Chapter 9: The Lure

Chapter 9: The Lure

The silence in the apartment after Liam left was a physical presence. It was heavier than grief, colder than fear. It was the sound of absolute isolation. Elara sat on the floor, her back against the sofa, and stared at her own dark reflection in the tablet’s blank screen. The echo of the Smiler’s internal whisper was a venomous stain on her thoughts. They will all leave you. But I am always here.

It was not a threat. It was a promise. A declaration of ownership.

In that moment, something inside her calcified. The terrified, cornered victim withered away, and in its place grew something hard and sharp. A surgeon’s resolve. You don’t cower from a cancer; you cut it out. You don’t hide from an infection; you attack it with everything you have.

Her hands, no longer trembling, picked up her phone. She dialed.

“Anya,” she said when Dr. Petrova answered, her voice a flat, cold monotone. “He’s gone. It’s time. We’re doing it tonight.”

The hospital’s sleep-study lab was in the quietest part of the sub-basement, two floors below even the records archive. It was a place designed for observation, a sterile cube of a room filled with the quiet hum of sensitive electronics. An array of monitors stood like silent sentinels against one wall, their screens dark. In the center of the room was a single hospital bed, stark and uninviting under the adjustable, low-level lighting. It was a room for dissecting the mysteries of the mind, and tonight, they were using it as a hunting blind.

“Are you certain about this, Elara?” Dr. Petrova asked, her voice tight with a mixture of scientific curiosity and profound ethical concern. She was unpacking a portable EEG machine, her movements precise and methodical. “The risks are… astronomical. We are intentionally inviting a hostile psychic entity into your consciousness under laboratory conditions. There is no precedent for this. No protocol. You could suffer a complete psychotic break. You could become like them.”

The image of the whispering husks in the St. Jude’s Annex flashed in Elara’s mind. The empty eyes, the carved smiles. That was her future if she did nothing.

“Doing nothing is the greater risk,” Elara replied, her voice steady as she changed into a set of clean, dark blue scrubs. The familiar uniform felt like armor. “It’s already in my head, Anya. It smiled with my face. It spoke with my thoughts. Hiding is no longer an option. It thinks I’m broken. It thinks I’m alone and weak. We’re going to use that arrogance against it.”

Petrova paused, her slate-grey eyes meeting Elara’s. “The arrogance of a predator,” she mused. “It believes its prey is helpless. A dangerous assumption to make.” She gestured to the IV stand next to the bed. “The Cyclofane is a sledgehammer. It blasts the door wide open. We need a scalpel. I’ve prepared a titrated solution of Propofol and a mild dissociative. It won’t knock you out completely. The goal is to induce a state of hypnagogia—that perfect, vulnerable threshold between waking and sleeping. The state where sleep paralysis occurs.”

“The hunting ground,” Elara murmured, understanding completely. She was not just setting a trap; she was marinating the bait.

“I will monitor everything,” Petrova continued, her voice all business now as she switched on the monitors, which flickered to life, displaying a cascade of green and black grids. “EEG for neurological anomalies, ECG for cardiac stress, pulse oximetry… everything. I need you to understand, this isn’t about trapping it in a bottle. This is about data. If this thing is a psychic parasite, it must have a measurable effect on your brain when it manifests. A signature. A frequency. If we can identify its signature, we can learn how to disrupt it.”

“And I need to see it,” Elara said, her gaze fixed on the sterile bed. “Not paralyzed. Not helpless in my own bedroom. On my terms. If I can face it, I can fight it.” She held up her hands, the surgeon’s hands the creature coveted. “It wants these. It wants to get back into an OR and carve. I am not going to be its instrument.”

The next fifteen minutes passed in a tense, focused silence. Petrova worked with clinical detachment, attaching the multi-colored EEG electrodes to Elara’s scalp. The cool, conductive gel and the slight scrape of the sensors against her skin were grounding, real sensations in a plan that felt like a fever dream. Each wire was another tether to the physical world, another string Petrova could use to pull her back from the abyss.

Finally, it was done. Elara lay on the gurney, a web of wires connecting her to the humming machines. The pulse oximeter on her finger glowed with a soft red light, its rhythmic beeping a steady counterpoint to her racing heart. She looked like a patient, a specimen. But she felt like a soldier arming for a suicide mission.

Petrova stood beside the IV pump, her face illuminated by the monitor glow. The scientific fervor in her eyes was now tempered by a deep, human worry for the woman on the bed.

“I’ll be right here,” she said, her voice softer now. “I will not leave this chair. I’ve programmed the pump with an override. If your vitals fluctuate beyond the preset safety parameters, it will automatically flood the line with a counter-agent and bring you back to full consciousness. Instantly.” She took a steadying breath. “We need a safe word. If it becomes too much, if you feel you are losing control, you say the word. I don’t care if you can only whisper it. I will hear you, and I will pull you out. Understood?”

Elara nodded, her throat tight.

“The word is ‘Scalpel’,” Petrova said.

The choice was perfect. The tool it wanted to corrupt would be the word that banished it.

Elara looked up at the acoustic tile ceiling, taking one last, long look at the solid, logical, brightly-lit world. She thought of Liam, of the life that had been stolen from her, of the smiling thing that had taken it. Her fear was a cold, hard knot in her stomach, but beneath it, the core of her fury burned hot and clean.

“I’m ready,” she whispered.

Petrova gave a single, sharp nod. Her hand moved to the control panel on the IV pump. She pressed the button to begin the infusion.

“Induction starting now,” she announced, her voice as formal as an anesthesiologist in an operating room. “Just relax, Elara. Try to clear your mind. Let it come.”

Elara felt the tell-tale coldness snake into the vein in her arm, a chemical chill that began to spread through her body. Her limbs grew heavy, not with the crushing weight of paralysis, but with a languid, drifting sensation. The rhythmic beeping of the pulse oximeter began to slow, the sharp edges of the sound blurring into a soft, resonant pulse. The lights in the room seemed to dim, their focus narrowing until it was a single point of light above her.

Her eyelids fluttered. The wall of monitors became a liquid smear of green. She felt her consciousness untethering, drifting away from the solid shores of reality.

The world dissolved into a low, familiar hum, and she felt herself begin to fall.