The St. Martin's Art Centre stood on a relatively quiet street in central London, its classical sandstone facade a stark contrast to the surrounding glass-and-steel modernity. Yet, as Alan and Emily approached, a palpable sense of dissonance washed over them. Huge posters emblazoned with "Whispers in the Static" partially covered the classical columns, the distorted figures and abstract vortices of light rendered jarringly vivid in the daylight. A short queue of fashionably dressed young people, buzzing with anticipation, snaked towards the entrance. The air carried a faint, peculiar scent – ozone mingled with old paper.
Alan clutched the avant-garde ticket, his knuckles white. The internal "tingling" had become intensely active the moment he entered the street, like ants crawling beneath his skin, fueling his restlessness and unease. Grandfather's "Young people need to get out" now sounded like ambiguous testing or resigned acceptance. He glanced at Emily, bouncing beside him, chattering excitedly about the "mind-blowing immersion" effects she'd read about online. His dread deepened.
"Look! There it is!" Emily pointed at the entrance and pulled Alan forward.
Passing through the heavy, artificially aged bronze revolving doors felt like crossing a threshold. Outside light and noise vanished, replaced by a wave of artificially chilled air laden with a potent, curated perfume – sandalwood, patchouli, and an unfamiliar, metallic tang like rusting iron. The blend was cloying, oppressive, slightly dizzying. The light dimmed drastically, replaced by stark beams of white or sickly blue spotlights stabbing the black entrance walls, illuminating meaningless, twisted metal reliefs that reflected the cold light.
"Whoa… so cool!" Emily whispered, eyes wide with awe.
Alan's heart plummeted. This place… was wrong. Intense Anima flux! Clearer, more concentrated than anything he'd felt at the docks! It wasn't background noise or internal turmoil anymore; it felt like a tangible, viscous, icy current saturating the air, pressing heavily on his chest, making breathing difficult. This was not a normal art exhibition atmosphere! The dangerous aura of the world behind the Veil, as Grandfather described it, hung thick as fog here!
"Welcome to 'Whispers in the Static'." A staff member clad in pure black, face expressionless, materialized like a ghost. His voice was flat, handing them each a lightweight wireless headset. "Please wear your headsets and follow the floor guide lights. Do not touch the exhibits. Do not speak loudly. Let the art… guide your inner self." His empty eyes scanned Alan, lingering for a fraction of a second longer, revealing nothing.
Alan put on the headset. Cool plastic clamped against his ears. Instantly, a low, monotonous drone, like white noise, flooded his hearing, laced with faint, intermittent bursts of static that sounded disturbingly like fragmented, indecipherable whispers. The sound wasn't external; it was piped directly into his auditory nerves, carrying a hypnotic rhythm. Emily was already eagerly following a ribbon of glowing blue light snaking across the floor.
The exhibition space was a vast, serpentine maze. Walls weren't flat planes but warped into unsettling curves, clad in sound-absorbing black velvet or textured metal panels. Overhead, tangled pipes and suspended, grotesque metal shapes cast elongated, monstrous shadows under the shifting beams of harsh white, cold blue, or lurid red light. The strange perfume grew stronger, mingling with the headset's relentless drone and whispers, creating a disorienting, hallucinogenic environment.
The exhibits were profoundly unsettling. Some featured abstracted, contorted human figures frozen in expressions of agony, encased in transparent resin blocks like macabre amber. Others were vast screens flashing rapid-fire sequences of abstract patterns and distorted faces at seizure-inducing speeds. Still others were sculptures cobbled together from discarded electronics, rusted metal, and unidentified skeletal fragments, radiating decay and madness.
Alan's Anima perception surged like a thermometer plunged into boiling water! Chaos, pain, madness, despair… waves of potent negative emotion, like physical shockwaves, emanated from the twisted exhibits, battering his senses! His temples throbbed. His stomach churned. This wasn't art. It was psychic assault! Torture on an Anima level!
"Emily…" Alan rasped, desperate to warn her. He turned to his friend, and his blood ran cold.
