"How is Ellen?" The man sitting on his desk asks. He has delicate, pale hands; they curl nicely around a half-burnt cigarette. Peter just finished cleaning them; he was meticulous enough not to leave clogs of blood under the nails, and to rub the palms with enough alcohol to make them clean again. The agent might say he doesn't mind, that he's used to it, but dirty hands disturb Peter, and if he's going to stare at the agent all night, he better be looking good.
"Small-talk isn't your thing, what is it you expect to hear tonight?"
The agent smiles, thin lips stretching into a crooked parody of a yellow-toothed grin —from the coffee he always claims to drink. It has an air of finality to it. Peter wonders how much it hurts to even move his face; it is too swollen, too green. He whipped the remains of blood from it earlier too.
"Anything you want to tell me, Peter, you know how this goes."
Peter nods. "Then let's go to the bedroom, I enjoy you better lying down." And he laughs, wanders out of the study with his shadow stepping behind him, the thrilling echo of breathing accompanying them into the hallway.
Once they reach Peter's bedroom, the agent steps into his designated black chair at the right foot of the bed. He looks almost delicate sitting on a chair so big, his soft black hair blending with the shadows. His white mask catching the light from the window. Peter knows he should not be as used to this as he is. Knows what normal people fear to know. Knows he is alone in the room.
Peter sprawls on the mattress, arranges his body to face the agent's shadow, his judgement, head on. Mentally, he prepares for the following battle.
"I want to see your face" Peter recites, as he does every night. He can feel his other smile in the darkness. "I want to know what you are."
"I do not have a face," the agent says softly "and I am many things. What do you want me to be? What do you want?"
Peter smiles, and doesn't answer. Truth is: He doesn't know. What do you ask of someone who barely exists, who appeared out of nowhere, and will dissolve into nothing once the universe is unneeded? The agent could be anything, and the prospect of cutting the infinite possibility of this being feels distasteful to Peter. So he changes topics.
"I want a better job," he starts "I could hardly afford food for Ellen this month. I also want the lady from the corner store to stop looking at me like you do when I poke your cuts."
"Do I look at you, at all?"
Peter winks at him "You wouldn't come so often if you disliked the view"
"Mm."
"Don't be like that, are you going to tell me this isn't some kind of indulgence from your duties, Mr. Agent? Of course, you take breaks to see my beautiful face once a day, and be the object of my tenderness."
The agent laughs, it's small, like everything about him. His feet shuffle on the floor, as if he's too amused to keep still. This is Peter's favorite part. He tries not to let his smile go sour.
"Will you make sure to inform the high power how I, the lowlife, am doing? Whoever is getting a kick out of this, ask them to stop beating you up. My poor maiden heart hardly resists."
"You're not allowed to talk about the program, Peter," the agent is kind, he's always so nice to Peter "we have no choice, and you know that. I'll be forever impressed with the things you know. You are freer than me."
"What, no snarky remark towards my conspiracy theory?"
"If it were a conspiracy, there'd be an objective."
"If it were a theory, we would be alive" Peter retorts, thinking back to the carton of milk sitting in the fridge. His daughter will have to make do with it for the rest of the week, there's nothing else to buy out there. He stretches. The world is such a dull shadow these days, and he isn't going to get her the government's free artificial food. He may be a fake parent, but he isn't a bad one.
He doesn't get a response, is left expecting, like always, the signal that everything is fine. After a few seconds, he says "Freedom isn't a spectrum." And leaves it at that.
The agent licks his lips.
"You could choose to believe. I can't choose to not know. It is the price of power."
"As you say."
"But you are powerless."
"You too. So neither of us is free. I'm not freer than you, I can't be. We have no freedom at all."
The agent sniffs. He stands up, towers over Peter's relaxed body. He looks bigger than he really is, but his hands are soft when they touch Peter's face. It sends goosebumps all over his body, and he smiles. The white mask covers half of Agent's face, it reflects Peter's face.
This closeness is new. Having tenderness directed at him makes his skin crawl, but this is the agent's moment, so he stays still.
"Why do you pretend to live if you do not believe in life?"
"Why not?"
"If you choose to believe, if you choose to forget what you discovered so many years ago- if you decided to be back into the system for real, let it swallow you up with all its programming- "
"Yes?"
"What would happen, then?"
Peter's been waiting for this question since the agent was sent to torture him, all those years ago. Lucky him, to fall in love with a shadow. To have a daughter that exists only in his mind, in a world that only exists in his mind. To work every day for the system that won't let him die. He smiles at the only real thing in the room.
"I'd have to discover it again," he says, hands reaching into the darkness to touch the agent's face "and I wouldn't survive the truth this time."
