No Afterwards E-Book

Dominik Mikulaschek

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 708

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

In **“No Afterwards: The Protocol of Guilt,”** a simple card with two words changes everything: **Zero Point**. What begins as a mysterious summons quickly turns into a terrifying descent into a hidden world of surveillance, manipulation, and psychological control. Mara Stein follows the coordinates to an isolated facility that looks like a cross between a medical complex, a security center, and a sealed archive. No signs. No witnesses. No easy way out. Inside, sterile corridors, handleless doors, cameras, loudspeakers, and carefully controlled routes make one thing clear: she was not invited. She was expected. At first, Mara believes she has entered another trap designed to intimidate her. But the deeper she goes, the more horrifying the truth becomes. This place is not just watching her. It has been documenting her. Recording her. Structuring her life into files, reports, video clips, and official narratives. In room after room, she discovers that her past has been turned into a case file, her fear into evidence, and her reactions into proof of guilt. Every incident appears categorized, archived, and prepared for one final conclusion. The system does not want to silence her anymore. It wants to define her forever. What makes **“No Afterwards”** especially gripping is its relentless pressure. This is not a slow mystery that waits to build tension. It is a **psychological thriller** that traps both heroine and reader inside a tightly controlled environment where every minute matters. At midnight, a final protocol is set to be sealed. Once that happens, every inconsistency will be explained away, every contradiction will be buried, and every attempt to defend the truth will be dismissed as instability. Mara has only hours to stop the process, expose the system, and save the one witness who can confirm what is really happening inside the complex. As Mara moves through archive rooms, surveillance corridors, medical observation units, and hidden control spaces, she faces enemies who do not rely on brute force alone. They use procedure, language, diagnosis, and narrative. Detective Rios represents order, certainty, and institutional power. Dr. Selene Hart transforms fear into pathology and turns panic into documentation. Together, they create a world in which truth is not discovered but manufactured. That is what gives this **domestic thriller** its disturbing edge: the danger is not chaos, but precision. Not madness, but design. **“No Afterwards: The Protocol of Guilt”** is ideal for readers who love **psychological suspense**, **domestic thrillers**, **conspiracy thrillers**, **women-in-danger thrillers**, and dark, atmospheric stories built around secrets, control, and high-stakes survival. Fans of books with **short chapters**, **constant cliffhangers**, **twists**, **surveillance themes**, and a strong female lead will find a powerful page-turner here. It is a tense and modern thriller about guilt, truth, control, and the terrifying power of systems that decide who you are before you can defend yourself. If you enjoy suspense novels about hidden institutions, false narratives, trapped heroines, manipulation, and a race against time, **“No Afterwards”** delivers a chilling, fast-paced reading experience. This is a thriller for readers who want pressure on every page, a haunting setting, and a story that asks one devastating question: what happens when the system writes your version of the truth before you get the chance to speak?

Leseprobe

Dominik Mikulaschek, born in Linz in 1983, dissects the architectures of power and the mechanics of truth-making. In *Kein Nachher*, he unleashes a thriller about the ultimate state of control: an archive that transforms life into evidence, and a system that irrevocably fixes the past. This is not about monsters in the dark, but about the clinical violence of protocols, boilerplate text and digital seals. An oppressively precise page-turner about the struggle against a reality that has long been on record – and about the final boundary between ‘true’ and ‘official’.

Dominik Mikulaschek

No Afterwards

The Protocol of Guilt

tredition GmbH

© 2026 Dominik Mikulaschek

Printed and distributed on behalf of the author by:

tredition GmbH, Heinz-Beusen-Stieg 5, 22926 Ahrensburg, Germany

This work, including its parts, is protected by copyright. The author is responsible for the content. Any use without his consent is prohibited. Publication and distribution are carried out on behalf of the author, who can be contacted at: Dominik Mikulaschek, Holzwurmweg 5, 4040 Linz, Austria.

Contact address in accordance with the EU Product Safety Regulation:[email protected]

Chapter 1 – The Invited Woman (Mara)

