1990'S META'S POV:
The nicotine registered in my system as a calming agent, but the hand that held the cigarette was a variable I no longer trusted. It did not shake. My nervous system, conditioned by a lifetime of tactical violence and calculated risk, has been trained to suppress such tells. The calm was a construct, a firewall against illogical stimuli.
Outside, the Bangkok night breathed its usual miasma of neon and desperation. A high-pitched scream echoed from a nearby alley—a predictable urban data point, statistically insignificant and therefore ignored. The scar on my cheek, a remnant of a past miscalculation, was inert. The familiar premonition of chaos it once signaled had been rendered obsolete. The true storm was no longer external; it was an illogical truth that had taken root inside my own mind. A ghost. A book that bled.
A sharp, precise rap on the heavy office door cut through the silence.
"Boss, I have the specialist you requested," Sakda's voice announced from the hall.
"Enter."
The door opened. My directive to Sakda had been to acquire a shaman, an expert in a field I'd previously classified as fraudulent. I had anticipated an older man, a peddler of incense and theatrics. The variable that entered was a woman who appeared to be in her thirties, her composure a stark anomaly. She carried no charms, wore no traditional garb. Her stillness was her authority.
"This is the shaman, Khunying Dawklao," Sakda stated, a hint of unease in his own voice.
I assessed the new variable. "She is not what I specified in my parameters."
Sakda tensed. Before he could formulate a defense, the woman spoke, her voice steady. "You were expecting age to be the primary indicator of ability, Khun Meta. A flawed metric. I can already sense the reason for your summons. It radiates from the object on your desk."
Her directness was another anomaly. Most people, upon meeting me, exhibit a measurable increase in heart rate and cortisol. She exhibited none. This registered as a positive indicator. This variable might yield results.
"Sakda, you are dismissed," I commanded. He bowed slightly and retreated, closing the door behind him. I gestured toward the chair opposite my desk. "The book. Explain your assessment."
She smiled, a fleeting expression that did not reach her eyes, which remained fixed on the plain leather-bound volume. "An explanation is unnecessary. I perceive energies invisible to the ordinary eye. That book is a focal point—a nexus of intense emotional residue that is now tethered directly to you. To fully analyze its purpose and your connection to it, a ritual is required."
She paused, her gaze finally meeting mine. "But a ritual requires context. Tell me what you observed."
I considered the variables, calculating the necessary amount of data to disclose. "The object fell from a sealed shelf in a secure room. It presented as a blank diary. It then manifested text before expelling a biological fluid consistent with blood. After I cleansed my hands, the object returned to its neutral state." I omitted the key detail: the writing that had appeared was my own, from a future I now had to prevent.
The shaman absorbed my report without flinching. "And you felt no fear during this event." It was a statement, not a question.
"Your observations of my emotional state are irrelevant," I stated, my voice cold. "I require data, not psychoanalysis. Perform the ritual."
She smiled again, a genuine expression this time, as if my dismissal was precisely the reaction she'd expected. It was the smile of an expert recognizing a complex problem she was uniquely qualified to solve.
She opened her bag, not with the hurried motion of a charlatan, but with the precise economy of a surgeon. From it, she produced a swatch of crimson cloth. "Hold the object," she commanded, her voice leaving no room for negotiation. I complied, my fingers closing around the inert leather of the book as she laid the cloth flat upon my desk, a stark field of operation against the dark wood.
From the bag's depths, she retrieved two small, exquisitely carved statues. I registered their forms instantly: Phra Mae Thorani and Phra Kali. Variables from my mother's world of faith, now active components in my own analysis. One, the eternal witness, a symbol of immutable truth. The other, the goddess of destruction and cosmic change. A paradox. She was presenting two opposing concepts as tools for a single purpose.
Another piece of cloth was produced, this one a stark white square, which she centered upon the red. It was a matrix of unknown symbols, a cipher of esoteric scripts from languages I could not identify. The inability to process the data was a familiar irritation.
Her preparations were not yet complete. From her bag, she produced two more components: a small, cast-iron basin and a bundle of dark, resinous sticks. She placed the basin on the floor beside the desk and ignited the tip of a single stick. A thin plume of grey smoke rose, releasing an aromatic catalyst into the air—sandalwood, and a sharper, herbaceous note I could not immediately classify. Superfluous theatrics, I assessed, unless the scent itself was a functional component of the process.
With the air now thick with the scent, she gestured to the book. "Place it at the center."
As the object made contact with the white cloth, she unspooled a length of white thread. It was thin, almost translucent. With movements that were both practiced and reverent, she bound one end to the book itself. The other she tied around her own wrist.
"Your hand," she said. It was not a request.
I extended my arm. Her fingers were cool as she looped the thread around my wrist, creating a physical conduit between the three primary variables: the object, the operator, and the observer. With the connection established, she began to chant.
The language was alien, a sequence of guttural and sibilant phonetics that my mind could not categorize. The ambient temperature in the sealed office began to plummet. It was not a draft; it was a direct violation of thermodynamics. A thick, white fog began to materialize from the corners of the room, coiling like smoke, obscuring the familiar lines of my domain. I did not register panic. Instead, my system registered a confirmation: the fraudulent field I had dismissed was yielding tangible, impossible results.
Just as quickly as it formed, the fog dissolved. But it did not reveal my office.
The polished wood and leather were gone, replaced by the wet, gritty asphalt of a bridge at night. A torrential downpour saturated the air, yet I remained untouched. The rain did not soak my clothes; it passed through my form as if I were an incorporeal observer, a ghost in this simulation. My fascination was a cold, clinical thing.
The sound of panicked, uneven footsteps reached me. I turned my head, and my analysis froze. I saw a version of myself—an asset I recognized—staggering across the bridge, his leg slick with blood from a fresh gunshot wound. He was being supported by the anomaly, Thyme. The boy's face was a mask of terror and desperate resolve. They were blind to my presence.
"Thyme, leave me," my other self commanded, his voice strained with pain. "They're after me. I'm a liability." A tactical assessment. Correct.
"I can't! I won't leave you!" Thyme's response was illogical, an emotionally-driven refusal to accept the strategic reality. The rain masked his tears, but his expression was an open wound.
"I will not be the reason you are terminated. Go," my other self insisted, his tone hardening.
"Don't say that!" Thyme begged. "I won't—"
His plea was cut short by the sharp crack of a gunshot, closer this time, followed by the sound of more pursuers closing in. I saw it then, a flicker of an emotion I have never allowed myself to display: pure, unadulterated panic in my own eyes.
"I'm sorry, Thyme," my other self grunted, his face a contortion of regret and tactical necessity. With a sudden, desperate shove, he pushed Thyme off the side of the bridge. It was a sacrifice, an attempt to save one asset by jettisoning the other into the churning water far below. A fall from that height, into a raging current... the probability of survival was near zero.
I tracked Thyme's descent, my analysis running cold calculations. But before he could impact the water, the impossible occurred. He did not fall. He dissolved. The rain did not pass through him; it unmade him, atomizing his form into the downpour until nothing remained.
A critical, paradoxical data point. He was not a ghost. He was something else entirely.
"BANG!"
I snapped my focus back to the bridge. My other self was on the wet pavement, a dark stain spreading across his chest. The men who had been chasing them now stood over him. I tried to process their faces, to log them as targets, but a sensory filter corrupted the data. Their features blurred into indistinct smudges, their identities deliberately withheld from me by the vision itself.