Dyna watched with a wince as a wooden letter block slipped out of Hematite’s grip. Hematite ground her teeth together, stilled and took a deep breath, then tried again. Her arm shook and her eyes were filled with concentration, but she managed to stack the block on top of another. The moment of victory crashed down along with the tower of blocks as Hematite’s thumb nicked the edge of another block as she tried to pull back from the tower.

Hematite slumped over, sighing to herself. She stared down at her black and gold arm, wiggling the fingers of her new prosthetic. The shining bits of brass around the joints gleamed, brand new as they were, while the matte finish of her the carbon fiber shell gave her arm a futuristic look. Designed and built in-house by the Carroll Institute, it was quite possibly the most advanced prosthetic ever made. The key unique feature was the psionic tap. A little device in the arm that effectively read Hematite’s mind, allowing her far more precision and responsiveness than any contemporary prosthetic could achieve.

At least, that was the theory. The prosthetics were apparently some of the most promising inventions of the Carroll Institute as far as general civilian use was concerned. Even someone without proper psychic abilities could make use of the psionic tap.

And yet…

Dyna put a hand on Hematite’s shoulder. “Is something wrong, Doctor?” she asked, looking over to the other occupant in the room.

Doctor Dyson, a young man of African descent, put on a wan smile and shook his head. “Just takes time, I’m afraid.” As if to demonstrate, he held out his own silver and far more skeletal-like prosthetic arm. He waved it across the table, smoothly picking up a block between each of his metal fingers. With one hand, he tossed three blocks up, juggling them for a moment, before catching them out of the air one at a time and stacking them on top of the fourth block that was already on the table. “When I first built my arm, the technology wasn’t nearly so advanced. It took me a week to stack a single block on top of another. Watching you do it in under an hour, Hematite? It gives me such hope for the future!”

His words carried an infectious enthusiasm. Hematite, obviously infected, drew herself up. Giving a nod of grim determination, she reached forward and grasped a block with her carbon fiber hand.

Dyna stepped back, taking her hand off Hematite’s shoulder to allow her the freedom to move as she wanted.

It wasn’t smooth. Her fingers knocked a block off the table; Dyson caught it out of the air and placed it back on top with an encouraging smile. That only seemed to motivate Hematite more.

Feeling a buzz in her pocket, Dyna gave Hematite a light pat on the back. “I’ll stop by later on. Maybe you’ll feel up for a movie tonight?”

“Will Ruby be there?”

“Well… yes.”

“I’ll think about it,” Hematite said, not taking her eyes off a block in her hand. “It’s heavier than I’m used to. I feel lopsided.”

“We matched the weight of your arm as much as we could,” Dyson started.

Dyna didn’t hear the rest of their conversation. She slipped out of the room and closed the door behind her.

The robotics experts and the technicians responsible for the psionic tap were in the adjoining observation room. They sat about, recording information on the new subject to hopefully improve and iterate upon the existing technology. It was a bit surprising to see their enthusiasm over the past few weeks. The prosthetic team was, quite possibly, the first element of Psychodynamics and the Carroll Institute that looked like they were making things actually designed to make regular people’s lives better.

Psionic-based prosthetics weren’t available to the public yet, but it was clear that the team were happy with what they were doing.

Moving down the halls of the Robotics and Cybernetics division of Psychodynamics, Dyna entered an elevator. Without even saying where she wanted to go, Beatrice had her up in the main administrative building and on the floor where she was to be seeing her therapist.

Doctor West didn’t keep his door closed while waiting for patients. Only during sessions. His office wasn’t what Dyna had come to expect from a therapist. Rather than two chairs, maybe a plant, and a peaceful view outside the window to cultivate a calming atmosphere, Doctor West kept the room dark with no natural lighting. There were lights, enough that one wasn’t about to stumble over anything and could, in fact, see quite well, but they were all in the corners and sides of the room, illuminating statues of nude men and women with straight wings taking deific poses. A bit strange, but Dyna didn’t exactly hate it.

