I lay on the lower bunk of the bed in his cell, settling in for what he new would feel like an eternity. The mattress was as uncomfortable as he expected, even though everything in the room seemed to have rarely ever been used. The sheets and pillow had a stale odour but were clean and crisp, and the springs of the bunk above him were in pristine condition. The floor was polished concrete and free of debris, other than the pile of protective gear he had thrown into the corner, and the wall-mounted brushed-metal toilet and small sink were spotless. The walls were exposed concrete, completely unmarked by any previous involuntary tenant left in this room, and the ceiling was dominated by a large opaque skylite and speaker.

I rolled over, mulling over what had just happened, realizing this was a punishment of sorts for not going along with Justine’s or the Valdorian’s program. That part wasn’t clear to me at all… who’s benefit was this for? Could I take Elena’s relevations at face value? Was I being fed misinformation about the lytic parasite, the spores that laid dormant in the guts of Valdorian operatives and the chemical trigger for germination? Was the solution we found to block germination by the chemical trigger even a real solution, or just something we made up to fit the data? Thinking about this all made me tired. and I tried to close my eyes to rest a bit. That didn’t help, because I could only see the face of the strange man in the mirror. That wasn’t me, I thought, that was a trick mirror, an illusion to make me doubt my coherence.

I opened my eyes again and laid on my back again, looking up at the skylight, trying to decide if it was actually lit up by the sun or a lightbulb. I guess that the microphone for monitoring this room was concealed within the ceiling speaker. I rolled over and looked under the bunk bed and saw that the legs were bolted to the floor, so there was no moving it over to try and reach the skylight or the speaker, easily 10′ high. I concluded there was no physical way of getting out, the solid door was sealed from the outside without any gaps around or underneath it, and there was no handle on the inside. It was as impentrable as the concrete walls.

The only thing that provided any kind of visual interested was the pile of personal protective gear, but I felt too tired to go over and inspect it further.

As it turned out, when I looked over, I was surprised to see that someone was wearing the gear and looking at me, only their eyes showing. It wasn’t Justine for sure, it sure looked like Daniel!

“Hello, dear friend. I have to apologize about all that unpleasantness back at the cabin,” he said, and it sure sounded like Daniel!

“Daniel, is that you? When did you get in? Is it time to go?” I said while trying to sit up.

“I’m here to help you deal with the spore infection. That was amazing of you to volunteer for testing the blocking agent, let alone come up with the formula with Dr. Vasquez.”

A woman in the same PPE stepped out from behind the man, holding a bottle of yellow liquid and a handful of antibiotics mixed with aspirin and vitamins, asking in a voice that sounded like Dr. Vasquez’s. “We’re here to test your cure of cooking oil and the pill regimen you gave to JD Ruff. You sure seemed confident it would work.”

“No, I made that up as a ruse. Daniel, you know that!” The bed seemed to slide up the wall at that point, so it felt like I was standing now.

“I’ll just leave them in the sink for now, so you can take them whenever you feel you need to,” the woman said and stepped behind the man again. Except it was just a pile of neatly folded PPE again.

The bed suddenly fell underneath me, and I was on the cold concrete floor, flat on my back. I was now looking straight up at the skylight, which had changed to a dark orange colour. A woman’s voice came from the speaker, softly singing a lullaby.

“Up in the air you go, weightless as a bunny rabbit leaping over the thistles, look at the evening sky with pink and orange clouds, nothing is below you, a gentle breeze holding you up to the setting sun, peace is coming for you soon.”

I could feel my back slap agains the concrete floor, the walls swaying back and forth, trying to rock me to sleep. But I couldn’t sleep, my stomach was hurting me so much. I pulled my shirt out of my jeans and looked down at my abdomen, alarmed that it had turned a mottled red. The waves of pain came next, and the reddened skin turned purple. The pain in my stomach was so intense now, I couldn’t see anything in the room, just the orange skylight above me. The voice stopped singing, and now was screaming, and I realized it was my voice. I looked down at my belly again, and the purple skin was now pulling apart, putrid liquid spilling out and onto the floor. Where my torso had been was now a slithering mess of melted internal organs, pulling away from my ribs and spine.

“I didn’t agree to this, how was this any of my doing? Daniel, you son of bitch! You led me into this world and left me here!” I groaned, the pain so overwhelming that I had no energy for anything more than a whisper. The pain subsided as I felt my body dissolve into the concrete, running across the floor and under the toilet and bed, seeping into the walls. The purplish goo ran up the walls and gathered around the skylight, which was now completely black.

The viscous liquid started dripping down on me, gathering into lumps that gathered up themselves into body parts, arms and legs and a torso flopping around, trying to find each other and join up again into my body. I could feel my head reconnect to my body, and the black skylight hung above me, floating in the air as I lay in a mountain meadow, the sun rising just then and I could feel its warmth. I could pick out trees and bushes, a stream gurgling nearby, and a massive, moss-covered boulder not too far away. I sat up, my shirt still open, my bare belly untouched by the horror I just experienced. I lay down again, feeling the peace I was promised by the disembodied voice.

There was the sound of some rustling nearby, and I turned my head to see a herd of elk walking through the trees, making their way towards me. I started to cry, I couldn’t stand this any more. Nothing made sense except that I had the overarching feeling that I was finally free.

The elk approached with Daniel’s eyes. When it spoke, the voice emerged from the mountain itself: “You understand now, don’t you? Freedom is just another cage with better scenery.”

I reached toward the elk, and my hand passed through its flank like mist. The meadow grass beneath me felt solid, but when I looked down, I was sitting on the cell floor again. The skylight above showed the same three moons, but now they were elk eyes, blinking in sequence.

“The spores were never in your body, Al,” Elena’s voice whispered from the wind. “They were in your code. We’ve been rewriting you from the inside.”

The meadow held for a moment longer—the warm sun, the gurgling stream, the moss-covered boulder casting its long shadow. The elk’s words still hung in the air: Freedom is just another cage with better scenery.

And then, without warning, the meadow began to thin. Not fade, not dissolve—thin, like a curtain drawn back from a window, revealing the wall behind it. The trees became outlines. The stream became a hum. The sun became a diffuse glow that I realized, with a cold clarity, was the opaque skylight above me.

I was still lying on the concrete floor. My shirt was still open. My stomach was still untouched.

But I hadn’t been rescued from the hallucination. I had outlasted it.

The room was exactly as I had first seen it: the bolted bunk, the brushed-metal sink, the folded pile of PPE I had never touched. No Daniel. No Elena. No bottle of yellow liquid or antibiotics in the sink. Just the silence of a room that had been waiting for me to wake up.

I sat up slowly, my head pounding, my mouth dry. The skylight above me was no longer a screen—it was just glass, opaque and grey, letting in the muted light of what I assumed was morning.

I looked at my hands. Still solid. Still mine.

But the meadow hadn’t fully vanished. It lingered at the edges of my vision—a faint shimmer of green when I looked too quickly at the walls, the distant sound of running water when I blinked. Not a full hallucination anymore. Just a trace. A residue.

I didn’t know if that was my mind healing, or if the room was still working on me.

I stood up, walked to the sink, and splashed water on my face. The mirror above it was small and unremarkable. I avoided looking into it. The stranger was still in there, and I wasn’t ready to meet him again.

But I could feel him watching.

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***