Chapter 3 Part 2

Ode’s body went rigid in an instant, but Faust interjected in a placating tone. “If it’s not life-threatening, then there’s no rush.”

His gaze returned to Ode. “You don’t remember why you headed to Dreamcatcher Town? Allow me to jog your memory.”

Faust snapped his fingers behind him. The entire wall of monitors went black, then flickered to life with a somewhat grainy surveillance feed.

It showed a dingy, cramped old building, its walls leaning at precarious angles, as if liable to collapse at any moment and squash a few rats, spiders, and unfortunate tenants as a bonus.

This was the cheap rental Ode had scrounged up after the bank tossed him out on his ear.

The place was ancient, and the landlord had whispered grim tales of past tenants meeting sticky ends—reason enough for the rock-bottom rent, practically nonexistent. A dozen or so down-on-their-luck folks like Ode after his bankruptcy crammed into the little three-story dive. The most unforgettable roommate was the one holed up on the first floor: the Old Madman.

“…” Ode’s eyes flicked away from the screen for a split second before he forced them back, unwilling to show weakness before the enemy.

He knew exactly what was coming next. That scene on the monitors? He’d been right there.

Thud!

The door to first-floor Room 104 flew open under the impact of an aged body. “Liquor… gimme liquor… LIQUOR!!”

The Old Madman’s frenzied howls roused the nearest tenants within seconds. A couple of scrawny kids dashed back to their room and returned with an old army canteen. But no sooner had he gulped down a mouthful of water than he clutched his chest, rolled sideways coughing violently, and spewed thick ropes of blackish-red blood from his mouth and nose.

“Lord above! What’s wrong?!” The children’s mother rushed out too, attempting frantic first aid to no avail. “Hugo! Hugo! Run next door and ask the landlord if he can call an ambulance!”

By the time young Hugo bolted from the room, everyone present knew the Old Madman was beyond saving. These days, even working stiffs hesitated to shell out for an ambulance, let alone on behalf of a penniless, gibbering old lodger.

Against all odds, though, minutes later the landlord showed up with a blaring ambulance in tow. Three paramedics moved in with practiced efficiency to hoist the Old Madman aboard—

“No!! No!” Yet at this brink of death, the old man thrashed wildly, his grimy long nails raking at those around him. “I ain’t leavin’—cough! Cough-cough! Lemme stay! Let go—cough! My granddaughter… my granddaughter ain’t back yet. Gotta wait for her—”

“You ain’t got no granddaughter, Mr. Victor,” the mother pleaded desperately—one part genuine concern for his life, the other fretting over the bill. “You’re off your rocker again. When you’re lucid, you’ve told us a dozen times: no granddaughter. It’s just the madness making you think you never parted from your sweetheart—”

“Lies!! All lies!” The Old Madman spoke with eerie clarity, as if granted a final burst of lucidity. Even the three paramedics struggled to hold him down. “She went to Dreamcatcher Town! She’s in Devon County! But she can’t get back—”

His crazed expression softened into raw pleading. He seized a paramedic’s wrist in a vise grip. “Please, I’m beggin’ ya—save her, can ya? Somethin’ terrible happened to her in that town—”

Hugo’s voice broke sadly. “But my sisters and I checked special. There ain’t no Dreamcatcher Town in Devon County…”

“The patient is exhibiting extreme aggression—likely acute mental disturbance.” The paramedic’s cool voice cut through the chaos. “Restraints. Someone fetch the restraints.”

“…” Ode’s fists clenched involuntarily. Unable to watch as the Old Madman—half-strapped to the gurney, face smeared with blood and tears—was hauled away howling and struggling, he finally tore his gaze aside.

Faust studied his expression before raising a hand to freeze the footage. “Reliving this scene is still too much for you, isn’t it?”

“Then allow me to sum up what came next. Midway through, you burst out of your second-floor room, marched straight to the Old Madman, promised to track down his granddaughter, and took the pendant necklace bearing her photo from his grasp. Only then did he go peacefully with the paramedics.”

Faust inched a fraction closer, his lanky frame casting a shadow that all but swallowed Ode in darkness. “Why?”

“Why help him, Ode?”

