It was mahogany, or he thought so, it could have been sanded plywood, stained, buffed, polished, and painted to look like mahogany. It didn't make a difference to him what his desk was made of, but he was sure it had always been mahogany. Why did it look so different now? He glanced beyond the shimmer of the wood to the figure sitting opposite him. Sun rushed in through the window and glistened off her pale, creamy skin. He wondered for a moment if she was real. He thought, maybe he should ask her, should clear his throat and ask her if she was real. What then? A furrowed brow? An accusing sidewards glance? A flash of her golden, yellow eyes narrowing under the proposition of such a thing? But the sunlight made her look so different. It was as if her skin was made of heavy cream and was swirling around in peaceful waves; a smooth, pure, white ocean.

He couldn't stand it any longer. "Katie?" his voice seemed to echo, as if he was calling through a tunnel to her. She turned her head toward him, seeming to move in slow motion. Her eyes glowed, as if there were a fire behind them. She raised her eyebrows, an indication that she was listening, but he couldn't find the words he was looking for. He just wanted to stare at her. She looked like a Van Gogh painting. Finally he blinked heavily and cleared his throat. "Are you real?"

She grimaced, and the fire went out from behind her eyes. They weren't golden anymore, but a dull, murky yellow. "I don't know," she said sincerely. She ran her delicate, thin hand through her hair. Her skin had since cease to swirl and was flat and pasty again. He also noticed that the sunlight had been covered up by heavy clouds, either that, or someone had drawn the blinds in their office. He couldn't tell, his eyes were locked on her. She reached her hand across the desk and slipped her fingers in between his. They were like ice; it was almost painful to touch her. "What's happened to us, Norman?"

He didn't have anything to say. He just gripped her hand once he noticed he was back in the real world, back in the closet they were forced to call an office. The blinds had been drawn, so there was never any sunlight at all.

It had seemed so real…

Now it was cold, and dark, and Katie looked the way she had looked the past three weeks. Tired, thin, and delicate; a shadow of the woman he knew to be his partner. "We used to be…" she trailed off in sheer exhaustion. "We used to be so good, you and me."

He knew what she meant. He felt the pain the same way she did, suffered the same agony, was lost in the same alternate reality, with no idea which side of the mirror was the side everyone else existed on. He just wished he could do something to save her. Anything…

"It just feels like nothing's real anymore," she sighed. "I walk to my apartment in the evening and it's like I'm existing behind a veil, like everything is foggy. Like this world here isn't the real world." She turned her sad, tired eyes his way. "Do you ever feel that way?"

Of course he felt that way. He'd felt that way all the time. That was, until he found a cure. At first it was fine, glorious. It lifted the fog and made everything sharper, made the real world seem more real. But after awhile… well, after a while it got dangerous. "Sometimes," he said. Maybe he should tell her, maybe it would save her. She stood up from her chair and went to the window, peeking through the blinds.

"Can I tell you a secret, Jayden?" she asked, barely above a whisper. He nodded and she must have felt it because she sighed heavily and prepared herself to speak, a feat that required most of her energy nowadays. She reached into her suit pocket and pulled out a pair of black sunglasses, she held them delicately, as if they were going to grow fangs and bite her. "ARI," she began. "I think ARI is doing this to me… to us… making us so sick… the headaches, the hallucinations…" She fiddled with her pair of glasses, they seemed so much smaller and ladylike than the pair in his suit pocket. She turned away from the window and made eye contact so intense that he felt the need to look away for a second or two. "The thing I can't figure out is this: Why would they give them to us, if they knew they were so harmful?"

I don't know Katie, I just don't know…

Her sadness quickly sparked into anger like a firecracker and she threw the glasses down on the desk. "I think as federal agents we deserve to have a little fucking discretion thrown our way!" she collapsed into her chair and looked near tears. "Why? Why would they do this to us? We're not lab rats, Jayden, we're human beings…" she set her head down on the desk and sniffled loudly. He was sure she was crying. It put him in physical pain to see her this way. He got up from his chair and managed to make his way over to her side of the desk. He knelt beside her and carefully placed his hands on her frail shoulders, afraid that she might shatter.

"Katie," he said. "Katie, please…" He was about to beg her to pull herself together when her sobs became audible. He pulled her chair towards him and reached his arms around her, she nestled her face into his neck and wept warm tears onto his skin. It was almost comforting to feel something so warm…

"My head, Norman… the migraines, I just can't take it anymore!" and she wrapped her arms around his neck and tried to breathe easy. He stroked her hair for a moment, then she sat back up, hastily wiping her eyes. "I'm sorry," she began. "You'd like to think I have a little more self control than that…"

Something wasn't right. No, something was terribly, horribly wrong. Norman felt a bolt of white hot lighting shoot through his entire body as he stared at his partner. Beneath her sunken eyes, where the remnants of saline tears should have been, there was blood. The world seemed to slow to half speed and he pulled out his collar and examined it. It was soaked through with blood, instead of tears.

