07 – i – The Mind

The massive man, suspended on wires and chains within a fragile glass cube, itself suspended over a bottomless pit leading to the depths of The Castle’s asylum, turned his head the moment The Mind looked in on him. He always did. Most of his bones were still broken, and enough sedatives to kill an elephant coursed through his veins, and still… he knew.

The Mind held his gaze a moment longer than was comfortable, then looked away.

The rest of The Castle required attention.

The corridors of The Castle twisted and branched in an endless labyrinth of liminal space. Two servitors exited The Gadget’s quarters one after another yet found themselves at opposite ends of the asylum. With a subtle twist of space, the central nervous system of The Castle redirected their absolute positions; The Mind cut their travel time down to mere instants, placing both directly in front of The Castle’s exit. Neither noticed the brief moment in which they were apart.

From their perspective, they simply stepped out into the corridor, walked to the next door over, and found themselves exiting into Chinatown. They would wander, gather food, medical equipment, and other supplies, then return without ever realizing they had nearly become permanently lost.

Not that servitors were particularly cognizant of their surroundings to begin with. The Gadget was talented, but the Artificial-class beings they created lacked that spark.

The workday ended well. The Gadget lounged on their couch, fiddling with upgrades for their paintbrush—trying to replicate digital smudge and blur tools on their physical brush, a project The Mind found quietly charming.

Across the asylum, The Doctor sat hunched over archaic medical tomes so worn from use that only bare threads held them together. The Orderly endured one of The Maid’s increasingly embellished recounting of an outing with stoic patience. As for The Butler, she curled up on a couch in the library, paging through a Regency-era bodice ripper with a heavy blush on her cheeks.

The Mind couldn’t detect The Director or The Bodyguard, both within the former’s shielded quarters. Whatever they worked on was for The Director’s eyes alone… though a ping on The Gadget’s computer system, requesting they join a gaming party, meant they weren’t working as much as one might expect.

Although unable to participate in most casual activities, The Mind enjoyed that others enjoyed their time off. Too many people—especially those of a supernatural persuasion—wound up locked in on their various fixations. Convincing The Director to stop plotting for a few hours every now and again had been the project of years. The Doctor was still a work in progress.

Captured maggot-men tested the bars with repeated gnawing, wearing down their sharp teeth more than the hardened metal of their cells. An aberrant test subject chipped away at a concrete wall, flaking off small bits of dust with each strike of its hammer-like arm. Biomechanical avians feasted on a rotted cow carcass like cavemen served up a Michelin Star meal, ripping bits and pieces from the bones.

All routine. All expected.

Finally, The Mind returned his attention to the prize guest, The Monk.

The man couldn’t move, of course, not more than small twitches. Once again, the moment The Mind spied on him, he performed one of those small twitches, almost like he was teasing. He knew he had an audience and set out a dare to do something about it.

If The Mind could shudder, he would have.

“No problems, I hope?”

With a light telekinetic push, The Mind’s mind shifted in his tank, glad for the reprieve in its duties. Reorienting to point his eyestalks toward the door, he stared down at the final member of The Castle.

The Prescient stood in a dour mood, tonight more than usual. Even without The Mind’s insight, The Prescient frequently wore his emotions in his posture.

“I am watching for the signs you warned of,” The Mind answered, projecting thoughts directly into The Prescient’s mind. “As of now, everything is as it was yesterday, as it was the day before that, and the day prior as well.”

The Prescient took the good news poorly, wrinkling his nose and grinding his teeth. “It won’t stay like that forever. I just wish I knew when.”

“The future is a fickle thing,” The Mind replied, radiating amusement. “As you should well know.”

“I know,” The Prescient growled, pacing back and forth in front of The Mind’s vat.

The Mind waited. This was routine—The Prescient grew more agitated the longer one of his predictions went unfulfilled, convinced that delay meant magnitude. It didn’t. The Mind had the data to prove it, but data rarely won an argument against emotion.

Empirical evidence from previous prophecies proved no correlation between the making and the passing of the prediction and the prediction’s magnitude, but evidence did little to downplay emotions.

“Would you prefer if I helped?”

The Prescient stopped in his tracks, genuinely considering the offer. He remained silent for a full minute, during which The Mind performed another quick check over the rest of The Castle, before he finally shook his head.

“No. This isn’t traumatic, just… I’m anxious. Something is going to happen.”

“It is perfectly normal to worry about the future,” The Mind consoled, feeling like a therapist in The Prescient’s presence, as usual.

“Normal people probably don’t worry about apocalypses every other week.”

“You might be surprised,” The Mind said with a mental equivalent of a wan smile. “The uncertainty builds that anxiety. You may know more than the average person, but you still don’t know everything.”

The Prescient shook his head. After a glance at his watch, he visibly relaxed. “I suppose we’re good for at least one more day.”

His latest prediction showed the incident occurring at precisely ten o’clock, by his watch. Such a specific detail, yet he had so few other details to offer. His abilities were as fickle and unpredictable as the future itself. “Have you considered not wearing your watch for the rest of your life? Maybe have The Butler crush it?”

