New data received from the system.
He turned his gaze slowly in every direction. The shadows varied in clarity, some defined enough to distinguish human forms, and some barely there.
Clarity scaled with distance. The nearer, the sharper.
The first thing in this place resembling a law. A thread he could pull.
Then silence.
Not a hospital silence, that has a texture. Machines. Breathing. Footsteps. The hospital silence says: you are in a place that cares for you.
This silence said nothing at all.
He tried to remember. Stretched his will toward the darkness behind his forehead. Nothing. Not a void, a locked room with light leaking from beneath its door. He knew that he knew things. He just could not access them.
Then the pressure changed.
Not in the air. In the density. The void around him grew heavier, as though something massive were approaching from the other side of a wall he could not see. And the stray shadows, those shapes whose presence he had grown used to, fled. They scattered in every direction like schools of fish that had caught the shadow of something they knew.
Two shadows condensed. One to his right and another to his left. Calculated movement. A flanking maneuver.
To his right: exceptionally tall. Heavily muscled. Thick features. Hair chopped military-short, leaning toward the color of snow. Narrow eyes that revealed nothing. He took his position and did not move.
To his left: shorter. Shaved head. A broad forehead and a jaw designed to absorb impact. Eyes that read and classified before speaking.
«Adam.»
Not a question. Not a greeting. An establishment of presence. His voice was not like Raf’s, that had been a warm current that slipped in and knocked before entering. This dropped from above and settled at the bottom of his awareness. A weight.
«I am Mike. This is Gabi.»
No smile. No preamble.
«Raf says you are improving. I came to see for myself.»
Adam tried to steady his inner voice:
«What is this place?»
«Not a hospital.»
Direct. As if waiting for the question.
«Raf said...»
«Raf said what the patient needs to hear. I don't treat people like patients.»
Silence. Then:
«This place doesn't have just one name. Everyone who arrives names it according to what they can comprehend. Raf called it a hospital because that’s what you needed. But you don't need it anymore.»
«Then what is it?»
«A [transit station]. A place of transit.»
«Transit to where?»
«That depends on you.»
Adam swallowed his next question. Not because he didn’t have it, but because ten questions crowded in at the exact same moment.
«These shadows everywhere, what are they?»
Mike looked around. The look of someone inspecting an inventory he knew by heart:
«Transients. Like you.»
«Like me.»
«Like you.»
The word grew heavier upon repetition. Adam held onto the thread:
«But they're different from me. Some are barely visible. Some move in loops. And I...»
«You are clear.» Mike said it like reading a number off a screen. «Clearer than you should be for someone in your time.»
«My time?»
«The duration you've spent here.»
«How long have I spent?»
«The question has no answer in the way you imagine. Time here does not function as you know it.»
Gabi intervened. For the first time, something moved in that statue. His voice was rock falling upon rock:
«Hold yourself together, boy. Those are common symptoms.»
The first word — hold together — vibrated in his awareness with a weight disproportionate to its size. As though it were not merely advice.
«Symptoms of what?»
Gabi continued in the exact same tone:
«Symptoms of [Arrival].»
«[Arrival]. To a [transit station]. Without memory. Without a body. Surrounded by shadows.»
Adam stopped himself. Then pushed:
«You know what happened to me. Why won't you say it?»
Mike looked at him. A look that lingered longer than it should. Then:
«Because the information is not the problem. Your comprehension of it is the problem.»
«That is not your decision.»
«It is exactly my decision.»
Firmness. Not cruelty, but authority. The authority of someone who knows that the wrong word at the wrong time breaks more than it builds.
«Then tell me one thing.» Adam tried to sound calm. He didn't completely succeed. «Why am I "clearer than I should be"? What makes me different from these shadows?»
A longer silence this time. Mike and Gabi exchanged something, not words, but a silent confirmation, like someone who had had this conversation a hundred times and knew where it ended.
«Because you ask.»
«Everyone asks.»
«No.» Mike said slowly. Like explaining to a smart child something that seems simple but isn't.
