Dr. Karen Fletcher's office smelled faintly of lavender oil and ink. A diffuser hummed on the corner table, its mist curling upward like white ghosts. Against the wall, a clock ticked in even intervals, but the sound bent strangely in the air whenever Malik Veyra sat here.
He filled the leather chair awkwardly, all long limbs and restless energy. Seventeen years old, already six feet tall, his growth stretching him faster than his balance could keep up. His face was sharp, handsome even, but in flux — not because of age but because of the way his expressions never seemed to belong entirely to one boy.
Dr. Fletcher adjusted her glasses. "Which one am I speaking to today, Malik?"
The boy smiled faintly, but it wasn't Malik. His posture straightened, his voice leveled out.
Adrian had arrived.
"You know better than to ask that so directly, Doctor. It makes the others… competitive."
She nodded, making a note. Adrian was the diplomat, the rational speaker. He always appeared at the start, like a host welcoming guests to a house.
"Have the others been restless?" she asked gently.
Adrian tilted his head. "The walls are thin. They all want their turn. Some of them don't like this room. Others…" He leaned closer, lowering his voice. "Others hear things in here."
Dr. Fletcher's pen hesitated. Hear things?
Before she could ask, Adrian's expression softened, lips curving into a wide, innocent smile. His body seemed smaller somehow, shoulders drawing in, hands folding nervously.
"I made a drawing," said Milo, the child alter, nine years old and bright-eyed. He reached into the hoodie pocket and produced a crumpled sheet of paper. Fletcher smoothed it carefully.
It was a mess of black crayon lines, jagged and spiraling, forming something like a doorway at the center. Behind it loomed a dark figure with too many arms.
Fletcher kept her face calm, but her heart tightened. "What's behind the door, Milo?"
Milo looked down. "He doesn't have a name. But he… knocks. Sometimes at night."
Another shift. Shoulders squared again. Eyes sharpened. The grin died.
Soren, the paranoid one.
"You shouldn't ask about him," Soren hissed. "You make him stronger when you name him. He listens. Always."
Fletcher underlined her notes three times: the submerged alter.
She had studied dozens of cases in her career, but Malik was different. The Mosaic System was random, unpredictable, but patterns were emerging. In people like Malik, fracture wasn't weakness. It was evolution.
And somewhere beyond the 23 alters already catalogued, she suspected something else lurked — not just a personality, but something new.
Malik blinked rapidly, his body convulsing as if the chair itself shocked him. When his voice returned, it was deeper, steadier.
"I don't like her questions," growled Brutus, the violent one. His fists flexed, tendons straining. "She digs too much."
Fletcher calmly raised her hand. "Brutus, I respect your role. I just need to understand what Malik is becoming."
He leaned forward, nostrils flaring. "Becoming? He already is. You think you're the one studying him?" He jabbed a finger at her. "We're studying you."
Another shift, too fast to stop. A chuckle, sharp and anarchic. Jett now, the anarchist.
"Brutus is too serious. But he's right, Doc. You've got that look. Like you know more than you admit. You're hiding something."
Fletcher kept her hands folded on the desk, but sweat prickled her spine. Because Jett wasn't wrong. She was hiding something. She knew about the Mosaic mutation — the fractures, the abilities — far more than Malik realized.
And in him, she saw not just a patient, but the key to understanding the future of humanity.
The session ended with Malik collapsing back into himself, silent and pale. For a moment, it was just Malik — the boy, not the crowd inside him. He looked at her with eyes that were too tired for his age.
"Dr. Fletcher," he whispered. "What if… what if I'm not sick? What if I'm changing?"
The lavender diffuser hissed. The clock ticked unevenly. Fletcher's throat tightened.
"That," she said carefully, "is exactly what I intend to find out."
And somewhere in the back of Malik's mind, in the corridor no other personality dared to enter, Dominion stirred.