Chapter Text
Surely, the confirmation that my day would start badly came in the form of a notice about a meeting on the director's floor.
I loosened my shirt collar as I walked stiffly through the empty corridors of the sanatorium, unable to ease the tension gripping my muscles. After the chaos of the previous night, the patients were still confined to their dorms until further notice.
Before pushing the door open, I held the handle for a few seconds. I took a deep breath — and jumped at the deep voice that cut through the silence like a dry gunshot:
“Come in.”
It was only then that I realized how tightly I was gripping the metal, as if trying to mold it in place of the thoughts boiling in my head.
As I entered the room, the thick smell of burnt cigar in the enclosed space hit me with enough force to provoke nausea, but I kept my steps steady until I sat down in front of the imposing polished wooden desk of the great Doctor Steven — the director of Grimshade. The only room in that entire building that didn’t reek of mold, urine, and cheap disinfectant.
“Doctor Rune…” he said, extending a cigar with a slight tilt of his chin — an automatic, almost ritualistic offer, which I silently declined.
“Father.”
“You’re six minutes late.”
I cleared my throat, glancing briefly at my watch just to keep up appearances. I avoided dragging out the subject. I crossed my legs and leaned back in the chair with an impassive expression.
“To what do I owe the honor of the invitation? I’m in the middle of my shift. I don’t usually postpone my sessions to waste time with idle talk.”
Steve pulled his chair closer to the desk, maintaining firm, almost challenging eye contact. His graying hair was perfectly combed, except for one stubborn strand he slicked back right after precisely adjusting the cufflinks on his blazer — an obviously expensive piece, likely custom-made.
We definitely didn’t inherit anything from each other. He was… extremely ugly.
“When exactly were you planning on telling me what happened yesterday?”
“The moment there’s something worth reporting. In fact, I was just drafting my report when I was pulled from the north wing to come here.” I smiled wryly, without humor.
“I’m being serious, Julian.”
“Doctor Rune, to you.” I corrected, raising my finger almost cynically.
“Whatever.” He rolled his eyes, dismissive. “I didn’t call you here for coffee, in case you’re deluding yourself. I was informed that someone prone to delusions caused trouble last night, coincidentally on the same day he left my office.”
I’ve always had a repulsion for stubborn fools — and that was exactly my father’s problem. As grotesque as he was on the outside, there was something even more pathetic in the way people respected him only for what he represented. Just try to hold a professional conversation with him for more than five minutes to realize how ignorant he really was.
But of course, if I exist to clean up the shit he leaves behind, why would he care about any minor detail?
“Exactly what I warned you would happen did happen if we didn’t intervene when the first signs of paranoia appeared,” I said, impatient. “The patient entered a catatonic state with a severe psychotic episode. He was convinced something wanted to come out of him, as if his ‘real version’ was trying to tear through the flesh. The neurosis corroded the structure of his psyche, and he completely lost control of himself.”
I crossed my arms before finishing in a dry tone:
“He wrote a suicide letter and slit his own wrists.”
Pause.
“Luckily, we got there in time.”
Steve remained silent for a few seconds, just drumming his fingers on the wood with an irritating, hollow rhythm, as if trying to provoke me with that repetitive sound.
“You are aware that this regression in the case is your fault, aren’t you?” he stated with his usual arrogance. “They found hundreds of capsules of his medication scattered across the garden, the same ones you asked to reduce the dosage of.”
I leaned my body forward, jaw clenched, but held my composure by a thread.
“I acknowledge that the absence of medication may have contributed to the episode,” I admitted firmly. “But you better get it through that thick skull of yours that keeping him doped up 24 hours a day won’t get you the result you expect! That’s not treatment, it’s mass sedation! You, as a doctor, have the obligation to know that.”
He might be a renowned doctor, a specialist in mental rehabilitation, respected by colleagues and fawned over by universities — but nothing, absolutely nothing in his career prepared him for the worst tragedy of all: facing his own son as a patient.
