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The Tower stood.
It stood as it always did and always would, imposing and unknowable in both design and function. The signal it put out hypnotizing the denizens of the city it sat in and damning it to rot away with neglect with no one to care for it.
Yet through its power the city still stood, buildings that should have fallen and crumbled to dust were forced to stay together, roads that should have been nothing but dirt and mud still retained the brick and mortar that held them together.
This was the power that the Tower possessed, the ability to force the world around it to become enthralled and bend to its whims be it life or stone.
There was one however, that the Tower could not bend, could not force to its will, for if it did then it would undo what that individual was made to do. Its purpose was to be a free agent, one who was undoubtedly bound to the Tower but could act outside it and achieve things that even it could not.
This individual was special to both the Tower and to the world as a whole and right now as the Tower stood broadcasting its signal that individual in question was found in only one place, doing only one thing.
They sat in the heart of the city, inside the Tower itself.
And they did nothing but cry.
He didn’t know how long he had cried.
All he knew was that he had cried for a long time.
He had cried till his throat became sore and dry.
He had cried till his eyes had become nothing more than red inflamed puffy balls inside their sockets.
He had cried till his body could no longer endure it and he was forced to slumber.
That was only thing that offered any solace in this place.
When he was forced to sleep, he could finally be free for just a few hours of what had happened and what he endured, when he dreamed of nothing he was happy, but that rarely happened. More often than not he dreamed of the journey he had taken through the city, he dreamed of the horrible monsters that he had encountered and inside these horrible nightscapes would often see his demise.
But those nightmares were still preferable to the living nightmare he endured when he was awake.
When he awakened to the world there was always a brief sense of confusion, a split second of not realizing where he was and what had happened. Then it would all come back within a couple seconds and it would begin again.
Today was no different.
He awoke once more to the sight of nothing but a grey concrete wall and the feeling of a stiff wooden chair beneath him. The fog that graciously covered his mind, sadly faded away and he once more felt the memories and horrible emotions fill him up once more. He should have been dead days ago; his body had cried so much that he should have died of thirst within the first couple of days. But here he still sat, the same room, the same chair and the same horrible realization of where he was.
He should have been dead.
Maybe he was dead?
That was a new thought and one that briefly brought pause to the horrible feeling inside him. Maybe he was dead and this was just the afterlife that every kid he met talked about. He stared at the ground that the chair stood on, its material and colur the same as the walls and ceiling. If that was true then what was this horrible place? He had heard the kids in the orphanage turned hideout talk about two places that people went to when they died, Heaven and Hell.
They talked about how Heaven was the place that good kids went to and how it was the best and happiest place to be. They also talked about Hell and how it was a horrible place where everything was designed to hurt you and was for horrible monsters and evil kids.
That thought made the horrible feeling in his chest come back with greater force, was this Hell? Was this horrible place that held nothing but him Hell?
Why?
What had he done wrong that could have possibly caused him to be an evil kid? He had tried to help the other kids, but they always pushed him away. He had tried to stop the transmission, but he was simply just a child. He had tried to save her , he had saved her, he HAD saved Si-
That thought process immediately stopped as soon as she came into the mix. Had he been wrong to save her? Was it wrong to save a fellow child that had been destined to waste away in a basement or become a horrible piece of décor?
‘No’ He told himself without a moment's hesitation, of course not.
His chest panged with a feeling of remorse and sadness as tears once more dripped down his face.
Right?
It was right to save to her, it was what any kid would do right?
The tears fell more freely now.
He was right in that situation, he had done the right thing, he had made the decision that anyone with a shred of goodness in their heart would do.
Right?
He wasn’t evil, he wasn’t a monster, he was a good boy, a friend that helped others smile even when he couldn’t.
The tears ran down his face like a river now, as the sobs once more consumed him.
No.
This wasn’t Hell.
Because he was a good person, he helped people.
Because this felt too real, because Hell wouldn't allow him to dream, it wouldn’t let him rest and in some ways that was worse.
