“I see it,” she gasped. “The orange. The shadow. The drip. They’re all the same thing. They’re just… folds .”

He didn’t know if he was the doctor anymore.

“The needle, Doctor,” Mina whispered, her eyes fixed on a water stain on the ceiling. “Is it the blue or the red today?”

Elias stepped back. His hand went to his own arm, where a faded scar marked the site of an injection he had never told anyone about. Iteration Zero. Self-administered, fifteen years ago, on the night his wife looked at him and said, You’re not real, are you?

Dr. Elias Vane had a rule: never let the patient see the needle until the last possible second.