Dulcinea Lace paused with a heavily salted French fry halfway to her mouth, staring at me across the sticky table of The Faraday.
The subterranean bar's electromagnetic dampening field hummed in the background, a low, oppressive vibration that made my teeth ache. Dulci slowly lowered the fry, her dark eyes narrowing as she processed the deadpan lie I had just fed her about handling the Dezonic in my alley.
"Let me get this straight," Dulci said, her voice dropping to a skeptical, gravelly whisper. "You—a man who currently registers as a complete psychic flatline—manifested a kineticpinned a Dezonic to the asphalt, and crushed its skull with the heel of your shoe?"
"It was a very sturdy shoe," I replied, maintaining absolute, unblinking eye contact.
Dulci stared at me for three long seconds. Then, she threw her head back and laughed.
It wasn't a polite chuckle. It was a loud, barking, genuine laugh of pure mercenary amusement. Several of the heavily scarred smugglers in the adjacent booths glanced over, their hands subtly drifting toward their concealed weapons before turning back to their drinks.
"Oh, Doc," Dulci gasped, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye. "For a second there, you actually had me going. You almost had me believing you were some kind of undercover Class-A rogue merc operating off the grid."
I didn't react. I kept my face a perfect mask of clinical boredom, but internally, a cold spike of caution pierced through my apathy shield. "I assure you, the carcass is currently melting into the concrete."
"I don't doubt there's a carcass," Dulci smirked, leaning forward and resting her elbows on the table. "But you didn't kill a high Class-C apex predator, Doc. You stepped on a cockroach."
*Excuse me?* my Alter hissed, materializing in the pristine office of my subconscious. His cashmere suit practically bristled with sudden, violent indignation. *My kinetic yield was flawlessly calculated! I pulverized its chitinous armor with a localized gravity well of pure, unadulterated Authority!*
"I fail to see the humor," I deadpanned to Dulci.
"Doc, if a true high Class-C Dezonic had breached that alley, you wouldn't have had time to blink, let alone manifest a shield," Dulci explained, her tone shifting to a patronizing, educational cadence. "A high Class-C is the size of a large city bus. It breathes a thermal plasma that melts kinetic shields like cheap plastic. What you fought was a low Class-D. A scavenger. A runt that slipped through the tear behind the Freaks looking for table scraps."
My Alter went completely, absolutely silent.
"A low Class-D," I repeated aloud, my voice flat.
"A pup," Dulci confirmed, taking a bite of her burger. "Don't get me wrong, a low Class-D will still rip a normal civilian in half. You got incredibly lucky, Doc. But don't let a stroke of dumb luck convince you that you're the apex predator of Sector Four. There are things walking around this grid that would eat your Ego for breakfast and floss with your tailored suit. You're swimming in an ocean, and you just punched a guppy."
I leaned back against the vinyl booth. I didn't show a single ounce of relief or embarrassment, but internally, I was projecting a massive, toxic wave of smug satisfaction directly at my Alter.
"Did you hear that, Freud?" I mocked in the dark theater of my mind. "You aren't a god. You aren't the Architect. You're a guy who got a lucky shot on a stray dog, and you let it go straight to your profoundly inflated head."
*It was a tactical victory based on the available threat assessment,* my Alter argued stiffly, though the pristine, arrogant warmth of his voice was completely shattered. He sounded defensive. He sounded bruised. *I am still acclimating to the physics of this dimension. My Ego requires a growing phase. I simply need to... optimize my kinetic output for larger biologicals.*
"You're a rookie," I thought back, ruthlessly twisting the psychological knife. "And if you ever try to hijack my nervous system to fight an army again, I'm going to let them shoot us just to prove you wrong."
I manually re-engaged my apathy shield, wrapping the lead-lined darkness tightly around my prefrontal cortex, and looked back at Dulci. I needed to pivot the conversation before she started asking too many questions about how a non-manifesting therapist managed to crush even a low Class-D runt.
"I appreciate the ecological reality check, Ms. Lace," I said smoothly, pulling my unlit cigarette from my pocket and turning it slowly between my fingers. "It is exactly why I hired you for this consultation. Now, let us return to the primary geopolitical threat. You mentioned the Pharmacological Guilds."
Dulci's amusement vanished instantly. The rapid, vibrating tap of her combat boot against the concrete floor resumed, a physical manifestation of her baseline speedster anxiety.