He wrapped his arms around himself once more as he felt the torrent of sadness engulf him again.
He ignored the feeling of betrayal in his chest.
He ignored the walls around him shifting into pillars of flesh and eyes.
He ignored the horrible sounds of flesh shifting into horrible and impossible shapes and the horrible sound of static that surrounded him.
Mostly importantly he ignored the hat that the flesh offered him, hanging just in front of him.
Because he wasn’t him, he was evil.
Mono wasn’t evil.
He was a good boy.
Why?
Why had she done this?!
He had awakened once more, another hopeless day that had come and brought nothing but the horrible realization of the reality he lived in.
This time however, he did not cry, not immediately anyway.
Because his first thoughts upon waking were of her .
The girl he had found.
The girl he had travelled with.
The girl who he thought was his ‘friend’.
The girl named Six.
Even now the mere thought of her name brought Mono nothing but bitter sadness and incredible anger.
Why had she dropped him? What could he have possibly done that would make her want to drop him?
He’d been having these same thoughts for several ‘days’ now. Though days may have been the wrong word to use considering he had no way to tell how long he’d been trapped here, another thing that he was angry at. He couldn’t tell how long he had been here; sure he had grown slightly and his feet now swung slightly lower to the ground but that was no help in telling how long he had been here.
Not even those damned TVs helped.
They had appeared in the wall in front of him sometime ago, he couldn’t remember when exactly. They stuck out of the wall at odd angles, seeming to literally grow out of them and fused to the wall itself. There were a lot of them in the wall, though not every single one was on at one time. Some displayed nothing more than static and others would often flick through scenes of the crumbling city the Tower stood in the middle of. But none of it helped to tell him just how long he had been here.
If anything, it only made him angrier.
The scenes of the city outside only served to mock him, to show him the freedom that was just outside these walls, the freedom that had been taken away without his choice.
A notable scene that had caught his ire was the view from one of the screens looking at the streets just outside the Tower. Right in front of its stone-clad gates, sitting in a puddle of water was his beloved bag, just as he remembered it. Upon seeing it through the screen his anger boiled over into a feeling that he didn’t even know how to describe.
The brown-paper bag was what he wore to protect himself, it was his shield, his sanctuary. He had worn it to shield himself against the cruel and hateful gazes of those around him that shunned him as a monster. When he wore it, he felt like he could challenge the world, like whatever it threw at him would not harm him and he could make it out of anything.
Yet he had abandoned it for her.
He had thrown it away, his beloved bag, so that those powers he had could be fully realized. He always knew that he had powers, but he kept them to himself, hiding them away for he knew that kids would be scared of him if they knew. Yet he brought them out just to save her.
Six.
The name felt like something disgusting was in his mouth and Mono felt something rise within himself, something he had never felt before and...
He screamed.
There were no words in his scream, no rhyme or reason, no higher motive, He simply screamed. He screamed with anger and hatred he never knew he could feel, he felt the scream take the breath out of his lungs and simply took another breath to scream more. He screamed till his throat started to crack and bleed, he screamed till he felt winded and tired, he screamed till the blood rang in his ears.
He screamed till he started crying again.
Tears weren’t always for sadness.
Sometimes they could be for other things.
Through a haze of tear-soaked eyes and boiling anger, Mono once more looked at the screens in front of him, seeing the crumbling pale city that he had fought through with Six. He felt his hands shift themselves into fists that trembled with rage at the sight.
“I hate you.” The words were the first uttered in a long time and his voice was barley a whisper from lack of use and screaming.
“I hate you.” The words were louder now, they hurt his throat but still he continued.
“I HATE you.” Louder than before now, his throat screamed in protest from their volume.
“I HATE YOU!” The words scratched his throat and Mono felt himself cough from the dryness and pain in his neck.
He had sacrificed everything to save her and this is how she repaid it? Dropping him into the Tower to suffer and languish alone? For what? Saving her?
