(POV: Prof. Dr. Sterling)
19:00 GMT | London Institute of Criminal Psychology – Case Review Room
This room was never meant to function at night.
The bluish-white lights reflected off the glass walls — as clean as an operating theatre, as hollow as a prayer room.
Cold. Without empathy.
Only the hum of a projector, and the breath of people who knew the boundaries of ethics.
On the screen: Case File 7319 — The Third Man Bomber.
A case from twenty years ago, resurrected.
Two minor explosions last month copied its pattern with brutal precision.
Public headlines still blinked across news feeds: "The Third Man Has Returned."
I, Professor Sterling, Head of Clinical Forensics, sat in the center.
To my right, Dr. Sinclair, Senior Consultant, stared at the screen as if trying to switch off his mind.
To my left stood Dr. Nicco —
immaculate suit, grey tie, hands clasped before him like a statue awaiting judgment.
We were supposed to have retired from horrors like these.
But when machines fail to understand humanity, they always call for us.
Nicco pressed the remote.
The screen shifted.
Black-and-white photos slid across: the wreckage of a bookstore, pages burned, a victim's hand still clutching a half-melted novel by the curb.
Someone inhaled sharply.
Maybe me. Maybe Sinclair.
Nicco remained silent.
"Twenty years," I said flatly. "And we're still here."
He looked at me, expressionless.
"No, Professor," he said evenly. "We're just back at the start of the cycle."
His gaze was sterile.
He once read brainwaves like musical notation.
He could tremble without losing professionalism.
Now — no emotional resonance at all.
Zero affect.
He was no longer a psychiatrist; he was a walking MRI scanner.
No sympathy, only mappings of neurological density.
He had lost his human buffer.
"Proceed," I said.
Nicco:
"The Third Edition Bookstore case displays a Sociopath-E pattern.
The subject isn't ideological. Not a classic psychopath.
They are humans with vmPFC dysfunction.
To them, extreme actions are rational decisions."
The laser pointer drifted calmly across the screen.
He spoke without notes.
His tone was flat — each word weighed before release.
On the monitor: a red prefrontal cortex; an empty limbic system.
Dr. Sinclair,
"Under the M'Naghten Rule, we determine whether the subject knows their act is wrong. You've moved that judgment to neurology. Doesn't that erase the concept of mens rea?"
Nicco, unflinching,
"Mens rea is a legal artifact, not an anatomical structure.
If neurons fail to compute guilt, then punishing morality is a scientific error."
A second of silence.
Sinclair,
"So you're concluding morality is just a prediction of regret?"
Nicco,
"Not a conclusion. An observation.
We don't interpret gravity just because an apple falls."
Sterling,
"You're comparing crime to gravity?"
Nicco,
"If the limbic system fails to measure emotional consequence, then guilt is merely a social illusion.
And punishing someone for an illusion—
that's the legal error."
I studied his body language.
He barely blinked.
Every motion calculated, as though the verdict had been written before the hearing began.
Cold. Precise. Terrifying.
He spoke like a god sterilizing his own creation.
Nicco walked to the glass board.
He reached into his pocket — pulled out a pair of medical latex gloves, still sealed.
I raised an eyebrow.
There was no reason to wear those here.
He bit the tip of the left glove, tore it with his teeth, and tossed it into the biohazard bin.
Then slid on the right glove, tapping the fingertips.
He wasn't sanitizing himself.
He was drawing a boundary between himself and the world.
Sinclair,
"Your method sounds like therapy— or coercion."
Nicco wrote in neat letters on the board,
"Forced Adaptation.
We implant new fear through electromagnetic impulse—
Rewrite anxiety. Recreate morality."
Sterling,
"You're turning forensic psychiatry into cognitive engineering. Secondary psychosis risk?"
He stopped writing.
Stared at the board.
Then added one final sentence,
"Fear greater than ideology restores order."
He turned.
"Psychosis is a small cost for social stability.
Sometimes they die. But death isn't failure.
It's just data completed—
an accepted variable, as long as the output remains useful."
Silence swallowed the room.
The hum of the air conditioner sounded like a dying patient's breath.
That sentence — it was surgery without anesthesia.
I've trained hundreds of psychiatrists.
Only one has ever frightened me.
He didn't lose empathy from trauma.
He wasn't insane — just colder than madness.