"The Armsterwhite Syndicate," Dulci muttered, glancing around the dimly lit bar to ensure no one was within earshot. "They're the primary Guild in Sector Four. They control the manufacturing and distribution of the blue-vein suppressants."
"The chemical straightjacket," I noted, remembering the glowing blue veins on the neck of the terrified teenager at the electronics store, and the mother stabbing an auto-injector into her toddler at the duck pond.
"It truly sounds like an old fashioned Mafia family in a shitty dark romance. Why have nobody said that" I joked to my Alter.
"Lithium on steroids, mixed with heavy kinetic dampeners," Dulci confirmed, her dark eyes locking onto mine. "The Sector Council makes the laws requiring emotional suppression, but the Armsterwhite Syndicate actually holds the patent on the cure. And they run it like a mafia monopoly, Doc."
"Supply and demand," I deduced, the cynical corporate architecture of the city snapping into crystal-clear focus.
"Exactly," Dulci nodded, taking a sip of her violently pink protein shake. "If you manifest an Ego—if you have trauma, or anxiety, or just a really bad temper—you are legally required to take the suppressants to avoid a cognitive detonation. But the Syndicate sets the price. And it isn't cheap. It's an exorbitant, non-negotiable subscription fee for your own life."
I stared at the scarred surface of the table, my analytical mind running the grim calculus. "And if a citizen cannot afford the subscription?"
"Then they stop taking the pills," Dulci said grimly. "The withdrawal triggers a massive psychological rebound. Their repressed trauma hits critical mass, their Ego fractures, and they detonate in the middle of a crowded street. The Anomaly Task Force swoops in, neutralizes the threat, and harvests the kinetic energy to power the city grid."
*A perfectly closed, deeply parasitic economic loop,* my Alter whispered, his bruised ego temporarily overshadowed by his sheer fascination with the systemic cruelty. *The Syndicate bleeds the populace of their capital, and the Task Force harvests the ones who go bankrupt. It is a masterpiece of dystopian capitalism.*
"It's a meat grinder," I said aloud, my voice dropping to a harsh, flat drone.
"It is," Dulci agreed, leaning forward. "Which brings me to my question for you, Doc. You told the breach squad at the café that you're an independent cognitive consultant. You told me you specialize in high-yield Ego integration."
"I did."
Dulci stared at me, her eyes tracking the absolute, thermodynamic void of my presence. "If you're actually doing what I think you're doing... if you are actually *fixing* fractured Egos instead of just chemically suppressing them..."
"I integrate the trauma," I lied flawlessly, leaning into the corporate persona. "I remove the cognitive dissonance. I make the Ego stable."
"Then you are actively taking customers away from the Armsterwhite Syndicate," Dulci stated, her voice tight with genuine warning. "If a citizen is cured, they don't need the blue-vein pills anymore. You aren't just practicing unlicensed therapy, Doc. You are directly threatening the bottom line of the most lethal pharmaceutical cartel on the grid."
I didn't flinch. I slowly brought the unlit cigarette to my lips.
"Let me guess," I deadpanned. "They don't send strongly worded cease-and-desist letters."
"No," Dulci said, shaking her head slowly. "They send private contractors. People like me. Speedsters, thermals, kinetic snipers. They pay us exorbitant bounties to make sure unregulated 'miracle workers' have very sudden, very fatal accidents."
I sat in the dim, amber-lit gloom of the Faraday cage, the heavy dampening field pressing against my eardrums. I had woken up this morning thinking my biggest problem was a broken air conditioner and a Warlord's spoiled son.
Instead, I had discovered that my Alter's Ego was a rookie that still needed to grow, the interdimensional monsters were significantly larger than I thought, and my newly minted, entirely fake psychiatric practice was on a direct collision course with a billionaire pharmaceutical mafia that hired superhuman assassins to protect its monopoly.
My absolute, phenomenal shit luck remained completely undefeated.
I pulled the cigarette from my lips, tucked it back into my breast pocket, and looked across the table at the woman who used to politely water my office ferns.
"Well, Ms. Lace," I said, my voice a perfect, unshakeable mask of utter, exhausted apathy. "It sounds like I am going to need to retain your services on a more permanent basis. What is your going rate for corporate espionage?"