03 – A Meeting of the Minds

The asylum hadn’t changed since Erika last visited. A liminal space of branching hallways and corridors stretched off in every direction. Old hardwood floors warped in a way that gave the ground texture, with occasional hard bumps that made Daniel stumble. The occasional incandescent bulbs dangling from a lone cable were the only sources of light, making the shadows loom large in every corner.

Stopping at one intersection, Erika looked down the darkened hallway and tried to count the bulbs. She got to twelve before they started blurring together in a thin, faint line of light that faded into the darkness. It was the same in the other direction. This was the eighth intersection they passed.

“You guys must blow your budget on lightbulbs every few months,” she said, taking a few quick steps to catch up with the group. “Have you considered switching to LEDs? They last longer.”

“Brighter too,” Daniel murmured as he shuffled forward, trying to avoid stumbling again.

The Butler looked up, blinking like it was the first time she had seen a lightbulb. “Do other people change their lightbulbs?”

“Normally, yes,” Erika said with a slight sigh. “Wouldn’t be surprised if they never go out in this place. Where’d you people dig it up from anyway?”

“The lightbulb?”

“No, the—”

The Butler turned and half-smiled, eyes mirthful.

“Fine,” Erika said, giving her a flat look. “Keep your secrets. I’ll figure out how to get my own pocket dimension all by myself.”

The Prescient snorted. “Wouldn’t recommend that,” he said in a lighter tone—not quite as sunny as he had been before getting manhandled into the van, but not quite as sedate as the last time Erika saw him. “The only reason we’re not lost and stranded here is because of The Mind. Most people who wander into places like this never find their way out.”

The Stalker made a squeaky, whiny noise at Erika’s side. “It’s making me sick,” she muttered, looking left and right despite there being nothing around. Her eyes kept flicking to their shimmery state before returning back to normal. “I don’t like this place.”

“What’s wrong?” Erika asked, touching her elbow.

She jolted, hopped aside, and stared at Erika for a long moment. Her eyes carried a look of frustration, shimmering on full blast. She finally shook her head, blinking away her power. “This place is messing with my power. Do you think they’re in front of us right now? Do you think you’re next to me?”

Erika glanced around. The group stopped at The Stalker’s outburst, leaving The Butler and The Prescient a few steps ahead of Erika, Daniel, and The Stalker. Erika met each of their eyes, double checking, then shrugged. “I’d say yes, but I’m assuming you’ll disagree?”

“You’re all sliding around. Not even moving your feet—it’s like you’re standing on skateboards, moving in different directions without even knowing it.” Her eyes shimmered again, head trailing off to the side. As soon as she shut off her power, she snapped back to Erika again. “But then you’re here.”

The Prescient chuckled. “I warned you. Nobody listens to me.”

The Stalker bared her teeth, but hopped away when Erika reached out to her again.

“Maybe you’ll feel better when we get inside,” The Butler said. Of the many, many, nearly identical doors lining every hallway in this place, she picked one and paused in front of it, frowning like she wasn’t sure if she should knock or not. With a shrug, she pushed open the door.

Erika stepped into a laboratory. Not a modern, sleek, clean lab, but a real mad-scientist, ripped-from-a-cartoon type of place. Tubes of bubbling, colored liquids lined one wall, dripping from tiny nozzles into a larger vat with spatulas hooked to a spinning flywheel. A massive silver sphere hung high overhead, crackling as electricity jumped to thick coils set above five tall tanks, each filled with murky green liquid. Twitching mechanical spider-limbs stuck out of a large pool of more green liquid, open to the air. A metal slab with restraints oriented for a human hung from chains over the pool; the chains went up to a pulley system before branching down to a pair of cranks.

Knowing everything she knew about The Castle, Erika wasn’t as shocked as she might have been. This seemed like something right up their alley.

“The Doctor’s laboratory?” Erika asked, nudging Daniel as he stopped to gape.

“Partially,” The Butler said, looking around the room like she didn’t often get to come inside. “A collaborative effort with The Gadget.”

Erika suppressed a grimace, shooting a nervous glance around. The Gadget was obviously not present… she would have been tackled to the ground with a contraption shoved in her face along with a lengthy, breathless explanation that she wouldn’t begin to understand.