He didn't destroy morality.
He was archiving it.
The digital clock ticked — one, two — like a countdown.
Blue light from the screen illuminated his eyes.
The final photo— Josh, Nicco's former assistant — appeared in the corner.
Nicco stared at it.
The corner of his mouth barely moved.
"We don't fix monsters by healing them, Professor.
We fix them by designing better ones."
I rested my elbow on the table.
Felt my own body heat fighting the sterile chill.
On the screen, Josh's frozen face lingered between brain graphs and a flatlined pulse.
Nicco still stood — wrinkleless suit, flawless breath.
"Debate adjourned," I said, my voice rough but precise.
"Nicco, you just violated both M'Naghten and mens rea in a single sentence."
He didn't answer.
Just lifted his chin slightly — the gesture of someone who knows he's right before the argument begins.
I exhaled.
"But remember this: a society stabilized by forced neural engineering will always breed anomalies.
The difference between psychiatry and neuro-terrorism is who controls the data."
Silence settled like fog.
The only sound: the faint hiss of ventilation — like a patient breathing through isolation glass.
Procedural ethics.
The last weapon I had left.
He thought he was a case study.
But the manual still bore my name.
I tapped the table twice with my knuckles.
Two taps — the institute's official closure signal.
The echo sounded like an evidence seal being locked.
"The report will be revised," I said coolly.
"Focus on Psychological Risk Assessment, not a Neurological Mandate.
Therapy recommendation deferred pending review."
I looked at him.
He remained calm — an object refusing definition.
He knew I couldn't stop him.
Only slow the time around him.
My gaze drifted back to the screen.
Josh's photo still there.
"For potential Sociopath-E cases," I said almost in a whisper,
"You'll lead the pattern-monitoring team. Focus on tracing corrupted algorithms, not justifying reasons to destroy them."
For a moment, his eyes flickered.
Something surfaced — not emotion, but recognition.
He simply nodded once.
A mechanical motion — almost non-human.
"Understood, Professor."
He closed his folder, tucked it under his right arm —
the one still gloved.
His left hand hung bare — like a remnant no longer counted as living.
His footsteps were steady, rhythmic, syncing perfectly with the digital clock.
The door opened.
Cold air seeped in — a new chill with no origin.
He didn't look back.
He didn't need to.
The logic trail he left behind was enough to command machines for years.
On the screen, brain graphs still pulsed.
Residual data. Josh's notes.
Everything moved in repetition — like a prayer stripped of meaning.
I stared at my reflection in the glass.
One hand on the desk, the other on my temple.
"We're no longer reading minds, Nicco," I whispered.
"We're rewriting whatever's left."
The clock ticked twice.
Meeting adjourned.
Cut Scene (POV: Dr. Nicco)
(The exact moment he bites the left glove)
Blue light floods my hand.
The right glove fits perfectly.
"Last night, I pressed EXECUTE.
Josh's face appeared in the reflection.
Not as a ghost — but as an algorithm requesting continuation."
The mouse in my palm was cold.
The screen split my face in two — doctor and subject.
"Contamination isn't blood," I whispered.
"Contamination is empathy."
I inhaled deeply.
Stared at my own fingers.
"The left hand pressed that button.
The right hand will write history."
The sentence on the board still glowed: Fear greater than ideology.
I smiled faintly.
"Josh feared death. I didn't.
That's why he became data,
and I became a walking hypothesis."
I adjusted the right glove.
Precision. Silence.
"Right hand for measurement.
Left hand for erasure."
My eyes found Professor Sterling watching me from his chair.
He thought I was still his student.
He didn't realize — I had become his thesis.
"You want to know what I've learned, Professor?
That guilt is just an algorithm you can delete.
And grief— the lowest form of efficiency."
The lab lights dimmed slightly, lowering the room's temperature by a few degrees.
The blue hue shifted toward a pale, surgical white.
I smiled again.
My reflection split in two on the glass board.
"Josh died because of pattern.
Because the world keeps repeating patterns without consequence.
Pattern is weakness.
So I will become the pattern they fear."
I stared at my reflection for a long moment.
"And they'll never find proof of my insanity.
Because my insanity is the purest form of logic."
FADE OUT.
White light fades to cold blue.
Click. — the right glove tightened at the wrist.
Silence.
Perfect.
Sterile.
—To be Continued—