He had trusted her, confided in her and yet all he was rewarded with was a look of complete and utter hatred as she held him over the abyss, looking at him like he was a monster. Then he remembered the feeling of weightlessness and despair he felt when she pulled her hand away and let him fall to the bottom of the Tower.
The Tower...
Another thing to be angry at.
It constantly mocked him, it was the one who controlled the TVs, including the ones in front of him. IT was the one that showed him the images of the city around him, constantly reminding him of the thing he wanted. It was the one that had sent the Thin man, the one who chased him through the city, the one who took Six, the one who he battled in the rain filled streets.
The one who had dark eyes like midnight, just like hi-
Mono felt his anger change in direction at the thought.
No.
He wasn’t him.
He would never be him.
Because he came from here, he liked it here.
Mono didn’t, he hated it here.
Once more he felt the room shift around him, the walls shifting impossibly from stone to flesh. The walls of eyes of flesh started at him once more and for once Mono stared back. He held the gaze the of the hundreds of eyes that stared at him with his own gaze, filled with anger.
The Eyes did nothing for a few minutes, simply shifting in shape and producing horrible sounds as they stared at him. Then they shifted their seemingly endless mass into a something that somewhat resembled a tendril holding the same thing it always held.
A hat.
Mono felt nothing but disgust looking at the hat. It was his hat, something Mono would never dare to accept and was half tempted to swat the hat out the flesh's ‘hand’. But despite his anger, common sense won out.
Instead, Mono once more folded his arms around himself and brought his knees to his chin, his gaze not leaving the wall of eyes in front of him. The Eyes in question simply stared for a few more seconds, holding the hat out like it always did. Then the room shifted once more, the sound of static accompanying it and the room shifted back to how it was, grey walls and barely functioning televisions.
Mono let his gaze stay on the wall for a few seconds before resting his head on his arms, a few stray tears falling onto the wooden chair below as he did.
Good, let them realize that he would never accept their offer.
He would never be him , for any reason.
But as he felt the tears begin to slow down in their pace and his mind became quiet, a single stray thought filled with anger occupied his mind.
Not even to find her?
His mind fell silent at that.
And for once regarding the Tower, Mono didn’t know how to answer.
Another day arose, another night of sleep plagued with nightmares had gone by and yet here he sat, the same place as always, the same thoughts as always.
Why?
The thoughts and questions that swam in his head always came back to that singular point, that one important and heartbreaking question that he always asked himself.
Why? Why did she drop him?
Much time had passed now he had guessed from his feet now able to touch the ground from the chair he sat on, his arms also much lankier than he remembered them. He felt much taller now, but in some ways he still felt... small.
The passage of time had allowed him to grasp his emotions a bit better, he still felt very emotional and tired, but now at least he didn’t cry all the time, now it was just every other ‘day’.
Now with what seemed a slightly better grip on himself, Mono stared at himself through one of the TVs in front of him that was turned off allowing him to see his reflection.
Why did she drop him?
It had been the first thought that truly settled into his skull since he had been down here, always there and wanting to be answered, but his constant state of emotion didn’t really allow him to think about it. Now however, he could.
Mono thought about the question, he thought about what it truly meant and thought about the look Six had given him when she had held him over the abyss he was dropped into. She had seemed... angry, bitter and filled with hatred towards him that even now, he couldn't understand. What had he done to her that would warrant such a reaction?
He thought back through their journey together through the city, trying to remember every detail and event possible to decipher why she had done it. He thought of the School and its Bullies and horrid Teacher, the Hospital and the malformed patients and their ugly Doctor. Did she drop him over the danger they encountered, blaming him?
No, it couldn’t be that.
Mono had told her when they reached the shores of the Pale city that she did not have to follow him, despite whatever debt she may think he was owed for saving her from the Hunter, she did not have to follow. But she had regardless, even after the experience with the School and him proposing the same thing she had still decided to follow.
He thought again, looking for a different reason, even as his thoughts became more saddened as he did.
Was it because of the Music box?
