The interrogation room was cold. Fluorescent lights hung over Jack and the unmasked stranger Margo apprehended earlier, drenching the room in a dim white haze. The two of them sat at a silver table in the center of the room, and to Jack's left stretched a one-way mirror across the wall.

This simulation is hitting every cliche in the book, Jack thought.

Jack clapped his hands together and pulled his seat in. "All right, buddy," he said. "You don't have anywhere else to run. So how about you start telling me more about yourself?"

The stranger was slumped in his chair, refusing to make eye contact. He had red hair and skin as pale as snow, aside from a few small contusions around his neck. There was a bruise around his left eye, and Jack knew fully well why he was wearing so many layers even at the end of March. If the stranger was aware he wasn't actually conscious, there was no way he'd recreate whatever wounds he was trying to hide.

"What's your name?" Jack asked.

"Finn."

"How old are you, Finn?"

"Nineteen."

"What were you doing at the Philadelphia Zoo? The animals are long-gone, buddy. And even if we found any, I would've killed them on the spot. Just like I killed your friends."

Finn remained silent, his eyes focused on the table in front of him.

"You a dealer?" Jack continued. "Apaths, Euphors, 'Gasm Gas, shit like that?"

"No," Finn replied.

Jack slammed his fist on the table, prompting the boy to jerk up. "Where'd you get the black eye?" he asked.

"Self-inflicted."

"Uh-huh." Jack flicked his fingers, and Finn's sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Dozens of dark red incisions were carved across his arms. "I'm guessing those were self-inflicted as well?"

Finn slowly nodded his head before hanging it low once more. "How'd you do that?" he asked in a dull tone.

"Easy, buddy. We're currently running a Psychoanalytical Cognitive Evaluation Render. Most people refer to it as the PACER."

"Is this a dream?"

Jack chuckled. "Buddy, when dreams end, you still have a whole day to look forward to. As far as I'm concerned, yours is only gonna get worse."

"Can we get hurt in here?"

"Physically, no. Unfortunately, your mind, however, is as vulnerable as a kid in a dark alley. In fact, just to prove we're in a simulation, I'll let you throw your chair at the mirror."

Finn gave him an understandably confused look.

"Go ahead, buddy," Jack urged. "I don't mind."

Still wondering what the catch was, Finn folded up the chair and carried it in his hands toward the mirror, coming face to face with his own reflection. He froze as he realized his reflection didn't have his black eye or the cuts on his arm now that he was aware of the simulation. He further concluded that there really was no mirror. Whatever went on behind that opaque screen didn't matter.

Still grasping the chair by its legs, he turned toward Jack and slammed it down on him.

The chair exploded into millions of grays fragments as soon as it made contact with Jack's head. Jack remained unmoved, not even flinching when the object came hurdling toward his skull, and he took glee in watching Finn's confidence wash away with that failed attempt.

"I already told you, buckaroo," he said as he rose from his seat. "Neither of us can get hurt in here. Not physically anyway." He slowly took a few steps toward Finn, who started backing into the wall. "And unless you're skilled at breaking people with words like me and my colleagues, I'll be the only one getting out of here unscathed."

Now cornered and breathing rapidly, he let out a quick scream as his arms sunk into the wall as if it were quicksand. The bottom of his feet become one with the wall as well, leaving only his head and torso exposed.

"Holloway," Mason ordered Jack through his ThoughtControl piece. "Resist the urge to provoke the boy. If his mental state grows more unstable, we'll have to deactivate the simulation."

Jack ignored her and stood before Finn in an intimidating pose. "So you're obviously not the mastermind," he said. "Tell me who your boss is."

"What do you mean I'm not the mastermind?" Finn asked, struggling to unbury his limbs from the wall.

"Just the fact you asked that already proved my point." Jack cleared his throat. "Finn, there's no way a kid like you could be responsible for murdering four teenagers in the Psycho Slums so brutally. At least not one as disposable and mediocre as you are."

"Fuck you, man. I didn't want to kill them. I was just there to deal with you guys."

Jack burst out laughing. "So you'd rather face a squadron of armed policemen over a bunch of unhinged little shits who didn't even have any weapons?"

"He gave me a purpose!" Finn shrieked.

Jack froze, both due to his response and the beeping from his ThoughtControl. "Subject is feeling agitated," Nikki told him. "Five percent chance of cognitive deviation."

"What the fuck did they tell you now?" Finn growled. "I see the piece hanging in your ear, man. Tell me what they fucking said!"

"First off," Jack replied, "you really need to calm down. Your aggression is screwing with the PACER program. You might cause both of us to undergo potentially lethal cognitive deviation."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that once the PACER's control is gone, our minds could merge together. We'll be mentally fused together, sharing the same thoughts, plagued by the same trauma. Either your consciousness could switch places with mine, therefore trapping you in my body, or our brains will fry if the merging goes wrong. So I highly recommend you shut the fuck up and let me do my job."

