The attack on Margo's senses was unending, unable to resist. In her right ear, a low hum obstructed the sounds of her headquarters, blurring them like running ink. In her left, a shrill whistle pierced into the eardrum like a needle through fabric. A dazzling light filled her view, fighting to pry her eyes open and force itself upon her already-vulnerable senses.

She heard a voice. Several. Or maybe just one, broken down into countless doppelgängers, all intending to distort her perception of the world around her. She felt something underneath her. A cushion, hard as rock, hovering above the rest of the floor on a metal frame. But the rest of the world hid behind the blinding light floating several feet before her face. She felt cold.

A metallic taste filled her mouth, creeping down the back of her throat. Her teeth ached, and as she scanned the roof of her mouth with her tongue, she'd discovered that the copper flavor grew stronger around the right side of her mouth. Too strong.

A tooth's missing, she thought.

She coughed, a sensation of sand pouring down her throat. Blood sprayed from her mouth, drizzling around her face and her neck. The voices around her spoke faster, louder, restless. She felt a napkin dabble her chin and her cheeks, and she winced, a piercing pain flaring with each touch.

One voice called her out from the distance. She didn't know who or their intentions, but she knew they awaited her response. A silhouette eclipsed the light, enshrouding Margo in shadow. A person towered above her, a medic, face hidden behind a surgical mask and hair tied up in a bun. Suddenly gloved fingers spread her eyelids apart, but she didn't know why. What were they looking for?

"Margo, wake up," she heard her sister say. It was unmistakable. Too clear, even over the tinnitus.

"Margo," another voice said, the nurse hovering above her, "can you hear me?"

What the..., Margo thought, and she flinched. But the clenching of her eyes only brought more pain, as if her skin of her face was being forcefully stretched apart.

"Shit, she needs another one," the medic continued, and with a snap of her fingers, she declared, "Apath. Now."

Margo sunk her nails into the cushion beneath her as everything above her waist ascended forward, halting once she was at a forty-five-degree angle. Tinnitus continued to plague her ears, but the world before her cleared up, made itself known to the remaining shreds of her sanity. She was on an exam table, and the door out of the room stood four feet away. Splashes of blue and green light coated her surroundings like soap down a car's windshield, fluid transitions from one hue to the other.

"Take this," said the nurse, and she presented Margo a medicine cup, a neon blue pill glowing inside.

"What is that?" Margo croaked, her voice raspy and harsh.

"An Apath for the pain. We thought one would be enough, but I can tell you're still feeling the sting of those contusions on your face. However, you're doing great despite the possibility of a grade 3 concussion."

The words brought a chuckle out of Margo. What is this lady talking about? she thought. And why do I find this amusing?

"Ma'am?" the nurse asked, snapping her fingers. "Did you hear me? You're gonna need one of these. Then I'll have to ask you some questions to jog your memory in case you're having any troubles with that. Typical concussion shit."

Margo chuckled again. She said "shit"...Did I seriously just laugh at that? What's wrong with me?

She took the cup and downed the pill, cringing at the feel of the Apath's plastic-like texture as it plunged down her throat. With an exhale, she sank back into the inclined mattress beneath her, eyes glued to the door.

"Alright," the nurse said, clapping her hands. "Do you remember your name?"

"What?"

The nurse leaned closer, repeating the question.

"Ma—" Margo coughed, a tickle in her throat. "Margo Sandoval."

The nurse squinted. "Are you alright, Margo?" she asked. "You're blinking your eyes a lot."

"Sorry."

Is she messing with me?

"It's alright. Just the fact you're speaking coherently is reassuring, especially considering the possibility of a grade 3 concussion. Although, it's rather unlikely considering you took a hit to your left temple, which rarely has enough force to render someone unconscious. But I'll get back to that in a little while." The nurse cleared her throat. "How old are you, Margo?"

"What?"

Damn the ringing in my ears.

"How old are you?" the nurse repeated.

"Twenty-three."

"When is your birthday?"

"January 7."

"Where do you live?"

"Philadelphia."

"Which state is Philadelphia in?"

"Pennsylvania."

"What is your job?"

Suddenly, Margo was at a loss for words. What's the name of this shithole again? she thought, and another round of laughter broke through, but she didn't feel the pleasance of such a sensation.

