Kyon's eyes snapped open to sterile white ceiling tiles and the distant sound of muffled voices. His head felt like it was filled with cotton, and there was a bitter taste in his mouth that he couldn't identify. He tried to sit up, but his body felt heavy, sluggish.
"He's awake," a voice said nearby. Female, professional. "Doctor Martinez, he's conscious."
Kyon turned his head slowly, fighting against the fog in his mind. He was in a hospital bed, but this wasn't like any hospital he'd ever seen. The windows were covered with thick mesh, and the door had a small window with reinforced glass. There were no sharp corners anywhere, and everything was painted in those soothing, institutional colors that somehow made everything feel worse.
A woman in a white coat approached his bed. She was middle-aged, with kind eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, but there was something in her expression that made Kyon's stomach clench with dread.
"Hello, Kyon," she said gently. "I'm Dr. Martinez. Do you remember me?"
Kyon tried to speak, but his throat felt raw. He managed to croak out, "Where... where am I?"
"You're at Riverside Psychiatric Facility," Dr. Martinez said, sitting down in a chair beside his bed. "You've been with us for three years now."
The words hit Kyon like a physical blow. Three years? That was impossible. He had just been in the OtherSide, had just been talking to the network, had just been about to make his choice. "No," he whispered. "No, that's not right. I was just... I was in the OtherSide. I was saving the children."
Dr. Martinez's expression grew sad. "Kyon, we've talked about this before. The OtherSide, the Architects, the Shepherds—they're all part of your dissociative episodes. Your mind created them as a way to cope with the trauma."
"What trauma?" Kyon demanded, though part of him already knew. Part of him had always known.
Dr. Martinez glanced at the nurse, who quietly left the room. Then she turned back to Kyon, her voice gentle but firm. "Kyon, do you remember what happened to your parents?"
The question hit him like a sledgehammer. Suddenly, memories came flooding back—memories he had buried so deep that he had convinced himself they were someone else's. His parents, arguing in the kitchen late at night. His mother's terrified scream. The sound of breaking glass. And then...
"No," Kyon whispered, shaking his head violently. "No, that wasn't me. That was the entity. I was in the OtherSide. Something took over my body while I was gone."
"Kyon," Dr. Martinez said softly, "there is no entity. There never was. You killed your parents during a psychotic break three years ago. You were found standing over their bodies, completely catatonic. You've been here ever since."
The room seemed to spin around Kyon. He could feel his carefully constructed reality crumbling, could feel the truth pressing against the walls of his mind like water against a dam. "Amy," he gasped. "What about Amy? She was taken by the Shepherds, she was—"
"Amy died in a car accident when she was seven," Dr. Martinez said. "You were nine. The trauma of losing her, combined with your guilt over the fights you'd had with her before she died, created the foundation for your dissociative episodes. Amy never came back, Kyon. She never transformed into something else. That was your mind's way of dealing with the fact that she was gone."
Kyon's vision blurred as tears he didn't remember crying streamed down his face. But beneath the overwhelming grief, something else was stirring. Something cold and dark and hungry for revenge.
"The medication has been keeping the episodes at bay," Dr. Martinez continued, "but we've been gradually reducing the dosage to see if you could handle reality without it. Unfortunately, it seems like we may have moved too quickly."
"I need to go back," Kyon said, his voice barely a whisper. "I need to go back to the OtherSide."
"Kyon, the OtherSide doesn't exist. It's a fantasy your mind created to—"
"I NEED TO GO BACK!" Kyon screamed, lunging forward. The restraints on his wrists caught him, and he realized for the first time that he was tied to the bed. "You don't understand! There are children there! They're trapped, and I was supposed to save them!"
Dr. Martinez pressed a button on the wall, and within seconds, two orderlies entered the room. "Increase his medication," she said quietly. "And keep him under observation."
As the orderlies prepared a syringe, Kyon felt the cold darkness in his chest growing stronger. They didn't understand. They couldn't understand. The OtherSide was real. The children were real. And somehow, someway, he was going to find a way back.
But not to save them this time.
This time, he was going back for revenge.
The entity—whatever it was that had taken over his body while his consciousness was trapped in the OtherSide—had stolen three years of his life. It had made him a killer, had destroyed his family, had left him rotting in this place while it... what? Disappeared? Moved on to someone else?
As the sedative flowed into his bloodstream, Kyon's last coherent thought was a promise. He would find a way back to the OtherSide. He would find the entity that had worn his face while committing those unspeakable acts. And he would make it pay.
The old Kyon—the one who had wanted to save everyone—was gone. In his place was something harder, colder, more focused. Something that understood that sometimes, the only way to stop a monster was to become one yourself.
The medication pulled him under, but even in his chemically induced sleep, Kyon could feel the OtherSide calling to him. And this time, when he answered, he wouldn't be going as a hero.
He would be going as something far more dangerous.
A victim with nothing left to lose.