayed. In the bar. In her apartment. You’re punishing yourself, Mark. It’s time you realized you need to move forward, not chase answers that have vanished. You are more than you think you are.”

Her words were a diagnosis — precise and absolutely correct. With a single merciless sentence, she sliced open his self-deception. He wasn’t hiding; he was serving a self-imposed sentence in the hell Eliza had built for him.

“Come,” Mari said softly. “I want to show you something.”

She led him up the creaking staircase to the roof. The snowfall had nearly stopped; the few large flakes drifted lazily in the streetlights, settling onto the black, rain-soaked surface of the roof. The world had gone quiet under a white shroud, and the City’s sounds were swallowed by the soft, cottony hush of snow.

They approached the edge, and a thick, nauseating déjà vu washed over him. The same rooftop and parapet, the same distant glow of the City’s towers. Mari was deliberately — almost theatrically — recreating that night. Only instead of pouring rain, there was gentle snow; instead of a demon-tempter, a half-blind bookseller.

“Forget her for a moment,” Mari whispered. “Forget the love, the betrayal, everything she did. Tell me — what do you want, Mark? Truly?”

Her question pulled the trigger. Something inside him, wound tight to breaking, finally snapped. Rage surged up — blind and boiling — at Lily for playing him; at Michael with his lying mask; at the dreams tearing his world apart; at Eliza, who had been all of that at once.

“Destruction,” he spat, breath steaming in the cold. “I want to burn everything to the ground. Their towers, their lies, this damned Ring... everything they built. To destroy it all and grind it into the dirt. Burn it down to the bare foundations.”

Lost in that fury, he didn’t notice the faint smile ghosted across Mari’s lips — subtle, invisible, full of quiet satisfaction.

“But I can’t let her go. I can’t,” Mark added after a long pause, voice hollow.

“Look,” Mari said, pointing toward the gleaming towers of the City. Mark shuddered at the gesture, at the eerie repetition. “You want to destroy their world. And what have you become in this fight? Everyone plays you — the corporations, those agents, Eliza, Lily... You’ve become their weapon, a stone thrown into water. You want to shatter someone else’s cage, but you don’t even try to step out of your own. Why don’t you take control for once?”

From the alley came drunken shouting. Two drunks, arms around each other, were bellowing some filthy song across the Ring — their chorus sounded like mockery, a jeer flung into the stillness of the empty streets.

Soon their hoarse, off-key voices faded somewhere around the corner. Mari’s words throbbed in his temples.

Why don’t you take matters into your own hands? That’s ridiculous.

“How?” he asked, turning away from the City. “How am I supposed to take anything into my own hands when I’m no one? They are corporations, they’re power. Borgs. Compared to them, I’m an insect. I don’t even know where to begin.”

“You begin by looking for information,” she replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Even ghosts leave traces. Especially digital ghosts.”

Her visor caught the reflection of distant lights as she stepped closer.

“You can’t fight the City on its home ground. But here, in the Ring, they don’t have absolute control. Here there are other forces. Here there is the Legion.”

Of course, he’d heard of the Legion. The white cross on black. The only syndicate with structure, with a code, the faction that dominated the Council of gangs.

“The leader of the Legion is Derek,” Mari continued. “He’s a veteran like you. The Legion controls all trade in the Ring. Derek is the one most likely to know about the borgs. He doesn’t like ghosts operating on his territory — especially those from the City. He can make inquiries with Major or Pops.”

She stepped very close, eclipsing the glow of the City behind her.

“I can arrange a meeting. If you’re ready to talk to a real person instead of your memories.”

Mari stood before him — a fragile silhouette against the winter sky. She was offering him something he hadn’t had in a very long time — a purpose. A chance. And, more frightening than anything — hope.

“Yes,” he said at last. “I’m ready.”

They descended from the roof into the quiet, warm apartment. Mark replayed his outburst and her strange proposal in his mind. He looked at her differently now, trying to see, behind the visor and the fragile frame, the person who spoke so easily about one of the most powerful men in the Ring.

“How do you know all this?” he asked. “About the Legion, about Derek? You’re not just a bookseller. Who are you, Mari?”

Mari poured more tea and turned to him.

