The cold seeps through the thin mattress, a familiar parasite. It's in the stone, in the air, in the thin gruel they slide through the slot in the door. It's a constant, like the stench of rust and despair. I sit on the slab bed, my coat a threadbare shield across my lap, the journal balanced on one knee. It's all I have left of the world outside. All I have left of myself.
The matchstick is a splinter of wood, a promise of light. I strike it against the rough concrete floor. Sulphur flares, a tiny, angry sun in the gloom. I don't smoke. Never saw the point. Just watch the flame eat the wood, turning potential into ash. A life in miniature. The ritual keeps the edges from fraying. Keeps Kovacs in his box.
The match dies. I pick up the pen.
October 24th. New York. Not mine. Place feels… wrong. Thrumming. Like a nerve exposed to the air. Full of masks, but they're not faces. They're appetites. Predators everywhere. They call themselves Spiders. Scuttling along glowing threads visible only at the edge of sight. Think the threads are fate. Think their Web is the only truth. Idiots. Spiders treat fate like gospel.
The act of writing is an anchor. Each letter a nail driven into the shifting floor of this place. My words. My observations. My truth. It steadies the tremor in my hand, but not the one deep inside my chest. The unease lingers, a phantom limb. The last message that appeared in these pages, unbidden, still glows behind my eyes: The web will wait. The predator will not.
I press the pen to the page again, continuing a thought. They build their nests in the ruins of what was, ignoring the rot—
The ink shimmers.
I stop, my breath catching in my throat. The letters beneath my pen, still wet, twist like worms on a hook. The word I just wrote, gospel, liquefies and reforms. It now reads trap.
My heart hammers against my ribs. A trick of the light. The weak, flickering bulb overhead. I stare at the sentence, willing it to make sense.
Spiders treat fate like a trap.
It's not what I wrote. I know it isn't. Before I can process the violation, another line I was forming in my mind, about their arguments and infighting, changes as the ink dries. What I wrote was: Spiders argue over territory. What now stains the page is: Spiders are prey.
A low growl escapes my throat. This is a trick. A chemical in the paper, reacting to the ink, to the air. A psych-op. It has to be. Then, a new sentence bleeds into existence at the bottom of the page, the letters fine and sharp, utterly alien to my own blunt script.
Threads cut. Threads reborn. Predator feeds, predator grows.
My hand clenches. With a snarl, I gouge the pen over the offending lines, a furious black scar of ink. I will not be a party to this. This journal is mine. But as I lift the pen, the ink of my angry scratch-out seems to sink into the paper, absorbed without a trace. The words reappear in the margins of the page, the letters elongated, crawling up the sides like spider legs.
Hurm.
Psionics. Has to be. The Weaver's Child they whisper about, the nexus of the Web. Or maybe the Spiders themselves, planting coded messages in my sanctum, turning my own mind against me. The paranoia, always a low hum beneath the surface, spikes into a piercing shriek. This cage has more than bars.
I rip the page from its binding. The sound is a satisfying violence in the oppressive quiet. I tear it to shreds, the pieces fluttering to the grimy floor like dead moths. My control. My action.
Then the scraps begin to move.
They twitch, dragged by an unseen current across the floor, arranging themselves into new patterns. The black marks of my writing form new words. I stare, my jaw tight enough to crack teeth, as the message forms from the wreckage.
JOURNAL LIES. MIND LIES. TRUTH WAITS IN THE HUNT.
With a roar of fury, I slam my boot down on the reformed message. Again and again. I grind the paper into the concrete until the words blur, the scraps becoming nothing more than a pulp of fibre and ink, a meaningless stain. But the message is already burned into my memory. Mind lies.
My sanity is a currency here. They are trying to bankrupt me.
I retrieve the savaged journal, my hands shaking. I have to test it. Have to establish a baseline. Find the flaw in the illusion. I will write something simple. Something undeniable. Something real.
With deliberate, heavy strokes, I write: Cold room. Weak light. Cage smells like rust.
The facts. The immutable truth of my environment. I watch the ink dry, my eyes burning from the strain. For a moment, nothing happens. A wave of relief, potent and dizzying, washes over me. It was a hallucination. The strain of confinement. The hunger.
