Fantastical Ramblings!

I didn't hurt myself, Isaac Night's spirit guide possessed me so he could scrawl this infernal glyph on the wall in my blood.

That would have sounded so crazy a straitjacket might have been the least of your concerns. Would Stonehearst jump at the excuse to treat you to a regimen of mind-melting electro-shock therapy?

You clenched your teeth with aggravation and writhed in place, still far from relaxed in your repose. A brisk jerk put you dangerously close to the edge of your cot and you realized you were one hard toss away from finding yourself on the floor. You settled in unhappily while Isaac kept pleading with Stonehearst.

"... conduct the necessary tests if I can't even reach her..."

Your arm started to fall asleep, so you rolled onto your other side. It barely helped. Your grated knuckles throbbed and chafed under the restrictive canvas enswathing you. Resentment pulsed through you alongside the physical pain as you cursed your oppressors.

Icharus! Stonehearst! Isaac...

Your anger fizzled out at the thought of the other psychic, still outside trying to convince Stonehearst to let him into your cell. And for what? He'd already admitted that he didn't have any actual experiments to put you through. Isaac, you suspected, was worried about you. He wanted to check your injuries and probably your state of mind as well.

As much as you wanted to hold him accountable for roping you into this mess, the complexity of his motives and the contradictory tenderness he kept showing you stopped you from lumping him in with your enemies. Reticently, you gave up on animosity, surrendered to the undeniable fact that Isaac was the closest thing you had to a friend down here.

"Useless old normie coot," Isaac grumbled under his breath, right at the threshold of your cell.

His unexpected proximity broke through the haze of your moody contemplations. The click of a key in your lock sent your head snapping around fast enough to make you dizzy, just in time to watch Isaac leave the door ajar as he approached you. Stonehearst must have taken his leave already, judging by the way Isaac muttered uncensored condemnations of the man.

"Between him and these ghosts, it's hard to say who's trying harder to drive us completely out of our minds," Isaac seethed. He sat at your side like it was nothing and started urging you upright. You went along mechanically, your eyes fixed longingly to the door. "Come on, I'll get this crap off of you, you can show me your hands..."

Fingers preoccupied with buckles and straps, Isaac still noticed the intensity of your gaze, your focus entirely fixed on the false possibility of freedom. He slowed for a second, then redoubled his efforts to loosen the newest layer of your captivity with a knowing chuckle that was as wry as it was short.

"So much for knowing you won't make it far," he observed, as keen as he was bitter.

You tore your eyes from the lying lure of escape in favor of watching him while he worked to free you from the straitjacket. He spoke as he went, though he kept his sights set on the task at hand.

"It was the same for me right after Stonehearst brought Francoise down here," Isaac confessed. "He kept me behind a locked door the entire time I refused to work on that machine for him. Twelve years behind a locked door... but once he figured out he could use her to motivate me, he swapped a locked door for a chain around my ankle. I mean, logically, I know it all amounts to the same thing. I'm no freer now than I was then, but... there's something special about seeing that door cracked open, isn't there? It makes your heart jump up into your throat... gets your pulse racing and your imagination running away, too fast for logic to catch up. It doesn't really matter how many more locked doors you know block your escape. You still want to see what's past the door that just opened up."

You swallowed down a forlorn lump while Isaac perfectly narrated the internal crisis paralyzing you. The last strap surrendered to his cajoling and he pulled the straitjacket off your body, tossed it aside with disgust twisting his lips down into harsh scowl.

"I fucking hate these things," he growled. "Wish I could set the damn thing on fire. Now..."

He took your hands in his cautiously, close to clinical as he inspected the damage. You forgot about the open door, content to fixate instead on his somber examination of your wounds. You trembled subtly, your skin colder and softer than his as he tilted and scrutinized your knuckles. The pads of his fingers, still gentle despite the firmness of his grip, brushed painstakingly at the lines of dried blood clinging to the tops of your fingers. He rubbed hard enough to dislodge the crimson flakes and you winced at the pressure, but bit back any protest. Your knuckles were sore and the skin around them was sensitive, but you liked the caress of his fingers over yours, even if it stung a little. You let him touch you unhindered, lax and cooperative under his intense attentions.

"It's not so bad," he reasoned. His dark eyes burned with a quiet shame. They avoided yours even though they'd already seen all there was to see of your minor injuries. "Right?"

"I'm gonna die from infection like a pioneer," you tried to joke. "What a lame way to go out... I guess it beats being fried to death in that machine, though. Maybe."

"You're not gonna die," Isaac rebutted, almost angrily. "Although it's true, I don't have anything more effective than water to wash these with... nothing even approaching a disinfectant. I'd probably have an easier time convincing Gus to give me a fucking unicorn than a first aid kit, since it's you we're talking about and he's made it abundantly clear that he would rather-"

"Isaac!"

You cut him off briskly because he was spiraling. Your hands switched places abruptly on instinct and suddenly, yours were holding his, squeezing tight enough to command his attention. Enormous brown eyes, rife with guilt and frustration, flashed up to latch to yours.

"I'll be fine," you reasoned, echoing his earlier sentiment just to calm him down. "It's not so bad. Right?"

Neither of you believed it. The scrapes might not have been awful, but the situation that precipitated their infliction was dire and only growing more perilous by the day. Isaac nodded anyway after a long moment.

"Right. Not so bad," he muttered disingenuously.

You wondered when he would pull his hands from your grasp, but he never did. You kept holding on, hardly surprised by the realization that a comforting, human touch was enough to make you feel just a little less doomed. Isaac must have felt the same way because his fingers flexed subtly through yours, deepening their entwinement and inspiring a flutter in your chest that came close to panic. Warmer than fear, though no less anxious. The moment stretched while you breathed slowly together in the dark, each waiting for the other to pull away first. For every second neither of you broke contact, the flutter intensified. Heat blossomed to follow, an irrational confluence of chemical and emotional instabilities that left you both shivering with anticipation.

The dark, the cold, even your imprisonment seemed distant with your fingers intertwined. An invisible spark somehow managed to warm and lighten two oppressed souls, in spite of every impossible set of odds facing you. The longer you let the moment wear on, the more it began to feel dangerously intimate. The tremor of your nervousness seemed to have infected Isaac, wracking up and down his thin frame while his eyes traced a frantic path over your features like a prey animal assessing a threat.

As much as you treasured the instant of peace, the taste of connection, you knew the moment would sour if it didn't shatter first. Shockingly, you found yourself grateful for Icharus' macabre, innovative methods of communication. Your eyes were reluctant to leave Isaac's, but the symbol darkening your cell wall proved magnetic enough to draw both your gazes.

"I know you have pens out there," you quipped caustically. "I guess that wouldn't have been dramatic enough for your spirit guide."

"Icharus wanted our attention," Isaac scowled. "This is my fault. I've been ignoring him... I never thought it would result in-"

"I'm not bored enough to play the blame game that competitively," you assured him. "Icharus did this. Let's leave it at that."

Isaac didn't seem grateful, but you were as disinclined to indulge his self-loathing as you were to let Icharus off the hook. You forged on stubbornly, standing as much to put a little distance between you and Isaac as to trace the edges Icharus' bloody handiwork.

"If I had a nickel for every time I've seen this same stupid symbol," you remarked acerbically. "Azalia showed it to me in a vision. It was in Icharus' notes, some ritual he was going to use to steal her ability for himself."

You could see the cogs grinding in Isaac's head, so you went on.

"I saw it your notes, too. And in your memories. That girl at the top of the tower, the one dressed all in black."

"Morticia Frump," Isaac provided.

"I thought so. She wore it on an amulet," you reminded him. "Given the evidence, I think Icharus' intentions are pretty obvious."

"He wants me to use it to steal your raven's vision," Isaac sneered. "I'm not interested. I never even wanted a dove's vision. If it weren't for Morticia's meddling that night-"

"I think there might be more to this than Icharus' bad intentions," you stopped him. "And you already mentioned that your machine only worked once."

"Worked is a stretch. I only ever intended to remove outcast abilities, to help Francoise" Isaac corrected you. "Swapping them around... that was never in my designs."

"Your designs aside, you told Stonehearst you thought Frump's presence was what made the machine work the first time," you went on. "Stop me if I'm assuming too much, but Frump was a psychic. The night your machine worked, you traded abilities with her. That's how you ended up with the dove's sight and Icharus hanging over your shoulder."

"That... I mean, it's an oversimplification of what happened, but the outcome is accurate," Isaac grumbled. "I don't like thinking about that night, there's nothing-"

"Well, you want to make your machine work again, don't you? To cure Francoise?"

"Frump had nothing to do with it working, that was just something I made up for Gus' sake, so he wouldn't murder you," Isaac protested.