"Is something funny?" the nurse asked.

"I work for Psychwatch," Margo replied, clearing her throat.

"You're blinking your eyes again. Is everything alright?"

"I think it's just the lights."

"Alright, well, let me know if they continue bothering you. Do you have any siblings?"

"Just an older sister."

"What is her name?"

"Ellie."

Margo froze as a knock sounded against the door. But the fear vanished as quickly as it came, instead replaced by excitement.

"That might be her!" she exclaimed, her voice cracking.

The door nudged open, and Kusanagi peeked his head in, a large cut stretching across his cheek. "Sorry, Nurse Louise," he said. "The commissioner ordered me to bring Officer Sandoval a new ThoughtControl piece."

"No worries, Joseph," the nurse replied, and she held her hand out, taking the new piece.

"Kusanagi?" Margo asked, wondering why elation continued to flush through her. "What happened?"

"Oh, uh..." he said, "nothing much. Barely made it out of the Rabbit Hole in one piece. Or in my case, barely made it into the Rabbit Hole. I'm sure the nurse here will help catch you up to speed." He turned to Nurse Louise. "You have your own piece, right?"

"Yep, right here," she replied, tapping the device as it rested in her right ear.

Margo watched as Kusanagi and Louise maintained eye contact for a full minute, their expressions running the gamut from indifferent to alarmed. She thought nothing of it until the nurse took a momentary glance at her, concern crossing her face, veering toward disgust. She looked at Margo long enough to provoke humiliation, distrust. What did I do? Margo thought.

"That'll be all for now. We'll get back to you on the rest," Kusanagi said, and he disappeared out the door. Margo heard Mason angrily call out his name just as it closed shut.

Nurse Louise turned back to Margo. "We're making more progress!" she said. "You remembered Joseph's name."

"I never knew his first name was Joseph," Margo replied.

"Yep, Joseph Kusanagi. Good man." Louise cleared her throat. "How does your head feel, Margo? Any migraines? Ringing in your ears? Blurred vision?"

Margo hadn't realized how quickly the pain meds took effect. Her face didn't hurt every time she blinked or crinkled her nose. The world was no longer a menacing blur. No pounding headache. And even the ringing faded out. All that remained was semi-cloistered embarrassment plaguing her, a consequence of the painfully fresh memories of having to make Louise repeat herself because of that stupid ringing.

"Fortunately, Apaths are good with curing tinnitus," the nurse replied having read Margo's thoughts, and she carefully took her patient's chin, studying the wounds around her face. "I'm still very surprised a hit to the left temple knocked you unconscious like that. Hard to believe there weren't any facial fractures considering all this bruising."

"Yeah," Margo replied. How am I supposed to respond to that?

"Well, you correctly responded to basic questions regarding your identity, so once again you're making progress." The nurse leaned forward. "What's the last thing you remember before blacking out?"

Nothing came to mind. Just a blank, quiet slate. "I don't know, uh...How did you guys bring me here?"

"One of your fellow officers saw you enter this hidden chamber down in the Rabbit Hole. He never uttered more than a few words, and his body language suggested he may have been recovering from a recent tragedy. But anyway, he found you in what turned out to be a narcotics laboratory, one specifically manufacturing Wonderland Mist. Just found you on the floor with that bruise on your head, doused from head to toe in blood."

Margo looked down at herself. Aside from her hands, which were bare while the gloves rested on a table away from her, her body remained concealed by her shiny, spotless BufferSuit.

"My associates and I cleaned off the bloodstains, if it wasn't obvious," Louise said. "Of course, not before running some blood tests and making sure none of it was yours. The only traces of your blood we could find came from your missing right molar on your upper jaw."

Margo licked the bloodied space where her tooth used to be. While pleased to not feel the sting of such a wound, sadness overcame her, knowing it was only one of many parts of her she felt she'd lost that day. Possibly the only physical thing, she'd hoped, but knowing her kind of luck, she did her best not to dig her grave any deeper.

One particularly dangerous thought that came to her mind was the possibility of the Multi Man saving her. Or whoever was underneath that mask.

"Are you alright, Margo?" Louise asked.

"Who found me down there?" Margo asked back.