He remembered when he had first set foot into her room in the Signal tower and seeing the much larger version of the Music box she cherished and played. He remembered her anger-laced cries and screams as he destroyed the box with the hammer, trying to undo the spell the Tower placed on her. He remembered the way Six looked at him when he did break it, the way she stood and said nothing.
Mono had only known Six for a week at best, but he knew her body language and the way she had looked at him despite not being able to see her face was one that entailed pain. It was a look that Six used on a lot of things throughout the Pale city he had learned. Six was someone who liked getting back at those who had done her harm, he had seen that with the Bully.
Was that the reason, over a Music box?
The Music box was special to Six, he knew that, as she hummed it wherever they went in the city and the notes were ingrained in his mind. But to drop over him over a simple toy? A toy that he knew were scattered throughout the city? That brought a special kind of pain in his heart.
No, there had to be a better reason than that, right?
Was it because of his powers? He always tried to hide them from her, but the TVs sucking him in definitely made her suspicious.
Was it the Thin man taking her? He had tried so hard to reach out from under that bed, but it hurt so much. The sound and static had rang in his ears and made his head feel like nothing but an empty void filled with pain.
Was it because he had eyes like him , was it because he looked like hi-
His thoughts stopped at that.
He wasn’t him...
Right?
He had constantly told himself that he wasn’t him, that whatever resemblance he felt he saw in that man's face was just him being scared. The man’s eyes may have looked like his, yes. They may have also had similar powers to his, but that didn’t make them the same, right?
But what if you are him?
That thought ringed in his head and Mono felt it difficult to get rid of it.
What if he was him?
Mono had tried not to think about, but now he finally gave it some thought. What if he was him? How could there be two of him? Why would he come after himself?
It didn’t make any sense.
But then again, the world had stopped making sense some time ago.
He felt a wave of sadness wash over him again, not enough to make him cry, but enough to sour his mood even more.
If... He was him...
Only IF he was him.
Why would he chase himself? Was he trying to stop him from doing something? Was it the Towers doing?
Was it because of Six?
His mind paused at that.
The man had seemed transfixed on getting Six, despite how well Mono thought the bed had hidden him, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that the man knew he was there and simply chose to go for Six.
He thought about Six again and how much he simply wanted to...to...
He didn’t know.
Question her? Hurt her? Kill her? Simply tell her how much he hated her?
He didn’t know what he would do if he had the opportunity.
Would you do what he did?
Again, the thought came and went and yet he felt it difficult to shake off. Could he do what the Thin man did to Six? Bend and transform her into a monster and force her to live an illusion. Did he hate her that much?
He didn’t know.
But how much would you want the opportunity to see her again?
He knew this thought well, as it was one of the first he had when he had been trapped here. He turned his gaze to one of TVs in the wall, one of the few that was always on and always displayed the same thing, the outside of the Tower. He looked into the screen and saw the sight that had happened a few days ago.
His beloved paper bag, gone.
He didn’t know when it had disappeared, only that he had noticed it gone from the same puddle it sat in constantly. He didn’t know how it had disappeared, the bag had remained in the puddle despite the constant wind and rain of the storm that seemed to always reign above. All he knew now though, was that another piece of him was gone, another piece sacrificed to her .
He tore his gaze away from the TV and looked at the ground, sighing.
How much did he want to see her again?
ALOT, was the answer.
As if sensing the turmoil inside him, the room shifted and Mono watched as the walls of flesh and eyes took form again. They once more stared at him with eyes that seemed both curious and amused, but more importantly they held out a tendril that always gripped the same thing.
The hat.
The same hat that he wore, black in colour and looking brand new and completely spotless. The flesh always offered it to him, regardless of how many times he said no.
Mono once more stared at the hat, the hat of the monster that chased him.
And for once, he felt his arm begin to rise to reach out for it.
Mono stopped his hand as soon as he felt it reach out for the hat and forced it back to his side. The desire to see Six was great, yes. He oh-so desperately wanted to be free from here to confront her and at least try to make it in the world again.