"Fine, but what if her being there introduced an element that did make the experiment work?" you pressed. You knew you were onto something and you were trying to get him to see it on his own.

"What, the symbol?" Isaac wondered. A shrewd light ignited behind his eyes as he considered the implications of your presumptive leap.

"It fits," you continued. "If the missing ingredient to your life's work is arcane in nature, it would explain why you've spent so long struggling to make that death trap work. Coming at it from a purely scientific perspective..."

"There's plenty outcast mysticism baked into the design for my machine," Isaac shot back. "But... admittedly, this is something I might have overlooked. If I can find out what the symbol is, what it means, figure out how to incorporate it into my work..."

A manic energy emanated from Isaac, animated him in a way you'd never seen before. It was enough to bring a bemused smile to your lips. You settled back down on your cot and nudged him with your elbow encouragingly.

"Go on then," you sighed. "Sounds to me like you've got research to do. Best hop to it."

Isaac let you push him to his feet, though he still seemed hesitant to leave your side.

"If you see Icharus again, you call me," he instructed.

You rolled your eyes, unsure of how Isaac planned to deter a spectral force from molesting you.

"Sure," you agreed, despite your misgivings.

"How ironic would it be," Isaac mused in parting, "... if you actually did turn out to be the key to making my machine work?"

He left you, but his words planted an uneasy squirming in your gut. You could only hope he meant nothing more involved than your deductive ability and unwilling service as a conduit for Icharus' lost knowledge.

Days passed and the bleak repetitiveness of your interminable captivity made them feel more like weeks. Time slipped through your fingers like a neck through a noose, coarse edges chafing exposed skin and imparting the promise of looming demise. Stonehearst came and went, his disposition vacillating wildly between optimism at the progress Isaac was making with his newest avenue of research, and anxiety that screamed from his beady eyes any time he directed his gaze your way. Stonehearst looked at you like you were a ticking time bomb of unpredictable catastrophe.

The door to your cell remained unlocked, but you left the door shut for fear that Stonehearst would decide to take the key back from Isaac should you tempt his paranoia too far. You suspected the reason for his increasingly frequent visits to the basement had more to do with his desire to keep tabs on you than any need to check in on Isaac's progress. As long as he limited the expression of his scorn to sidelong glances, you were content to maintain the stolid silence that simmered between you and your jailor.

According to Isaac, his research was progressing in leaps and bounds. He surprised you by returning to your cell often to fire questions at you. Apparently, your knowledge of the occult put his to shame. It made sense, after you dwelled on it a while. Where you had taken advantage of witchcraft to cheat your way into psychic prowess, Isaac was almost purely a man of science. Even now, he was only using the mystical as a means to an end. It held no more allure for him than a hammer or a wrench. You could tell it frustrated him that he wasn't able to easily grasp the nuances of magical cause and effect. You were more than happy to bridge the gaps in his acuity.

Disturbingly, Judi's already sparse interactions with you became increasingly hostile. You only saw her when she made her daily descent with food and medications, but her ill-will made itself apparent in the close calls between meager dinner tray and the floor. She glared at you in passing with more animosity than her Father, her suspicions slanted in a more personal, fervent direction than his. Ever inclined to hazard a guess, you inferred that she could sense the budding closeness forming slowly but surely between you and Isaac. You wouldn't have minded her jealousy, except that you weren't keen on upsetting whatever designs Isaac had on Judi's cooperation.

None of it could be helped. The tension in the asylum basement seemed to mount minute by minute, day by day. Sometimes the weight of it all left your head aching, blood pounding in your ears while pointless adrenaline urged you to action. A frustrating physical state in which to find oneself when a six by six space forced a sedentary existence.

Your only reprieve was the fact that neither Azalia nor Icharus had seen fit to manifest again since the day of your possession. You kept waiting to see their ghostly outlines blink into existence, bright against the dim backdrop of your basement prison, but they continually surprised you with their failure to appear. Their absence was the only pleasant surprise LOIS had to offer.

A break in the suffocating monotony finally came in the strangest form, something so mundane it almost failed to garner your attention.

Almost.

You couldn't help craning your neck when Stonehearst left the basement for the day, only to capture your interest when he returned less than five minutes later. Isaac was as taken aback as you were. You watched warily from your cell while the scientist approached the doctor with a raised eyebrow.

"Forget something, Gus?" he asked.

"Hm? Oh, no, just... just taking one more look around," Stonehearst said.

He sounded nervous, but the tenor of his anxiety was stranger than what you were accustomed to hearing from him. Sharper, more unsettled. Closer to apprehensiveness than dread. Isaac picked up on the difference too. He crossed his arms over his chest, narrowed his eyes and waited for Stonehearst to explain himself.

Stonehearst stumbled over an excuse that was poorly improvised, full of stalling non-fluencies that belied actual information. All the while, his eyes raked interrogatively across the basement. He considered the chain around Isaac's ankle, frowned at the machine half-hidden behind its glass screen, scanned the empty cells lining the walls... then his eyes went wide as dinner plates when he spotted you, watching him carefully from behind the thick iron door that seemed to define your entire world these days.

"Well I'll be a monkey's Uncle!" Stonehearst exclaimed. "Aberdeen, I thought you were dead for sure!"

Confusion gripped you nearly as bindingly as your fingers grasped the bars of your cell window. Isaac's perplexed expression had enough time to shift to outright suspicion, but the charading intruder made sure he didn't have enough time to react in any meaningful capacity. 'Stonehearst's' fist, deceptive in its frail appearance, lashed out to connect soundly with Isaac's jaw. You cried out in shock when he crumpled, dazed, into a heap on the ground.

The intruder shook his fist, hissed in pain at the impact.

"Bony bastard!" he exclaimed.

Quick as a whip, he turned his full focus to you while Isaac reeled on the ground, too disoriented to do much more than groan and roll over. Blood spotted at the corner of his mouth while he struggled to regain his bearings after the sudden assault.

"Alright, quick, we can't have that much time!" 'Stonehearst' called, clearly addressing you. "Where's the key? Does he have it?"

Obviously, this wasn't Augustus Stonehearst barging into your lightless prison with the hope of liberation in hand. You gasped and pushed your unlocked cell door open just far enough to take a single step out, hardly daring to believe your own deductions.

"It can't be... is it... Ras?!" you gaped.

Your shapeshifting colleague grinned at you.

"What, you didn't really think I was gonna let you off the hook for the last half of my payment, did you Ms. Aberdeen?" he teased, gaze sparkling with a roguish gleam.

Your cell had been sealed off for hours while LOIS swarmed with failure and the hurried footsteps of those tasked with cleaning up the predicted disaster. Isaac approached you slowly, hesitation weighing his departure from the refinement of his machine.

I should be working. I don't actually need her for anything. Progress should take priority over anything else. I should focus.

If only the will to direct his focus could force his tired mind to abandon the desire to wander. Reason stepped in to bolster his confidence in seeking reprieve. He knew only too well from past experience that overexertion wouldn't enable him to solve the problems at hand. Sometimes, a step back was more productive than a rush forward. Especially when the path ahead was blocked by brick walls at every turn.

You were unlikely to provide any means by which Isaac could advance his designs, but a means for him to forget them for a moment? Perhaps long enough to see them from a new angle when he returned to his toils? Now that, he thought, was something you could give him.

He opened the latch over your barred window, but you were nowhere to be seen. Panic, outrage and questions pulsed through him quick-fire as he wondered where you were. Had Stonehearst moved you in the pandemonium? Could he possibly have done so right under Isaac's nose, without him noticing? Was he that absorbed in the management of his machine, that he could have lost you without so much as an inkling of your departure?

Then he glanced down and realized he could see part of your huddled form, curled up at the base of the door. Your absence was merely a trick of perspective.

Isaac could have sighed his relief, but he swallowed the vulnerable sound before it could escape.

"You've been quiet in here for a long time," he observed.

The slight roll of your shoulders might have qualified as a shrug, but Isaac couldn't see enough of you to know for sure. He crouched and clanked open the slot where your meals made their dismal daily appearance. From this new angle, he was level with you. He could see you better now, if still not fully. His eyes interrogated yours, demanded a more concise explanation than the noncommittal motion you initially offered.

"Just thinking," you muttered, caving under the pressure of his intense gaze. "A lot has happened."

"Tonight, or in general?"

"General. Tonight... well. Both, I suppose. Hey, how much do you know about what happened between Icharus and Azalia?" you wondered.

Isaac grimaced.

"I was hoping you would take my mind off the ghosts, actually."

"Oh, so this is a social visit?" you teased.

"What else?"

"Fair."

Part of you wanted to resent him for taking advantage of your captive company, but the solitude of your confinement made a delicacy of his intrusion. You ignored Azalia's glowering while you indulged the mad scientist. You could imagine what she would say to you, were she so inclined to bother wasting her breath.