“Like recognizes like by scent alone. I can tell you’re a prime political animal—gifted with snap crisis judgment, the smarts to turn any situation to your advantage, and ice-cold poise. So when you’re still reeling from your Grandfather’s death, scrambling to save the ancestral home with no room to breathe, why step up for this needless errand? Unrelated to you. Uncertain odds. Zero payoff.”

Ode’s brows twitched faintly as Faust uttered “Grandfather’s death” and “ancestral home crisis,” alerting him that his captors knew far more about him—and his troubles—than he’d assumed.

Suddenly discomfited, he turned his cheek slightly, dodging those gray eyes that pinned him like a specimen on the slab. “My reasons are no concern of yours—”

“Because it hit too close to home—your parents, your Grandfather. Right?” Faust pressed on, ignoring Ode’s evasive, almost vulnerable flinch. “Every loved one dragged off in restraints, branded insane, vanishing from your life forever.”

“You just couldn’t bring yourself to look away, even as you grieved your Grandfather’s death and tore your hair out over the ancestral home. Hell, taking it on might’ve even stemmed from sel—urgh!”

Ode snapped. In a blaze of fury, he lurched to his feet, only for the restraints to yank him back toward the surgical chair. His forehead cracked against Faust’s right eye, sending the unprepared man staggering backward. Clutching the injured socket, Faust doubled over.

From behind Ode came the Russian woman’s immediate, unsparing bark of laughter. She then strode briskly toward the office door, evidently deciding the farce had wasted enough of her time.

Faust sucked in pained breaths, steadying himself against the table’s edge with one hand over his eye. “All I wanted to ask was, did you succeed in saving him?”

Ode regarded the disheveled Faust with icy disdain, his gaze imperious from on high. “You already know the answer. You said it yourself: I was the only one who walked out of that town alive.”

Faust peeled his hand away, pried his eye open experimentally, then hissed and clapped it shut again amid tears. “So why didn’t you go back? Mysterious memory loss—not curious? No suspicions?”

“I’m certain whatever horrors I endured tripped some brain defense mechanism, wiping those days clean.” Ode shot him a frigid look. “Put yourself in my shoes. Would you drag your half-crippled body back into likely danger—danger you couldn’t even identify?”

More crucially, amid the dizziness, he’d glanced at his watch and realized it was already June 2nd—the day of his civil service final interview.

To secure a job and gain this crucial bargaining chip for his negotiations with the bank, Ode hadn’t had time to think things through. He had stumbled off toward the nearby market. But after a series of twists and turns, by the time he finally made it back to London, he had missed the final round of interviews.

“Are you kicking yourself inside, thinking, ‘What a rotten decision’?” Faust could still manage a laugh under the circumstances. “No, no. Don’t think like that.”

“This wasn’t some rash impulse or emotional outburst. You were just processing your grief—and right now, your grief is manifesting as anger.”

“But,” he added, “I didn’t go to all this trouble bringing you here just to play therapist.”

Faust reached back and dragged over a wooden chair before sitting down. “I’m here to offer you a job.”

Ode found that hilarious. “Since when does joining a cult count as a job?”

Faust shrugged. Suddenly, a wisp of blue-purple mist seeped out from beneath his left palm. When he lifted his hand, the eye that had been bruised and tear-streaked from the collision was magically restored, good as new.

“If you hadn’t lost your memory, this conversation would have been a lot easier. Allow me to reintroduce myself, Mr. Ode Douglas.”

Regaining his composure, Faust rose to his feet and offered Ode a refined yet not overly formal nobleman’s bow.

“Jean Vashron. Codename ‘Faust.’ I currently serve with GORCC—the Global Occult Response and Containment Corps.”

He gave Ode another shrug. “GORCC operates independently of Military Intelligence Section 5 and Section 6, though we have the necessary classified clearances on file with both. If you’d like further proof, perhaps I could introduce you to the Prime Minister? Or even Your Majesty?”

Faust quipped, “You can’t seriously think the Prime Minister and Your Majesty are cult members too—though if the Houses of Parliament suddenly collapsed during session, it might wipe out four or five cult organizations at once.”

He didn’t give Ode a chance to respond. His expression sobered in an instant, and he continued in a low, urgent voice. “As I said, I went to all this trouble to bring you here because I have a job offer for you. Haven’t you wondered why my subordinate only had a single notebook with your name in it when he died?”

