London in the rain always smells like damp defeat, like the whole city has been steeped in a pot of cold tea. Mist clings to the street lamps; their light stretches into long stripes, like prying eyes.
I was walking alone down an alley, muttering to myself: of course — mandatory training for deep cover agents is "how to hold midnight conversations with yourself."
Just as I was about to turn into another side street, a familiar voice sounded behind me.
"You never change—your mouth's still faster than your gun."
I almost jumped out of my skin. I whipped around and there he was—Mark—the figure I'd thought a dream. Same loose, careless stance, rain dripping from his short hair, a half-smile on his lips.
My mouth opened and closed; finally I managed, "If I weren't afraid of being taken for a lunatic, I'd hug you just to see if you're meat."
He raised an eyebrow. "Don't. I didn't come to prove I'm alive."
"Then what are you proving? Should I write myself a psychiatric confession in advance?" I tried to joke; my heart hammered like a war drum.
Mark stepped closer, his voice dropping. "Ethan, you need to leave the Bureau. It's not what you think."
The air went colder by a degree. Rain muffled into the background; for a moment it was just the two of us.
"Ha." I gave a bitter laugh. "A good one. You want me to leave my only employer? Where would I go—join the nightmares? If they paid, I might consider it."
"I mean it." His eyes were blacker than the night. "The Bureau was never set up to protect people. It exists to, with governments, control nightmare energy."
His words drove an ice spike straight into my brain.
"Surely that's the hallucination's political conspiracy theory hour?" I tried to laugh it off, but my throat felt tight.
Mark's tone grew heavier than the downpour. "You think those vanished cities were accidents? Those ordinary folks consumed by nightmares—unlucky? No, Ethan, they were test subjects. The Bureau signed secret pacts with governments to use nightmare energy for military research. You think you were saving the world. You were feeding their black box."
I stood there stunned, the rain like pins on my face—pinning the words into my bones.
"So…" I forced it out, "that night you stabbed me—was it because of this?"
Pain flickered through Mark's eyes, quickly smothered by cold resolve. "I don't have time to explain everything. If you stay in the Bureau, you become their tool—a blade meant to cut nightmares, and eventually that blade will be turned on you."
I stared at him; my head was a blender of thoughts. "You know I hate betrayal. You saying this now is like trying to drown a fire with a can of gasoline."
He laughed, that old teasing twist in his mouth. "You still play tough. Fine. You'll see the evidence yourself. Then you'll have to decide—are you going to be their hunting dog, or someone who chooses his own fate?"
With that he turned and dissolved into the rain, as if he had never been there at all.
Left standing in the wet, I shivered from the cold and something worse.
I muttered, half to myself: "Either I'm truly losing my mind, or this conspiracy's so big even lunatics get a spoiler alert."
An engine rolled in the distance and I snapped back: if Mark's telling the truth, the Bureau already knows I saw him.
So I'm doubly compromised.
Black humor rose in my throat; I let out a low, shaky laugh. "Good news: a friend warned me. Bad news: he might be the one who puts a bullet in my head next."