You should not be talking to him. Why do you play into his manipulations even after what I have shown you?

What Azalia couldn't seem to wrap her deceased head around was the idea that you had far more to gain from manipulating Isaac than the other way around. Though you'd scoffed at the joke he made about you seducing your way out of LOIS, you couldn't write off the possibility that you could charm him into freeing you.

Though escape, you knew, would be more complicated than a broken lock on the door that kept you contained. Willow Hill wouldn't surrender its prisoners so easily.

"Fine then, tell me about your latest experiment," you prompted, the very picture of graciousness.

"I'd almost rather talk about the ghosts than my work," Isaac grumbled.

"You're picky," you complained.

"Am I?"

"What else do you want to talk about, if not the most pressing mystery hanging over our heads or the death-trap sitting in the corner?"

"Tell me something inconsequential," Isaac requested. "I haven't seen a newspaper in a long time. Tell me about what the world's like these days."

A question so broad you had no idea where to start.

"You know, a decade doesn't change the world as much as you might think it would," you mused.

"That's disappointing. We didn't find life on another planet or cure cancer yet?" Isaac nudged.

"We probably did, but I bet the government is keeping both under wraps."

"That's crazy, why would they cover up the cure for cancer?"

"I doubt they would. I'm just being absurd," you admitted.

"Though the more I think about it... I could come up with a few plausible motives," Isaac observed, a shrewd look twisting his expression as his mind meandered through bizarre, unlikely hypotheticals. You laughed at him for switching sides so quickly.

"You're easy to distract," you realized.

"Only when I want to be," Isaac shrugged.

"You must be frustrated if you're looking for distraction," you reasoned. "You know, you could tell me what's eating you, instead of ignoring it and fishing blindly for something to occupy yourself with."

"Do you ever switch off investigator mode, or are you always digging for information?" he groaned.

"That's a cynical way to interpret my offer to listen while you unburden yourself."

"My burdens won't get any lighter just because I verbalize them."

The gray, coarse, shadowed prison seemed to agree with his statement. Your own accession must have shown on your face, because Isaac's expression softened in response.

"I guess I am cynical," he admitted unbidden.

"Given the circumstances, who could blame you?" you allowed.

"I was cynical even before I got myself into this mess."

Self-reflection rendered him distant while you studied the steep composition of his gaunt features. What little light lived in the LOIS basement was strange, harsh red and dull at the same time. Too dim to provide satisfactory lumination, eerily adept at casting the deepest of shadows with its shallow, reticent touch. Isaac looked as terrible in its sheen as he did otherworldly. A shiver ripped through you at the thought that he really did look like the devil in this light. Couldn't your dank prison be a ring of hell all its own, after all?

Azalia's aphoristic warnings were starting to unravel what scant sanity remained to you.

"I'm cynical enough to suspect... you're only humoring this conversation because you think I'll break you out of your cell if you ingratiate yourself with me," Isaac sighed woefully. He let his head fall back against the door with a dull thunk while his eyes searched the pocked concrete ceiling as if for a magical way out.

"I'm not so sure myself," you mused, defeated by his sharp perception. "I know better than to believe you would ever imperil Francoise for my sake. I might only be talking to you because it's keeping me from losing my mind down here in the dark."

"Sure, except there's a distinct possibility that freeing you would ensure her safety moreso than my loose grip on Judi's fickle good will," Isaac pointed out.

"If you want me to talk you into opening my cell, I'm sure I could come up with a pretty convincing argument," you chuckled wryly. "But I think we both know I wouldn't make it far after I got out of this damned basement. Don't forget about all the orderlies... plenty of locked doors. Armed guards, checkpoints. The front gate is nothing to shake a stick at. Miles of woods between the facility and Jericho..."

"You make it sound like such a long shot," Isaac mumbled dejectedly. "You got in here in the first place. Surely that means you must know a way out... a door that isn't watched as closely, a time when changing shifts cause some confusion, some loophole, some chink in Willow Hill's armor..."

Isaac sounded even more desperate than you, grasping at straws he already knew would all draw short.

"I had help. Help that's nowhere in sight now," you mourned. "Isaac, I... I do want to talk you into letting me go, I guess, but... I think we're both actually too smart to believe it would do either of us any good."

The realization was so bleak it stunned you both into silence for a while.

"Ulterior motives ruin everything," Isaac grumbled discontentedly at long last.

Dread gripped and fluttered in your chest at prospect of watching him walk away back to his work, of being left with only Azalia's tragic ghost and your own analytical thoughts for company.

"Forget the ulterior motives, then," you growled brusquely. "We were having a nice conversation before you made it cynical."

"Were we?" Isaac wondered drolly.

"Sure. You were just about to tell me why you think the government likes cancer," you reminded him.

The playful intention of your words fell flat. Your tone lacerated him with the poignance of your wish for him to stay a little longer. Isaac had been the one who first came to you for a distraction from captivity, but now you found yourself just as willing to indulge delusion as your fellow prisoner. His gaze darted between your shadowed, plaintive features and the machine that waited for his modifications to bring it closer to functionality.

"Well, it's all speculative, of course," Isaac sighed. Defeat and relief mingled together in his curt exhalation, strange bedfellows under the best of circumstances. "... but as usual, I would have to argue that corporations are the real villains behind the plot."

Your giggle of unhinged absurdity clattered away through the basement. You scooted a little closer and gratefully gave Isaac your full attention while he went on and Azalia lurked like a bad omen in the background.

"This place is bad enough without you sitting there glaring at me like I pissed in your coffee," you eventually snapped.

Isaac had long since retreated from the oasis of your company. You curled up on the thin cot once he left. Though hard and scruffy, it was still more comfortable than the cold stone floor, if not by a wide margin.

"Your mood would be dark as well, were you as doomed as I," Azalia seethed.

You rolled your eyes hard enough to make yourself dizzy.

"Just leave me alone, won't you?" you entreated.

"Oh, worry not, for surely you will find yourself rid of my counsel soon enough," Azalia threatened. "All in due time, when that menace you so enjoy flirting with sees fit to siphon your powers away from you... then I will be gone forever and I suspect you may at long last regret your short-sighted impudence."

"Siphon my power- Azalia, what power?!" you demanded abruptly.

You pushed yourself upright so you could direct the full force of your disdain at your spectral guide.

"My powers were as good as spent before I even set foot in this stupid asylum! The only visions I've had are the ones bleeding off Isaac and all his untapped potential! Or the pity parties you drag me into, as if I ever asked to see your sad, shitty origin story! I'll tell you what, even if I had any powers left, I wouldn't mind Isaac taking them off my hands! My powers have never done anything for me aside from-from make me useful to my stupid Dad, or give you an excuse to hang around haunting my life as if it's any of your fucking business whether or not I respect a gift I never fucking asked for!"

You heaved in the wake of your incensed outburst, fists clenched, teeth bared with vehemence while Azalia's scorn stared back at you, unwavering as ever. You didn't intend to give her time to reply, but you had to stop to catch your breath. Rather than respond to your spiteful tirade, she faded out of view without breaking eye contact until she vanished completely.

Your racing heartbeat pounded in your ears, ringing with the nerve of your self-righteous ancestor. You uncurled your fists because your nails were digging painfully into your palms, on the cusp of piercing the skin. You gazed blankly down at the indentations while silence gradually returned to your cell, arriving on the heels of your breaking point.

"Who could have known Azalia would be cursed with a descendant so much wiser than she?" mused a soft voice.

The hairs along the back of your neck pricked up with instinctive alarm. Glad as you were to have chased off your stubborn spirit guide, you were no more eager to engage with Isaac's. You held your tongue, measured your breaths and waited to see if he would go away on his own.

"You look so much like her," Icharus breathed over your shoulder, so close to your ear that you stiffened at the unwarranted intimacy of the pose. His hands hovered, immaterial, along your arms, suspended as though he was debating whether or not to touch you. "And yet... you could hardly be more unlike close-minded, idealistic little Azalia. I have been waiting for her to leave your side... waiting to find myself alone with you."

You shivered. His sinister intentions were palpable, paralyzing in the cramped cell.

"You ought to know a secret about ravens," Icharus went on while his fingers rehearsed the idea of contacting your skin. "Being one yourself, you would surely agree... second sight is a curse from which all ravens long to be freed."

Your shiver returned, deepened to a shudder that resonated through your very bones.

"The light and the dark in this world are two halves of the same veiled truth. Can you imagine a seer who could harness both?"

The glee in Icharus' voice made your flesh crawl, but you remained rooted in place. As far as you knew, he couldn't hurt you. Was he only here to gloat? To expound on a design that had died with him, only for Isaac to somehow revive his twisted ambitions after centuries?