Oh, Katie, oh no…

Upon seeing the started look on his face, Katie pulled her fingers away to examine the warm liquid. Blood. It was blood. She locked eyes with Norman. At first, she looked startled, as if in a state of disbelief, then she blinked and a fine, thin stream of red rolled down her cheek. Her face went void of emotion, her eyes cold and dark. He noticed she was falling, slipping right out of her chair.

"Katie!" he yelled her name in a panic and grabbed her, hoping to brace her fall. She collapsed into his arms, completely weightless…

Norman Jayden sat bolt upright in bed, desperately trying to catch his breath. His heart was racing a mile a minute and he was gasping for air. He felt a panic attack looming. He placed a shaking, pale hand on his chest, trying to steady his frantic breathing, but it was to no avail. He'd started to shake all over, as if the temperature in his apartment had dropped to 30 below. He felt himself reaching for his nightstand drawer. He'd kicked into autopilot as he searched for the cold sensation of a glass vial against his skin. Once it met his fingertips he hastily pulled out the stopper and inhaled deeply, feeling the fluorescent blue powder coat the inside of his nose and drip down the back of his throat.

His body braced itself for a feeling it knew all too well, his muscles contracted in anticipation. It hit his brain almost immediately, like a bullet, and his muscles released their vice like grip. He carefully rested his head against the wall behind him and enjoyed the feeling of euphoria creeping its way up his veins. He sighed softly as order was restored to his world and his breathing returned to normal. He rolled over on his side in bed and tried to focus on the high, instead of what had awakened him.

Another dream, another nightmare about Katie…

He'd been having them every night since she died. Every night since he held her in his arms and watched her slip away. Watched her life slip right through his fingers, and he was completely powerless to save her. It had been nearly a week, and when advised by his supervisor to take leave, he obliged, but after several days of a depression he couldn't escape he went back to work, hoping that it would keep his mind off of what had happened. It wasn't doing a great job.

All he could think about was the look on her face when it happened. The desperation, the sheer desperation in her blood filled eyes, as if she was calling out to him to save her. There was nothing he could do but scream for help. And when her younger sister stopped to speak with him at her funeral she looked him straight in the eye, she'd had the same yellow eyes as Katie, and asked him if she'd suffered. He flinched at the thought of her sobbing about unbearable headaches, and told her no.

What else was I supposed to tell her?

Jayden shoved his face into the comforter and left it there for a second, breathing in and out. Once the fabric of the comforter had become slightly moist with what he assumed was sweat, he sat up again and glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand. It read 2:47 a.m. Norman sighed and turned the clock away from him, hiding the time from his eyes. He'd never get back to sleep now. He gingerly rubbed his temples, still feeling lightheaded from the drugs. They helped him relax, but very few things could lull him to sleep nowadays. He stood up slowly, trying to get over the shock of the cold wood floor on his bare feet.

He slowly walked out of his bedroom and into the rest of the apartment. The massive bay windows on the 22nd floor overlooked an always busy street below. He managed his way over to them and pressed his forehead against the cold glass, he swore he heard it sizzle against the heat of his skin. He opened his tired eyes and felt suddenly dizzy at the sight of the cityscape below. The lights of the cars on the road beneath him seemed to be glowing straight into this apartment.

Doesn't this town ever sleep?

Norman stepped back and drew the shades. He walked to the kitchen and flipped on the coffee maker. He wasn't sure if he'd drink any, but he just wanted to hear it brew, wanted to smell the aroma and let it permeate his small living space. Once upon a time, coffee solved all his problems, now it was just another stimulant that couldn't even begin to scrape the surface of the icy feeling in his veins.

He was supposed to leave in the morning for a case in Pennsylvania. It was a case he and Katie had been following in their free time, a series of child kidnappings and murders committed by a character the press dubbed the Origami Killer. The police station had demonstrated enough ineptitude to get the Feds called in on the case. He and Katie were supposed to go as a team, as partners, and aid the police station since the badges in charge had made virtually no progress in the three years the killer had been on the loose.

She was so excited to go, she just wanted to dig her nails into that case…

Norman blinked hard. They gratefully accepted the case, but little did they know, she'd be dead less than a week later. Now he was going into this without his partner of five years and he couldn't be more terrified. His supervisor had stopped him after the funeral and suggested that he turn the case over to another agent and just rest for awhile. Norman declined the offer, insisting that he could perform his job fine, and that it was too late notice to change the paperwork anyway. He was right, his supervisor knew it, and gave him to go ahead to proceed. Aside from paperwork, which Norman couldn't care less about, he really needed to get away from the headquarters for awhile. There was a lot of unfavorable talk going around the office about the appropriateness of the relationship between him and his late partner. The thought was enough to make him go running for the vial in his nightstand again.

I need to be careful… I never know if my next hit will be my last

Instead, he poured himself a cup of coffee and drank it black, waiting for morning to come.