The Solace Research Center did not look like a medical facility. It looked like the flagship retail store of a technology conglomerate that had recently merged with a high-end luxury spa.
I pushed through the massive, frictionless glass revolving doors and stepped into a sprawling, sunlit atrium. The floors were poured, high-gloss white resin. The walls were lined with living, geometric walls of synthetic moss that absorbed acoustic echoes. Soft, ambient, deeply annoying synth music played from invisible speakers, specifically calibrated to lower a baseline human heart rate.
It made me want to punch a wall.
"Stay in the basement, Freud," I muttered out of the side of my mouth, straightening the lapels of my midnight-navy suit. "I am going to handle this with the utmost professional diplomacy."
*I have absolutely zero faith in your diplomacy,* my Alter replied smoothly from his mahogany office. *You possess the interpersonal charm of a wet brick. But proceed. Let us see how far your weaponized depression gets us in the wealthy district.*
I walked across the pristine atrium toward the front desk. It was a massive, sweeping curve of frosted quartz.
Standing behind it was a receptionist who looked like she had been genetically engineered in a lab to be intimidatingly flawless. Her hair was pulled back into a severe, lacquered bun. Her posture was razor-straight. Her corporate smile was perfectly practiced, incredibly polite, and utterly devoid of a soul. Her silver name tag read: *Chloe.*
I stopped at the desk, manually engaging my apathy shield, wrapping the dense, lead-lined void over my prefrontal cortex. I didn't want to project any hostility. I just wanted to project the sheer, unavoidable inevitability of my presence.
"Good morning," I deadpanned, staring at her with exhausted, unblinking eyes. "I am here to see Dr. Forrest Amberwood."
Chloe's fingers paused over her sleek holographic keyboard. Her eyes flicked up, scanning the impeccable tailoring of my eight-thousand-credit suit, and then met my dead gaze.
"Do you have a scheduled appointment, sir?" Chloe asked. Her voice sounded like a corporate automated answering machine.
"No," I replied flatly. "I am an old friend."
Chloe's corporate smile didn't waver. It simply hardened into a microscopic layer of polite diamond.
"I apologize, sir," Chloe hummed, tapping her keyboard. "But the Director of Applied Cognitive Physics does not accept walk-ins. Nor does he receive 'old friends' without prior calendar authorization and a Level-Two biological screening."
"We go way back," I lied seamlessly, leaning slightly against the frosted quartz desk. "I assure you, if you simply page him and tell him Helian is in the lobby, he will drop whatever equation he is currently failing to solve and come down here."
"I cannot page the Director without an appointment," Chloe repeated, her tone dripping with the kind of high-society condescension reserved specifically for people who used the wrong fork at a dinner party. "If you would like to submit a request for a consultation, the current waitlist for Dr. Amberwood is approximately fourteen months."
*Fourteen months,* my Alter scoffed in my mind. *If Mulberry Aristdale reads my thoughts again, I will not survive fourteen hours. Intimidate her, Helian! Flash the Platinum pass!*
"I am not waiting over a year to talk to a man who spends forty-five minutes of his morning routine deciding which moisturizer to use," I argued aloud, completely ignoring my Alter and fixing Chloe with a look of profound, devastating boredom.
"Sir," Chloe said, her voice dropping an octave into a warning register. "I am going to have to ask you to step away from the desk. If you do not have an appointment, you are loitering in a restricted corporate sanctuary."
"I am not loitering," I countered monotonically, refusing to move an inch. "I am simply trying to bypass a deeply flawed administrative bottleneck. Look at my suit, Chloe. Does this look like the suit of a man who waits in lobbies?"
*Excellent point,* my Alter praised enthusiastically. *Leverage the tailoring.*
"I do not care about your suit, sir," Chloe stated, her fingers hovering over a discreet, glowing red panic button embedded in her desk. "I care about my access protocols. You are generating negative acoustic friction in my lobby."
"My acoustic friction is entirely justified," I droned, my voice accidentally rising a fraction of a decibel. The ambient synth music was giving me a migraine, and I was running on zero hours of quality sleep. "Your Director is currently upstairs, likely complaining about his cuticles, while I am standing down here facing a telepathic corporate crisis. Page the man."
"Security," Chloe said smoothly, pressing the glowing red button.
"Oh, for the love of god," I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. "I literally just crushed a giant spider on the train to get here. Do not call security. I am too tired to deal with armored guards."
"Excuse me."
The voice didn't come from the receptionist. It didn't come from a security guard.
It came from the sweeping, white marble staircase to my right.
It was a voice that possessed a smooth, melodic, utterly theatrical cadence. It was the voice of a man who treated every single conversation as if he were holding a press conference on a red carpet.
I turned my head.
*Oh, my,* my Alter whispered in the back of my mind, his aristocratic snobbery completely evaporating into sheer, unadulterated awe. *Look at him. He is magnificent. And deeply, profoundly unserious.*
Walking down the marble staircase was Forrest Amberwood.