The card was a simple piece of white card, unfolded, with no envelope. A single word was written on it by hand in black ink: Zero Point. She had found it that morning, wedged between the door and the frame of her flat’s front door, as if it had been placed there by a ghostly hand. No postmark, no sender, just that one word, which in her world meant everything and yet nothing at the same time. It was the title of the final volume, the one that had not yet been written, the final act in the series of her life that she had never commissioned. Mara slipped the card into the inside pocket of her jacket, where it pressed against her ribs like a brand. Outside, it was one of those grey December days when the light crept wearily and flatly across the landscape, as if it couldn’t be bothered to make the effort. She got into her car, an unremarkable grey hire car she’d paid for in cash. The journey took her out of the city, into an area not marked on any ordinary map. The sat-nav app on her shielded mobile phone showed only coordinates that led her onto a forest track winding through bare woods. The rattling of stones beneath the tyres was the only sound. The further she went, the less real the world seemed. The trees stood as if cut out against the leaden sky, motionless. No birds, no wildlife, nothing. After half an hour, the gravel track ended abruptly at a massive metal fence that stretched in both directions into the distance. No sign warned against trespassing, no indication of private property. The fence was tall, smooth, the tips of the bars uncomfortably sharp. Directly in front of her, right in the middle of the dead end, was a gate, also made of metal. And next to it, barely visible against the dull surface, a small, dark camera lens. Mara stopped, the engine idling. She stared at the lens, waiting. Her breath formed little clouds in the cold air of the car. She had no plan, except to see. To understand what Zero Point meant. Suddenly, without a sound, without the whirring of engines, the gate began to swing open inwards. It moved slowly, steadily, like the mouth of a giant beast. It did not invite her in; it gaped open. A cold draught swept in, smelling of nothing, absolutely nothing. No forest air, no mustiness, just sterile emptiness. Mara clenched her teeth. She drove slowly forward, the tyres crossing the concrete threshold. Behind her, just as the car’s front wheels touched the inner grounds, the gate closed again. Silently, but definitively. It didn’t snap shut; it simply merged back into the fence, a seamless barrier. Before her stretched an asphalted driveway, perfectly straight, lined with bollard-like, low concrete blocks. At the end of the roughly two-hundred-metre-long stretch, a low, elongated building came into view. It was made of grey exposed concrete, windowless, like a bunker-like cuboid cast into the landscape. No signs, no number, no letters. Just the smooth, hostile surface. There was no designated car park, so she simply stopped in the middle of the driveway, directly in front of the only visible door. It too was made of metal, with no handle, no latch, no letterbox. Just a smooth surface with a barely perceptible vertical crack in the middle. Mara got out. The silence here was different from that in the forest. There it was natural; here it was forced, absorbed. The slam of the car door sounded muffled and was swallowed up immediately. She no longer felt the cold wind. The air was still, temperate. A soft, constant hum lay within it, a bass undertone coming from everywhere and nowhere. She stepped up to the door. Once again, she waited. Nothing happened. She scanned the façade, looking for another camera, a speaking grille, anything. Nothing. Just concrete. Suddenly, there was a crackle from a hidden loudspeaker somewhere above her. The voice that rang out was clear, digitally smoothed, but unmistakably male. It was Rios’s voice. Yet it didn’t sound as though it were coming through a poor telephone line or from a great distance. It sounded close, present, as if he were standing directly behind the door and speaking through a thin wall. “Mara Stein. Welcome. Please come in. The final session is about to begin.” Her heart gave a thump she could feel right down to her fingertips. Final session. She knew this vocabulary. It belonged to protocols, to court hearings, to final reports. Not to a place to which she had never been invited. The loudspeaker fell silent. And then, with a soft hiss of compressed air, the vertical slit in the metal door parted. The two halves slid silently into the wall, to the left and right. Behind it lay not a room, but a short, brightly lit corridor, an airlock. The walls were white, the floor made of light-coloured, non-slip linoleum. At the end of the roughly three-metre-long corridor was another door, identical to the first. Mara hesitated for a second. She could turn around, run back to the car. But the gate was closed. And Rios knew she was here. His welcome hadn’t sounded surprised. It had sounded expectant. She took a deep breath, tasting the sterile air. Then she stepped inside. Immediately, the doors closed behind her. Not with a bang, but with a soft yet impossible-to-ignore pressure that sought to cut her off from the outside world. A gentle hiss, a click. She was locked in. The space between the doors was brightly lit, but the light was cold, clinical. On the ceiling was a round, dark camera lens. She stood motionless, allowing herself to be observed. Then the second door opened. Slowly, with the same silent movement. Behind it lay a corridor. A long, straight, white corridor with more doors on either side. All without handles. All closed. The floor was so clean it seemed to gleam. The air smelled of disinfectant and ozone. At the end of the corridor, perhaps thirty metres away, there was a junction. No signs, no directions. Just the choice between left, right or straight ahead. Mara stopped, listened. Nothing. Just the constant, deep hum, which now seemed louder. It came from the walls. She began to walk down the corridor. Her footsteps did not echo. The floor swallowed every sound. It was as if she were moving through cotton wool. She passed the first doors. They were all the same, made of light-coloured metal, with a small, glowing green panel at chest height next to the door leaf. No numbers, no names. Just the green light, pulsing steadily as if it were breathing. When she was about halfway down the corridor, the loudspeaker crackled again, somewhere above her in the ‘ ’. Rios’s voice. This time it sounded from further ahead, as if he had walked down the corridor. “The archive room is ready, Mara. Please follow the instructions.” A door to her left, about five paces ahead, changed. The green light went out and a soft, blue light began to flash. An invitation. Or a command. Mara stopped. She looked at the door, then at the empty corridor ahead and behind her. She could follow the blue prompt. Or she could keep walking, reach the junction, and decide for herself. She took a step towards the junction. Immediately, the blue flashing on the door to her left went out. Instead, a door straight ahead, at the end of the corridor at the junction, began to flash in the same blue frequency. The system was reacting. It was guiding her. A cold anger rose within her, mixed with an old, familiar fear. The fear of being trapped in a protocol where every movement was predetermined. She ignored the flashing door and walked towards the right-hand side of the junction. Nothing flashed. The doors on the right remained a dull green. She reached the junction. Left, right, straight ahead. Three identical white corridors stretched into the darkness. She chose the one on the right. After ten metres, it ended at a wall. A dead end. No door, just a smooth white wall. As she turned around, she saw that at the entrance to the dead end, where she had just come in, a transparent sliding door made of milky plexiglass had silently slid out of the wall and blocked the way. She was trapped. No handle, no way to open it. Mara pressed a hand against the cool material. It didn’t even give way. She knocked against it. The sound was muffled and wouldn’t carry. She was trapped in a white box. She breathed faster, feeling panic creep up on her like an old acquaintance. Then the loudspeaker crackled, this time directly in the ceiling above her. Rios’s voice. It sounded quiet now, almost regretful, but that was just another mask. “Orientation is important, Mara. We must maintain efficiency. Please go back to the junction. The blue marker will show you the way.” In front of her, in the plexiglass door, a glowing blue arrow suddenly appeared, pointing back towards the junction. The door slid back into the wall. The path was clear . Mara stood there for a moment, fists clenched. She wanted to scream, to punch the wall. But that was what they were expecting. An emotional reaction that could be recorded in a report as ‘affective instability’. She forced herself to breathe calmly. She walked back to the junction. The door straight ahead was still flashing blue. She had no choice. Every other route was cut off. She walked towards the door. When she was about a metre away, the flashing stopped. The green light shone steadily again, and with a soft hum, the door slid inwards. The room behind it was not the archive room. It was a small, bare room, barely larger than a broom cupboard. On the opposite wall was a large, flat screen. It was off. In the centre of the room stood a single, chrome-coloured chair with no upholstery. A camera was mounted above the screen, its red power LED staring intently at her. “Please take a seat,” said Rios’s voice from a loudspeaker in the room. “Preparations are almost complete.” Mara entered the room. The door closed behind her. She did not sit down. She scrutinised the screen, the camera. Then, without warning, the screen flickered to life. It showed a live feed. It was the corridor she had just walked through. The perspective was from above, slightly angled, roughly from the position where she had seen the flashing door. She saw her own figure from behind, walking towards the junction. The image was sharp, true to colour. But then her gaze fell on the digital time displayed in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. It read 11:47:22. Mara looked at her own watch. It was 11:49. A difference of almost two minutes. The image wasn’t live. There was a delay. She watched as her on-screen self moved towards the junction and then chose the right-hand corridor. On the screen, the plexiglass door at the dead end did not open. Instead, her digital figure simply stopped, turned around and slowly came back, as if she had turned back of her own accord. The narrative was already being shaped here. A trap became a choice. A cold shiver ran down her spine. The manipulation was so obvious and yet so insidious. Before she could say or do anything, the clock in the image jumped back. It suddenly showed 11:46:05, and the figure on the screen was back at the start of the corridor, approaching the first flashing door. The airlock closed behind me.

