Chapter 9: The Mind’s Abyss

The room was sterile, but the air was thick — charged. She sat across from me, clipboard balanced on her lap, eyes sharp like a hawk's. I smiled. Calm, but predatory.

"You think you understand me," I said. "But understanding is a myth. We only tell stories to make sense of chaos."

She leaned forward, voice steady. "Then tell me your story."

I chuckled softly. "My story? It's a mirror, Doctor. What you see depends entirely on your own reflection. Are you ready to face what stares back?"

Her eyes didn't waver. "I'm not here to be broken. I'm here to help you."

"Help," I echoed. "A word as fragile as morality itself. What is help but control disguised as compassion? You want to save me, but who saves you?"

She paused, a flicker of doubt crossing her face. I pressed on.

"Do you believe in good and evil, Doctor? Or have you just accepted society's convenient fictions?"

She met my gaze, steady. "I believe in choice."

"Choice," I whispered, "is the cruelest joke. Because every choice is bound by circumstance — the cage you refuse to see."

She smiled faintly, unshaken.

"So tell me," I said, "if morality is a cage, and we are all prisoners, who decides which cell we deserve?"

Her breath caught, but she didn't look away.

"Maybe," she said slowly, "the real freedom is not in escaping the cage — but in choosing how to live inside it."

The silence stretched, heavy and intimate. Two hunters circling, neither willing to blink first.

And in that silence… I knew the game had truly begun.