“Look what a bit of respect and authority does to a miserable thing like you…” he retorted, snorting. “More than two years and all I get are reports about your brother’s constant mental decline. You got him to talk? Great. But no one else saw it. Which makes me think you might be going just as insane as he is.”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I shouted, slamming my hand against the table hard. He flinched for a moment, surprised by my reaction. I was panting, chest heaving, eyes burning with fury.
The silence that followed was thick.
“Why haven’t you brought me any results yet?” he insisted, spitting the question as if savoring each drop of resentment.
I closed my eyes for a second, leaned back in the chair, and ran a hand over my head, trying to reorganize my thoughts before facing him again with more control.
“Because it’s long past time you accepted that Noah has identity disorder — and it doesn’t matter how much you try to deny it, how many people you sacrifice, or how many more years you keep me trapped here trying to manufacture a cure that simply doesn’t exist. He’s not special just because he carries the Blackridge name, Father. He’s just as sick as anyone else in this rotten place.”
“Unbelievable.”
Steve just laughed. A loose, mocking laugh, as he shook his head in denial, like someone refusing to see the tragedy right in front of them.
“What was the point of investing in you? Taking you out of the gutter, from being just another miserable beggar with a life expectancy of twenty years or less on this island? I gave you a home, a name you now reject, food, education, privileges — as if you were one of us. And all that so you could grow up arrogant and now refuse to help my son! You’re not doing this out of charity, Julian!”
My fists clenched against my thigh as the heat rose through my body.
It would be strange if a conversation with him didn’t end up turning into a tally of the handouts he threw at me out of guilt, as if he hadn’t already made me pay for every single one by keeping me trapped on this island as a slave to him and his idiot son.
“Sorry for being the healthy bastard, but I already pay that price every day, having to carry him on my back as if he were mine — as if the one who broke his mind wasn’t you!” I fired back, spitting each word like poison.
I loosened the collar of my shirt in an attempt to shake off the nerves once again and stood up from the chair, determined to leave that room.
It was useless — no matter how long my father had worked as a psychiatrist, everything that fell outside his old manuals was treated as fantasy. Rare diseases or those that required clinical sensitivity were dismissed as inventions, and Noah’s dissociative disorder, to him, was nothing more than an excuse for diagnostic incompetence.
He would rather die than admit that a Blackridge could be… defective.
“I’ve been informed there’s a new investigator on the island,” he said, and the gravity in his voice made me freeze mid-step. “He was hired by the Embleys. He’s digging through everything, trying to reopen the case. I need something more convincing than ‘he pretends to be someone else’… If this goes to trial, they’ll kill him.”
For the first time, I noticed a trace of real concern in his voice — almost imperceptible, but it was there.
“Then I’m doing Noah a favor, Father… He’ll be the first Blackridge not to die by your hands.”
“I haven’t finished talking! Julian!” he shouted behind me.
But I had already left the room. And the echo of my footsteps was the only response.
Beside me walked an intern who, out of pure bad luck — or naivety — chose to begin his career precisely at Grimshade. As we crossed the long, stuffy hallways drenched by rain toward the north wing, he poured out the story of his decision as if it were a grand epiphany.
Touching.
Maybe I should’ve told him there are nicer places for a fresh graduate: elegant clinics, cozy offices in expensive neighborhoods, far from this godforsaken island. But to be honest, I have a soft spot for this type of arrogant beginner. They show up hungry for challenges, ready to apply every code of ethics they parroted in university.
They’re the best to observe.
“Is that so?” I murmured, eyes still on the report I was flipping through, while he trotted behind me with the loyalty of an eager mutt.
“What do we have, doctor?” he asked breathlessly, and I only needed to raise a finger to silence him. Crane got the message, relaxed his shoulders, and adjusted his glasses with a restrained gesture.