«Most scream. Or pray. Or stop thinking completely. Those are reactions. You are not reacting. You are dismantling the place.»
«Dismantling it.»
«You look for the rules. You notice the clarity changes with distance. You notice there is no sound. You notice the bed has no supports.» He looked at him. «Raf told me. And I have seen enough.»
Something stirred in Adam's chest, not pride. Something older than pride. The feeling of being seen. That someone had read what he was doing and understood it.
«But this intelligence...» Mike continued, and his tone changed. Became heavier. «...is a double-edged sword here. The mind that dismantles, can also dismantle itself.»
«What does that mean?»
«It means that your doubt is not a psychological problem. Here, doubt carries weight. Contradiction has a price. What you believe in, or do not believe in, is not an opinion. It is...» He searched for the word. Or pretended to search. «The [infrastructure].»
«The [infrastructure] for what?»
«For your existence.»
Two words. They settled at the bottom of his awareness like a stone in a well.
«What I believe in is my [infrastructure]. What I believe in is what keeps me existing.»
He looked down at his hands, or where his hands should be. Then at the distant shadows. Distorted. Dissolving.
«Are they distorted because they do not believe enough?»
«Look,» said Mike. As if he had read the thought, or as if the thought had been clear enough to leak:
«You are asking the right questions. But not now.»
«When?»
«When you prove you can carry the answer without breaking.»
«How do I prove that?»
«That's what we are going to find out.»
Then he stood, or did the equivalent of standing in a place with no floor:
«Rest. We will return.»
And he moved to leave.
«Wait.»
He pushed the thought with everything he had:
«Who brought me here?»
Mike did not answer.
«Have you told my family?»
Mike stopped. He didn't turn around. The second stretched.
And Gabi, the silent statue who had only spoken two sentences the entire visit, moved. He turned toward Adam. And for the first time, he saw something in those narrow eyes. Not pity. Closer to acknowledgment.
Then Mike's voice came. From farther away than it should have been. Like it was rising from the bottom of a deep well:
«They all know.»
Three words.
Then he extinguished.
He didn't melt away the way Raf did — that was a merciful dissolving. This was different. One moment he existed. The next: nothing. As if someone had switched off a lamp. Gabi with him. Presence. Void. No gradation.
And the silence that returned was not like the silence that preceded it.
They all know.
He repeated it. Turned it over. Dismantled it like dismantling a line of corrupted code.
"They all" — who? His family? It meant he had family. A household waiting. A life that existed.
"Know" — know what? That he is here? That he is sick? That he is in a "transit station"?
"They all know" is not the sentence of a doctor reassuring a patient.
"They all know" is a sentence of condolence.
And condolences aren't offered to the living.
Something deep trembled. Not a body — there was no body to tremble. The thought itself trembled.
No. Not yet. Do not finish this sentence.
But Mike had said something else. Something still buzzing:
What you believe in is the [infrastructure] of your existence.
And the shadows — the distorted, the dissolving ones, wandering in their broken loops — are they like that because their [infrastructure] collapsed?
Three times now he'd been switched off like a screen. Three times they decided when he sleeps and when he wakes.
But he was starting to see something.
This isn't a hospital. Mike said so. Not a prison. Not a lab.
But it is a system. It has a shepherd who calms. An engineer who evaluates. A guard who watches. And transients who vanish if they don't possess enough... what? What keeps them?
«Hold yourself together, boy.»
The phrase returned. Gabi had said it as advice. But it echoed in his head like a diagnosis. Or a prescription. Or a law.
Hold together.
And the darkness began to descend. He did not fight it. Not out of surrender — but because there was enough to work on when he woke.
Mike's closed answers. Gabi's final glance. The [infrastructure]. The station. The transit.
And «They all know.»
Who am I to them?
What does everyone know that I don't?
And why are they afraid I'll find out?
He closed his eyes — or whatever remained of the idea of eyes.
The three words did not stop turning.
They all know.
And I am going to find out.