But taking the hat wasn’t worth it, not even for that.
Right?
He watched as the eyes regarded him with some form of amusement in their many eyes and the room once more shifted back to how it was.
He shifted himself into a slightly more comfortable position on his chair and let his eyes close in an attempt to sleep. As he did, his thoughts once more turned to the hat that was offered.
It was tempting to take it, but he wouldn’t, it wasn’t worth it just for her.
Or was it?
He didn’t know anymore.
He sat in chair as he always did, never changing and never moving from it. He hadn’t done anything for a while now, he hadn’t thought of anything or anyone or even attempted to sleep.
Because he saw his reflection again.
How long he had been here didn’t matter anymore, he had stopped counting days some time ago now and instead used himself to judge how long he had been here.
That had been a mistake, because in the reflection of the TV screen, he saw his own face.
And it looked nearly identical to his .
It had shocked him at first, seeing his face starting back at him, thinking that somehow, he was stood right in front of him. But then he looked down at himself and realized how blind he was. His body was much taller now, barley fitting onto the chair he sat on and he felt incredibly thin. The coat and pants he usually wore were gone, instead in their place a business suit was worn, black in colour and with a white shirt worn underneath.
He looked just like him.
Mono had gone into a panic after that, desperately checking himself, pulling at the clothes and his own face, trying to prove to himself that he wasn’t him, trying so hard to believe that he wasn’t a monster, that he couldn’t do the things he did.
But in his soul, he knew he was.
It had been a horrible realization, one that crushed his hope and spirt, whatever was left of it anyway. How could anyone even begin to understand what it felt like to realize just who you are? That you saw who you were going to be and what you wrought onto others? How you so desperately didn’t want to believe it, but the evidence and events kept mounting, showing you just how futile it was to deny it.
He had felt the shock turn into something like sadness in himself, he felt his body collapse in on itself and almost fell off his chair in the process, but he didn’t care.
He thought he would’ve cried at the realization, that his mind would turn into a sobbing mess like it always did.
He didn’t.
He didn’t feel sad or angry or scared, he felt...
Empty.
Like there was nothing inside himself, like a great void was in his heart making him feel cold and dead.
He felt tired but didn’t feel like sleeping.
He tried to think of memories of his past but nothing stayed in his head.
He tried to look at the screens in front of him but nothing in them brought a reaction from him.
Because none of it mattered anymore.
How could anything be important to him anymore? He had been forced to realize that his entire life was leading to THIS, that everything he done didn’t matter, because that wasn’t what he was meant for. No, he was meant to become a monster, one who stalked the streets kidnapping children.
How could anything matter to him anymore when he knew who he was?
It brought a certain hollowness to his soul.
And now here he sat, in the same haze he had been in for God knows how long, thinking of nothing and filled with nothing. He sat with nothing to do and with no intentions of doing anything, because what was the point?
He had lived his small life with the hope that he could escape the evils of the world one day. Only to realize that he was one of the evils of the world. All because he had decided to trust her.
Six...
Even her name didn’t bring any reaction to him, no anger or hatred was brought to his mind, it only seemed to add to the hollow feeling inside himself. She had dropped him into this hellish place, believing that the fall would kill him, that his body would have met the ground and turned into paste.
He wished it did.
Instead, he ended up here, trapped in this room with the realization that he was a monster. Part of him had wondered what would’ve happened if she did pull him up, would they still be friends? Would he be able to survive the cruel world outside? Would he still grow into a monster?
That last question had brought a humorless chuckle to him.
Yes, he would still be a monster, he could never escape that.
Escape...
Even that didn’t seem appealing anymore.
If he did manage to escape then what? Try and make it in the world as a monster? Everyone he knew before treated him like one, what would they do now that he was one? Try and kill him?
He felt the need to sigh but resisted the temptation.
What had led him to this fate? What terrible wrongdoing had he done that made him worthy of this hell? A part of him wished for the answer, another part didn’t.