"An officer named Carl Maslow. Although, he continuously referred to himself as Vince, and many of the other officers weren't very happy to see him, especially your commissioner. Do you know him?"

Margo nodded her head.

"Are you close with him?"

She shot the nurse a flinty gaze. "Where is he?"

Following a brief exhale, Louise replied, "I'm not sure if it's my business to say, but the last I saw him, he and your other colleague, Daniela Andrade, stepped out of the commissioner's office looking incredibly disappointed. Daniela looked especially unhappy compared to Carl."

"Where's the commissioner?"

"I'd say either in her office or checking in on Jack Holloway or that other man rescued from the Rabbit Hole. I don't remember his name, but it'll be a miracle if he survives considering how much Wonderland Mist we found in his bloodstream."

It'll be a miracle if I leave this building with this job intact by the time I'm done with Mason, Margo thought.

She froze in place, noting the shocked expression on Louise's face as the holographic lens of her ThoughtControl piece hovered before her left eye.

"Uh, Margo..." she said carefully, "how would you describe your relationship with the commissioner?"

Margo sat up, crossing her legs as she glared at the nurse. "I'd like to ask you the same thing if that's alright with you," she said.

The lens vanished, and Louise cleared her throat. "Well," she replied, "I've actually known Janice for quite some time, even before she joined Psychwatch. I remember we always used to talk about anthropology while I sewed her wounds up, how she was different from all the other folks on Sixth Street."

Margo's eyes widened. "She grew up on Sixth Street?"

"Oh yeah! Made her first couple of arrests there. They called her a traitor to the neighborhood and a loose cannon. Not that that would suddenly motivate her to take a look at herself and wonder what she's doing wrong. Although, she somewhat made up for it by taking it easy on some of the mentally ill residents in the neighborhood at least, so perhaps she's working on it."

"Has she always hurt her fellow officers?"

Louise raised her brow. "Who has she hurt?"

There was no point, Margo realized. She rephrased the question, killed its specificity, kept Carl's cruel treatment a baseless suspicion and Coggins' death an admittedly deserved act of collateral damage.

"Would you say Mason has anger issues?"

The nurse squinted nervously. Margo wondered if Mason—or anyone high above her—had their eye on the two of them.

"I will say," Louise replied, "that she's a terrible sport. She has good intentions and speaks excellently before crowds, but when things go wrong or subvert her expectations, she gets incredibly frustrated. And she can only hide that frustration for so long."

"On my graduation day, she said it was the duty of a Psychwatch officer to decipher the mystery that was the human mind."

"Yeah, she says that at every ceremony," Louise laughed, a sheepish chuckle that came and went.

Margo leaned over the exam table, spitting a gob of blood into a trashcan.

"I'm very sorry about your tooth," Louise said. "Fortunately, implants these days are very cheap, especially for people in your line of work."

"Do you mind if I rinse my mouth out in the bathroom?" Margo asked, her expression cold.

"Not at all. Just be sure to come back to put some gauze on that wound of yours when you're done."

Margo stuck her hand out, waiting for her ThoughtControl piece but evoking a confused glare from Nurse Louise. She didn't like the way the nurse hesitated to hand it over, as if such an act resembled the slightest form of insurgency against Psychwatch. But she did so, and Margo stormed out of the room.

Shutting the door behind her, Margo stood in a hallway strangely unfamiliar to her. The psych ward? The SafeSpaces where she'd held sessions as an Empath? An infirmary? Maybe even some ordinary hospital somewhere in the city? She couldn't tell the difference. Hazy white lights, gray walls, SanityScans protruding from every corner. Distinction was a foreign concept.

But even in an alien world, she discerned a slew of familiar faces amongst the crowd of doctors, nurses, and Psychwatch officers packing the hallway. She turned away from the door to the women's restroom before her, giving in to curiosity.

The first room she approached had the largest crowd, her fellow officers guarding the doorway like a group of ecstatic sports fans. The way they moved around, whispered, murmured, abandoned every ounce of professionalism she thought her colleagues were once capable of. All she heard was careless gossip rather than straight-faced diagnoses. Remarks like "He's still going at it?" and "Thought he would've been dead by now," and "Can't believe it's taking so damn long."