Chapter 2 – A Screen from Above (Mara)

The image on the screen froze for a moment, showing her as a small, isolated figure in the white corridor, and then faded back into a dull black expanse. The red LED on the camera above the monitor continued to glow, unchanged. Mara turned slowly, her back to the wall, and surveyed the bare room. There was no other door apart from the one she had come through. That was now a smooth, metallic wall, without the slightest hint of a frame or an opening. She hadn’t heard it close; it had simply vanished. The air smelled of static electricity and the faint, bittersweet undertone of coolant. The humming in the walls was louder here, a vibrating drone she could feel in her teeth. She walked towards where the door must have been and ran her fingertips over the surface. Cold, smooth, seamless. No button, no sensor. She was trapped in this white cell with the silent screen and the unblinking eye of the camera. The fact that they had locked her in here after confronting her with delayed footage was a message. They wanted her to understand that her movements were not only being observed, but could also be altered retrospectively. History was being written after the event, and she was the main character in a script she had never read. She took a deep breath and forced her thoughts away from panic, towards observation. The room was about three by three metres. The walls were made of the same white, slightly porous material as the corridors, which seemed to absorb sound. The floor was a rubbery, grey surface that gave way slightly with every step. Apart from the chrome-coloured chair and the monitor on the wall, there was no furniture. On the ceiling were four evenly spaced, flat fluorescent panels, emitting the same cool, shadowless light as in the corridors. Her eyes scanned for more cameras, but she could find none, only the one above the screen. Yet that meant nothing. The lens could be tiny, hidden behind one of the white panels . She stepped in front of the screen. Her own reflection, blurred in the dark glass, overlapped with the glare from the light panels. She looked like a ghost, pale, with dark circles under her eyes that bore witness to sleepless nights and constant vigilance. Rios’s voice did not return. The silence was complete, broken only by the deep hum of the infrastructure. Minutes passed. Mara did not sit down. She leaned against the wall beside the screen, arms crossed, and waited. She knew that waiting was part of the pressure. It was meant to make her restless, uncertain, ready for the next instruction. She would not give them that satisfaction. She closed her eyes for a moment, concentrating on the sounds. Beneath the hum, a barely perceptible clicking could be heard, rhythmic, like a relay switching somewhere far away. Then, more softly, the rustle of air flowing through ducts. The air conditioning. The room had no visible ventilation grilles, but the air was moving, a barely perceptible draught that seemed to be coming from somewhere low down on the wall. She opened her eyes and crouched down to examine the skirting board. Where the wall met the floor, there was a narrow gap, barely a millimetre wide. Cool, sterile air was flowing out of it. No grille, just this gap. It was a deliberate design choice. Nothing one could grasp, dismantle or block. Everything was smooth, controlled, unassailable. Suddenly, without warning, the screen came back to life. This time it showed no camera feed. It was a simple, white list on a black background, in a sans-serif, technical font. It looked like a cleaning or maintenance log hanging on a wall in a factory. The heading read: ‘Project Completion – Final Phase Log.’ Beneath it, in several lines, were familiar words. She recognised them immediately. They were the titles. The titles of the last few months, of the last nightmares. ‘Night Care.’ “Don’t fall asleep.” “Three o’clock.” “Keep still.” “Emergency lighting.” “Seven minutes.” And at the very bottom, not yet ticked off: “Zero point.” Next to each title was a date stamp and a status indicator: “ .” “Night care” bore a date from almost a year ago and the status “Completed – Archived”. “Don’t fall asleep” was dated a few months later, also completed. The dates preceded the events, just as she remembered them. Before the night-time calls, the spoiled food, the broken locks, the moving objects in her flat. That was the project list. The proof that it had all been planned. That she wasn’t going mad, but was trapped in a machine that had been running for months. Her mouth went dry. She wanted to touch the screen, zoom in on the list, but it was a display only. No touchscreen, no keyboard. She could only watch. Then, as if an invisible hand had swept over it, the text faded away. The screen showed the live feed of the corridor again, this time from a different angle. It was a view from above, almost directly over the junction, capturing all three corridors. The time in the corner read 11:51:10 – still almost two minutes behind real time. She didn’t see herself in the picture. The corridor was empty. But then something moved at the edge of the image, where the left-hand corridor led into the darkness. A figure, indistinct, in a light-coloured coat. It was visible for just a second, then vanished again. Mara moved closer, her face mere centimetres from the glass. Who was that? Hart? A guard? Or was it Noah? The screen flickered. The image changed abruptly. Now it showed a different room. A room with a medical examination chair, shelves of clinical equipment and a couch with leather straps. This room was empty too. The camera appeared to be mounted in a corner of the ceiling and showed the room from a high, oblique angle. It was an observation room. Whilst she was still wondering what to make of this information, something strange happened. The perspective of the image shifted slightly. It was as if the camera were slowly, imperceptibly, panning downwards. The angle became steeper, showing more of the floor, less of the couch. An automatic movement? Or was it being remotely controlled? Mara followed the movement with her eyes, and then she froze. For as the angle lowered, a section of the ceiling came into view—the ceiling of the room in which the camera itself was mounted. And in that ceiling, in the upper corner of the monitor, a tiny section of another monitor was visible for a brief moment: a grey frame, and on it, blurred, a face. It was her face. From above. The screen was showing her a live feed