There was no sign of The Doctor either. In fact, the whole laboratory, despite being filled with stuff and motion, managed to maintain that vacant, liminal space feel of the rest of the asylum.

“This way,” The Butler said, gesturing toward an archway on the far side of the room. She started walking, then paused and glanced back. “It should be obvious, but I’d refrain from touching anything.”

The Stalker’s arm snapped to her side, pulling back from a fishtank filled with six-armed starfish plastered against the glass, disturbingly human-looking eyes in their centers.

Daniel hopped back to Erika’s side at the same moment, jumping away from the crushed fragments of a skull, partially reassembled and dangling from wires attached to a pyramid of metal bars.

Erika just gave him a look. She expected flippancy from The Stalker, but Daniel too?

“Children,” she muttered, following after The Butler.

The room beyond was smaller than the laboratory, circular with wires and cables dangling from the walls, with one dominating feature in the center: a tall vat of clear, bubbling liquid. Erika couldn’t find the mildest of surprise within her at the sight of a brain suspended in the liquid from thin wires.

When the two eye stalks sticking out from under the brain swiveled to face her, she may have let out a slight yelp.

If anyone asked, she would blame Daniel.

“The Mind,” Erika said as realization hit her. “Of course it’s a giant brain in a jar. You guys aren’t much more creative with your names than Rick…”

“I am not particularly larger than an average brain.”

The words wormed their way into Erika’s mind. She could practically feel them squirming their way through her gray matter. The more she thought about how that worked, the more she squirmed in discomfort.

“Sorry.” The Mind melded her thoughts into speech. “Still tuning for a little collective thinking.”

The Stalker went for her gun, reaching for her holster, but her fingers closed around empty air—The Butler moved faster than a woman of her size ought to, snatching the gun right out from under The Stalker’s grip.

“No firearms in the presence of The Mind, sorry.”

“You bitch—”

“Stalker,” Erika said, grabbing her girlfriend’s arm before she could start something they would all regret. “Let’s not start a fight in the weird endless pocket dimension.”

The Stalker ground her teeth, audibly. “You could break us out.”

“Probably, but I’d rather not have to.”

“Sorry,” The Mind apologized again, this time with words just brushing the inside of Erika’s ear. “Never tuned to an… is it undead? Hard to tell. It is a bit different than I expected. Is this better?”

The Stalker didn’t respond with anything more than a harsh glare, eyes flickering between her shimmer and normal.

“Better for me, at least,” Daniel said, wiggling his knuckle around in his ear. “It tickles, but it might be my imagination?”

“Same,” Erika said, slowly relaxing. The voice no longer picked apart at the inside of her head, at least. She glanced around, frowning at The Prescient and The Butler before returning her gaze to the brain in the vat. Neither of them looked bothered by what was going on. “I trust there is a reason for all this?”

“The Director wished to meet with you,” The Prescient said, “regarding future operations. He doesn’t want to get on The Stalker’s radar though, so we have to meet through a proxy.”

“Fucking whiny-ass bitch should suck it up and face us like a man,” The Stalker growled, still glaring at the brain.

“With your skills,” Erika said, glancing back to The Prescient again, “I’m sure you could have arranged something when The Stalker wasn’t around.”

“She would have followed you, snooped around, and made a bigger mess. She follows you around a lot more than you think.”

The Stalker did not have a pulse, but with Erika’s hand still on her arm, she felt The Stalker stiffen at that accusation.

Erika, for her part, guessed something along those lines, even from before the pool hall. “She is called The Stalker,” Erika said with a mild shrug, before sliding her gaze over to The Stalker. “As long as she’s abiding by the rules we set out…”

The Stalker gave a quick, jerky nod of her head.

“Good. Then there are no problems.”

The way The Stalker relaxed made Erika wonder if there was something else they should be discussing, but really, she expected this. Or, rather, she expected this after a short but enlightening conversation with Anna on the topic of parasocial dependency, and how The Stalker might have had some kind of trauma in her life that wouldn’t let her act differently.