“They found the patient unconscious in one of the individual therapy rooms. Everything points to a severe psychotic break. There were subtle signs in the past few weeks indicating this might happen.”
Through the glass, we observed the body lying on the stretcher, still unconscious, with some electrodes attached to his chest.
“This was in the room too.” I handed him a paper, and he frowned as he read it.
“A suicide note?”
“Exactly.”
“During the episode, he believed killing himself was the only way out?”
“Seems so, doesn’t it?” I raised an eyebrow, letting slip a crooked smile. “But, like everything around here… it’s not quite what it seems.”
“Before collapsing, he wrote all this?” Crane asked, still analyzing the note with a mix of fascination and discomfort.
“He did. But what’s interesting isn’t what he wrote. It’s who wrote it.” I crossed my arms, leaning against the wall beside the observation window.
Crane looked at me, confused, frowning as if waiting for a trick. I waited. They almost always try to follow the logic.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Identity is a much more fragile structure than they like to admit in college. It’s not born ready, you know? It’s shaped — slowly, layer by layer — out of a series of experiences, traumas, repetitions. Some people learn to create compartments to deal with things they never should’ve lived through. Others… learn to split.”
“You speak with impressive authority…” he remarked, somewhere between admiration and respect. “I watched some of your lectures — that’s why I applied for both the internship and the research. At the university, they used to say you have the gift of opening a mind without needing a scalpel — that’s how they describe your sessions.”
That’s how they usually describe someone born with a purpose. Since early on, I was condemned to carry the burden of having been born, unfortunately, “perfect” — an unforgivable offense when you’re nothing but the bastard of a lineage like the Blackridges. Nothing remotely resembling privilege was allowed to me; that was reserved for the legitimate sons who, ironically, never earned a thing. For me, only the obligation of proving my worth like a trained animal, always waiting for a scrap of recognition. And with every success, I only fueled the resentment of those who hated to admit the most uncomfortable truth of all: no matter how much money they had, they’d never be able to buy sanity for the mediocre children they spawned.
I was tolerated, shoved among them only out of fear of scandal. But there wasn’t a single day I didn’t carry the weight of the penance they decided to assign to me.
The greatest of all?
My lovely brother, six minutes younger.
Noah.
“You’re saying he…” Crane hesitated, trying to find the right word without sounding ignorant.
“I’m saying he’s not just him. Or rather… he is, but not alone.”
I saw in the intern’s eyes the exact moment he understood — or thought he did.
“It’s not about pretending or dramatic escape. These aren’t performances. They’re autonomous, functional compartments, with their own memories, thoughts, and intentions. He built separate worlds inside his own skull — and let them live for him.”
When my ability to expose the cracks in his behavior and unstable mind became impossible to ignore as Noah grew up, it was like signing my own pact with the devil. I tied two souls to the agreement and proposed something simple: I wanted to study, I wanted the right to use my own last name, but above all, I wanted a financial fund that would allow me never to cross the gates of that house again.
I bought my mother’s freedom in exchange for my own sentence.
The Blackridges, of course, accepted the deal without hesitation — not because they trusted me, but because they were desperate for a solution that wouldn’t stain the family name. They didn’t question any of my demands, as long as I met theirs: all my studies had to orbit around my brother. His brain would be my research subject, his existence my script, his future my report. I could achieve anything, as long as I made that research the purpose of my life.
They wanted a cure — urgent, discreet, effective — but one that didn’t require removing the boy from the island.
I walked slowly to the clipboard hanging outside the door, flipping through the patient file with an almost disinterested care, like someone who had already memorized every line.
“We’ve identified, so far, three distinct manifestations within him. Three voices fighting to coexist in the same body. The first emerged in childhood — it has a more vulnerable trait but expresses itself naturally, winning others over with a kind of magnetic, seductive charm. It’s communicative, approachable... and at times, even charming. The second is a clear response to trauma: instinctive, aggressive, driven by the need for control and defense. It doesn’t hesitate. It doesn’t consider consequences. And the third... well, that one is the most recent. It was born in silence, for a specific reason — abandonment.”