from a room, and in that live feed, her own surveillance screen could be seen, displaying her own image. The camera that was now watching her was also filming the monitor that was watching her. It was an endless regression, a reflection within a reflection. And this tiny glimpse in the ceiling of the unfamiliar room proved something: the monitor showing her face wasn’t simply hanging on a wall. It was integrated into a surveillance room. And the angle from which her face was being filmed was from above, from a position that must have been above her head. She turned slowly and looked up at the white, seemingly pristine ceiling above her. The four light panels. Between them, in the centre of the ceiling, was a small, round discolouration, barely visible, a hint of grey in the white. No obvious lens, just a slight irregularity in the texture. But it was enough. The camera was there. She wasn’t just being filmed from the front through the lens above the screen. She was also being watched from above, from an angle that captured everything, every step, every twitch of her face. This screen here in the cell wasn’t just for intimidation or conveying information. It was part of the setup. Someone was watching her on a whole grid of monitors, and on one of those monitors, exactly the section she had just discovered was visible. They were not merely observers. They were staging the act of observation itself. They created a loop in which she was both the subject and the object of the gaze. A cold shiver ran down her spine, not out of fear, but from a kind of icy clarity. She now understood the logic of the place a little better. It wasn’t about secrets lying in hidden rooms. It was about the fact that everything was visible, but visibility itself was the prison. Every fact could be placed in a different context, every reaction reinterpreted as a symptom. The screen in front of her flickered again and switched to a new image. It was the corridor again, the view from above, at the junction. And this time she herself was in the picture. She saw herself from above, stepping out of the right-hand corridor back onto the junction, head bowed, arms crossed. She looked lost, small. The digital clock showed 11:48:05. The delay was still there. Then, on the screen, she saw her digital self turn around and walk towards the door that had now vanished in front of her in the real world. The figure on the monitor stopped in front of the closed wall, just as she had done. But then, in the image, the wall opened. A door became visible and slid to one side. Her on-screen figure stepped through. That hadn’t happened. In reality, no door had opened. The monitor was showing an edited version, a version in which she willingly walked into the trap. Whilst she was still processing this, something happened in the real world. With an almost inaudible hiss, the wall opposite the screen, which until just a moment ago had been smooth, began to split. A vertical crack appeared and widened. A door opened. Not the one she had come through, but a new one. Behind it lay not the white corridor, but another, narrower passage, dimly lit. The blue light of a marker flashed somewhere in the depths of this passage. The system had ended her captivity, at least for the time being. It had confronted her with the manipulated recording and was now showing her a new path. She looked back from the open passage to the screen. The image was black again. Her only confirmation, her only weapon against the false narrative, was her own memory and the tiny discrepancy in the time. She had to get out of this cell; she had to find the archive, the physical project list, something that wasn’t digital and therefore alterable. She stepped through the newly opened door. The corridor beyond was narrower, the ceiling lower. The walls weren’t white, but painted a dull grey. Bundles of cables ran along the right-hand wall in grey plastic ducts. It looked like a service wing. The blue flashing came from a simple LED mounted on the wall about twenty metres away. She followed it. The corridor curved to the left and ended in front of a lift. The lift doors were made of matt grey steel, with no buttons on the outside. As she approached, a small screen next to the door lit up. It displayed a green arrow pointing downwards. A humming sound rang out, and the doors slid apart. The cabin was small, windowless, with walls made of the same rubbery material as the floor of her prison cell. There was no floor indicator, no buttons. Just a camera in a corner of the ceiling. The doors closed. The lift began to move immediately, downwards, as the arrow had indicated. The journey lasted only a few seconds, but was distinctly noticeable. Then it stopped. The doors opened again. Before her lay another corridor, this time with a darker, more practical linoleum floor. The air smelled different here, of machine oil, dust and a faint hint of burnt insulation. The deep hum was much louder here, a vibrating buzz that ran through the floor. She was in a technical area, probably near the generators or the servers. The blue LED was no longer visible. She now had to choose her own direction. The corridor led to the left and right. She went right, towards the increasingly loud hum. The doors here looked different. They were made of sturdy steel, with large red handles, the sort typically found on emergency exits or in technical rooms. Some had warning signs attached: ‘Caution: High Voltage’, ‘Authorised Personnel Only’, ‘Fire Door – Keep Closed’. They were the first proper signs she’d seen since arriving. She tried one of the red handles. It pushed down, but the door didn’t move. Locked. She tried the next one. Same result. All the doors in this corridor were locked. She walked on until the corridor ended at a heavy steel door fitted with a large, black lock and a seal. A sign was attached next to the door: “Emergency shutdown – Emergency system – Use only in extreme danger – Mechanical lever.” Beneath the sign was a sealed flap made of transparent, impact-resistant plastic. Behind it, she could make out the upper part of a red metal lever, which operated in a vertical position. An analogue emergency shutdown. Something that lay outside the digital system. She examined the seal on the lock. It was made of lead and bore an embossed number and a date. The date was over six months old. This shut-off had not been prepared for a current emergency. It was part of the original installation, a pre-produced piece of theatre intended to give