The actual doctor was an unassuming man. Short blond hair parted directly down the middle of his head gave him a bit of a goofy look, but his black suits fit for a funeral made up for it. Today, he stood over a table covered in a vast variety of security cameras. From old box-like cameras to little flat web cameras to circular cameras like the kind Beatrice used around the Carroll Institute. Each camera was pointed at another. With over a dozen of them on the table, drawing their lines of vision would have looked like a tangled spider web. None appeared plugged into anything. Wires and cables draped over the table, but didn’t reach any outlets or ports in the walls or floor.

Every time Dyna had showed up for a session, he had some new experiment out. The first time had been a maze with rats that took up almost the entire floor space. It had been gone the next week, replaced with a skinner box for birds. Dyna was mostly certain they were just for show. Some set piece he had been hoping to use to break the ice.

It had worked.

Doctor West turned away from where he was adjusting the position of one of the cameras. “Good morning, Dyna,” he said, voice always intense yet breathing before Dyna’s name. Doctor West spoke like his voice had a limp in its gait. “Is it already… that time again?”

“If you’re busy—”

“None of that now,” he said, quickly gesturing both hands toward the actual therapy side of the room.

Doctor West had a Freudian couch rather than the simple, modern seats that Doctor Bellows had used. With its red leather and angular style, it fit in well with the statues and artwork in the room.

As Dyna sat down and rested her head on the pillow at the end with an armrest, Doctor West took his seat in a matching upright chair. After picking up a paper tablet and pen, he leaned heavily on one of his chair’s armrests, and stared at Dyna. One of his eyes was a bit hooded, drooping slightly. His large, old-fashioned glasses weren’t quite coke-bottle glasses, but they did make his eyes look bigger. Dyna had to wonder if he had been the victim of a stroke at some point in the past, but she hadn’t asked.

“Now then, anything… you care to discuss today?”

“Not really,” Dyna said, shrugging.

“I have a question for you, today.”

Dyna nodded slowly. “Alright. You can ask it.”

“Do you often feel as if people are watching you?”

That got a snort from Dyna. “It isn’t paranoia if it is true. People are watching me. All the time. No matter where I go.”

Doctor west took a deep breath. “I see… Then let us get right into it,” he said, opening the tablet to a blank page. “What… is on your mind? What have… you been thinking about lately?”

Every session started out with that question. What had Dyna been thinking about?

Today, most recently, the answer was Hematite and the prosthetic team.

As Theta had said, there was more to the Carroll Institute than just what Dyna was involved with. She had some small hope that Hematite might be able to use her lack of an arm as a way to meet with some of those other groups and maybe work with them rather than the artificers. While Hematite could, allegedly, be dropped into a war zone and escape unscathed, from everything she said and the way she had acted the night they were attacked, Dyna didn’t think Hematite wanted that. Not at all.

If she could work with the prosthetic team, she would probably be much happier.

It was something that had been on Dyna’s mind for a while now. Dyna wasn’t quite sure how it had happened or when, but… she didn’t think she minded the artificer life quite so much. Terrifying in the moment, yes. Harrowing and exhausting, yes. But having been effectively benched, Dyna found herself restless.

She didn’t want to sit around, playing nice in therapy sessions. There were things out there. Entities—or Tulpa now—artifacts, and… enemy organizations.

Id’s group, Tartarus, had seen her as a target of opportunity. First, perhaps, an easy mark to get their hands on an artifact in the form of the mirror given her lack of support and the lack of protocol Doctor Cross had followed in allowing her out of the institute with the mirror. Then, later on, as an object of recruitment. Although those first two mind-controlled goons had carried weapons, she couldn’t actually recall them firing at her. Id hadn’t wanted her dead.

The same could not be said for the group from the other week. Tulpa or human, someone had sent them after her and Hematite. They had not held back their shots. It was a miracle—probably owing a great deal to Hematite’s uncanny luck—that only Ruby had been severely injured.

That group was still out there. Sitting around, letting them dictate the terms of engagement, felt wrong.

“You want… to take the fight to them?”

Dyna started. She had forgotten where she was. Had she said all that out loud? “Kind of, I guess? I mean, they attacked me.”

“So you feel a need to attack… those who attack you?” West said, scribbling down a note in a very much not-blank tablet.