Crane seemed paralyzed. The excitement had given way to fear.
Perfect. This was always the phase when idealists decided whether they would last in this place or not.
“And the patient? Does he know about these divisions?”
“Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. It depends on who’s in control.” I ran my fingers along the glass frame, staring at the patient’s inert body. “He’s a house with many rooms and no master key. He may look empty from the outside, but inside... there’s a real civil war going on.”
Silence.
Crane watched the patient as if waiting for him to open his eyes and confirm everything with a gesture. But he remained still, between wires and sensors, while the machines worked to keep his heartbeat steady.
“Sometimes, the only way to keep something standing... is to accept that it’s already been broken too much to ever become whole again.”
I approached the containment capsule where Noah was sedated, his eyes half-closed, breathing with the same slowness of someone who, instead of dreaming, was being devoured from the inside. Around him, the walls of Laboratory F, beneath Grimshade’s psychiatric wing, pulsed with the ancient dampness of a place that should never have been reopened.
“Observations: dissociative identity disorder, diagnosis confirmed after weeks of intensive clinical observation. Subjectively, I note an unusual response to conventional methodology.” I explained, and the intern readied himself to take notes.
“And what was the methodology used on him?”
“Therapy sessions and medication administration under my direct supervision.”
“Shouldn’t the other attending doctors be present to follow this? I can call them, if you…”
His words trailed off into the air when I shot a serious look over my shoulder.
“I am the only one responsible for the case of my…” I choked slightly before finishing, “...of my patient. Everything related to Noah, since his arrival at Grimshade, has gone exclusively through my hands. I’m the one who prescribes the medication, conducts the sessions, and signs off on every evolution recorded in the file.”
“Understood.” He smiled. “I imagine there isn’t another professional with this specialty around here.”
I took a deep breath and looked away, ending the subject with silence.
While adjusting the levels of the containment serum, I raised my eyes toward the camera.
“This will be the first alternative protocol applied since his arrival. We’re not just looking for diagnostic confirmation, but structural understanding. How does one divide a human being and their personalities without breaking them?” I asked, knowing there would be no answer. “Accessing any remnants of memory he still has… that includes the trauma.”
“I-I’ve never seen this type of approach before…” Crane faltered over his words, his fingers whitening as they crumpled the paper in nervous squeezes.
“I’m sure your next question will be something like: ‘ But isn’t this supposed to be forbidden?’ ”
I gave a faint side-smile, but without any humor.
“...I guess so.”
“We’re in Blackridge. More precisely, in the Grimshade sanatorium.” I tilted my chin slightly. “Here, nothing is really forbidden.”
I paused, locking my eyes on the camera in the corner of the room.
Just… ignored.
The silence was thick like a fluid. And at its center, the metallic sound of connectors overlaid the mechanical whisper of instruments. Noah was fastened to the cranial arc with an almost ceremonial precision. The rusted steel rods slid over his temples as if reading the topography of old pain. Electrodes were connected to the base of the skull with flexible needles, piercing the flesh until they reached the spinal nuclei. Each contact point pulsed with a red, intermittent light. The visual interface rose to eye level.
“Patient positioned. Interface active. Stimulus frequency adjusted to 528Hz — distorted cardiac harmonic. Beginning exposure.” I noted precisely in the report.
The lights began to flicker. First, in white. Then, the images appeared.
A flash of a smiling woman — the tender smile that preceded the collapse.
The image was abruptly replaced by the face of the dead ex-girlfriend, her glassy eyes staring into the lens. Without transition: Noah’s childhood, running through a field, his tiny hand reaching toward someone off-frame.
Then, another overlay: his mother being dragged by the hair down a hallway. The younger sister crying. The father screaming something inaudible, his shirt soaked in blood.