Faust fished a photograph from the breast pocket of his suit and pressed it onto the wooden table. “Take a look at this face. Ring any bells?”

Ode’s mind was still sluggishly processing the flood of information Faust had dumped on him. He glanced down on instinct. “…I’ve seen him. During one of the interviews.”

“That’s when he spotted you—spotted that you possess charm far beyond the ordinary…” Faust paused thoughtfully, choosing his words with care. “Charm value.”

“A charm value this high can cause varying degrees of mental pollution in normal people. If it’s any stronger, it can even twist them into monsters.”

“Literal monsters—the kind that sprout extra tentacles or eyes.”

Ode’s tentative lean toward believing Faust screeched to a halt. “…Then how come Qian Ning never grew any extra bits? He wouldn’t even loan me the money without me begging repeatedly.”

“That’s rare, sure. But didn’t you already test this special ability of yours on those two poor sods who were supposed to be escorting you during your escape attempt?” Faust lit a second cigar. “How else do you explain a battle-hardened special forces soldier zoning out and staring at you mid-fight? My best guess is that your charm value has a greater effect on stronger individuals.”

“Take me, for instance. Right now, I really want to have my way with you.”

Ode: “…”

Ode: “…………What did you just say?”

Faust exhaled a plume of smoke. “Relax—my tastes run perfectly normal. I’ve got my lover. But you? You need to think this over carefully.”

“What do you think my subordinate wrote down your name for? To recommend top talent? Hardly.”

“He was a genuine undercover agent from a real cult. He kept that notebook on him because he wanted to kidnap you—to offer you up as a sacrifice to his god.”

“But that’s just an appetizer.”

“With charm like yours, the dangers you’ll face from here on out will only get deadlier, one after another.”

“Join GORCC. We’ll train you, give you the power to protect yourself. What else do you want? A job? Civil service status? Done. Even that ancestral home you’ve got your heart set on—I can buy it outright for you, from my own pocket.”

“And,” Faust said, removing the cigar and fixing Ode with a gaze more serious than any he’d shown so far, “I swear to you: I’ll do everything in my power to protect my own people—as long as you don’t lose sight of who you are.”

Ode had to force his eyes away, focusing on something else entirely just to fend off the temptation of Faust’s offer to buy the ancestral home.

Even as his rational mind warned him that the man was all talk with no solid proof of his identity, a powerful impulse rose within him: Just say yes for now.

Ode’s breathing grew a touch ragged. His wavering gaze was instinctively drawn to the distorted clock that showed the time. He wanted to check the hour, see how much longer he had to weigh his options. But the next second: “…Hey. What’s the deal with that clock over there?”

“Oh, you mean the one that looks like it’s melting?” Faust didn’t bother turning to follow Ode’s line of sight. Having made his promises, he shed his brief moment of gravity and spoke casually around his cigarette. “A nice little trinket I salvaged from Ctharnid. It detects disruptions in the local time flow. If someone’s about to get pulled into a time rift, the hands go haywire in their eyes—”

“It’s running backward.” Ode’s eyes were locked on the clock, where the hands were spinning in reverse, picking up speed from slow to fast. He cut Faust off.

Faust blinked in surprise. He glanced back at the clock, then whipped his head around to stare at Ode. The next instant, he lunged forward. One hand slapped the restraint release on the operating table, while the other yanked a pistol from his waistband. He didn’t even notice the glowing cigarette ember scorching his fingers.

Without explanation, he jammed the gun into Ode’s hand. “Hold on tight! When I say I don’t want to die—hold on tight—”

The final word never reached Ode’s ears.

An agony like being fed into a meat grinder exploded across Ode’s body. He could swear even his soul was screaming in pain.

His vision blurred. And in the next heartbeat, he plummeted downward—straight into an oxcart piled high with golden straw.

The cart rattled through a lush, dense forest, the ox’s hooves clopping rhythmically over scattered pebbles.

“Hey! Friend,” the driver called from the front seat. He urged the ox onward while twisting around with a cheerful grin amid the bumpy mountain road, eyeing Ode—who sat rigid on the cart bed. “Mind if I ask? What exactly brings you to our Dreamcatcher Town?”