The night had grown deep by the time Rhea returned to her office. The police headquarters had grown quieter than usual. Most of the staff had already left for the day, and the long corridor outside her room was almost empty. Only the distant humming of fluorescent lights and the occasional echo of footsteps broke the silence.
Rhea closed the door behind her slowly. For a few seconds, she simply stood there. Her mind was heavy. The events of the day replayed inside her thoughts in fragments... Evan's trembling voice, the interrogation room, the hospital corridor, the chaos. Something was wrong. She could feel it. And that feeling refused to leave her.
Rhea walked toward her desk and dropped her bag on the chair. The table in front of her was already covered with files from Evan's case. Photographs, reports, handwritten notes, psychological evaluations—everything she had collected over the past days.
She pulled the chair back and sat down. For a moment she stared at the pile. Then she began again. Page by page. Carefully. Evan's statements were stacked together in a thick file. Rhea opened it and started reading from the beginning.
The room grew quieter as the minutes passed. Her eyes moved slowly across the pages. Descriptions of the visions. Descriptions of the days when they happened. Descriptions of what Evan remembered feeling before and after them. At first, everything looked the same as before, but Rhea had been in this profession too long to ignore instincts. Years of investigating crimes had taught her that patterns often hid inside the smallest details.
She leaned closer to the papers and then she started noticing something. A strange similarity. Her eyes narrowed slightly. She flipped to another page... Then another...And another...
Her fingers stopped moving. The descriptions were different. But the settings were not. Every time Evan had experienced those visions… He had been somewhere public. Rhea turned the pages faster now. A café, busy street, bookstore, subway station, crowded restaurant. Again and again, the same pattern repeated. Evan had always been surrounded by people. Never alone. Never in a private space.
Rhea leaned back slowly. "That's strange…" she murmured. It didn't make sense. Visions, hallucinations, trauma responses, those usually appeared in moments of isolation, when the mind was overwhelmed or vulnerable. But Evan's experiences didn't match that pattern. If anything, they appeared when he was in the middle of ordinary life. As if something had been… triggered.
Her fingers tapped lightly on the table as she thought. Something about this disturbed her deeply. The human brain didn't create the same scenario repeatedly without a reason. Especially not with this level of precision. Rhea's eyes drifted toward the ceiling as she tried to connect the pieces. Then suddenly... A distant memory surfaced in her mind. 'A case.' Not from her department. From years ago.
Her eyes widened slightly. It had happened in India.The case had been discussed widely among investigators and psychologists at the time. It had shocked the legal and medical communities because of the disturbing method used by the criminal.
The culprit had manipulated the victim's mind. Not with violence. But with suggestion. A rare form of psychological manipulation, something close to hypnotic conditioning.
Information had been planted inside the victim's subconscious so deeply that he believed he had committed actions that had never happened. The victim had confessed repeatedly. Even described details that investigators believed were real. Until later evidence proved something terrifying. The memories had been manufactured. Carefully placed inside his mind. The criminal had used subtle triggers, environments, repeated exposure, small psychological cues that activated those false memories at specific times.
The case had become extremely controversial. Researchers had debated its implications for years. And eventually the study had been removed from public discussion officially. The reason was simple. The technique was considered too dangerous. If misused, it could destroy a person's identity completely.
Rhea's heart began beating faster. Her eyes slowly moved back toward Evan's testimonies spread across the desk. Public places... Repeated environments... Specific triggers... Her fingers tightened around the paper. No…
Her mind resisted the idea. But the more she thought about it, the more the pieces aligned. Because there was no other explanation. Evan's visions, his absolute belief that he had done things he clearly hadn't, the perfect manipulation of events around him. Someone had built this carefully. Someone had planted those thoughts. Someone had guided his mind.
Rhea whispered quietly to herself. "This isn't trauma…" Her voice barely existed. "This is control." A chill moved through her body. Suddenly another thought struck her.
Her head snapped up. The missing document. The paper she had lost earlier. Her breathing quickened. There had been something written on it. A detail she had overlooked. A name.
Her memory tried desperately to recall it. That name had appeared multiple times in the document. Over and over again. At the time she hadn't thought it mattered. But now...
Her chair scraped loudly against the floor as she stood up suddenly. Her heart pounded violently. "No…" Her voice trembled.
"No, that's impossible." The realization forming in her mind felt too dangerous to even think. Her breathing became uneven. Loud. Almost desperate.
Rhea grabbed the edge of the desk to steady herself. Then she rushed toward the door. She needed to check something immediately. She needed to confirm it before her mind convinced her she was imagining things. Her hand reached the door handle. She opened it quickly and stepped into the dim hallway. But then... Something made her stop.
Rhea slowly turned her head. She looked behind her. And froze. Her eyes widened in pure disbelief. A tear slipped silently down her cheek. Her lips parted slightly, but no sound came out.
The corridor light flickered faintly and Rhea could only stare.
Unable to move...
Unable to breathe...
Unable to believe what she was seeing.