"You know Isaac cares about psychic powers even less than I do," you pointed out. Your voice sounded high and thin, too tremulous for a woman who really believed the man behind her was merely an annoyance and not an entity capable of harm.

"Isaac will carry out my designs, whether he wants to or not," Icharus purred. "You scorn your ability regardless. Why let such talent go to waste? When it could be harvested instead... harnessed..."

Shockingly, his hands descended to brand your flesh with the ethereal chill of death. You had enough time to gasp, almost electrified by the freezing grip of the ghost bearing down over you. You wondered if he was going to shove a vision down your throat the same way Azalia had. What could Icharus possibly have to show you?

That same symbol danced and burned in your mind's eye. Your head throbbed and every breath you took felt like inhaling a mouthful of ice shavings. Your hands seemed to move of their own accord, palms grazing in appraisal over the pale, rough stonework of your cell wall. Icharus' accord, you realized, was responsible for your movement.

You strained against his influence, but his will was an iron shackle around your volition. Ghostly murmurs filled your ears, inklings of his plans and presumptive, cackling celebrations of his anticipated success.

Your cries stuttered and dragged through the basement while Icharus scraped your knuckles against the stone hard enough to shred the thin, fragile skin. Your resistance to his influence made the process a slow one, but you couldn't break free. The battle consumed every ounce of your being and your entire world narrowed down to the ghostly imprints of Icharus' freezing hands clamped around your wrists.

Isaac was considering the merits of replacing an actuator when your screams interrupted the thoughtful silence enshrouding him and the indifferent company he kept. His head snapped up, alarm twisting his features while Stonehearst seemed baffled by his reaction.

"Isaac, m'boy, you were just saying-"

"Something's wrong!" Isaac snapped. He made briskly for your cell. His dragging chain weighed him down and slowed his progress while Stonehearst scowled at his quick retreat.

"The detective? She's fine, just venting, I'm sure," Stonehearst scoffed dismissively. "Come back and tell me-"

Isaac caught his first glimpse of Icharus forcing your hand and his blood ran cold.

"Hey! Stop that!" Isaac shouted.

"Isaac?" Stonehearst called, curiosity mixed with wariness spurring him to take a single step closer. "Stop what? What's she up to?"

"She's not- Damn it! Gus! Come unlock this damned door, quickly!" Isaac called desperately.

Your eyes were rolled so far back into your skull that only their whites were visible, straining with crimson while you resisted Icharus' compulsion. Spasms wracked your body while the spirit drove you to paint the wall with your own sluggishly seeping blood. Your struggle to overcome Icharus left you completely unresponsive to Isaac's panicked cries. Stonehearst meandered closer, craned his neck to survey what must have looked like pure madness to a man lacking the benefit of psychic sight.

"Good heavens, she's well and truly lost her mind, hasn't she?!" Stonehearst exclaimed. Amusement, rather than alarm, pitched his voice high in the excitement of the moment.

"She's not- she's-"

The realization that Stonehearst couldn't see Icharus in the slighest left Isaac fumbling helplessly for any constructive avenue of persuasion. Stonehearst recognized Isaac's dismay, but he also misattributed the source of his concern.

"Very well, I know you have some way for her to help with your research," Stonehearst sighed. "I'll be back with an orderly and a restraint. Don't get yourself too worked up in the meantime, m'boy."

Stonehearst clapped Isaac on the back and strode away while you convulsed and Icharus continued his bloody drawing. Isaac seethed, rage and frustration at his own impotence leaving him to rattle the bars of your cell door futilely.

"Icharus!" he growled, vying fervently for the spirit's attention. "Icharus, leave her alone! What the hell are you doing?! Get away from her!"

The ghost needed all of his focus to keep you held in thrall and Isaac managed to steal enough of his attention to allow you the foothold you needed to break free. You wrenched yourself physically from Icharus' unearthly grasp, all but flying to collapse in the corner of the cell farthest your tormentor. Irked, Icharus turned his scowl to Isaac.

"Why, I only seek to help her," he sneered. "Poor, damned little raven... if you cared for her a whit, Isaac, you would unburden her of her dread curse. Visions of doom, gloom and damnation... or would you rather let her suffer under their yoke?"

"You touch her again and I'll find a way to kill you a second time, you spineless bastard!" Isaac spat.

Icharus only smirked, his eyes darting once more to his crimson handiwork before he vanished. He left you cowering, Isaac raging and the wall dripping with red that formed a symbol you were sick of seeing by now.

<== Previous Chapter

"Didn't Judi bring down your pills today?" he wondered.

Francoise only coughed in response. You could hear her trying to contain her outburst, but her efforts seemed to be in vain.

"Pills?" you wondered aloud.

"They keep her from transforming," Isaac explained. "They should help with the other, more deadly aspects of her condition as well. Fran? Have some water. Try to relax..."

You left him to console his sister in peace. You'd been in this bleak place little more than a day, but you had already memorized every line of mortar and cracked imperfection in the stonework of your prison. You were already on the edge of bouncing off the walls that held you, even without the maddening, dissonant melody of sickness and sadness Isaac and Francoise orchestrated.

If no one killed you soon, this place was going to drive you well and truly mad before long.

The ghosts helped nothing. While you paced to avoid making eye contact with her, Azalia was ever-present. She hung over your shoulder, silent, judgmental and vigilant. You got the feeling that she was guarding you. Every so often, you caught a glimpse of Icharus drifting past your door, his gaze cast inquisitively in your direction as though you had something he wanted. He looked so much like Isaac that a few times, you almost mistook him for his descendent and stopped just short of addressing him.

Though surely insubstantial enough to escape your prison at any time, Icharus never entered your confinement and Azalia never attempted to leave. The tension between them made the air feel more like fog, thick, clinging, so hot it was uncomfortable to breathe through. You stopped moving long enough to press your face flush to the bars, just to see if the atmosphere was any more tolerable without. You couldn't get close enough to tell, but the soft scratching of Isaac's pen on paper almost passed as a distraction.

"I don't understand why you would be here by choice," you grumbled at the specter of your spirit guide. "Is the afterlife that bad, that you would rather haunt me even in this living hell?"

Azalia actually looked as though she were considering a response, but the patter of rapidly approaching footfalls stole your attention. Judi Stonehearst pranced down into your prison with a spring in her step that immediately stoked your ire.

What does she have to be so happy about? Or doesn't her conscience bother her at all?

"Oh, Isaac!" Judi called in excited sing-song, glancing around as she searched for him.

The measured, patient scratch of writing halted. Isaac emerged from behind the thick glass isolating his workspace, wearing a coy little smirk that set your brow furrowing.

"Ju-Ju," he crooned brightly.

Your eyebrows shot up high with a combination of intrigue and automatic revulsion as Judi fell into her prisoner's arms with enthusiastic abandon. She went up on tip-toes in an attempt to reach Isaac's lips, only for him to crane his neck and peer over her shoulder with paranoia rolling off him in palpable waves.

"Wait now, Gus-"

"Father's busy, trust me!" Judi assured him. "We have a little time!"

"Very little, I'm sure," Isaac groaned.

"That just means we should make the most of it!" Judi insisted.

She pulled him into a heated, hurried kiss with single-minded intent and Isaac caved to her persistence without further protest. He kissed her back with an air of reluctance that could have been justified by jumpiness and a healthy fear of discovery. You gaped at the spectacle with distaste squirming and prickling under your skin. There were odious layers to the impropriety unfolding under your disapproving gaze that you were too gob-smacked to unpack immediately.

Unexpectedly, Isaac's eyes met yours over Judi's shoulder while she sighed blissfully in his embrace. You had neither the time nor the inclination to hide your disgust and his expression wavered with chagrin that fell drastically short of what he ought to have felt. By your estimations, at any rate.

"Judi... Judi!" he managed, interrupting her enamored antics.

She stopped short, seized with panic and glanced back at the stairs. Alarm twisted her features for a moment, only for her to sigh with relief and relax visibly in the next instant.

"Don't scare me like that!" she chided Isaac, swatting his arm playfully. "I thought my Father was coming!"

"Not to be all business, but you know tonight is important," Isaac reminded her. His gentle tone was plying, sweetened past the point of cloying with sentiment that struck you as pandering. "Gus said he would send the tranquilizer down with you?"

"I have it," she grumbled, dejection weighting her tone. "I can't believe he won't let me try again... and you shouldn't have taken his side like that, so easily! Couldn't you have at least tried to convince him to let me be the subject?"

"Don't be angry with me, I'm just as worried for your well-being as your Father is," Isaac countered. "Maybe more. I need you to be safe."

"I know that, but I want-"

"I know you want to be like me, Judi, but surely you don't want to make me worry about you?" Isaac pouted.

