New data received from the system.
His consciousness returned slowly. Like a loading screen, vision first, then spatial awareness, then something resembling borders. The same infinite silver [The Mist]. But something had shifted in the resolution. As though someone had raised the fidelity by a single degree.
He turned his head. He could move it. A small thing, but it planted something close to confidence.
He tried to sense his body. No numbness. No pain. Only a feeling of edges, a frame marking where he ended and the void began.
He lay on a flat surface. Not a hospital bed, a gray platform suspended in nothing. Smooth and cold. Or so his mind translated the missing sensory data.
He looked down at himself. A pale gray garment with no buttons, no thread, no seams, as though skin had been poured over him. He reached out and touched the fabric. He saw the touch. He did not feel it.
Virtual reality. Fingers passing over a surface that refused to acknowledge them.
Then: a disturbance.
The [The Mist] rippled to his left. No one approached, a form condensed from nothing. Simply, it became present.
The contrast was stark. Against the trembling mist, the visitor appeared painfully high-definition, a man with calm features, silver hair falling in geometric precision, and turquoise eyes that radiated a steady inner light. He did not blink.
He screamed inward:
Who are you? Stay away from me!
The visitor's mouth did not move. But a voice bloomed at the center of his awareness, not from outside, but from the region that processes language, as though the words had been planted directly:
«Do not worry. I am here to help you.»
A violation. He had not spoken to him, he had spoken inside him.
He tried to rise. The frame existed, but the commands would not reach. He managed only to turn his head.
Where am I? What happened to me?
No voice escaped him. Only a thought bouncing off the walls of his consciousness.
Something in the visitor's features resembled a smile:
«Your condition is stabilizing. That is good.»
He tried to remember anything about his "condition." A white wall, solid and blank. No details. No accident. No name.
I am...
The thought faltered. His name was not forgotten, it was absent. As though the file had never loaded.
He gathered the fragments of his will and focused them into a single question, trying to push the thought toward the visitor the way the visitor had pushed into him, a faint electric current:
«Am I in a coma? Is this a [hospital]?»
A brief silence. Then:
«[hospital].»
He echoed the word with what seemed like distant amusement.
«You may call it that, if it brings you comfort. We do heal here. But we do not mend broken bones.»
The words settled inside his mind like stones dropping to the bed of a pool.
«Will I be able to move soon?»
«You are beginning to cohere. That is good. But you are spending too much energy on fear, my friend.»
A pause.
(And we do not believe in waste here.)
«Then what do you believe in?»
«You cannot ask it in the plural.»
Silence.
«Belief here comes from knowledge. Or from desire.»
Something in those words disturbed him. An error in the system, not in the words themselves, but in the logic they assumed:
The visitor regarded him. A moment longer than necessary. Something shifted behind those turquoise eyes, not surprise, but what appeared to be recalculation. Then:
«Your logic confirms that your mental state is stable.»
A pause.
«But you are speaking of doctrinal faith. Things here are... slightly different.»
He did not elaborate. He did not seem to intend to.
Listening, he studied the visitor's form again. Noticed the clothing, identical to his own. The same gray garment. The same absence.
If I am the patient and he is the doctor, why does he wear the patient's outfit?
Raf moved closer. His hand reached out and touched the place where a chest should have been. A wave of enforced stillness. As though someone had pressed the mute button on the noise of his fear. The ripples in [The Mist] quieted. His thoughts slowed. Not true calm, sedation.
«Rest now. The answers will come.»
Then Raf's hand moved to block his vision. Cold darkness. Comfortable.
He did not tell me my name.
He did not tell me where I am. He did not tell me anything.
He closed his eyes, or what remained of the idea of eyes, and did not resist.