“Loopholes don’t work,” The Prescient said with a scowl. He shook his head, and turned away, but paused at the door. “I’m getting a drink. You want me to pour a bottle of beer into your tank, or whatever?”

“Thank you for your kind offer, but I’ll have to decline.”

The Prescient waved over his shoulder, departing the lab with a low chuckle. They both knew it was a joke.

It might have been nice, going out to a bar with a coworker, but alas, a brain in a jar couldn’t exactly go out, let alone drink. The Doctor and The Orderly kept trying to grow artificial bodies, and The Gadget mangled together a few ‘borgs’ for The Mind, but nothing ever worked. Even if The Mind could get comfortable in some random body, leaving the asylum would put all of The Castle in danger.

Which reminded The Mind to give The Prescient a little push through the corridors, letting him find the exit.

A flare of burning desire pulled The Mind’s attention through The Castle until he found The Butler. He quickly isolated himself from that feeling, withdrawing back to himself, and promptly triggered the television in his laboratory. Distracting himself with the best of Cronenberg, The Mind settled in for his own end-of-work relaxation.

He readmitted the servitors, nudged The Orderly through the corridors, and kept tabs on dozens of experiments, the prisoners, and the thing in the dark room. His own monstrosities prowled the corridors, puppetted by a splinter of his will, on guard for any potential guests that found themselves wandering into the asylum, accidentally or otherwise.

Yet, there were some things that did make him pause all his thoughts.

A faint, distant burn called for him. For a moment, he thought it was The Butler again, but she was still isolated and… it wasn’t coming from the library.

A gnawing disquiet silenced The Mind’s television as he realized that the call was coming from the cells. All of The Castle could call to The Mind if necessary, even The Butler, even while isolated, but no one outside The Castle could reach him like this.

He did a quick check, running through all the members of The Castle, hoping one had slipped into the cell block somehow without him noticing. Aside from The Orderly being back in her quarters and The Maid now yapping in his, everything was as it should be.

“So The Butler was down, slumped against the wall with her limbs utterly limp. The Orderly was caught in the net, trying to slash at it with one of her scalpels, but she didn’t want to pull a Tarzan, so she had to be careful. That just left me, The Maid, facing down the most vile, the most evil—”

“Maid,” The Mind interrupted. “Report to the cell block.”

The Maid stopped talking for the first time since entering The Mind’s chamber. She cocked her head to one side, staring up at the brain in the vat. A slow grin spread across her face. “Perfect,” she said, donning long white gloves from her apron pocket. “Can I livestream this?”

“No.”

She pulled her phone out anyway, flipping it around to use its cameras like a mirror as she adjusted her strawberry-blonde hair. “Aw. But I can blog about it later?”

“Ideally, there will be no it. This is a precaution.”

“That isn’t a no,” The Maid said in a sing-song voice as she skipped out of the room.

The Mind ignored her antics—The Director would deal with her if she violated his restrictions on what she could and could not post about. After giving her a light nudge through the asylum’s corridors, he finally turned his attention back to the cells.

There were no members of The Castle present.

Yet someone called for him.

The Mind scanned through the maggot-men, the avian creatures, the experiments, and finally peered in on The Monk.

The Buddha-like man remained trussed up, averting The Mind’s worst fears, but still stared up at The Mind. He grinned, smile missing several teeth, and started speaking.

“Hello there, friend. You can hear me, can’t you?”

The Mind could not hear the man, but his words rested on the very forefront of his thoughts as he spoke them, presenting themselves as readily as an open book. The ease with which The Mind perused his thoughts jolted him; everything they wanted to know from the man was buried so deep that it was as if The Monk had wiped his own memories, making mind-reading as useless as interrogation.

A psychic wave rumbled through The Castle. Every member looked up at once. The Mind didn’t waist time on explanations, instead pushing intent directly into their heads: Monk. Awake. Moving. Abnormality. The Doctor and The Orderly bolted for the sedative stores; The Gadget and The Butler converged on The Maid’s position. Ignoring The Mind’s assurances, The Prescient sprinted directly to The Director’s quarters.

“I hear you,” The Mind replied to The Monk, even as the alert went out. “You’ve remained silent for weeks. Why speak now?”

Mental suggestions went out to each of The Castle, informing them within moments of the unusual activity with the prisoner. The Orderly and The Doctor moved to the medical labs to prepare more sedatives, The Butler and The Gadget moved to backup The Maid, and The Prescient rushed to The Director’s room despite assurances that he had been warned of the situation.

“I wanted to offer my thanks for the hospitality you’ve shown,” The Monk said, still speaking aloud. He twisted his wrist, pulling and tugging against the chains binding him. The metal strained, but did not snap before he relaxed. “Your doctor could have fixed more than he did, but I appreciate the effort nonetheless. All of you are welcome to join us before the end times arrive.”