The subject of their curiosity was Jack. Unconscious, restrained to the bed back in his cell, lost in delirium induced by the Wonderland Mist forced into his body by Slater. Margo discovered this when she shoved through the crowd, finding Mason, Nikki, and several other doctor-cops standing before a dozen holographic screens. One screen glimpsed into Jack's cell, making way for his screams and grunts and moans as he wrestled with the straps tying him down to his bed. On another, the visions haunting his mind came to life like a movie, and Margo discovered she'd landed the lead role.

In that dream displayed before the officers, she was naked. Her skin shifted from one unnatural hue to the next. Green, blue, pink, so intense and unnatural, her eyes burned the longer she stared. She was on top of Jack, who was also naked, grinding against him, lowering herself down so he'd come into her. She repeated it over and over, his penis going in and out of her, and his hand grasping her bare left breast. Yet no reaction of pleasure came from her. Just hushed gasps. She never blinked, her eyes glassy and distant. Jack wasn't fucking her. Just something that took her form.

"What the f..." Margo whispered.

"Glad to see you're okay, Sandoval," Mason said coldly, eyes studying the screens before her.

"I'm s-s-sorry, M-M-Margo," Nikki whimpered, her hands shielding her mouth.

"Silence, please, Atkinson. These are just the effects of Wonderland. Erotic hallucinations, enhanced sensitivity, anxiety. No doubt his empty eye socket probably hurts more than ever. But it'll be over in seven hours."

"MASON!" Margo shrieked, and she marched into the room, only for the superhuman force of Andrade's robotic arm to yank her back out.

"Give it up, Sandoval," Andrade groaned, hopeless, defeated.

"Beat the shit out of her, Margo!" she heard her sister yell out.

In her mind, Margo said, Don't you fucking dare. But someone else was in control of her body. And soon her first collided with Andrade's cheek, knocking her to the side. Her first immediately throbbed, no longer nullified by BufferSuit gloves, and the other Psychwatch officers grabbed her by her shoulders and arms. She was screaming once again, willing to tear her vocal cords apart if she could.

"Margo!" Nikki screamed, but she and Mason disappeared behind the closing door.

"Fuck you, Mason!" Margo cried. "Fuck you, Andrade! Everyone, get off me!"

As usual, the BufferSuit was useless. She still felt hands and arms and knees against her. She still heard angry pleas to calm down booming into her ears. Taste the blood dripping out of the wound in her mouth. Smell the blood off the gloves of the medics and the uniforms of her fellow officers. Her neck cracked and ached as the others dragged her around, and her arms had no feeling. No way to shove or elbow everything out of the way.

"ELLIE! HELP ME!"

"Sandoval, just relax!" someone said.

"Someone get a Fatemaker or a stunner! Anything!" shouted another.

They're gonna put you to sleep, Margo told herself. It's up to them whether or not you wake up.

"Ellie!" she screamed again, and a set of fingers squeezed between her neck and the collar of her BufferSuit, extracting another deafening shriek. But she didn't waver this time. She threw another punch, her officers quickly dodging the attack, cursing her.

The second punch made unsuccessful contact, blocked in midair by Carl. Or by the austere look in his eyes, Vince.

"Carl? Vince?" Margo asked. "Which one of you is it?"

"Margo!" called Nurse Louise as she nudged through the crowd. "What the hell are you doing? You were just supposed to rinse your mouth out!"

"Get away from me," Margo spat as she tried to break from Vince's hold, but he had a grip of steel. Unbreakable.

"I told you something was fucking wrong with her," muttered one officer, and Margo saw it was the same one from the Rabbit Hole who'd nearly opened fire on her.

"Quiet, please!" Louise exclaimed, and she cleared her throat. "Margo, just come with me. We'll run more tests and you can go home for the day."

Margo ignored her, resuming her attempts to break from Vince's hold. Once again, not a budge. She looked at Andrade, anticipating another bout of snark, but she saw a broken, hollowed shell of her superior, massaging the fresh bruise on her cheek with her remaining organic hand.

"Let's go," Vince growled, his deadly gaze catching Margo's eyes.

"I'm sorry, sir, but Margo has to come alone," Louise said.

Vince jerked his head toward her. "I said let's go."