He was exactly as I remembered him from my dingy Earth therapy office, but elevated to a terrifying, dystopian extreme. He was an incredibly handsome Asian man in his late twenties, possessing a jawline sharp enough to cut a diamond.
His hair, which had been a distressed lilac in my universe, was now dyed a blinding, luminescent platinum blonde, styled with messy, immaculate perfection. He was wearing an oversized, cream-colored designer cashmere coat draped over his shoulders like a cape, a sheer silk shirt, and high-waisted tailored trousers.
In one hand, he was holding a massive, ridiculous, heavily iced beverage layered with violently pink foam.
In the other hand, he was holding a glowing holographic tablet, and he looked profoundly, aggressively annoyed.
"Chloe," Forrest sighed dramatically, pausing on the bottom step and striking a pose that belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine. He took a sip of his pink drink through a reusable titanium straw. "Who is causing this horrific, asymmetrical vibe in my atrium? I am currently waiting for the Chief Financial Officer of the Amsterwhite Syndicate to arrive, and they are six minutes late, which is a massive red flag for their corporate boundary issues."
"Dr. Amberwood," Chloe said instantly, her robotic condescension melting into fearful reverence. "I apologize. This individual claims to be an 'old friend' of yours, but he refuses to leave the desk."
Forrest paused. He slowly lowered his iced beverage, his dark, perfectly lined eyes locking onto my face.
He looked at my exhausted, deadpan expression. He looked at my impeccable, eight-thousand-credit midnight-navy suit.
He didn't recognize me. In this universe, I didn't exist. To the Director of Applied Cognitive Physics, I was just a random, aggressively depressed stranger standing in his lobby.
"An old friend?" Forrest mused, stepping off the staircase and strutting toward me. He tilted his head, his eyes scanning my face with the terrifying, rapid precision of a quantum supercomputer, before instantly hiding the intellect behind a vapid, pretty-boy pout. "I highly doubt that. I have an eidetic memory for cheekbones, and I would definitely remember yours. You look like a very expensive mortician."
I stared at him. The sheer, overwhelming familiarity of his dramatic nonsense almost made me want to smile. Almost.
I manually locked down the apathy vault, completely masking the profound relief washing over me. I needed to bypass his theatrical defense mechanism and hit the quantum physicist underneath.
"You're drinking a double-shot, iced synthetic-matcha with dragonfruit foam," I deadpanned, locking my dead eyes onto his perfectly manicured hands. "And you are currently experiencing extreme psychological distress because the alkaline water in the Sector One municipal plumbing is severely stressing your platinum keratin bonds."
Forrest froze.
The titanium straw slipped from his perfectly moisturized lips. His dark eyes went wide, the superficial, flamboyant sparkle instantly vanishing.
For a fraction of a millisecond, the vapid airhead disappeared, replaced by the terrifying, unfathomable intellect of a man who understood the fundamental physics of the human mind. He stared at me, completely short-circuited by a stranger casually reading the deepest, most superficial neuroses of his soul.
"How..." Forrest whispered, his voice dropping its theatrical melody, turning sharp and cold. "How did you know about the alkaline water?"
*Checkmate,* my Alter purred in the mahogany office of my mind, practically vibrating with smug satisfaction. *A divine turnaround of shit luck, Helian. We have him. Reel him in.*
"Because," I replied, my voice a flat, monotonous drone of absolute, unbothered authority. "I am a cognitive consultant. And I desperately need to hire a quantum physicist who knows how to build a telepathic firewall before my sociopathic nephew reads my mind again. Now, are we going to stand in the lobby discussing your split ends, or are you going to invite me up to your office?"
Forrest Amberwood stared at me for three long, agonizing seconds. The gears of his massive, terrifying intellect were practically visibly grinding behind his platinum blonde bangs.
Then, he gasped, pressing a perfectly manicured hand to his chest, the flamboyant theater instantly returning in full force.
"Oh, my god," Forrest breathed, his eyes shining with sudden, manic delight. He looked me up and down, taking in the bespoke suit and the absolute void of my emotional presence. "You are deeply, profoundly traumatized. And you have impeccable tailoring. I am absolutely obsessed with you."
Forrest turned to the terrified receptionist.
"Chloe, cancel the Amsterwhite CFO!" Forrest ordered, waving his pink iced beverage dismissively. "Tell him I am experiencing a spontaneous quantum breakthrough! And tell security to stand down. The Mortician is coming upstairs with me."
"But, Director!" Chloe stammered, completely flustered. "The security protocols—"
"The protocols are boring, Chloe!" Forrest sing-songed, grabbing me by the arm of my new suit. His grip was surprisingly strong. "Come along, mystery man. We have a firewall to build, and I need you to validate my feelings about this dragonfruit foam."
He practically dragged me away from the front desk and toward a private, frosted-glass elevator.
I let myself be pulled, offering Chloe one final, exhausted, deadpan stare as the elevator doors slid shut, sealing me in a glass box with the smartest, most ridiculous man in Sector One.
"So," Forrest grinned, leaning against the glass and taking a loud slurp of his drink. "Who are you running from, and why is your cognitive footprint a literal black hole?"