New data received from the system.
Faceless figures. Severed voices. The flash of a reaching hand, then nothing. Fragments. Not dreams, less than dreams. Signals cut from a source he could not remember.
My memory is damaged. That is the clearest explanation.
But the isolation was no longer complete. Raf's words — or his planted thoughts — had left a trace. A thin thread connecting him to the idea that an outside existed.
He focused on the platform beneath him.
I exist.
The platform was solid. More solid than he remembered.
He could move at last. He sat up. Raised his focus toward the gray horizon. And froze.
The [The Mist] was not empty.
Shadows. Dozens, perhaps hundreds. Swimming in every direction, on every plane, to the edge of the horizon. Some drifting slowly, others suspended like pillars of smoke. Varying in size and density. They were nothing like Raf. They were closer to poor television reception, images assembling and disintegrating, assembling and disintegrating.
One passed nearby. It resembled a child running. Its legs were smoke. Its face was white void. Then he caught something, not a sound. Closer to a stray data packet, floating through the ether:
(Mama?)
A single word. Not directed at him, it had leaked.
Was it because I looked at him?
Another shadow passed. Larger. Moving with slow heaviness, dragging a tail of gray mist behind it.
(I missed the train... the ticket is in my pocket... where is my pocket?)
A broken loop. The same thought circling without exit.
Are these ghosts? Or something else?
Curiosity — or loneliness — drove him to try. He fixed his attention on the shadow of the man and the ticket. Held his awareness on it like aiming a searchlight into darkness.
The shadow turned.
The void where a face should have been began to form, angry features, distorted, shifting like an image that could not settle on a frequency.
(Are you the inspector?)
The thought reached him like metal scraping glass.
(I paid the price! Don't take me!)
And the shadow lunged. Two disintegrating hands extending.
Crushing pressure. The world closing in. Instinctively — he contracted. Pulled his awareness inward. Cut everything.
The shadow retreated. Became mist again. Became nothing.
Silence.
Carefully, like withdrawing a hand from water he knew held something alive, he returned his gaze to his immediate surroundings.
Only then did he notice his bed. It was not a bed. A surface suspended over nothing. No supports beneath. No floor. No visible end in any direction. Mist below, above, and around, the only frame the world possessed. And stranger still: no weight. No resistance. When he sat or lay, his body translated no mass. As though the laws of falling had been revoked, or as though the body itself were a thought pretending to be matter.
Then Raf appeared. Did not approach, condensed. With what seemed a faint smile:
«Adam. You look better, my friend.»
Adam. That is my name? Why does it not feel familiar?
He tried to respond calmly:
«Thank you. Though I do not understand the nature of this care. No medical instruments. Nothing in this place, except you, the shadows, and this suspended bed.»
«You see them as shadows. I see friends.»
Silence.
«You will come to know them. I must leave you now, the Engineer needs to know you are ready.»
«The Engineer? You are the doctor and he is the Engineer.»
Something in the absurdity of the titles disturbed him.
«Is this some kind of game?»
Raf's features did not change:
«A charming irony that you mention the idea of a game.»
Then, with steadier tone:
«Your priority now: rest.»
And he departed. Did not walk, swam. Dissolved into the fabric of shadows like a drop of ink in an ocean of ash.
Adam remained alone on his suspended surface. Watching the place where [The Mist] had been.
He extended his hand. Touched the garment. The platform. The void around him. No texture. No warmth. No cold.
There are no bolts or gears. But there is a system. This bed is not magic. There is an explanation. And I will find it.