Cognitive Deviance

50. Cold Feet

Psychwatch spent years fighting back against the Psycho Slums, but it wasn't until that year that they finally felt like they had the advantage. A no-man's-land slowly becoming their land.

The following day, June 6, 2045, right after the agreement with Malcolm Slater to incapacitate the Rabbit Hole using an EMP device, Commissioner Mason and her fellow officers worked to take back the City of Brotherly Love. Neighborhoods that spent years at the mercy of the insane, individuals who could truly be defined as bloodthirsty monsters, came into the light of the day as SanityScans were installed at the corner of the most impoverished blocks they had ever laid eyes on. More and more folks became one with the System, their conditions finally recognized with a sympathy no ordinary policemen would've shown them.

But as always, even though the sympathy was there, not everyone took the offer. Many of the incoming patients higher in their Threat Levels put up a good fight against the officers, sometimes with their fists and other times with something louder or sharper. One man in particular quickly solidified his Threat Level 5 by opening fire on a Psychwatch crew as they minded their own business installing another SanityScan. Once he was put out of his misery, his home was raided, and his entire family was found dead in their kitchen.

Upon making their heinous discovery public, many neighborhoods were far more cooperative with the installments of the Scans. Dozens upon dozens of new patients made their way to Psychwatch without a word, only hoping for the best. And unfortunately for those with the highest Threat Levels, what was best for them wasn't the most peaceful of options. But the less they resisted, the more peaceful the outcome.

By 8:55 PM that evening, Psychwatch's range grew from ninety-two percent to ninety-six percent of the city. Far more than a handful of people were comfortable with the numbers, but the ones with the more critical thoughts went silent extraordinarily fast, a consequence of acquiring electronic access to every psyche within the city limits.

Mason, however, was a person who prioritized safety over comfort. Or at the very least ensured safety before pursuing comfort. At least in Margo's mind. But she also felt as if Mason never truly felt comfort outside of her work, outside of interrogating people on the verge of psychosis and supervising people too far over the line with utter condescension. Was it even condescension? Could it have just been confidence? Determination? Perhaps she was hiding something?

That was it. She was hiding things. Margo saw it days ago after returning to work during her evaluation. She scolded herself for turning down the opportunity to see the results. By doing that, she just gave the woman more power over her, more reason to be a condescending overlord watching as more lunatics were wheeled into the technologically advanced Bedlam House she called Psychwatch. The ones deemed worth saving, anyway. Who was playing God there, anyway?

It could've been Mason on her own. Or maybe it was Andrade. Maybe just the System itself. Maybe the ghosts of Tetsuo Fujioka and Cyrus Lynch had come back from the dead as vengeful, genocidal spirits wishing to erase their patients rather than guide them on a path toward healing. Or maybe the Multi Man was the System.

The thoughts made Margo feel like she was being lobotomized, a cold, filthy icepick stabbing through her eye all the way into her prefrontal cortex. But she wasn't misguided like the so-called doctors who carried out that procedure in a past era. She knew it was nothing more than brain damage. Something felt like it was missing. Something hurt her, and she didn't know what. Maybe it hurt because she didn't know what it was.

Or it might've just been the guilt of watching Andrade open fire on a Threat Level 4 man diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder in front of his loved ones.

She could still hear the man's partner screaming his name out into the unexpectedly heatless evening as they crammed his bloodied corpse into a cadaver bag. Blood had sprayed across his lawn because of the skirmish, and a good splash of it stretched across his partner's face as she remained on her knees, shrieking like a banshee to the sky above her. While the rest of Margo's colleagues marched back to the van, she paused at the edge of the sidewalk, only a step away from the pavement itself.