The excitement had vanished from Emily's face. Her eyes were vacant, expression blank. Her movements were stiff, mechanical, like a puppet controlled by invisible strings. She wasn't looking at the exhibits; her gaze was fixed straight ahead, locked onto the blue light strip, shuffling deeper into the maze. Not just her! Alan glanced around; other visitors ahead of them were in the same trance-like state! Blank-faced, moving with robotic stiffness, eyes unfocused, a procession of sleepwalkers silently drawn towards the same destination.
"Emily! Wake up!" Alan grabbed her arm, shaking her hard. Her skin felt unnaturally cold! She gave no response, merely swaying with the force, still straining to move forward.
At that moment, Alan's Anima sense snapped into sharp focus, magnetically drawn forward. In the depths of the maze, within a relatively open circular space, stood an exhibit.
It was an unremarkable sculpture.
About human height, it seemed carved from rough, unpolished dark grey stone or perhaps charred wood. Its form was brutally abstract, a vague suggestion of a hunched, agonized figure, lines fractured and devoid of detail. Unlike other exhibits spotlighted for attention, it stood in a dim corner, shrouded in shadow, like a forgotten reject.
Yet, Alan's internal alarms shrieked at the sight of it! This was the source! The epicenter of the pervasive, viscous, psychically oppressive Anima saturating the gallery! All the chaos, the pain, the hypnotic pull radiated like invisible tendrils from this unassuming object! It pulsed like an evil heart in the gloom, pumping out hallucinogenic venom!
"Psychic control!" Grandfather's warning exploded in Alan's mind! Descriptions of vile Animates manipulating minds, twisting wills! This sculpture was an Anima weapon! Silently, insidiously, it was eroding the minds of everyone here!
Panic clawed at Alan's throat. Get out! Get Emily out!
He acted. Gripping Emily's shoulders firmly, he tried to physically turn her around, drag her away from the path leading to the malignant core. "Emily! Look at me! Come with me! Now!" he hissed, his voice barely audible over the headset's drone.
Emily's body shuddered violently. A flicker of struggle, infinitesimally brief, appeared in her empty eyes, instantly smothered by overwhelming blankness. A meaningless gurgle escaped her throat. Her body seemed rooted to the spot, resisting his pull with surprising strength.
Worse, as Alan attempted to wrench her away from the blue light's trajectory, a powerful, invisible repulsive force slammed into him!
It felt… like plunging into air solidified into thick honey! Immense resistance pressed from all sides, making every inch of movement a struggle! Simultaneously, a cold, vicious psychic assault, like invisible needles, stabbed into his brain!
"Ungh!" Alan grunted, pain exploding behind his eyes! His vision blurred! The psychic assault carried fragmented whispers and screams of agony, trying to shatter his will, drag him into the same abyss of numbness as the others!
Get off! Alan roared internally. The dormant, chaotic "Harmonizing" force within him, provoked by the external malice, surged violently! No longer mere tingling, it was an enraged beast rampaging through his limbs! He felt currents skittering under his skin, his body trembling uncontrollably. A faint, chaotic ripple of Anima spilled from him, uncontrolled!
This chaotic ripple seemed to interfere with the sculpture's focused psychic control field!
Hum—
The drone in the headset hitched, a fractional distortion! Emily's body convulsed again! The struggle in her vacant eyes flared brighter, momentarily! She even turned her head slightly, looking at Alan with dawning confusion, her lips parting as if to speak.
But at that critical moment—
"Hmm?" A soft, almost inaudible sound of surprise and inquiry came from the shadows behind Alan and slightly to his left!
Alan whirled around. A figure in black work clothes, hood pulled low, stood like a shadow coalesced beside a twisted metal column. The hood concealed his face completely, but Alan *felt* it – two icy, sharp, serpent-like gazes piercing the gloom, locked onto him with laser intensity! The gaze held scrutiny, confusion, and… a spark of affronted irritation!
He had been discovered! The hidden manipulator had spotted the "anomaly" – Alan and the disruptive power within him that interfered with the sculpture's control!
An invisible wave of lethal intent, cold as the deep ocean, instantly engulfed Alan!