He heard the sounds of the room shifting around him, the room became bathed in pinkish light and the floor beneath him transformed into flesh. He didn’t bother to lift his head though, he knew what the Eyes were offering.
He was very tempted to take the hat, why bother denying what he was anymore? He may as well embrace what he was, right?
But he didn’t raise his head nor his hands to look or take the hat that dangled in front of him. He didn’t see the point in taking it anymore, he was already him wasn’t he? What difference would the hat make in making him realize what he already knew?
He didn’t see the point.
None of it mattered.
He was already a monster.
So why did it offer it him?
He finally found just enough energy to lift his head to look at the Eyes in front of him and simply saw them as they always were. Many eyes that simply stared at him, filled with amusement and curiosity, but strangely no judgement, as if they didn’t care how long they waited. He felt like saying something, perhaps he wanted to ask why this all happened to him?
But in the end he decided against it, what more was there to know?
He lowered his head back down till all he could see was himself and let his arms rest in his lap.
He was only vaguely aware of the flesh around him receding, but he didn’t care about it anymore.
He let the emptiness inside himself consume him again.
And he let himself become nothing.
He sighed for what let like the hundredth time already this day.
He was him, wasn’t he?
He looked into the blank screen, carefully running his boney hands along the features of what was now his face. He looked so much older now, his skin was wrinkled and dry along with it seeming to literally buzz with static just below the surface. He often wondered what he would like when he was older, now he had his answer.
He sighed again.
Mono had been here for so long now, it had given him a lot of time to think about his situation and what it meant. When he was first dropped down here he was sad, scared, angry and just a jumble of emotions and feelings that he didn’t know how to deal with. But so much time had passed now down here and with it came the ability to sort through everything he felt. Yes, he still felt betrayed and full of anger towards Six but sitting around and languishing with the feeling wasn’t going to make him feel any better.
The realization of who he was, came with a sort of... Acceptance he supposed.
It wasn’t the good kind of acceptance though, accepting that you were the monster that chased you when you were a child and were responsible for the deaths of who knows how many people was never going to sit well with him. But accepting it brought a type of peace to him, even if was a selfish type of peace.
He finished looking into the blank screen in front of him and instead turned his gaze to one of the screens that was on. It showed a scene of the city that he was vaguely familiar with, that of the hideout that he had lived in for some time with the other kids before that unfortunate fire had occurred, forcing them out.
He wondered if he was in there now.
Mono didn’t know how the Tower did what it did, seemingly able to bend time in such a way that he was able to be chased by his future self. But at this point he knew that the Tower was powerful, how powerful he wasn’t certain, but it certainly had the ability to bend the world around it and he supposed if it could do that to the world, why not time?
He sighed again; he was thinking too much about things that didn’t matter to him anymore.
Instead, he switched his thoughts to about what he was about to do and what it really meant to him. Accepting who he was and what that entailed was one thing, actually going through and doing those things was an entirely different situation. He knew about the Thin man from when he was younger, the supposed ruler of the broadcast that pulled those in that strayed too close to the screens, who hunted down children and took them somewhere horrible.
Turns out only one of those things were wrong.
He doubted that doing those things would feel good, indeed he would probably feel horrible for a long time afterward. But there was no sense in denying what he was meant to do, especially with the few upsides it did bring.
He would have thought more about it, but right on cue the room shifted around him.
The big moment was here.
The walls of flesh and eyes once more took the place of concrete and Mono watched as they took form, still slightly disgusted at the sight. They once more regarded him with their gaze and as they did, they held out the tendril that held his future.
The hat.
He swallowed nervously, he was really accepting this, wasn’t he?
Taking a breath to calm himself, Mono once more stared at the Eyes for just a few short seconds before lifting his hand up and grasping the hat between his fingers. He didn’t take the hat immediately, instead he simply felt it between his fingers, checking if it was real. The Eyes regarded him curiously, as if intrigued by his hesitance.
Mono sighed once more before raising his other hand and gripping the hat, slowly taking it from the flesh. He held the hat in front of him, running his hand along the fabric, feeling the smooth material it was made from, it was a nice hat.