Alarm bells began sounding throughout the facility as restraints ripped out from the ceiling without any apparent action on the part of The Monk. The Mind shunted The Maid directly into the chamber, skipping several hallways. She shook off the disorientation between steps, mentally shrugging at the abrupt movement in a way that only she could manage.

It was only as she looked around that The Mind realized there was a third being inside the chamber. One person whose mind he couldn’t feel at all, who he was only aware of now because he saw the being reflected in The Maid’s mind. A woman dressed in nothing but tattoos, crawling over the bulk of The Monk as she ripped cables and chains off the walls.

“I missed my grand entrance,” The Maid groaned.

The Mind slammed urgency into the demented maze that was her thoughts. “Stop them!”

“Yes, yes…” The Maid moved up to the edge of the bottomless pit, high heels planted half over the ledge. She stared, crouching low as she readied herself, before she leaped in a flying kick.

The glass cube shattered as she passed through it, sharp shards falling into the pit below. She carried on, ignorant of gravity, until the spike of her stiletto pierced the side of the nude woman’s forehead, just between her tattoos.

The Monk, one arm freed, slammed his fist into The Maid’s face without remorse. The Mind moved in, shunting her back to the edge of the chamber before she could fall.

“Ha!” The Maid shouted, hands on her hips, radiating smug energy at the look of mild surprise on The Monk’s face. “The villain thought he could tarnish the heroine’s beauty, but she reemerged, completely unharmed. Guess again, idiot.”

“I’ve lost track of the woman,” The Mind said as he scanned through The Maid’s mind.

“’Cause I defeated—”

A ribbon of tattoos began to form over The Monk’s shoulder, spiraling into existence. Flesh manifested between the tattoos as a set of teeth grew into an overly wide grin. Swinging a high heeled shoe back and forth with her pinky, the woman leered down before tossing it aside, letting it fall down into the depths of the asylum.

“I… You…” The Maid cracked her knuckles, twisted her head to either extreme, then crouched, readying for another leap. “The dramatic tension of a villain being defeated in a single hit—”

“Maid.”

The Maid rolled her eyes.

Before she jumped into another flying kick, the door swung open. The Butler and The Gadget charged in, the latter raising a weapon, the former flinging heavily weighted bolas.

“As her allies arrived, thoughts of escape fled from the villain’s minds. There was nowhere left to run, no escape, and—Hey!”

The nude woman’s torso phased out of existence, avoiding the bolas, even as she scrambled up the cables. Reaching the ceiling over The Monk, she slammed her fist into the anchor point over and over again until the anchor gave way. With his weight straining the sole remaining anchor, The Monk’s restraints snapped.

Both went tumbling down into the darkness, chased by blasts of molten ice from The Gadget’s pistol—each shot missed.

The Maid jumped after them without hesitation, aiming for the pit, only for The Mind to shunt her aside again. “Are you insane? Even I can’t get you out of there.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll drag them back, you’ll see.” She started for the ledge again.

The handle of a cane came down on her shoulder, stopping her in her tracks. She turned to argue with its holder, but stopped once she realized who it was.

“You will do nothing of the sort,” The Director said, stepping ahead of her. He advanced slowly, one hand in the small of his back, tapping his cane against the tiles with the other. He stopped at the edge and peered down with a small frown on his face, before looking up to the ceiling, analyzing the remnants of the restraints. “An intruder freed him?”

“It was that woman,” The Prescient said, growling as he paced back and forth. “The one who steps between the lines.”

“She was inside the cube before The Maid arrived, though I only noticed through her eyes.”

“Without breaking the glass.” The Director’s eyes drifted back down to the pit. “And they intentionally dove in,” he continued. He didn’t ask it as a question, but The Mind provided context for the sake of everyone else present.

“I was unable to read their intentions, but it seems likely. They should be lost in-between forever.”

“They didn’t know not to go in?” The Butler asked, confusion worming its way into her thoughts. “We didn’t tell The Monk, but you’d think he could have reasoned that we wouldn’t just hang him over an easy escape route.”

“Better to be lost but free than be forever at our mercy,” The Maid said, nodding her head in understanding. “It’s like the traditional villain motivation.”

“It would be best not to assume when dealing with foes such as these,” The Director admonished, tone light.

“Shall I go drag them back?”

“No.” The Director turned away from the pit, heading toward the cell door. He paused halfway, looking to The Prescient with a thoughtful expression. “Do you have the time?”

The Prescient hesitated, staring at The Director, before slowly lifting his wrist. The Mind felt his stomach flip as he realized just what he was looking at. He tapped twice at the glass, teeth clenched, before looking back to The Director. “My watch has stopped.”

The Director nodded his head. “Set up watches. Lock down the Asylum. Recall all assets. Mind, I’ve got a few ideas that might help you detect the woman in the future. If I had seen her in person… No matter. There will be a chance for better observation in the future.”

“You think they can come back from between?” The Gadget asked, scurrying over just to the side of The Director’s route out.

The Director rested his hand on the child’s head. “I expect it.”