The Salvation Hunt

XIII. Recall and Recovery

The Mind Prison, at least at first glance, did not seem to live up to the idea of metal bars and gritty cage that its name had implied. Instead, a clean, empty room welcomed its newest inmate with the nondescript charm of a hotel suite.

Soon after Volta arrived, however, the walls and decorations began to shift. The furniture rearranged themselves and a faint beam of light peeked through a crack in the window where the curtains couldn't quite cover. This... was his old bedroom. His very first bedroom in the old home with his mother and father before Wyatt was born.

At least, as well as he could physically remember it. A few things were still blurry here and there, and there would occasionally be items that shifted from place to place as he tried to remember if his first 3-dimensional puzzle sat on the left or right of his shelf... Or maybe it was the bedside stand? He'd moved it around a lot during his frequent episodes of spontaneous energetic days.

"On the desk next to your readings."

Sure enough, when he looked over at the desk, nestled right next to his old case studies (goddamn intellectual property law) to see a half-assembled model boat.

"You took it apart because you were bored one time and needed to do something with your hands. You lost one of the pieces and the whole thing fell apart 'cuz it couldn't function without it."

A blond woman in a white dress and wings white with faint patches of dye sat on his bed with an ankle propped up to her knee. "Like you, a little bit. Pretty funny, but also kind of sad."

He glowered. "Oh, like you know anything, Callisto–"

Wait, what?

A moment ticked by as the woman looked at him in wait.

"Come on, Mr Joule," she said eventually and tapped at her temple. "Think a little. Where do you think you're in right now?"

"My... brain?"

But he didn't know Callisto. He'd heard about her, sure, but this was a woman he'd never seen before in his life. Her glinting brown eyes or her lip-tinted mouth curved into a cheeky smile, the way she looked at him like she'd known him her whole life. These were features he couldn't just construct from just her description.

Volta himself also could sense that he was, despite having a total stranger in his room, completely at ease. Somehow, it was as if she were his sister the whole time as well. It was a strange feeling, to say the least.

She seemed unimpressed at his answer. "Is that all?"

"No, obviously." He crossed his arms and furrowed his eyebrows in thought. "I'm in Nova's brain..." But she didn't have any knowledge on what his childhood bedroom looked like, "...At the same time. I'm in both of our Mind Prisons."

She shrugged, half content with his answer. "Close enough."

She tapped the side of her head. "We're not really in your head. We're just recreating scenarios from your previous experiences. A fun little memory slurry, if you will. All the other stuff we can't perfectly recreate, we use other bits of your memory to patch up the holes." She snorted, gesturing back to his case studies. "What, you think you were reading legal case studies next to your Baby's First Ten-piece 3D Boat Puzzle?"

"Where is she, then?" Volta asked. "I thought I would find her here. If you're here, I can't be completely wrong."

"She's probably in her own prison," Callisto replied. She seemed unbothered. "She's been there way longer than you. Way further down the line of 'fighting her mind demons' or whatever that brother of yours calls it."