For some reason, he expected it be heavier.
He held it for a few more seconds, a small sense of hesitation building up inside him, was he really doing this?
He sighed once more.
Yes, Yes I am
He took the hat in his hands and slowly lifted it above his head. Then, with a final sigh, he lowered it onto his head.
And...
Nothing.
He waited for a few more seconds, expecting something, anything to happen. But nothing did, no sudden change in his mind, no sudden burst of power, no mind control or illusions.
He was still... him.
Huh.
That was... Underwhelming, to say the least.
He honestly expected something to happen.
Instead, all that felt different was that he now felt the familiar and honestly, reassuring presence of a piece of headwear atop his head. He supposed that one last part of him was hoping that the hat was the source of him becoming the Thin man, that he was forced to become him. He guessed that was untrue now.
He looked at the wall of flesh and eyes in front of him and in the reflection of one of the Eyes saw himself. He looked exactly like him now, it was a weird feeling, but one that didn’t bring any dread to him anymore. With a final resigned sigh, he finally accepted who he was and pushed himself off the chair he had sat on for so long.
And then promptly almost fell face first into the fleshy floor beneath him.
He forgot how long it had been since he had stood up and walked.
After a moment of getting used to standing with his new height, Mono patted his new suit down before taking the first new steps of his life towards the Eyes. He stood in front of them as they watched him, seemingly satisfied that he finally took the hat. Taking a calming breath, he stared into Eyes and spoke his first words of his new role.
“Where do we start?”
The Eyes regarded him for but a few moments before he felt the entire room shift around him once more. This time instead of finding himself in the cramped room he had been in for so long, he instead found himself in a massive space, made of the same flesh and eyes. The room had walls of flesh that expanded upwards seemingly forever and there was a hall behind him that seemingly did the same.
But the most important feature of the room was the wall in front of him.
The wall contained a massive alcove that seemed to expand upwards for a great distance, but not forever like the walls that surrounded it. The surface of the alcove was littered with TVS, each fused to the wall like those in his room, but here there were hundreds compared to the dozen he had seen. As if on cue, they all turned on, broadcasting nothing but static before quickly turning into actual images. Each one showed a scene of the city like the ones in his room, but now he could see them all, the entire city now laid out before him.
He felt a brief sense of awe at the scene, was this how the Eyes saw everything?
A small sound of squelching broke him out of his stupor and looked up to see a particularly large eye starting from the top of the alcove. He held its gaze for a second before the sound of a TV changing channel got his attention.
The screen in question was one at waist height, showing the scene of a street with rain pouring down it. As the rain poured down the street, the small form of a child could be made out, trying their best to escape the storm.
He stared at the screen before something entered his mind. It wasn’t a series of words nor commands and it didn’t feel like something horrible trying to take over his mind. Instead, it simply felt like he knew what to do now from staring at the screen, as if he simply obtained the knowledge from the Eyes.
There are those who do not bend to the transmission.
Find them.
He felt something he hadn’t felt in a while, a sense of purpose as he strode across to the screen. True, that it wasn’t a good purpose, he knew what he was going to do and continue doing was not something he ever imagined he would do.
But it would have its upsides.
It would bring a sense of freedom that he had not felt in so long. True, that it was not complete freedom, being bound to the Tower and following its whims. But then again, he never had true freedom to begin with, did he?
But more importantly, it would allow him to see her again.
It would be some time before he could see her again, he knew that. He didn’t know when it would come, but it would come eventually and when it did, he could finally get the truth and closure he so desperately sought.
He still didn’t know what he would do when he confronted her, but he would work it out when he got there. For now, the tasks the Tower provided would give him purpose till then.
Desires planned, he finally reached the screen and placed his hands upon it, feeling the familiar tug of being transported through the screen.
Acceptance of oneself does not always bring happiness nor relief.
But it will always bring purpose.
With that new purpose, the Thin man exited the screen.
And begun his life anew.