Finn shut his mouth immediately. The two of them glanced up at the ceiling as the fluorescent lights flickered four times. It wasn't just your typical flicker to add to the creepy ambience. It glitched out like a computer screen, lines of binary flashing across the ceiling in a blink.

"See that, kid?" Jack said. "That's just a small sign of this simulation's transience. So make it quick. I recall you shouting that someone gave you a purpose. Please elaborate on that."

"Yes," Finn hissed, no longer hiding his true nature behind a calm demeanor. "He taught me things."

"I'm guessing one of them wasn't social skills."

"He taught me how to fire a gun. Skin with a knife." He paused momentarily as he regained control over his breathing. "He taught me how to take my pain and give it to someone else."

"Who?"

Finn remained silent again.

"Get a Psych Expressor ready," Jack ordered to his colleagues through his ThoughtControl piece. He leaned closer to Finn as he was still engulfed by the wall behind him. "Who gave you a purpose and what does he look like?"

"He's multiple people," Finn replied in a suddenly raspy voice.

Jack wasn't amused. "Do you know who any of those 'multiple people' are? Just give me a fucking name, kid."

"Multiple names. Multiple motives. Multiple methods of ending lives."

Jack punched Finn across the face. The lights in the room blacked out for a moment once his fist made impact with the boy's nose before flickering back to life. Along with Finn's bloody nose, several new sights appeared around the room. The ceiling was missing panels that were in their correct positions only seconds ago. Three dead bodies lay on the floor near Jack and Finn, wading in pools of blood. Two of them sported the same mask Finn wore during the skirmish at the zoo, but the third was that of a man appearing to be in his late forties. His lifeless blue eyes gazed into the ceiling as if it were miles away. He wore a security guard's uniform and held a scrunched-up napkin in his hand doused in an unknown chemical.

"Whoa," Jack said, exchanging glances between Finn and the dead security guard. "You mind telling me who the fuck these people are?"

"Multiple people, multiple names, multiple..." Finn repeated frantically.

"Finn," Jack urged in frustration.

"...multiple motives, multiple methods of ending lives, multiple..."

The lights flickered again. When the lights returned to normal, the room gained a few more noticeable details. The walls and one-way mirror were scarred by deep cracks, blood dripping out like open wounds. Bullet shells and bloody daggers littered the floor as if they had stumbled upon a psychopath's weapons stash.

"Kid, chill the fuck out!" Jack shouted as he smacked Finn across the face. However, once he did, Finn looked back up to him, red X's scorched across his eyes like brand marks, and he screamed one more time that day.

"HE'S COMING FOR ME!"

"Ninety-eight percent chance of cognitive deviation!" Nikki exclaimed through the ThoughtControl. "We're getting you out of there, Jack!"

Following another quick series of flickering lights, darkness engulfed the room. And that was the last time anyone would hear from Finn.

* * *

"PACER program complete," the PACER's automated voice said as the helmet rose off Jack's head. "Please visit Psychwatch again if you experience any mental or emotional distress in the future."

As soon as his head was free, Jack rose from his seat. Finn sat across from him in another chair, a metallic halo wrapped around his forehead to indicate the PACER's target. However, unlike Jack, Finn's still-unconscious body was restrained by cuffs. The two of them were in an interrogation room identical to the one fabricated by the PACER, except this one had a SanityScan hanging in the corner of the room above the exit.

Jack activated his ThoughtControl. "So how did I do?" he asked pridefully.

"Your behavior inside the PACER was reckless, idiotic, and hardly beneficial to the interrogation," Mason asserted. "Aside from a few visual clues provided by the Psych Expressor, you've done nothing new to further the investigation."

"I think you mean he did nothing new," Jack replied as he walked over to Finn. "The bastard thought it would be fun playing the pronoun game and leaving everything open to interpretation."

"Actually," Margo chimed in, "if you look at the Psych Expressor's images close enough, you can make some pretty solid conclusions."

"Such as?"

Beyond the opaqueness of the one-way mirror, Margo was gathered with Commissioner Mason, Nikki, Holden and Royce as they kept tabs on the PACER's stability and the results of the Psych Expressor. Four holographic pictures projected against the wall, taken directly from Finn's mind in the PACER. The first image was a drawing of the self-inflicted cuts on Finn's arms, just a series of red streaks across his stenciled arms. The second image was of the two dead bodies bearing masks just like his, surrounded by bullet shells and their own blood. The third was of the deceased security guard and the sodden napkin in his hand conspicuously colored a light shade of green. The fourth was a self-portrait of Finn, except that everything in the picture was colorless aside from his fiery red hair and the red X's burnt over his eyes. What was most unsettling about his picture was that his face was contorted in the same expression he displayed as he spent the last few seconds in the simulation shrieking.