Then the words begin to melt.
Cold room becomes Cage is cocoon. The change flows into the next phrase. Weak light twists into Cocoon splits. The final, simple observation transforms into a terrifying prophecy. Cage smells like rust becomes Something new crawls out.
As the last word settles, I feel it. A low, resonant pulse through the concrete beneath me. A vibration that seems to come from the very walls of the cell, as if the entire structure is a living thing that just drew breath. The Web. It heard. It responded. This isn't just a message; it's a dialogue. And I am not in control of the conversation.
My gaze drifts to the high, barred window. A slit of bruised twilight in the oppressive dark. Shadows move out there, flitting across the glowing threads of the Web that crisscross the sky. The silhouettes of other Spiders on patrol. I can't make out their words, only the muffled cadence of their voices. But my paranoia is a translator. It takes their meaningless sounds and twists them into conspiratorial whispers, all directed at me. At the thing in the cocoon.
A new sound reaches me, closer this time. Faint, rhythmic. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. It's the sound of a pen on paper. But it's not mine. It's an echo, coming from all sides, from the cells above, below, beside me. The scratch of phantom quills, as though dozens of unseen hands are writing in dozens of journals, all recording the same terrible truths. We are all being written into the same story.
I look down at my hand. The pen is still clutched in my fingers. It jerks.
My own muscles betray me. My hand, the agent of my will, begins to move on its own, dragging the pen across the page in a jagged, spidery script that isn't mine. I fight it. I lock my elbow, my shoulder, my wrist, a growl tearing from my chest as I pit my will against this invisible puppeteer. It's no use. The force is irresistible. Ink smears across my knuckles, a black stain of my failure. The words it writes are a direct assault.
MASK HIDES TRUTH. TRUTH WILL BE EATEN.
With a final, desperate surge of strength, I break its hold and throw the journal. It smacks against the far wall with a hollow thud and falls to the floor, landing open. The pages flutter. The words written by the alien force shimmer and shift one last time.
YOU CANNOT CLOSE THE WEB.
I scramble back, pressing myself into the corner of the cell, as far from the book as I can get. My eyes are fixed on it, this cursed object, this Trojan horse I willingly brought into my own mind. It lies there, accusingly open, a gateway. I can feel the warmth emanating from it, a sickening, living pulse. Sweat slicks my brow, cold in the frigid air.
Whispers escape my lips, a desperate litany against the encroaching madness. "Not my words. Not my mind. Don't belong here." The mantra repeats, my voice hoarse, cracking. "Not my thoughts. Not my truth."
I need something real. Something to hold on to.
I make a fist, digging my fingernails into my own palm. I press harder, breaking the skin, the sharp, clean sting of pain a beacon in the fog. Blood, warm and thick, wells up, staining my hand. I stare at the red on my skin, the undeniable proof of my own body, my own pain.
"This," I rasp, the word catching in my throat. "This, at least, is real."
The pain clears my head, just for a moment. The fear remains, but the panic recedes. I am still here. Kovacs is still in his box. Rorschach is still on watch.
Slowly, deliberately, I rise. I walk across the cell and stand over the journal. It still feels warm, alive. But it is a tool. My tool. I will not surrender it. I pick it up, the pages smelling of ozone and something else, something ancient and hungry. I set it back on my lap.
My hand still bleeds. I dip the pen into the blood on my palm and then, with every ounce of will I possess, I force one final line onto the page. My own declaration of existence, etched in jagged, forceful strokes of red and black.
Journal is mine. Lies don't change truth.
I slam the book shut. The cover feels warm against my fingers, a low thrumming passing through the worn cardboard into my skin. It feels like I've just won a battle, but the war has just begun.
I look up, through the bars, at the glowing threads of the Web that stretch into infinity. I see the shadows scuttling along them. I think of the words. Spiders are prey. Predator feeds, predator grows. Something new crawls out.
A final, terrible clarity settles over me. The journal wasn't trying to drive me mad. It wasn't trying to lie.
I mutter the words into the cold, silent air of my cage, a truth more terrifying than any delusion.
"Not lies. Warnings."