He turned away from the crowd, his boots crunching on the dry earth as he sought out a moment of solitude.
He found a jagged, bare rock perched on the edge of the clearing, a natural seat that overlooked the strange, sprawling landscape of the settlement. He lowered himself onto the stone, placing the heavy, oversized Bonsai tree beside him.
For a long moment, he simply sat there, his chest rising and falling with a rhythm he was only now beginning to truly notice.
"It's hypnosis. It has to be," he muttered to himself, his mind frantically trying to categorize the impossible. "A deep-state, multi-sensory hypnotic trance. The old woman must have used a chemical catalyst—something in that glass ball, perhaps an aerosol or a contact neurotoxin."
He raised his left hand, examining the wound the statue had inflicted. He hadn't wrapped it as the youth had suggested; he wanted to see it. He wanted to study the evidence.
The blood had already clotted, forming a dark, metallic crust over the puncture in his palm. His hand was stained a deep, rust-colored crimson, the dried fluid flaking at the edges of his skin.
It wasn't the first time Thomas had been wounded. In the military, he had survived shrapnel and blades, but back then, a wound was just a data point—a mechanical failure to be addressed.
This was different. This was the first time in his memory that he had actually felt the sting. He could feel the pulse of the blood beneath the scab; he could feel the phantom itch of the healing process.
There wasn't just the physical ache, though. There was the storm. A myriad of emotions—sharp, jagged, and uninvited—clashed within him like a hurricane.
"So… this is how real people feel all the time?" Thomas sighed, a sound that felt like it was being pulled from the very bottom of his lungs.
He leaned his head back, looking up at the sky, and felt the weight of a thousand disturbed thoughts. "It's a hellish nightmare! How do normal people live with all of this? The distractions… the internal noise… it's deafening."
Before this moment, his mind had been a clean, sterile sheet of white paper. He had been a machine of pure logic, unburdened by the "static" of feeling. Now, it was as if a chaotic child had grabbed a permanent marker and scribbled thick, dark lines across his consciousness without order or logic.
He had zero experience in emotional regulation. He was a master detective who couldn't even solve the mystery of his own rising heart rate. The internal pressure was so great it manifested as a physical throb—a headache that felt like a rhythmic hammer behind his eyes.
"I got it! I surrender!" he raised his head and shouted toward the sky, his voice echoing off the nearby hills. He was trying to communicate with the old lady, convinced she was watching him from behind a two-way mirror in some New York laboratory.
"I knew what I had was a gift! A blessing from God or whoever! I've learned my lesson! Just let me go back to the grey! I don't want the colour anymore!"
He waited, breathless. He expected the world to flicker, for the "hypnosis" to break and reveal the cold, grey pavement of Wall Street. But nothing happened. The wind continued to rustle the strange, blue-tinged grass. The birds—if they were birds—continued to sing in the distance.
After a few long, agonising minutes, a cold realisation began to sink in. Something was fundamentally amiss. The "simulation" wasn't ending.
"Fine. I'll play along a little longer then," he whispered, his detective's curiosity finally overriding his panic.
He picked up the small, finger-sized scroll. His fingers fumbled with the delicate red thread, his pulse quickening as the seal snapped. He unrolled the parchment, but the moment he looked at the ink, his heart sank.
The handwriting was elegant, but it was written in a script that bore no resemblance to any language he had studied. They were alien symbols—curved, sharp, and utterly unintelligible.
"This…" he began, his bloodied left hand inadvertently brushing against the paper.
The moment his blood touched the parchment, the world tilted. A sudden, violent throbbing pain exploded in his temples, forcing his body to tremble. He dropped the scroll, his hands flying up to squeeze his head as if he were trying to keep his skull from splitting apart. He groaned, the sound lost in the roaring in his ears.
And then, just as quickly as it had arrived, the pain vanished.
Thomas remained hunched over, breathing heavily, his eyes staring through the gaps in his fingers at the scroll lying on the rock. Like a trick of the light, the symbols began to shift.
The alien curves straightened; the strange glyphs blurred and reorganised themselves. Through the haze of his shock, the alien script transformed into something familiar. Something he could read as easily as a police report.
Retto Town, in one day. Meet Mr Mark; he is your mentor. Please go there and take further instructions from him.
The scroll contained only those few words, yet they carried the weight of a death sentence—or a birth certificate. Thomas picked the paper back up, flipping it over, trying to find the alien symbols again, but they were gone. The ink was set. The translation was permanent.
"Interesting," he whispered, his analytical mind struggling to keep pace. How had his brain processed a language he didn't know?
He tried to find a logical explanation. Perhaps he had been confused by the "storm" in his mind and had simply misread it at first? Or perhaps the old lady's "catalyst" had a linguistic component?
But as he looked up, the "hallucination" theory began to crumble. He took a long, sweeping glance at the people surrounding the hill. They were staring at him with a reverence that felt too visceral to be a dream. He was a superstar in a world he didn't understand.
Then he looked at the sky.
High above the Dante settlement, a sun hung in the firmament. But it wasn't the sun he knew. It was a massive, brilliant orange star, far larger and more imposing than the one that shone over New York. Its light cast long, amber shadows that felt heavy and ancient.
"Everything… everyone… they all look so real. Yet they all look so alien."
The conflict between his logic and his senses reached a breaking point. The emotions—fear, awe, anger, and a desperate, clawing hope—collided again, making him grab his head and squeeze his temples until his knuckles turned white.
"What the hell did you do to me?" he muttered, his voice cracking. He stood up, the heavy Bonsai tree at his feet forgotten for a second as he threw his head back and screamed at the endless, orange-lit sky. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!"
The sky offered no answer, only the steady, warm glow of a world that was waiting for its first hero to stop screaming and start walking.