"The first one is the most obvious," Margo explained. "Self-harm is a symptom of a variety of mental disorders. Most of what Finn said during the simulation implied either trauma or self-hatred, possibly PTSD or depression." She looked over at the picture of the security guard. "Which then leads to our next discussion: the cause of his behavior."

"What does the security guard have to do with anything?" Holden asked.

"Look at the napkin in his hand. Back in the simulation, it was colorless, but you could still tell it was soaked in some kind of fluid. The green color is obviously meant to emphasize its significance."

"Just to support Sandoval's theory even more," Jack interrupted through his ThoughtControl, "I did a quick scan of the substance with my piece. It might not be very accurate being a hallucination and all, but if the chemical formula is correct, then that napkin was doused in chloroform. Given the fact it's surprisingly hard to take someone down with chloroform, that may also explain the bruises on Finn's neck. Attempted strangulation."

Each and every person in the room developed a look of disgust. It wasn't hard to assume what the guard wanted to do. "Holy shit," Holden muttered in horror. "You're telling me the guard tried to..."

Even though Jack couldn't see Holden through the one-way mirror, he still faced in his general direction and slowly nodded his head, completely devoid of the shock felt by the rest of his colleagues.

"Horrible as it is," Mason remarked, "it's unsurprising that would drive the boy to do something horrible to him."

"B-B-But what about the two masked men?" Nikki stuttered. "If he was wearing the same one, doesn't that mean they're allies?"

"Maybe," Royce replied. "But that doesn't necessarily mean they're close. Their superior could have so much power over them that all it takes is one order to get them to kill one of their own. Most likely a way of dealing with traitors."

"And the final picture," Jack continued. "Those infamous red X's. The last thing Finn screamed before the PACER deactivated was that someone—most likely his superior—was coming for him. Given the brutality of recent crimes, I'd say that he's fully aware his fate has been sealed."

Margo leaned forward into the one-way mirror, gazing at the unconscious boy slumped into the chair. Even before the Psych Expressor channeled Finn's trauma into art, she saw everything that went on in the PACER. And while the Neutralizer part of her was glad he was off the streets, the Empath in her wanted to fix him. Wipe away those wounds as if they were nothing more than stains.

"Well," Jack continued, "now that we made use of what we have, I think we can put this poor bastard to rest."

Margo knew what was coming next. "NO!"

The other officers panicked as Jack reached for his Fatemaker. He aimed the firearm at Finn, the barrel of the gun placed directly against the boy's head. However, he found himself unable to pull the trigger. Not because he felt guilt; he couldn't remember the last time he felt guilt and highly doubted he'd ever felt it before.

Commissioner Mason had activated his implant. He had no control over his mobility thanks to her.

"Holloway, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Royce barked.

"I already told you," Jack replied callously. "His fate has been sealed. If I don't kill him, someone else will. And at least I'd do it peacefully." The implant prevented him from bending his fingers. His attempts at pulling the trigger were still for naught.

"Mason, he can't kill him!" Margo exclaimed. "He's only a Threat Level 4. That means he hasn't directly taken anyone's life! We can still save him!"

"Then think of it this way, Sandoval," Jack urged in frustration, his neck twitching due to the pain of the implant. "I'll be saving him by pulling the trigger. Or better yet, maybe you should ask if he even wants to be fucking sa—"

His voice cut off as the implant emitted a shock more powerful than the ones before. A blue light flashed in Jack's eyes before he collapsed to the floor, dropping his Fatemaker beside him.

Normally Margo would've sympathized with her fellow colleague, but she didn't feel he deserved it at the moment. "Think about it, Mason," she said. "If we can return Finn to a healthy mental state, maybe he'll be more willing to cooperate with us. We could start tomorrow morning. I'll hold a session with him and progressively earn his trust."

Mason remained silent for a few seconds before replying, "I had the same thing in mind." She patted Margo on the shoulder. "Good work, Sandoval."

Once Mason wasn't looking, Margo exchanged congratulatory thumbs-ups with Nikki and Holden.

"I'll take Holloway and the boy to the psych ward," Royce approached Mason. "We already know Holloway isn't going anywhere, but I'll be paying extra attention to the kid if some maniac is really coming after him."

Mason nodded her head, and Royce unlocked the door into the interrogation room, joined by three other Psychwatch officers. Two of them unlocked Finn's cuffs while Royce and the other officer worked to carry an unconscious Holloway out.

"Margo," Holden said he skimmed through the news on his phone. "Remember that dude you saw near the zoo? That journalist who worked for the Perceiver?"

"Yeah," Margo replied. "Why?"

Holden flashed the screen of his phone toward her. "He's talking shit about us."