“The dissociative mind organizes itself like a castle with sealed doors. Each trauma seals one, each dissociation invents a guardian to watch over the contents. But there are images... there are memories no guardian can face. When forced in, they tear the architecture from the inside out.”
Noah gritted his teeth. His neck strained against the supports. His eyelids trembled, unable to close. A tear slid down, tinged red. Subconjunctival hemorrhage.
We approached, and I pointed to his pupil.
“The occipital cortex is presenting microconvulsions. Pupils dilating asymmetrically — classic sign of overlay. The primary personality is being challenged. And it… is trying to resist.”
He wrote something down.
“Observe. The blood in his eyes is not injury, it’s a protest. It’s the limbic system trying to expel the intruder. The truth hurts. But it’s at this exact point that the mind can be redesigned.”
The sequence of images restarted, faster, like a sensory whip. This time, voices were added.
“Please, dad… don’t do this…” “Run, Noah!” “You promised you’d help me.” “I never saw anyone besides my own reflection until you showed up.”
Noah arched his body violently. A short, non-clinical seizure. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. The jaw was locked like a rusty gate.
I smiled briefly — more to myself than to anyone else.
“The therapeutic personality tries to react. It absorbed elements of emotional containment. She’s the psychiatrist, trying to calm the chaos. But she doesn’t belong here. That’s why she fragments. That’s why she suffers.”
Crane leaned in, observing Noah’s contorted face.
“Fascinating… Watching someone tear through their own identities as if peeling the skin off their face. And still… still wanting to go on.”
Noah gasped. Each breath seemed to push shards of glass into his lungs. Blood now trickled from his nostrils too, as if the memories were literally bleeding out.
I turned one of the interface dials, increasing the contrast between images — an old technique of sensory overlap to break through subconscious blocks. The screen now alternated dead faces with living ones, voices with distorted screams, like a kaleidoscope of juxtaposed traumas.
His sister’s voice: “Don’t look, Noah. Close your eyes.” The psychiatrist’s: “You don’t have to be afraid of me.” Noah’s own, in a childlike tone: “I’m mommy’s guard.”
Slowly, I pressed a button.
The lights exploded in white.
And then, silence.
Noah’s body went limp for a few seconds, his head tilted, a thin line of blood running down his chin. The heart monitor flickered, then resumed its rhythm.
I wasn’t alarmed in the slightest.
Quite the opposite.
We moved closer, as if contemplating a work of art about to reveal itself.
“The dominant personality is exhausted. The structure sustaining the ‘ Self ’ has cracked. In this state, he’s fertile ground for the truth. A container ready to absorb, or… to disintegrate completely.”
Crane jotted something down in an old leather notebook, with precise handwriting:
“First structural failure. The psychiatrist won’t withstand the next threshold.”
“Conclusion of Experiment I: Successful stimulus. Somatic reactions confirm active conflict between identity fragments. Signs of acute catharsis. The therapist’s personality is attempting to integrate, but it’s succumbing to wear. It’s likely that… in the next session… she’ll disappear.”
“We’re almost there.”
At least, that’s how it looked. But the pain in my shoulders the result of far too much tension for one body reminded me I wasn’t even close to where I should be. I still didn’t have what my father wanted. I hadn’t yet given him the miracle of a functional son.
“Doctor Rune, may I ask a question?”
Crane — always Crane — slowed my steps in the hallway back to the main wing.
“If I say no, you’ll ask it anyway.”
He laughed, more out of nervousness than anything else. The short, muffled sound echoed between the peeling walls. He adjusted his glasses with his index finger while showing me the notebook as if presenting evidence of a crime.
“From what I noted…” he began, “and also from what I understood… each personality may represent a figure involved in the trauma. But taking into account that the psychiatrist had an obsession with another personality of his… who exactly was she inspired by?”
My eyes narrowed. The question hit like a needle between the ribs. I glanced at him sideways, jaw tight in a smile that never had time to bloom.
“That’s an excellent question, Crane.”