She really had been speaking aloud the whole time.

“I’m not like seeking violence,” Dyna quickly said, only to frown as West’s writing hand sped up. “It’s just, are they going to stop now? I doubt it.”

“From what I read, you sent… them running with their tails between their legs.” His writing paused for a moment as he amended what he said. “Or rather, you either captured or killed everyone you came across.”

“They were tulpa. Random thoughts given form.”

“Aren’t we all?”

Dyna lifted her head off the pillow, shooting the doctor a look.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. But you didn’t know that at the time. You thought they were normal humans.”

Maintaining her look for a moment longer, Dyna eventually dropped her head back to the pillow. “I don’t see what difference that makes. They were trying to kill me! Are you saying I should have sat back and let them kill me?”

“I’m not saying you should… or should not do anything, Dyna. I’m just trying to bring your… decisions to light so that… you may better look at them.”

“I know my decisions,” Dyna huffed. “I’ve written a dozen reports and sat through twice as many meetings, all of which went over every aspect of the night, what happened, what could have been done differently, how to prevent such things from happening again, and… everything else.”

“Frustrated?”

Dyna leaned forward to shoot him another look. Doctor West didn’t even react. Frown on her face, Dyna dropped her head again. “If there is someone out there with the ability or technology to drag tulpa out of their world of thought and into reality, he effectively has an endless army. He just has to dress them up like soldiers and shove them in our direction. In a war of attrition against an endless army, we lose. Simple as that.”

“That’s why you want… to go on the offensive.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“Are you strong enough?”

“I can make myself strong enough.”

“I meant mentally… emotionally. From the notes I… received from Doctor… Bellhop—”

“Bellows.”

“Yes, of course. The notes… suggest you aren’t in-line with what you want. Your… fears, worries, hopes. Deep down, on a subconscious level, you’re fighting yourself.”

Dyna narrowed her eyes. That sounded familiar. Locking her jaw, Dyna very carefully kept her gaze on a single point on the ceiling. Those had been Id’s words. Not exactly. Not the same ones in the same order. But close enough that he might as well have been paraphrasing her.

Coincidence? Possibly. Id was obviously a psychoanalytical doctor of some degree. So was Doctor West. West came personally recommended by Administrator Theta. He would surely have vetted the man’s allegiances. But then again, Theta did want as much information as possible on the members of Tartarus, especially Doctor Darq. It seemed… unnecessarily complex to go through a therapist to get to Tartarus. And dangerous. From what he said, West knew far more about the goings on of Psychodynamics than a spy really should.

No. Far too dangerous. They were both psychiatrists. Id, from her name, clearly took inspiration from Freud. West, couch and questions, was the same. They simply drew the same conclusions. Id had a slight advantage in her temporary direct connection to Dyna’s mind, but West had notes from his predecessor.

“So what are you saying,” Dyna eventually said. “That I don’t actually want to know who attacked Hematite, Ruby, and myself?”

“Not at all. I’m not here to dictate… your wants.” Doctor West took a few deep breaths. “But perhaps we can work on your subconscious. It is my opinion that you will be a far more fearsome… force if your subconscious insecurities were replaced by your conscious wants and desires.”

“I feel plenty confident. I know I have… some issues. Doctor Bellows helped make that apparent. But I’m working to not be affected by them. I didn’t get dragged down in indecision the other week ago. I moved with purpose and acted decisively.”

“And that is remarkable progress. But… wouldn’t you want to be even better?”

Pressing her lips together, Dyna slowly nodded her head. “I suppose.”

“Excellent. Our session… is at an end for today,” he said, gesturing his pen toward a clock on the wall. “I will come up with a proper plan by next week. Please look forward to it.”

“Sure.” Swinging her legs over the side of the couch, Dyna sat up.

Her eyes wandered over the room, but quickly honed in on the table with all the security cameras. Before, their lines of sight would have been a tangled web. Now?

Every single one faced her. None were plugged in still, none had glowing red lights, but they were still there… watching.

Dyna shuddered. Ignoring the scratching of Doctor West’s pen against the paper, she hurried out of the room.

Look forward to it indeed.