the appearance of security whilst remaining inaccessible. Yet its existence proved something: there was a physical weak point. Something that could not be operated by software, but only by force or a key. She heard a noise behind her. A faint creaking of metal. She spun round. The corridor behind her was empty. The noise came from one of the doors she had already found to be locked. She walked back slowly, listening. Nothing. Perhaps it was just the metal expanding under the influence of the vibrations. She looked down the long, grey corridor once more, to the spot where the lift had dropped her off. There, on the wall opposite the lift, hung a small monitor, no bigger than a tablet. It was black. As she looked at it, it flickered to life. It displayed a black-and-white image. It was a picture of her face, from the perspective of the ceiling camera in the white room where she had been trapped. She saw herself standing motionless, staring at the wall. The image was sharp, rich in detail. It was clearly not a delayed recording, but live. The time in the corner matched her own. She looked straight into the lens of the camera that was now capturing this image, somewhere here in this corridor. She couldn’t see it. Then, on the monitor, something moved. Not herself, but in the background of the image, in the white cell. The door, the new door that had opened, was visible. And for a fraction of a second, as the camera shifted to a slightly different angle, she saw something in the dark gap of the open door. A hand. A human hand gripping the doorframe, as if someone were listening from outside. Then the image vanished. The monitor went black. Mara stood rooted to the spot. She wasn’t alone. Someone had been in the white room, just after she’d left it. Someone who had watched her being watched. Was it Grey? The operator? Or was it Noah? Or someone else? The silence in the technical corridor now felt menacing. The hum of the generators seemed to grow louder, a dull heartbeat of the building. She knew she had to move on, away from this exposed spot. She walked back towards the lift, but not quite all the way there. About halfway there, there was a recess in the wall, a blind spot created by a protruding cable duct and a large, green fire hydrant box. She stepped inside, pressed herself against the cold wall, and peered cautiously around the corner back at the monitor. It remained black. Her thoughts were racing. The hand on the door. Was it a warning? A hint that there were allies? Or just another way to unsettle her? She had to find a way to get back up from these lower floors to the main areas, where the archive must be. The lift was a trap, a direct link to the control centre. She needed a staircase, an emergency exit. Her eyes scanned the corridor. And then she saw it. Between two of the massive steel doors, almost invisible in the grey light, a narrow green sign was affixed to the ceiling. It showed a white man running and an arrow pointing to the left. An emergency exit sign. It was the first official sign of an exit she had seen. The arrow pointed to a spot on the wall, about three metres further on, where the corridor curved slightly. She went there. There was no door at the indicated spot. Instead, there was a narrow, vertical line in the wall, barely wider than a pencil stroke. She ran her hand over it. The surface felt different, cooler, metallic. It was a door, perfectly recessed into the wall, without a frame, without a handle. Only that tiny sign from the ceiling indicated it. A blind sign for a blind exit. It was not a way out. It was another dead end, another illusion of control. She took a step back, her breath short and shallow. Her sense of direction had been systematically stripped away , replaced by a labyrinth of predetermined paths and locked doors. She turned to head back to the lift when the monitor on the wall came to life again. This time it showed no surveillance feed. It displayed a text message, in large white letters on a red background: “Target moving into unauthorised zone. Initiate return.” At that very moment, a shrill, pulsating alarm began to sound from hidden speakers—not loud, but piercing. The red handles on all the steel doors in the corridor began to move downwards simultaneously, clattering mechanically and loudly, as if being locked from the inside. The hum of the generators rose in pitch. From the ceiling, at the end of the corridor where she had come from, a white, pulsating light began to flash, freezing the grey walls in glaring strobe flashes. Mara ran. Not back towards the lift, but forwards, round the bend, down the corridor, away from the alarm and the pulsating light. The corridor ended after ten metres in front of another steel door, but this one had no lock. Instead, it had a simple green push-button next to it. Without hesitation, Mara pressed it. Nothing happened. She pressed it again, then slapped it with the flat of her hand. Behind her, the strobe light grew faster, the alarm tone increased in intensity. Then, with a hiss, the door swung open inwards. She rushed through and found herself in a small, square room. It was a sort of electrical distribution room. The walls were covered with light-grey control cabinets fitted with flashing LEDs and meters. In the centre of the room stood a large, cylindrical transformer, emitting a deep, resonant hum. The air was warm and smelled of ozone and hot metal. The door behind her closed immediately and the alarm tone was abruptly cut off, muffled into a distant, barely audible whirring. The silence here was almost worse, filled with the ominous hum of the transformer. She leaned, panting, against a control cabinet and tried to control her breathing. She had ended up in a technical room, the heart of the building. From here , paths must lead upwards – maintenance shafts, cable ducts. Her eyes scanned the cabinets. And then she saw it. On the opposite wall, above a desk covered in dusty technical drawings, hung a screen. It was switched on and displayed a still image. It was a picture of her stepping out of the white cell into the technical corridor, seen from behind by a camera mounted on the lift. The image was sharp and clear. The time in the corner showed the current time. There was no delay. This was live surveillance from the control centre. And from the camera’s angle, high up on the wall, everything could be seen, every detail. Every hesitation in her posture, every glance she cast. The screen showed me – from an angle above my head.

