> *"The most perfect lies are always hidden within the sweetest truths. Doubt, however, is the acid that melts that sugar."*
— Dr. Aris Thorne, Notes on 'Collective Delusions and Mimicry'
The heavy 'click' of the door closing echoed in Elara's mind like the fall of a guillotine.
Detective Miller was gone. He had taken Elara's service pistol, her badge, and the last remaining shards of her reputation, leaving behind only that yellow envelope he'd tossed onto the table. On the envelope, a single phrase glared in the cold, soulless font of official bureaucracy: **"PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION REQUEST - URGENT."**
Elara leaned her back against the door and took a deep breath. The air filling her lungs wasn't oxygen; it felt like the smell of hot dough fresh from the oven. Even though it was midnight, the thermometers outside read thirty-two degrees. The sky had taken on that sickly, purple static color, and the streetlight leaking through the windows painted everything in the room a dingy yellow.
"I haven't lost my mind," she whispered to herself. Her voice sounded thin in the empty apartment. "I saw it. I saw that thing."
She remembered Miller's gaze. There was pity in the man's eyes. *"Elara, there's no blood on the floor,"* Miller had said, taking care not to step in the sticky puddle on the kitchen tiles. *"This is... spilled strawberry syrup. And you're telling me you shot at a stray cat escaping through the window. For God's sake, when was the last time you slept?"*
Elara walked to the kitchen. Miller was right; technically, there was no corpse. But what Miller hadn't seen—what he didn't *want* to see—was that pink, fluorescent liquid seeping into the joints between the floorboards.
She dropped to her knees. This was exactly where Mark—or whatever was wearing Mark's skin—had vomited. The liquid had begun to dry. It was no longer fluid; it had turned into a layer of crystallized, hardened sugar. She touched it lightly with her fingertip. Hot. Still hot, as if it were alive.
Normal blood turned brown when it dried. It smelled of iron. This thing... it glowed. And the scent was so intense it brought the bile in Elara's stomach to her throat. Vanilla. Rotten strawberries. And beneath those, much deeper, that metallic smell of electricity reminiscent of the ozone layer.
She pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her pocket. Her hands were shaking. She managed to flick the lighter on the third try. When she took the first drag, the bitter, harsh smoke of the tobacco burned her throat, and that pain brought her a strange sense of peace.
At that moment, a bolt of lightning struck her mind.
She thought of Mark's—*The Thing's*—final moments. It hadn't felt pain when the bullet pierced its chest. It had been surprised. But when Elara took aim a second time... No, not when she took aim. At that moment, Elara wasn't just preparing to fire; she was trembling with caffeine and nicotine coursing through her veins, frothing with fear and rage.
Why had the entity shrunken? Why had it fled?
"Mass..." that screeching voice had said. "Too heavy."
Elara took another deep drag from her cigarette and blew the smoke directly onto the pink stain on the floor.
The moment the smoke touched the layer of crystallized sugar, a microscopic reaction occurred. The pink residue sizzled upon contact with the toxins in the smoke. It recoiled as if acid had been poured over it, its color fading and turning gray.
Elara's eyes widened. Holding the cigarette tightly between her lips, she ran to the kitchen cabinet. She tore through the shelves. A jar of coffee, half a bottle of whiskey, painkillers, cleaning supplies... She piled them all onto the counter.
"Pure..." she muttered. "They feed on pure energy."
Her theory was insane, but it couldn't be as insane as the night she had just lived through. These entities, these "Tulpas" or whatever the hell they were, were like biological machines. A flawless imitation, a perfect form. But in nature, perfection is fragile.
She unscrewed the cap of the whiskey bottle and poured some over the stain on the floor.
The result was instantaneous and violent.
The moment the pink layer came into contact with the alcohol, it foamed violently. A pungent smell of burnt plastic filled the room. The stain writhed like a living organism and, within seconds, dissolved into a black, ash-like powder.
Elara bit her lip to keep from letting out a hysterical laugh.
This was what the police, the forensics experts, even Miller couldn't see. They were looking for a biological murder; blood, tissue, DNA. But what they were facing was a chemical anomaly.
"Poison," Elara said, looking at the whiskey bottle in her hand as if it were a weapon. "This is your weakness. Our habits that kill us are acid rain to you."
That was why Mark had hesitated before attacking her. Elara's blood had become so toxic from years of consuming cheap coffee, chain-smoking, and taking sleeping pills that, to the Entity, she was a walking bag of poison. It couldn't eat her. It couldn't transform her.
It could only imitate and intimidate.
From outside, the music of that damn ice cream truck drifted in. *Calliope.* This time the melody was closer, perhaps just around the corner of the street. The notes of the music were distorted, skipping in the same place as if the record were stuck.
Elara looked up at the window. The hot air entering through the bullet hole in the glass caused the curtains to flutter slightly.
On the roof of the building opposite, two yellow dots glowed in the darkness.
A cat. Or a shadow that looked like a cat.
Elara was no longer afraid. At least, it wasn't that paralyzing fear born of helplessness. What she felt was the alertness of prey sensing the hunter's breath on its neck. Paranoia had begun to flow through her veins like a cold river, but this river gave her the power to focus.
She took the "Psychological Evaluation" envelope from the table, crumpled it up, and threw it into the trash can.
"Alright," she said, her voice no longer trembling but resolute. She turned off the kitchen light, and in the darkness, the ember at the tip of her cigarette glowed. "If this is the game, it's time to change the rules."
She began stuffing the whiskey bottle, the coffee jar, and the boxes she took from the medicine cabinet into her bag. The purple sky outside flickered like a harbinger of an approaching storm. And Elara, in the heat of this endless summer, vowed to be as toxic as she needed to be to survive.
The music of the ice cream truck stopped for a moment. Then, as if someone had heard Elara's thoughts, it started again in a much louder, much shriller, and angrier tone.
The hunt had begun.