His eyes went wide as he tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear with. Yours, meanwhile, narrowed with the realization that you were watching a pantomime. The improvised flourish of tenderness fell like a discordant note in the middle of a sonata. You'd already seen Isaac concerned, genuinely anxious over Francoise. He'd even directed more authentic care in your direction than he now offered Judi. You crossed your arms, consumed by as much by fascination as by disgust. As wrong as it would have been for Isaac to actually feel affection for his captor's daughter, you considered the possibility that him faking fondness might actually be worse. It was a tough call between the two.

"No surprise that Icharus' rotten bloodline would bear the boldest of cads and ponces," Azalia scoffed beside you.

You quirked an eyebrow at her, shocked that she would be interested in this debauchery. Though perhaps interested was too strong a word. Azalia's one good eye flicked away from the scene disdainfully in favor of surveying your cell's monotonous stonework. She seemed content to level a single caustic remark and return to her standard of haughty silence.

Meanwhile, Isaac's performative cajoling had done a superb job of soothing Judi's misgivings.

"I guess lycanthropy isn't the best ability to end up with anyway," she sighed. "Father said you would have a list for me?"

"I have it."

"Oh, Isaac, I'm so excited for tonight!" Judi warbled while he tucked the folded paper into the breast pocket of her lab coat. "I know you and Father are nervous, but I have a really good feeling about this time. I really think this is going to be the night, you know?"

"Your optimism is the brightest part of my day," Isaac drawled insincerely.

If Judi detected any current of deception, she hid it well. She giggled, blushed and stole another kiss before she fled with Isaac's list. He watched her go, then fixed his eyes back to you with a harrowed frown.

"Don't look at me like that," he grumbled.

You uncrossed your arms in favor of leaning forward against the cell door while wheels turned in your clever mind.

"I was wondering how you could trick yourself into believing Stonehearst would let you use your machine to cure Francoise," you mused aloud, throwing your observations out into the basement while Isaac paced slowly closer with his hands thrust deep into his pockets. "Since obviously, you and Francoise would become liabilities the minute that death-trap starts doing what it's designed to. Once you stop being useful to Stonehearst, you're both just extra witnesses to his crimes. But now I see you're hedging your bets. You're not actually counting on Stonehearst sanctioning her cure, are you? You're playing his daughter to make sure you get the opportunity to carry out your plan when the time comes."

"Judi has just as much access to LOIS as her Father," Isaac shrugged. "And his approval is hard-won... I don't see the harm in giving her a little of mine to bridge the gap. If it makes her feel better... if it serves my purposes..."

Your lip curled back with uncontainable distaste.

"Sure. If manipulating someone ten years younger than you doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth..."

"Seven years. And I'll do whatever it takes to ensure my success down here," Isaac scowled. "Anyway, Judi's no saint. She's scum, the same as her Father, just as much responsible for all the deaths and disappearances connected to this project-"

"Your project, you mean."

The reminder of his culpability further torqued the tension between you. Isaac's defensiveness condemned him. For a second, you wondered why he would care what you thought of his methods. Then you remembered the illogical hopes he had riding on your life. The impossible dream that despite his own best attempts to foil you, you would still somehow bring salvation to his lightless purgatory.

You remembered starkly that Isaac and his foolish hopes were all that stood between you and death. You took a deep breath and forcibly softened your approach. You couldn't afford to alienate him, no matter how harshly you disapproved of his tactics.

"It's not my business," you shrugged, struggling to imitate nonchalance while your flesh still crawled. "And you're not wrong. You have to do whatever you can to survive down here."

Isaac chewed your words over slowly, critically considered the change in your tune. No doubt he understood your motivations were as firmly rooted in self-preservation as his own.

"It does," he admitted suddenly. "I mean... manipulating her. It does leave a sour taste behind."

You shrugged again, more emphatically than before.

"It's nothing to do with me," you insisted. "Anyway, who's to say I would take the moral high ground in your shoes? If I could seduce my way out of this dungeon, I guess I would do it in a heartbeat."

That earned you a raised eyebrow, a suggestive little smirk that you rolled your eyes at.

"You should give it a try," Isaac chuckled. "Who knows, Stonehearst might be receptive to your charms..."

"I'm good, actually," you scoffed. "You could see if Francoise wants to take a shot at it..."

The overwhelming look of disgust on Isaac's face wrung a short cackle of real amusement from you.

"That's what I thought. We'll leave the seductions up to you," you informed him.

"Great, thanks," Isaac muttered sarcastically.

You let him slink away unchallenged, back to whatever work devoured his waking hours. Uneasiness lodged firm in your conscience. Your eyes followed his lithe figure until he disappeared behind the clouded glass partition obscuring his terrible machine. The chain he dragged along behind him moved every so often, its rhythm betraying his own apprehensiveness. You could tell he was pacing just out of view.

"Do not acquiesce to Night's charms."

Azalia's voice was closer than you expected it, close enough to startle you a little. You scowled her way and restored some of the space separating you. She followed and the confines of your cell made escape impractical.

"It's nice of you to worry about me," you sighed. "Very, uh... motherly, of you. But in case you hadn't noticed, this isn't exactly a romantic setting. And you're talking about the reason I'm trapped down here in the first place. I don't think Isaac's charms really make the list of things I need to worry about."

"Night's charms are the most perilous danger this place has to offer," Azalia retorted. "Beware his silver tongue. Do not be so fool as to trust the devil just because he softens his eyes and bats his lashes when he speaks to you."

"Are you talking about Isaac or Icharus?" you snapped back. "Sounds to me like his ancestor burned you, but that doesn't mean I'll fall victim to these 'charms' you're so worried about. Anyway, Isaac is keeping me alive for the time being. Stonehearst is the one trying to kill me. As long as we have an enemy in common-"

"As long as you have an enemy in common, Night has another weapon in his arsenal of treachery," Azalia persisted. "And Icharus sits upon his shoulder, whispering the designs of our downfall."

"Our downfall?" you scoffed. "You're already dead, I'm not sure what you could possibly have to worry about."

"Death is a reprieve," Azalia scowled. "What concerns me is the prospect of oblivion, which has yet to touch my thrice-damned soul."

You frowned while you prepared your next round of questions, but Azalia beat you to the punch for once.

"Know this, my obstinate charge: while my concern is undeniably more for myself than for you, the danger to you is no less imminent, no less dire."

"Clearly!" you growled. "If you're so concerned, why don't you stop speaking in riddles and tell me something useful?!"

Azalia showed you her teeth, aggravation shattering the solemn, stately presentation she tried so futilely to maintain. Your breath caught in suspense. You had never felt so acutely that your spirit guide was on the cusp of revealing the heart of a matter.

The moment was cut short by the brisk slap of soles on concrete. You blinked and Azalia vanished like a wild animal startled away by a sudden noise.

"Pointless dramatics!" you seethed as the footsteps grew closer. "It's not like anyone else can see her anyway... god, I hate dead people!"

Uniformed orderlies marched past your cell, escorting a woman in psych ward garb while Stonehearst followed behind. He held a strong, stiff posture, hands folded officiously at his back. You forgot all about Azalia, adrenaline electrifying your blood in your veins as opportunity teased you. You leaped to your feet, ignoring Stonehearst in favor of trying to steal the attention of the orderlies accompanying him.

"Hey! Hey you! Hey, you have to help me!" you called desperately.

Judi trailed at her Father's back. She shot you a deep scowl, then latched a cover over the already meager aperture provided by the barred window of your cell door. You kept yelling, banged a few times on the thick, unyielding metal, only to realize how pointless your efforts truly were.

"Right. Crazy house," you scoffed dejectedly to yourself. "Who in their right mind would listen to me anyway, even if the window was open? Fuck... fuck!"

You slammed the side of your fist against the door one more time in a gesture of pure, helpless rage that you didn't even feel deeply. You were too exhausted for real anger or even true misery. You slid down into a crouch, defeated on the frigid floor.

You did muster some regret that you weren't able to catch even a glimpse of the experiment everyone had been anticipating all day. The sounds you heard were muffled, voices, shouts, mechanical whirring, buzzing and humming. You pressed your ear to the door and focused your full attention on interpreting the chaos unfolding outside. Ten minutes, you estimated, of havoc and mayhem muted by rusting iron that obstructed your curious gaze.

Then silence. A quiet so consuming you intuitively knew it meant failure. You waited, held your breath as you tried to discern whether you were once again alone with your fellow prisoners.

"Isaac?" you called cautiously. "Isaac!"

"Will you not leave the devil well enough alone?!" Azalia hissed over your shoulder.

"I want to know what happened!" you snapped. "Isaac!"

"I suppose my continued existence is worth the pain of a few exhumed calamities," Azalia sighed.