Chapter 3 – The Breath in the Loudspeaker (Mara)

The still image on the screen vanished, replaced by a live feed showing the entire distribution room from the same high, angled perspective. Mara saw herself in the picture, small and lost amongst the huge switch cabinets. The red operational LED beneath the lens glowed steadily. She turned away, refusing to meet the camera’s gaze. The air in the room was stifling and warm; the hum of the transformer penetrated her skull. She had to get out of here. This room was another cage, just a slightly different one. Her eyes searched for another door, a shaft, anything. Next to the desk with the dusty blueprints, she spotted a narrow, grey door, almost invisible in the wall. It had no handle, just a flat, metallic push-button. Mara walked over and pressed it. Nothing. She knocked. The sound was hard and echoed briefly. The door was solid. She glanced at the screen, which watched her relentlessly. Her posture betrayed her desperation, and she knew it. She forced herself to pull her shoulders back, exhaled slowly and began to systematically examine the control cabinets. She wasn’t looking for an exit, but for vulnerabilities in the system, for something that wouldn’t be on a plan. The cabinets were sealed, with small padlocks on the doors. On one of the cabinets, the one labelled ‘HVAC Control Basement 1’, the padlock wasn’t properly secured. It was ajar; the shackle was only loosely fitted in the hasp. A mistake? Or a trap? She hesitated for just a moment, then pulled the shackle out and opened the door. Inside, rows of green and red LEDs flashed above relays and switches. Small, handwritten labels were attached next to some of the levers: “Emergency ventilation, Corridor B”, “Hallway lighting, Main Level”, “Door release, Archive Anteroom”. Her fingers ran over the cold switches. She couldn’t just flip anything at random; that might trigger alarms or lock doors permanently. Her eyes lingered on a lever fitted with a red safety bar and bearing the inscription: ‘Manual override Door 7-Gamma’. She didn’t know what or where Door 7-Gamma was. But it was a manual override. Something that bypassed the automatic controls. She looked at the screen. Her digital self was still standing there, staring into the cupboard. She had to make a decision that was impossible to predict. She reached for the red safety bar and turned it. It gave way with a soft click. Then she grasped the black lever beneath it and pulled it down. A loud, mechanical clatter rang out from the cupboard. Somewhere in the building, perhaps directly behind the grey door, she heard a whirring sound, followed by a dull thud, as if a bolt were being retracted. She hurried back to the grey door and pressed the panel again. This time it gave way with a soft hiss, and the door swung open a crack. Behind it lay not a corridor, but a narrow, dark service shaft, filled with the smell of old dust and metal. A few dim, yellow bulbs lit the way, which led through a tangle of pipes and cables running along the walls. It wasn’t an official route, but it was a route. She slipped through and quietly closed the door behind her. The shaft led upwards, via a steep metal ladder fixed to the wall. She began to climb, her hands clinging to the cold rungs. The sounds of the transformer grew fainter, replaced by the echo of her own breathing in the narrow shaft. After climbing the equivalent of about two storeys, the ladder ended in front of a horizontal metal hatch. She pushed against it. It wasn’t locked and swung upwards with a soft squeak. Mara squeezed through the opening and found herself in another room, but this one was different. It was a small, windowless room filled with shelves laden with electronic spare parts, reels of cable and cleaning supplies. A storeroom. The air smelled of cleaning products and plastic. A large, laminated sheet of paper hung on one wall. She stepped closer. It was a floor plan, but not a detailed one. It was a schematic representation of the various floors with coloured lines running through them . Headings in block capitals: ‘Route A: Reception/Diagnostics’, ‘Route B: Archive/Processing’, ‘Route C: Technology/Security’, ‘Route D: Personnel/Log’. The building operated like a system, with routes. She was now apparently in an area between Routes C and B. One of the coloured lines, marked in yellow, led from the storeroom through a door on the plan that opened onto a hallway labelled “Corridor 4 – Archive Link”. The door in the room was exactly where the plan showed it to be. A normal door with a normal handle. Mara opened it cautiously and peered out. The corridor beyond was narrow and dimly lit, with a worn carpet and walls that might once have been painted light green but were now dirty and stained. It looked like a back area, a servants’ passageway. There were no cameras in sight, but that meant nothing. She stepped out and closed the door behind her. The silence here was different, not forced, but simply empty. She followed the corridor as it turned left. Old posters with safety instructions hung on the walls, faded and crumpled. “Washing your hands protects you!” “Report suspicious activity!” The sense of normality here was so artificial and out of place that it seemed almost threatening. She heard a sound. A faint, mechanical whirring, followed by a click. It came from ahead. She stopped, pressing herself against the wall. The sound repeated. It sounded like an electric door opener. Cautiously, she peered around the corner. The corridor opened onto a slightly wider hallway, carpeted in the same shabby material. On the opposite wall hung a loudspeaker with a small yellow mesh. A motion detector was mounted beneath it. And about ten metres further to the right stood a person with their back to her. They were wearing light-grey overalls and had short, blonde hair. It was a woman. She was standing in front of a door, holding a plastic card up to a reader. The whirring and clicking sound was coming from there. The door opened and the woman stepped inside without looking back. The door closed slowly behind her. Mara waited a few seconds, then crept towards the door. A small sign next to the frame read: ‘Archive – Access only with Level 2 clearance.’ She didn’t have a card. She tried the handle anyway. The door was locked. She looked around. The corridor was empty. No cameras in sight. But the whirring of the door opener must have been registered somewhere. She was now in an area closer to the core, to the archive. She had to find a way in without a card. Her thoughts were interrupted by an announcement. The voice coming from the loudspeaker above her was not Rio’s. It was another, neutral, slightly mechanically distorted male voice. Operator Grey. “System error detected. Unauthorised movement in Corridor 4. Please remain at your current location. A member of staff will collect you for your own safety.” The voice didn’t sound threatening, but matter-of-fact, almost friendly. That made it worse. Mara began to walk quickly back down the corridor towards the service entrance. She couldn’t wait for someone to come and ‘collect’ her. She reached the corner when she heard footsteps, quick, determined footsteps coming from the other end of the main corridor. She ducked back into the narrower passageway and ran quietly, as quietly as the carpet would allow, back to the storeroom. She slipped inside and closed the door behind her, leaning her back against it and listening. The footsteps drew nearer, but passed the entrance to the servants’ corridor and receded again. She breathed a sigh of relief, but the relief was short-lived. A faint, whirring sound began