Erika often wondered if she could break that somehow, or if Carter could steal it away, but then she wondered about the morality of doing so. Would The Stalker still be The Stalker if they picked her apart like that? Or would they just be crafting someone completely different?

Psychosurgery… was a bit of a frightening concept, she decided.

“Okay,” The Mind announced, barely sounding different than a voice on Erika’s shoulder. “I believe we are ready. Let’s have a meeting of the minds.”

Erika blinked.

She sat in a large, wingback chair made from red leather with deep tufts. The cushions squeezed under her weight, cradling her. Shocked, Erika stood, planting her hands on a mahogany meeting table. The surface wasn’t fully smooth, grooved and grained with the texture of real wood.

But her eyes weren’t on the table or the array of chairs lining it.

Erika stared up, mouth agape, as the table, seats, and all their occupants drifted through a void. Nebulae twisted and spiraled around, stars dotted the blackness, and a burning red sun dominated the head of the table without the blinding light that should have come from such a thing.

The sun framed The Director in the end seat, legs crossed, with his hands clasped together on his knee. His dark hair was slicked back over his head and his suit looked far more expensive than the one Erika previously saw him in. He smiled, meeting Erika’s eyes, then turned to survey the rest of the table. He started with his immediate right, where a second, identical copy of The Director sat, though in a less relaxed pose. The Second Director leaned forward over the table, back straight, with his hands resting flat on the surface. This Director’s hair was a bit messier than the first—he had run a comb through it, parting it neatly, but didn’t put any other product in it before letting it dry as it was.

Both of them looked far too small for their chairs.

Something sat in the seat opposite from The Second Director, but Erika couldn’t actually see it. A haze in the vague shape of a person made slight indents in the tufted cushions.

The Doctor and The Butler sat side by side, unbalancing the table by being the two largest people present. The Doctor was more wide than tall, head dipped forward as his chest lightly raised and lowered like he was in the midst of a calm, peaceful nap. The Butler wore her trademark tuxedo, looking exactly as she had just moments ago in the laboratory.

Across from them, The Orderly sat poised and precise, dressed in her nurse regalia complete with her surgical mask over her mouth. Her six-pointed eyes surveyed the table, stopping at Erika long enough to give Erika a brief jolt of unease.

The Maid, between The Orderly and Erika, patted down all the pockets on her white apron with her expression bordering on panic. “Where’s my phone?” she chirped out, thumping her hands on the table as she glared up toward the head. “You forgot my phone!”

“You can manage without it for a subjective half hour,” The Second Director said with a withering sigh.

“That’s not—” The Maid slumped as literal thunderclouds formed over her head like she got depressed in some old cartoon. Erika stared, but found her attention ripped away by a hyperactive squeal.

“Oh boy! Oh boy, oh boy!”

Erika snapped her gaze across the table to find The Gadget vibrating in his seat.

“Hi,” he said, waving his hand rapidly. “You’re back. I wanted to talk to you again. I designed a whole new tattoo gun I wanted to show you. I figured out how to make tattoos move and sometimes even talk but the talking isn’t working quite right because the words come out in one long unbroken sentence and it isn’t even a sentence I can understand but The Mind says—”

The Butler’s heavy hand settled on his shoulder, stilling his vibration and words with a firm grip. “Not now,” she said softly, offering Erika a smile.

Daniel, seated next to The Gadget, stared off into the distant space. “What the fuck?” he said, echoing Erika’s feelings on the matter. A realization that she wasn’t sure she had heard him swear before almost got Erika to comment.

The Stalker yelped and groaned, sounding like someone kicked her in the shins, but she clamped her hands over her eyes instead. “Shit, fuck, cunt, bastard—”

“Sorry,” The Second Director said. The table bowed slightly, letting him look down the line without having to lean halfway over the table. “Wasn’t sure how to translate your power. I’d avoid using it.”

“You took my power?”

“I didn’t touch your power, which is why you don’t have it.”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Erika frowned at The Stalker, hands still clasped to her eyes, before turning her attention to her own hand. She couldn’t feel her armory at all, and the watch on her wrist was not on her wrist, giving her a jolt of panic—one which she didn’t actually feel, like her head knew she should be feeling adrenaline but the body forgot to turn it on. She balled her fist, about to test anyway, only for the flat of The Director’s cane to catch her by the forearm.