Her hands were unexpected and cold as death itself, her palms pressed to your cheeks with the same force as a manacle. She pulled your gaze straight up, her scarred visage scowling down fiercely from where she stood at your back. You gasped at the bracing sensation while your world spun. More than physical disorientation gripped you. Azalia's touch was an instigation of psychic immersion, an irresistible invitation into the hallowed ground of her worst memories. She offered you clarity through a synthesis of moments, rushed but no less potent for their truncation. The first images were more feelings than pictures, more impressions than true glimpses, before real scenes solidified from the ether of Azalia's crystalized perceptions.

You've never been so in love. The boy courting you couldn't be a more perfect gentleman. You see a flash of his poetry, penned in an elegant scrawl, intimate as only a lover can be. You have a flower a day, a lily, a rose, a tulip. When the season forbids the gift of a delicate bloom, he plies you instead with evergreens, with holly and mistletoe. More than romance, here is a soul who can understand you in ways no one else ever has. Another seer who knows the burden of the future and the mythic allure of the secrets hidden beyond the veil of the past.

Here is your perfect match, your preordained other half, the missing piece for which your melancholy soul has searched for all your young life.

Here is Icharus, his lips brushing your knuckles in the sight of others, joined with your own when privacy allows your passions to blossom. Here is Icharus, handsome and confident, fearless and bold enough for both of you. Here is Icharus with his fingers wound tight through yours, promising he will never be far from your side. Here is Icharus, charming, beguiling, adoring, infallible Icharus.

"Say the words with me," he smiles and slips a ring onto your finger in the golden darkness. "I will be with you forever and you will be with me. Not even death will dare to break the bond we forge today. All that is mine will be yours, and all that you have will be mine. Say the words with me, darling..."

It's an incantation that slips from your lips at the candlelit altar he has prepared, a shrine to your shared devotion, a dedication to your fidelity, a testament to vows you have coveted all your life. He echoes your words, an old dead language that you have no hope of understanding, but he insists this is the rite used in his homeland. This is what it will take to bind you together, to seal you together inseparably as man and wife.

You don't shy away when he unsheathes the dagger, because even where you come from, blood is demanded for such a sacred promise. You smile at him and your vision swims with tears, with joy, with the anticipation of eternity. Icharus smiles too, warm, grateful, breathless at the precipice of everything he's ever wanted.

Icharus is still smiling when he raises the dagger high. Too high. You have enough time to frown your confusion as he poises it above his head. Not enough time for the betrayal to register before he brings it down across your eyes.

Your scream is a terrible thing as the world goes dark. Your agony cannot be described with words. In the darkness and the pain of the assault, you are incapable of comprehension. All you can do is fight blindly for a life your love claws at you to take. You have no idea how the blade finds his heart. Perhaps fate or the gods have seen fit to intervene on your behalf, to spare you out of pity for your naivety.

Here are the tears that wash blood from the one eye remaining to you. Here is Icharus, beautiful even as death cools his body on the ground before the altar of his profane sacrament. Here are the pages of his book, the transcriptions of his ritual, the details of a plot you won't come to understand until your wounds have healed and your heart has decayed into a brittle, hideous, resentful thing.

A symbol you have seen before brands itself behind your eyelids, pulsing from the pages of Icharus' sacrilegious ambitions.

You collapsed as soon as Azalia released you from her spell. Your panting gasps filled the cell, bounced off the stone walls and impacted you hard enough to knock you prone. The deluge of her emotions was stronger than anything you'd ever felt in your life, more vivid than any experience you'd actually lived. Detached from your own mind, you wondered senselessly why she felt so much more acutely than you did. Something was wrong with one of you, though which of you was more dysfunctional was not a question you were qualified to answer, even at a time when your world wasn't reeling unpleasantly with the aftershocks of such a violent vision.

"What the hell did you just show me?!" you finally demanded.

"The reason for your connection with Night," Azalia replied, more open, more plain than she'd ever been in all the time you'd known her. "You see... Isaac is not the first Night to set his ambitions on the means to sever an outcast from their ability."

<== Previous Chapter

Is that her? I told her to stay away! She's going to ruin everything! I can't let her, not when I'm so close!

Doubt was not a malady he suffered from often, but it plagued him as your cries tapered down into quiet sobs. He considered trying to stifle the miserable chorus with his pitiful excuse for bedding, but he knew from experience that the fabric wouldn't be enough to bring him peace. The desolation of his fellow prisoners never failed to reach him through the time-worn cloth. He clenched his eyes shut and measured his breaths into even stanzas, but the interruption of your slowly burning breakdown kept his head aching and his mind spinning.

I need her to stop. God, won't she ever stop?

Isaac considered making his demands aloud, but he doubted admonition would quell the tide of your despair. Instead, he suffered aggravation like a penance while the drizzling background murmur of your desolation pattered on softly.

He felt Icharus' presence in the cell, but didn't spare him the courtesy of a glance. The ghost waited with the patience of an entity assured of its own inevitability. His miasmic smugness grated on Isaac's already tested nerves. He was too tired to snap, even when curiosity won out over his spiteful desire to ignore the otherworldly spirit.

"I know what you did," Isaac eventually mumbled into the ether. His own low words proved a welcome distraction from your quiet, incessant weeping. "You lead her down here. You must have known I couldn't let her interfere. Not when I'm so close to my sister's cure. What I don't understand is why. Why would you do that?"

"When a harbinger of calamity comes to sniff at your door," Icharus murmured in response, "... sometimes the best solution is to stick the bitch in a cage before she can do any real harm."

Isaac's hopeful vision slipped past his eyes like oil over water. In the darkness ensconcing him, it seemed to grow dimmer. On the desolate precipice between interrogation and unconsciousness, he wondered futilely if he'd made a mistake.

"You reek of uncertainty," Icharus sneered. "You need to focus."

Isaac's determination to succeed was hard at war with base gut instinct. Logically, what he felt was the only sound decision at the time was still the most rational option. Untrustworthy as Stonehearst was, he was right about one thing. Isaac needed the resources he could provide. He needed live test subjects. He needed utter secrecy in which to conduct his experiments. For all the torment in which he was paid over the course of his association with Stonehearst, Isaac knew better than to believe he could finish his machine on his own.

All that notwithstanding, an easy way out had been lured to his lightless purgatory in the form of a woman. A glimpse of freedom taunted Isaac, sowed resentment in the inhospitable soil of his cold metal heart. His vision of liberation haunted him when he closed his eyes, so he opened them again only to be greeted by the smug countenance of his spirit guide. He blinked up at Icharus grudgingly.

"My goals haven't changed," Isaac re-avowed, as much to convince himself as the apparition. "But it isn't calamity we stuck in that cage. It's hope."

Bright, fleeting, doomed. Even so, he'd enjoyed a brief, irresistible glimmer of cheer when you were still an unquantified factor. Not knowing who you were or the exact trajectory of your goals had been a gift Isaac was all too anxious to savor while it lasted. Now it was over and with the certitude of your revealed identity came the added guarantee that you had no mysterious means by which he would be magically freed from the complexities of his conundrum.

"Neither hope, my young unwilling protege," Icharus purred, unaffected by Isaac's depressed musings. "But potential incarnate."

Isaac's dour bewilderment was apparent, but Icharus was unfazed. He crouched by the bedside, leaned close as though there were anyone else who could overhear what he had to say to his descendant.

"Listen closely now, accidental little dove," he chuckled. "And I will tell you a secret about ravens."

Isaac's eyes narrowed even as his curiosity rose to the challenge.

Rest never touched your tormented mind. Hours rolled past invisibly but inevitably. When sleep came to visit, it was a crushing thing that smothered you beneath the weight of its fatalistic portents. There, in the murky haze of the ethereal, you met Isaac Night once more. You knew he was as oppressed by unconsciousness as you were. Neither of you would feel rejuvenated when you returned to the waking world. The dreams you shared were awful and fragmented. Through the cracked, spasming lens of Isaac's unhoned third eye, you caught glimpses of the past and inklings of the unknown. Even with your own ability so far out of reach, the mysterious connection between you and Isaac guided your fitfully slumbering consciousness into the beckoning pit of his disturbed dreams.

You travel slowly up the longest flight of metal stairs you've never seen in your life, greeted by machinery that Isaac knows well. You see it through his eyes and its beauty is second to none.

"Francoise's cure," Isaac sighs, easy as a verse, a mantra he's recited all his life. If he lost his own name, he would still remember the label for his most important work.

"What you're doing up here is unnatural, Night."

A flash of stranger's face accompanies the voice, a deathly pale girl with strong features, dark hair, darker clothes and an amulet around her neck that strikes you as familiar. Or is it familiar to Isaac? In this confused, undone state, your minds are half-merged, the line blurred between his memories and yours. The vision shifts dramatically, displaces you abruptly and there is your Father's face. Your heart leaps and Isaac's sinks.