“Books aren’t my real business, Mark,” she said gently. “It’s information. You think the only currency in the Ring is weapons and drugs? For pawns — yes. But the real players, the gang leaders — they’re after something else. They’re after power.”

She placed the cup in front of him.

“There are hundreds of small cults, sects, groups in the Ring. All of them believe that in old texts, in pre-war grimoires and rituals, there’s a key. A key to escaping this hell. To gaining strength and power. Esoterica is in high demand here. It’s a very profitable business.”

Sitting across from him, she watched him drink his tea.

“Derek is one of those who understands that real power lies not in weapons, but in knowledge. He’s not a collector or a hobbyist. He’s searching for answers. That’s why he’s my best and most trusted client.”

Her words seemed to hang in the cold, reflected in the snowy window. Mark stared at this fragile girl and tried to reconcile her appearance with what she was saying. A purveyor of forbidden knowledge to the most dangerous men in the Ring. His mind refused to accept it.

“So all this... esoterica — it isn’t just nonsense?” he asked, nodding toward the shelves packed with ancient books. “What is someone like Derek looking for in them?”

“He’s looking for the same thing all my clients are looking for, Mark. Another explanation. A way out. A means to step beyond, to gain power, to ascend. They believe the world isn’t what it seems — and they hope the answers are written on these pages.”

She gestured lightly at the bookcases.

The rage that had boiled in Mark on the rooftop finally burned itself out, leaving behind an abyss. He was empty. His world destroyed, his feelings a lie, his hatred powerless. And the truth — what was this world, really?

“What’s happening to me?” he asked, and the question sounded like a plea. “All these shifts, the voices... what is it really?”

Mari’s sharp knees were almost touching his leg.

“Long ago, in ancient Indian texts,” she began slowly, “they said that our world is maya — an illusion. We’re all dreaming the same dream — shared, detailed, and therefore convincing. In that dream we’re born, we live, we die.”

She drew invisible patterns on the table with her fingertip.

“But sometimes... someone begins to see their own dream. Wakes up inside the shared one, lives in their own world. And if their will is strong enough, the borders between dreams thin out. A personal dream seeps into the common one, like ink into water, changing the rules for everyone nearby. Such people gain power. They reshape the world however they please. The old texts had many names for them: asuras, pishachas, a hundred other titles. In other teachings, they’re called demons.”

It sounded insane, yet there was a logic in that insanity.

“Demons... they shape their own reality,” Mari went on, more quietly. “They learn to make their dream as real as the shared one. They impose their will, their dreams, on others. They want to become new gods — dreaming a new world into existence.”

Seeing how tense and intent his face had become, she suddenly laughed — light, almost childlike.

“Don’t take it too seriously,” she said, shattering the entire mystical mood. “I’m just repeating what I’ve read. I have a lot of this sort of literature here, and evenings in the Ring are unbearably dull.”

Outside, the storm gathered strength again, turning into a full blizzard. The wind howled through the old flue, and the lone streetlamp in the alley flickered twice before dying for good. The room fell into complete darkness, lit only by the faint glow of Mari’s visor and the restless glitter of snow. It was long past midnight.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for dreams — any dream, even a shared one,” Mari said, and there was a hint of weariness in her voice.

“Yes, it’s late,” Mark said abruptly, rising to his feet. A wave of alienation washed over him — he felt out of place, unnecessary. “I should go. Thanks for the tea.”

“Go where?” She turned toward him, and her visor seemed to look straight into his soul. “There’s a blizzard out there. You’ll freeze. Stay.”

She offered it the same way she had offered tea earlier, without flirtation and without hidden meaning.

And he stayed.

Mari made up the old, worn sofa for him, brought him a blanket that smelled of dusty books and something else — faintly sharp, like dried herbs. He lay down without undressing, watching her silhouette move across the dark room before disappearing behind the door.

In this strange, quiet apartment at the heart of the Ring’s chaos, he lay listening to the wind howl outside. For the first time in weeks, he didn’t feel like a hunted animal or a ghost. He didn’t know who Mari was — a savior or a manipulator — but beside her, the world had stopped tearing itself apart.

As he drifted toward sleep, he expected the usual heavy nightmare.

But only silence came.