“Please desist,” he said, voice calm. “There are only three outcomes: your powers fail as The Stalker’s did; you succeed in damaging this environment, potentially giving The Mind an aneurysm in the process; or you break all of our psyches and we all end up as vegetables. Given the potential consequences, I’d ask you to refrain.”

Erika stared down at him, wondering why her heart didn’t feel like it was racing at him stopping her like that. He lowered his cane, planting it in the void, with his other hand moving to the small of his back. She hadn’t even seen him move from his chair. When she looked down the table, he was there, seated at the head. The Second Director was still in his seat as well.

Looking down at her side again, she found The Director gone.

“Okay… Someone want to explain?”

Daniel breathed out, hard and heavy, feeling his breath with his own hand. “It isn’t real.” He tried to hold his breath, but only managed a few seconds before shaking his head. “But the mind makes it real? Or… The Mind makes it real.”

“You said the same thing twice,” The Gadget said, tone earnest and helpful.

Daniel stared a moment before looking up and down the table, bringing Erika’s attention to the final two seats. The Prescient sat separated from The Castle for some reason, next to Daniel, as did a woman that Erika couldn’t recall having seen before. The pale woman with somewhat stringy black hair almost made Erika ask if The Stalker had a twin.

“It’s a meeting of the minds,” Daniel said, a little more excited. “Get it? We’re not here. They’re not here. The background is all fantastical, but I bet it could be anything The Mind wants to imagine… right?” he asked, directing his question to the table.

“Astute,” The Director said with a nod. Before Erika could ask if this whole ordeal was just to protect against The Stalker’s power, he chuckled and shook his head. “More importantly, here, we can all be assured of our identities. There is no chance of an impostor present.”

“Among…” Daniel trailed off, ears tinging red for some reason.

Erika found that an odd reaction. She couldn’t feel her heartbeat but he could get embarrassed?

“The Mind can’t be fooled?” Erika asked, deciding not to bring up blush—for now. “No mistakes?”

“None,” The Director confirmed. “The Mind has a direct connection to all of The Castle, and while the connection to you is not as whole, it is enough to know you are who you say you are.”

“Then why are there two of you?”

The two Directors looked at one another. The Second Director stood, bowing slightly. “Hello. I’m The Mind.”

Erika and Daniel shared a look, the latter raising his eyebrows. “You look a little different…” she said.

“There was a problem in the cloning procedure,” The Doctor said, head still nestled in the crook of his shoulder. He breathed out, long and slow and heavy. “While the body decayed, we saved The Mind.”

The Director nodded his head. “At the time, the only person I truly trusted was myself.”

“We took that a bit literally,” The Mind added.

“I see…” Erika decided she very much did not see, and had more than one thought that she probably shouldn’t think around The Mind. Then again, The Mind probably already knew that she thought everyone at this table was insane.

The Mind offered a wan smile, doing nothing to object to her internal opinion.

“Well, I know all of you—except the woman at the end—so I suppose introductions for The Stalker and Daniel? Would you—”

“Pardon, sorry,” The Butler said, looking embarrassed she interrupted, but she carried on nonetheless. “You don’t know her?” She waited a second before looking down the table at The Director and The Mind. “Do we know her?”

“She came in with The Agent,” The Mind offered, leading to everyone turning their heads down to the opposite end of the table.

The woman at the end barely seemed to notice, too busy staring at her own hand as if it were the strangest thing in existence. She lightly pulled at her straight black hair, tugged at her dress, prodded the table, and finally turned her head up to the watching crowd, hair draped over her face and covering her eyes. She opened her mouth, but just couldn’t speak.

Slowly, as Erika stared a little harder, some recognition tingled in the back of Erika’s mind. Vague and faint, but now that she thought of it, she grew more and more certain.

“I told you I had never tuned an undead before,” The Mind added.

“She’s the hitchhiking ghost,” Erika muttered to herself as realization hit.

The ghost lifted her eyes, met Erika’s gaze, and dropped her head to focus on the table.