"Dad! You're here to get me out of this place!" you cry with relief. Could your nightmare possibly be over so quickly, so easily?

Isaac's panic bleeds through the incorporeal psychic fabric binding your wandering minds.

Don't take her! Not yet! She might still save me! She might still-

"They can keep you," your Father scoffs and you gape up at him with dread while he looms over you, impossibly tall in the shadowy dreamscape. "You're no good to me without your powers anyway."

Your protests threaten to choke you, but the scene dissolves and re-forms while you're still reeling from the devastating impact of his edict. Stonehearst towers over you in place of your Father with a key held in one hand and the other hidden behind his back.

"You made that blasted contraption work once, you can make it work again!" he insists. A tired line, one you've heard over and over.

Wait, no you haven't.

The moment's hesitation is enough to let you take one step beyond the perspective of the boy huddling on the floor at Stonehearst's feet. Of course it's Isaac, immobile in a straitjacket and seething up at his captor. This isn't the Isaac Night who is ricocheting by your side unwillingly through unpleasant imaginings and half-formed memories. Here is a young man glaring up at a fool who thinks he can steal everything he wants and disguise his thefts as innovation.

"You can't keep me here forever," that young man reasons, full of of vitriol and more than half-mad with the certainty that someone is coming to save him. "I didn't do anything wrong and Fran will prove it! She'll get me out of here!"

Stonehearst laughs down at him while darkness creeps in to consume the finer details of the cell until the scene is reduced to two figures flickering dimly in a well of black, the inevitable oblivion of finite memory. Even as they fade completely from view, Isaac's emotions remain. They permeate the vision until rage and grief paint the dimming spectacle with violent, helpless crimson. Stonehearst's voice is loud as thunder, inescapable even as he disappears from view.

"Not so, m'boy. No one's going to let her waste their time searching for a dead outcast."

You're losing Isaac to the potency of the pain evoked by the memory. The seance threatens to devolve into a true nightmare, something undirected by psychic talent. The dream becomes a snare and the trap of the boy he once was mires your hapless conduit in a cruel reenactment of his past. He shivers and shakes at your feet, constrained and confused, too dazed to remember that he's only sleeping.

You could wake yourself if you wanted to. You're free enough from the gravitational pull of his untrained ability that you could wrest yourself from his bad dreams. Of course, that would mean leaving him here, moaning and muttering in the dark, in the skin of a younger, more helpless man.

"Dead? Dead? They think I'm dead? He told them I'm dead?" he mumbles, now fully unaware he's still sleeping. "I could be dead... I should be dead already. Am I dead yet?"

Pity for Isaac's desolation consumes you, irrational as it is inescapable. You don't leave him. Experienced enough to navigate the realm where dreams exert as much force as reality, you steer your hand through the confusion until it lands on his shoulder. His agony is a dull blade sinking through your palm and it makes you wish you would have left when you had the chance.

"We're not dead yet," you tell him, because you don't know what else to say.

He won't meet your gaze, just rocks in place in his straitjacket and fumes while his hair lightens in streaks and the lines of his features deepen with the passage of a decade.

"I know a secret about ravens," he mumbles to himself, as if he’s completely oblivious to your presence. "Icharus told me."

Your curiosity rises, but the invocation of Icharus brings him into the fold. As if in direct retaliation to his appearance, Azalia materializes over your shoulder.

"He will twist your sympathy into a weapon and use it to destroy you," she warns you.

"Get up," Icharus commands Isaac. "No child of my blood should be so pathetic. Can you not tell a simple vision from plain wakefulness? Get ahold of yourself!"

"Pathetic," Azalia sneers.

Their voices overlap, bickering and insults traded while you huff your consternation.

"Dead people are such assholes," you comment, unimpressed and irreverent.

The blithe phrase shatters the mood of the moment. The spell of dream-bound delusion gripping Isaac breaks along with the somberness. He meets your eyes at last and the straitjacket melts away like mist in a cool breeze, like your coarseness is the magic he’s been waiting for all this time.

"Good thing we're not dead yet," he replies while the ghosts go silent around you.

"Not yet," you concur.

Isaac almost smiles, but there isn't enough time for the expression to fully form before he's gone. You're a little sad to think that he's woken before you, a little lonely in the relentless embrace of somnolence now that he's been whisked away by consciousness. The darkest part of the night holds you prisoner as much as it ever did, only now, without the benefit of your own psychic abilities, it offers no recompensive insight to salve the icy sting of its grip.

The rest of your sleep was a shapeless, interminable void until you were woken rudely by a metallic clatter. Every muscle in your body tensed, then protested the needless, automatic reaction. You groaned your discomfort, sat up on your incommodious cot and cast your gaze to the door of your cell. A tray waited in unceremonious offering, the sliding aperture already closed behind it. You got to your feet shakily, voices from outside commanding the bulk of your attention as you sifted through the sparse nourishment dejectedly. Nothing qualifying as edible, though your expectations had hardly been high to begin with.

You focused most of your attention on the voices as you nibbled what might have been a vegetable before it was steamed into mushy oblivion. Isaac's steady cadence was easy to pick out, low, familiar and hurried. Stonehearst's anxious tenor made your flesh crawl. A third voice introduced itself.

"If it's really so close, I could try again," a woman piped up.

You craned your neck, but couldn't see far enough to put a face to the voice.

"Out of the question!" Stonehearst rebutted at once. "We barely pulled you out in time during the last test you volunteered for."

"But I wasn't hurt!" the woman argued. "I can do it again! I just know this time it'll be successful!"

"Judi, I know you're eager to assist," Isaac broke in. "But your input is as invaluable to our research as is your Father's. Gus is right. There's no point in taking needless risks at this stage."

"But if it works-"

"If it works on an inconsequential test subject, we'll have all the time in the world to grant you a set of powers all your own," Stonehearst insisted. "Now... I have a batch of samples awaiting analysis. You know you're the only one I can trust with this task."

"Yes, Father," the girl sighed grudgingly.

"Hop to it, then."

You got a look at the woman as she passed your cell. Dark-haired and glowering, younger than you and Isaac by a few years, perhaps as many as ten. She didn't spare your cell a glance as she sulked away. Isaac and Stonehearst trailed behind her, still distant but now within your line of sight. You fixed your attention to them as Judi ascended the stairs and disappeared.

"She's getting impatient," Stonehearst sighed. "Her dedication to the work is in danger of being overshadowed by her desire to assimilate an outcast's abilities."

"Judi only wants to make you proud," Isaac observed. "She'll do whatever you ask her to, as long as she feels like she still has your approval."

Standing side by side with the normie Doctor, Isaac would have seemed Stonehearst's peer but for the chain still secured at his ankle. The only reminder that he and Stonehearst were not equal partners in their atrocities.

"My approval was good enough for her when she was a girl," Stonehearst sighed. "The older she gets, the farther her interest wanders."

He glared pointedly at Isaac over the top of his glasses. Isaac crossed his arms stoically, though the unhappy draw of a frown tugged at lips he couldn't quite keep in line with force of will alone. Whatever Stonehearst was implying, Isaac seemed eager to brush it off unaddressed. Intrigue fired through you. Even in this dark, dull place, there was drama afoot.

"In any case, everything's ready for the test tonight," Isaac went on. "I presume you're as ready as I am to get underway?"

"Of course. Despite Judi's eagerness to throw herself on the pyre of progress, I have a patient who will serve our needs just as well," Stoneheart assured him.

"Perfect, perfect. Now as for the werewolf, the tranquilizer-"

"I don't want you to use the werewolf," Stonehearst interrupted. "We need to rid ourselves of this detective as soon as possible. Put her in the machine instead."

Your heart hammered off-kilter. You had to slap a hand over your mouth to keep from crying out in shock and dismay.

My vision. My death. This is it, you thought starkly.

Your motion drew Isaac's gaze, unfocused by his own surprise at Stonehearst's suggestion. He locked eyes with you, took in your horror with something strange twisting his expression in subtle ways. The agitated twitch of an eyebrow, the quirk of a stillborn scowl, an undeniable frustration that swam behind irises you could barely make out in the dim basement light.

"That's a bad idea," Isaac protested. "Anyway, you're assuming failure on my part. Are you so certain my machine won't work this time?"

"You've had six months to make it work. So far all it's given us is a pile of charred bodies to be disposed of," Stonehearst pointed out. "It's only a matter of time before people come looking for her. I want her done away with before that happens."

"If you're so eager to kill her, there's nothing stopping you from doing it yourself," Isaac sneered goadingly. "Or are you afraid of getting your own hands dirty after all, Gus?"