in the room. It came from a small, white device hanging on the wall next to the shelf, which she hadn’t noticed before. It looked like a room thermostat, but had no display. The whirring grew louder, and then, with a soft click, a concealed vent in the ceiling began to open. A cold draught swept in, and with it came a faintly sweet, chemical smell that seemed instantly familiar to her. It was the same smell as on the night of the ‘emergency lighting’, when she’d woken up in her bedroom and the light had flickered and that strange, numbing weakness had overcome her. The system didn’t just control doors and lights; it controlled the air. She held her hand over her mouth and nose and rushed to the door of the storeroom. She flung it open and stumbled back into the servants’ corridor. The sickly sweet smell followed her, but was weaker here. She had to get out of this area, back into the sterile, monitored zones, which were perhaps more dangerous but more predictable. This back area was a trap, a staged breach in security designed to catch people like her. She walked quickly down the corridor, away from the direction the footsteps had come from. The corridor ended at a staircase. A narrow, concrete staircase with a simple metal banister. A sign pointed upwards with the words ‘Level 1 – Administration’ and downwards with ‘Level -2 – Engineering’. She was on Level -1 or 0. She decided to go up. She climbed the stairs, two floors, until she stood in front of a fire door. She pressed the horizontal bar, and the door creaked open. Behind it lay a corridor that immediately felt both familiar and menacing. Clean, white, with the odourless linoleum floor and the handle-less doors. She was back in the main system. She stepped out and let the fire door close slowly. The corridor was empty. No blue flashing lights, no markings. She had to get her bearings. One of the doors had a small, green nameplate next to the sensor panel: ‘Dr S. Hart’. The doctor’s office. She was near the medical or diagnostic zone. That wasn’t good. Hart was one of the architects of this reality. Mara was just about to turn away to head in the opposite direction when the door in front of her, which must lead to Hart’s office, opened with a soft hum. Not fully, just a crack. An invitation. Or a trap. Mara hesitated. She couldn’t just stand there. Grey’s announcement meant she was being actively sought. Perhaps Hart’s office was an opportunity to find something, a weakness, physical evidence. Or it was a direct route to sedation. She stepped closer and pushed the door further open with her hand. The room behind it was an office, but it looked like a consultation room. A large, simple desk made of light wood, with an ergonomic chair behind it. On the wall, shelves lined with medical textbooks and files. In one corner stood a modern but impersonal couch covered in white paper. And by the window – there was indeed a narrow, high-set window, though it let in a milky, diffuse light – stood Dr Selene Hart. She was a tall woman in her late forties, with perfectly cut, dark blonde hair pinned up into an elegant bun at the nape of her neck. She wore a white lab coat over a beige blouse and dark trousers. Her face was flawless, her skin taut, her expression professional and slightly concerned. She turned slowly as Mara entered. “Ah, Mara. I’ve been waiting for you.” Her voice was warm, melodious, a voice designed to inspire confidence. “I heard there was some confusion with the wayfinding systems. I’m sorry about that. Please, have a seat.” She gestured to an upholstered visitor’s chair in front of the desk. Mara remained standing in the doorway. “Where exactly am I, Dr Hart?” “In a secure facility, Mara. A place where we can help you process everything that has happened.” Hart smiled slightly, a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “The last few months must have been very stressful. The dissociative episodes, the paranoid anxiety… it’s understandable that you’re confused right now.” The words hit Mara like blows. Dissociative. Paranoid. It was the vocabulary from the files, the vocabulary that turned her reality into a symptom. “I’m not confused,” Mara said firmly. “I was lured here. With a card. It said ‘Zero Point’.” Hart’s smile became a little more sympathetic. “The card. Yes. That was part of your… arrangement. A tangible anchor for your search for an end. It’s a common pattern. The desire for a final confrontation, for a ‘zero point’ from which everything can begin anew. We understand that.” She walked behind her desk and sat down, folding her hands on the smooth tabletop. “Come, sit down. We need to talk about the final session. About the conclusion.” Mara did not step closer. Her eyes scanned the room. On the desk stood a tablet, next to it a carafe of water and two glasses. Everything was clean, tidy, clinical. A perfect setting. “What sort of final session is this? What is to be concluded?” “Your case, Mara. Everything must come to an end. For your own safety and that of the public. The evidence is overwhelming, as you are surely aware. But we are not here to punish you. We are here to help you accept responsibility and find a way forward. That is the purpose of the Zero Point. Reintegration through clarity.” Hart spoke in those calm, measured sentences that sounded as if they were taken from a textbook. Every word was chosen to soothe, whilst simultaneously framing any resistance as a symptom of illness. Mara felt the anger rising within her, a hot, dangerous anger. She wanted to overturn the desk, to smash the façade of this cool woman. But that was exactly what they wanted. A violent reaction. Evidence. She took a deep breath. “I want to see the archive.” Hart raised an eyebrow almost imperceptibly. “The archive? Why?” “Because I want to know what has really been collected here. I want to see the evidence. The real evidence.” “You’ll see everything that’s relevant in the final session. And understand it. Right now, the priority is for you to calm down. You’re agitated. That’s normal.” Hart stood up and went to the carafe. She poured a glass of water. “Have a drink. It helps.” She held the glass out to Mara. The water was clear and still. Mara looked at it, then at Hart’s face. The gesture was friendly, but her eyes were cold and observant. It was a test. A test of obedience. If she drank, she accepted the role of patient, of object. If she refused, she was uncooperative and confirmed the paranoia. Mara took the glass. It felt cold in her hand. She didn’t raise it to her mouth, but simply held it. “Thank you,” she said tonelessly. Hart watched her for a moment, then sat down again. “Good. Now that you seem a little calmer, let’s talk about the procedure. The final session will take place at midnight tonight. You have time to prepare until then. There will be a review of all the materials, followed by a… clarification. A final report. After that, everything will proceed as normal.” “And what exactly happens at midnight? With the seal?” The question slipped out before Mara could stop it. Hart’s face barely changed, but a tiny tension appeared at the corners of her mouth. “The seal is merely a technical formality, Mara. A safeguard for the chain of evidence. To ensure everything is in order. It’s nothing you need to be afraid of. It’s a protection for everyone involved.” It was the same meaningless, reassuring language. Mara slowly set the water glass back on the desk without having drunk any of it. “I’m not afraid. I just want the truth.” “And you’ll get it. In a way you can handle.” Hart leaned back. “Now, I’m afraid I have to leave you alone for a while. I have another commitment. Please stay here. The room is secure. If you need anything, just press the button there on the wall.” She pointed to a small, white push-button next to the door. “Someone will come.” Then she stood up, smoothed her coat, and left the office without looking back. The door closed behind her. Mara was alone in Dr Hart’s office. She waited until the footsteps had faded away, then began to search the room. She went to the desk first. The drawers weren’t locked. The top one contained clinical forms, pens, a stamp. The second held more personal items: reading glasses in a case, a packet of tissues, a tube of hand cream. Nothing revealing. She opened the bottom drawer. There lay a thin, yellow folder. Mara pulled it out. On the cover, written in handwritten block capitals, were the words: ‘Text modules – final reports.’ She opened it. The pages were full of pre-written phrases, paragraphs and diagnostic criteria. She read: ‘During the final confrontation, the subject displayed increased affective lability, accompanied by dissociative moments…’ – “The line of argument must underpin the continuity of the perpetrator’s actions; gaps are to be filled by the psychological profile…” – “The physical piece of evidence (see Appendix A) is to be integrated into the narrative structure to create plausibility…” It was a script. A script for her trial, for her guilt. Her hands trembled slightly as she leafed through . Then she found a page that was different. It was a schedule. “Event: Final incident. Time: 00:00. Location: Room 7-Gamma. Participants: Target (Mara), Witness A (Lila), Witness B (Noah), Trigger (Rios), Interpretation (Hart). Objective: To bring about a final, irreversible situation to morally legitimise the Seal. Note: Set delay on live feeds to 120 seconds to allow for narrative adjustments.” Room 7-Gamma. The manual override in the control cabinet. That was the place. At midnight. And Lila and Noah were caught up in it, as victims, as witnesses. It was a staging of their final downfall. A murder? An accident? She hastily stuffed the page with the schedule into her jacket pocket and put the folder back in the drawer. She had to find Noah and Lila before midnight struck. She had to warn them, get them out of this machine. She went to the door and pressed gently against the push-button panel. It was locked. Hart had locked her in here. She wasn’t a patient; she was a prisoner waiting for her turn. Mara looked around the room. The tall window was out of the question. The door was the only way out. She went to the white button on the wall that Hart had mentioned. She wouldn’t press it. Instead, she examined it more closely. It was set into a small, white box that was firmly attached to the wall. Next to the button was an almost invisible slit. She tried to pry the cover loose with her fingernails. It wouldn’t budge. She needed something sharp. Her eyes fell on the pen holder on Hart’s desk. She took a metal paperclip and straightened it out. Then she tried again to pry the cover open. After a few attempts, it gave way, and the small white plastic cover popped off. Behind it lay not only wires, but also a tiny, flat compartment containing a narrow, white plastic key, similar to a key for a radiator thermostat. She pulled it out. It wasn’t a door key, but perhaps it controlled something. She put it away and looked around. Her eyes fell on the thermostat-like object on the opposite wall, next to the bookshelves. She walked over. The device had no obvious opening, but there was a tiny slot on the side. She inserted the white key and turned it. There was a soft click, and a small flap on the front of the device sprang open. Behind it were two miniature switches and a tiny display, which now showed the words: ‘Room Climate – Control.’ One of the switches was labelled “Air Supply”, the other “Sedative Dispenser”. Both were set to “Auto”. With trembling fingers, Mara switched the “Sedative Dispenser” to “Manual” and then to “Off”. A soft humming sound in the unit fell silent. She had just shut off the covert sedative supply for this room. It was a small victory, a tiny crack in the system. But as she removed the key and closed the panel, the loudspeaker in the ceiling crackled. Operator Grey’s voice was back, this time direct and abrupt. “Unauthorised tampering with room controls in Sector 4-Alpha. Security breach. Initiating countermeasures.” At that very moment, the light in the room began to flicker. Not like a power cut, but in a rapid, irregular rhythm that felt disorienting and unsettling. A high-pitched, piercing whine sounded from a hidden loudspeaker. Then the door was unlocked. It didn’t spring open, but Mara heard the familiar hum of the unlocking mechanism. She rushed to the door, and this time it gave way when she pushed against it. She stepped out into the white corridor. It was no longer silent. A soft, orchestral murmur now emanated from all the speakers, an eerie soundtrack that filled the atmosphere with a sense of density. And the light—the perfect, shadowless illumination of the corridors—began to pulsate, in a slow, menacing breathing rhythm. Bright, darker, bright, darker. It reminded her of something, of a previous nightmare. The flickering rhythm was the same as on the night of the ‘emergency lighting’ in her old flat, when the lamps in her corridor had shifted into a slow, menacing heartbeat and a paralysing fear had gripped her. Back then, it had been a deliberate psychological attack designed to destabilise her. Now it was a memory, an echo deliberately evoked . The echo of emergency lighting, but now without the flickering. It was a constant, rhythmic pulsing that assaulted her senses. Mara began to run down the corridor, away from Hart’s office. She didn’t know where to, she just had to get away from that pulsing light and the eerie hum. The doors on either side remained closed, their green lights now flashing in time with the lighting. The building had come alive, and it was breathing her in. She reached a junction. Left, right, straight ahead. All the corridors pulsed in the same rhythm. She chose the left-hand path at random. This corridor was shorter and ended in front of a large, glass lift. The doors were open. Inside the cabin, a monitor was mounted on the wall. It showed a live feed. It was the corridor she had just left, seen from the perspective of a zooming camera. She saw herself from behind, running towards the lift. The clock in the corner of the monitor showed the current time. No delay. This was real-time surveillance. She stepped into the lift. The doors closed immediately. The monitor in the lift cabin switched the image. It now showed a room she hadn’t seen before: a control room with rows of monitors on one wall. A still image was visible on one of the large screens in the centre. It was a picture of her fiddling with the climate control in Hart’s office, captured by the ceiling camera. The image was sharp and clear. Below it, on the screen in the control room, a text crawl ran: “Manipulation detected. Protocol violation. Escalation level 2.” Then the image on the control room screen zoomed in on her hand inserting the white key into the slot. For a moment the image was razor-sharp, then it became blurred, as if the focus had been lost. But before it vanished, Mara saw something. In the reflection of the glass lift door behind her digital self, visible on the control room monitor, the clock from one of the other surveillance screens was reflected. That clock showed a different time. It was two minutes ahead of the time displayed on the main screen. The clock in the image jumped back.

Chapter 4 – The Taste of Metaphors (Mara)