"I'm only being practical. I'm surprised at you, Isaac," Stoneheart observed. "I would have thought having another test subject fall into your lap would have delighted you. I assumed that was why you let her live to begin with."

Isaac met your gaze one more time. Fear almost kept you from holding his eyes, but terror couldn't hold a candle to your desperation. You wanted to articulate a plea for your life, but you couldn't catch your breath fast enough. All you could do was stare at him entreatingly, silent and fervent. Isaac pursed his lips and furrowed his brow, then redirected his attention to Stonehearst.

"Of course I had a reason for letting her live," Isaac confessed, though he used his next breath to lie. "But that wasn't it. She has more value to the work than as fodder for a trial run."

"How could she possibly-"

"I'm refining a hypothesis. When the times comes, I plan to use her to test its validity," Isaac asserted.

"What hypothesis?" Stonehearst scoffed.

"It's more of a hunch at this point."

"I won't have you risk our entire operation on a hunch! If you-"

"More than a hunch, then!" Isaac countered, unable to disguise his aggravation as he argued with his patron and jailor. "Look, my experiments were only successful once. Surely you haven't forgotten?"

Stoneheart hesitated.

"How could I?" he wondered. "It was a monumentous achievement, if an accidental one."

Isaac's grimace sharpened. Clearly, the occasion wasn't one he enjoyed recalling.

"I may have only been actively fabricating this machine since you brought my sister here," Isaac went on, "... but I spent years wondering what it was that made my machine work that first time, back up in old Iago tower. When I... when I lost my inborn abilities."

Stonehearst opened his mouth, but quickly closed it again. He stroked his chin thoughtfully and bit his tongue, holding back whatever he wanted to say in favor of letting Isaac continue.

"Frump was the only factor I can't account for in that incident," Isaac scowled. "Her and her ability, that is."

Frump. You knew that name and it evoked a face from Donovan Galpin's collection of files. A psychic outcast, it was she who brought the charges of attempted murder that allowed Stonehearst to incarcerate Isaac to begin with. The face of the girl at the top of the iron stairs, the one from Isaac's bad dreams, flitted through your imagination and you realized the two were one and the same. So that portion, at least, of Isaac's unconscious amblings, had been rooted in actual memory. Did that mean you could take all of it at face value? Unlikely, but tantalizing.

I know a secret about ravens. Icharus told me.

A chill tingled its way up your aching vertebrae. What did Isaac think he knew? And why was he trying to keep you alive now? What share of the motivations he was feeding Stonehearst were true and how much of it was deception? Most importantly, were you in more or less danger if he really was lying about needing you for these experiments of his?

While your mind raced fruitlessly, Stonehearst's pondering deepened.

"You think psychic talent, specifically, played some role in the success of the experiment?" Stonehearst wondered aloud. His eyes took on a faraway glaze as he considered the merit of Isaac's proposal.

"It's the only thing that makes sense," Isaac pressed. "The detective could be a great stroke of luck, if that really is the case. But she won't be of any use to us if she fries to a crisp before I can test my theory."

"How would you test such a theory without putting her through the machine?" Stonehearst ruminated.

"There are tests I can run that shouldn't kill her," Isaac explained. "Of course, I won't need her at all if the next test is successful. Which brings us back to the sedative I'll need for the werewolf..."

You didn't realize you were holding your breath until bright spots started to prick across your field of vision. Stonehearst hummed and contemplated for what could have been a hundred years while you shook in your cell and waited for him to decide your fate.

"Very well then," he finally announced. "It's your work, after all, m'boy. If there's any such thing as an expert on outcast ability transference, you would be the closest fit for the bill. Use the detective if you think it will advance our designs. But know that if anyone comes looking for her, I won't hesitate to dispose of her, no matter how useful you think she might be."

"Jumpiness doesn't suit you, Gus," Isaac tsked. "Relax. We're closer to success than we've ever been. After twelve years, would you really risk abandoning the fight on the cusp of victory?"

"You've talked me into enough dubious, ill-advised schemes for one day," Stonehearst scoffed dismissively. "I won't budge on this condition, so whatever it is you mean to do with her, do it quickly. Don't assume time is on your side."

"Fine, but I'll need materials."

"Don't you always?"

"I'm a scientist, not a wizard," Isaac scowled. "Can you get me what I need, or not?"

"I'll do what I can, of course. Judi will be back later with the sedative for tonight's test," Stonehearst sighed. "Have the list ready for her."

Relief couldn't touch you as Stonehearst departed. Not past the din of your screaming uncertainties, not with the fine edge of mortal peril hovering eagerly over your pulse. Isaac must have seen the questions plaguing your expression. He seemed drained by the effort of convincing his captor to spare you a while longer. When he approached your cell, it was to lean wearily against your door. You shuffled closer still, gripping the bars while you waited anxiously for him to speak.

"Don't worry," he murmured, so low that your jagged breathing almost drowned out his soft words. "I don't really need you for anything. Well... not to make my machine work, anyway."

"First you doom me," you lamented. "Then you try to save me. Care to shed some light on what you're up to? Or can I just chalk it up to insanity?"

"In the bowels of a mental asylum? I'd think insanity would be a safe bet," Isaac quipped. "You put me in an impossible position. I couldn't let you bring the sky down on Stonehearst, not before I finish my machine and cure my sister. But don't assume I want you dead, either."

"That's not an explanation," you complained caustically. "It would be no trouble for you to roll over and do what Stonehearst wants. So why not let him kill me?"

You watched Isaac's expression drop with melancholy, contort with desperation that you longed sorely to understand.

"What kind of an idiot would I have to be to let him kill hope itself?" Isaac mumbled, vague and evasive.

He started to turn away, but you weren't satisfied yet. Discontent to let him leave in such a noncomittal state, your hand darted out through the bars and caught his shoulder. Your grip closed around a handful of fabric, stole a fistful of his shirt that kept him from walking away.

"How can you possibly have any hope pinned on me while I'm locked up like this?!" you demanded, seething at the irrationality.

Isaac's hand flew to yours to pry your fingers loose. The instant his skin touched yours, a flare of light blinded you to the corporeal world.

The light is Isaac's entire perspective, spilling in mercilessly from an opened door. Your silhouette is the only reprieve from a pain he welcomes, even as he brings up a hand on reflex to shield his eyes from the barrage.

It's over, he thinks to himself. She really saved me after all... she set me free, just like I knew she would.

The vision fled as quickly as it appeared, probably because Isaac had managed to wrench free of your grasp. His hand left yours, but the pungent after burn of his emotions remained with you, seared through your veins like a fleeting high that dissipated all too quickly. Suddenly, you understood.

"Oh," you sighed. "I see. So you had a vision about me too, then."

Isaac straightened his shirt while you withdrew your arm from between the bars, retreated with a defeated sigh.

"You're impossible," you accused him. "And a complete lunatic, too."

"No, please, flattery will get you nowhere with me," Isaac snarked.

"When did you have that vision?"

"Not long after the first time you reached out to me."

You scoffed unhappily and slunk away into the recesses of your cell. Despite himself, Isaac surged forward in pursuit. It was his turn to grip the bars, to peer between them with his breath catching in his throat as he reconsidered his questions. You crossed your arms and sank down into a corner, shivering with the realization that Isaac's determination to keep you alive was based on something so flimsy as a single bright flash of a future that might not even come to pass. His ignorance of the fundamental laws of psychic ability was the only thing standing between you and and your execution at Stonehearst's hands.

"You were so uncertain the last time we talked about the future," Isaac finally managed. His voice was thin with fear. You closed your eyes, frustration welling behind their lids as you realized Isaac wasn't quite as oblivious as you'd hoped he might be. "You kept going back and forth between talking about it like it was inevitable, and insisting that it wasn't. So which is it?"

"That's not what you really want to ask me," you scoffed unhappily. "Go on. Ask the question you actually want me to answer."

Isaac's quick, ragged inhalations marked the passage of a set of seconds that felt closer to an aeon. His fingers tightened around your bars until the skin over his knuckles threatened to break from the strain.

"Do you think my vision can still come true?" he all but whispered. "Do you think there's any way you can still help me? After I save Francoise. After... after all is said and done."

You knew better than to trust foresight. Far from immutable, glimpses of the future were fluid and prone to disintegration. Still, Isaac's desperation was catching. You glanced back through the dark to meet his wide, shining eyes. He looked at you like you were the light at the end of the tunnel.

He must have known deep down that Stonehearst would only keep him alive until he perfected his machine. He must have known that while he was under the Doctor's thumb, Francoise's cure was as impossible as the fragile hope of freedom.

And you? What could you say to preserve the tenuous thread by which your life hung in the balance?

"Maybe," you finally told him. "But at this point? Only if you help me first."

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