Chapter Two: In the Forests of Forgetting

"Well," Truman said, looking around, "this is new."

"If by 'new' you mean 'completely deranged,' then yes, I agree," Sasha replied, taking in the twisted mental landscape with a cool expression. They were standing just outside the boundary of what must have once been a semi-peaceful Latvian forest but was now nothing short of nightmarish, somehow managing to be both overgrown and dying back at the same time. Vines crept up the once lush trees--in the handful of seconds it took for them to examine the area, the vines had shot up at least another foot--and were quickly strangling the life out of them.

The sky overhead was dark, threatening rain, and the way the clouds were churning and turning varying shades of green added an ominous pall to the scene. Ravens pin-wheeled silently above their heads, exactly out of rhythm with the cloudscape.

"So, ah..." Truman cleared his throat gently. Somewhere deep in the forest, a tree groaned, cracked, and crashed to the ground, causing both of them to jump. "Er. We should get moving."

"Agreed."

Surprisingly, a worn-down dirt path into the forest still remained, although vines had grown across it at certain points and made it nearly impassable. Truman, with Sasha bringing up rear guard, carefully made his way down the path, pushing vines out of the way with telekinesis. Often, as soon as they'd walked past, the vines would simply creep back into place as if nothing had happened. The forest around them was dark--very little light filtered down past the canopy--and altogether much too quiet. The only noise came from the occasional raven overhead or vines sliding their way past leaves and tree bark.

"Listen, Nein," Truman began after a long silence, "I think we need to talk."

Sasha slapped away a vine that was trying to creep into his personal space. "About?"

"Well, to start with, your attitude. I swear, I haven't seen you this damn cranky since Agent Vodello left."

Sasha stopped dead in his tracks. A vine started to slither by the back of his neck, only to spontaneously burst into flame. "Sir," he began, almost spitting out the word, "you'll forgive me if I don't exactly see the connecting relevance between that...incident and this one."

Truman stopped and turned around, arms folded across his chest. "It's called a comparison, Nein. Now, I know you and Nick have a history--"

"That's putting it mildly," Sasha muttered, snorting.

"--but your being a pain in the ass isn't helping the mission any." He sighed. Somewhere off in the distance, another tree crashed to the ground. "We'd all like to strangle Nick, okay? Personally, I'd like to do a lot more than that, considering what he did to me--but the point is, you're letting your personal feelings for the situation affect your judgment."

Sasha's back stiffened and he seemed to bristle with anger. "With all due respect, sir--"

"Snap out of it, Nein," Truman interrupted, his raised voice startling a group of ravens out of a nearby tree, "or you're off this mission and back to headquarters to twiddle your thumbs, and to hell with how qualified you are to help us. Am I clear?"

Sasha had to pause and consider what Truman had said for a moment. Then, "Fine."

Truman smiled faintly. "Good. Now--"

Which was precisely when something flopped out of the tree overhead and landed in the dirt between them with a sickening splat. Sasha and Truman both stared down at the shapeless blob for a few long seconds. "What is that?" Truman finally asked, debating over whether or not to poke it with his shoe.

"I think..." Being very careful not to get too close, Sasha bent down to examine it. "It's a bird," he said, straightening. "Clearly dead. A raven, if you'd like to be precise."

Truman glanced up at the tree it had fallen out of, then back down at the body. He reached out very carefully with his telekinesis and picked it up--it flopped over, its wings dragging limply in the dirt. "It's..." He went to poke it, but Sasha stopped him with a hand on his wrist.

"I wouldn't, sir. Germs."

Truman shook him off and poked the bird anyway. Blood and fluid seeped out of half a dozen wounds that looked like they'd been made by rather sharp claws. "It's completely boneless," he said, dropping it back to the ground. He quickly wiped his hand off on a vine creeping nearby. "Something came along and ripped all its bones out."

"Very precisely, if they managed to keep the body intact," Sasha added.

"Couldn't have been done by an animal..." Truman began, then trailed off into silence, glancing around at the darker parts of the forest. "Maybe we'd better keep moving."

They walked on in silence after that, carefully picking their way down the path, and both of them keeping a closer eye on the surrounding forest than before. The trail eventually petered out into nothingness just in front of a particularly large, dead tree--the only thing keeping it from falling over were the vines wrapped around it, binding it to several other trees nearby.

"Well," Sasha said, glancing up at the tree, "this exercise has proven almost entirely pointless."

"We must've missed a turn or something..."

"I sincerely--" Sasha stopped in his tracks, sniffing the air. "Sir, do you smell..."

Truman nodded. "Smoke, yes." He tilted his head towards the forest at his left. "I think it's coming from this way." Without waiting to see if Sasha would follow, he psi-blasted an opening through the vines and took off into the forest.

Once off the path, the forest turned into a vast, complicated maze of tree trunks--the trees had grown so close together that they blocked out the sun, leaving all the lower branches dead and bare--broken only by the creeping vines and an odd, thick fog. Strangely enough, all the trees seemed to grow in the same, twisting pattern, creating natural paths and leading anyone who might be walking them to the same location, no matter where they started from.

Truman jogged down the would-be paths as fast as he could, with Sasha close behind and muttering about poor decision-making the whole way. They both skidded to a stop at the trail's end, nearly colliding with one another. They had come to the edge of a small clearing that formed the forest's center. A deer that had been grazing there bounded off into the trees, startled by their less than stealthy approach.

In the past, the clearing might have been beautiful, with its running stream and clear view of the sky overhead. Now, it was little more than smoldering ruins. The stream barely moved at all; it was dirty, sluggish, and Sasha had a feeling it was likely poisonous besides. The grass, what little there was of it, was all dead and dying.

Scattered around the clearing was the source of the smoke: a number of burned out gypsy caravans in varying states of disrepair, but all of them still smoking, as if they'd been burned recently. Someone had spray-painted graffiti on almost every available surface in an angry red paint--"nihil cogitas" was the most prevalent, followed by the occasional "nihil cogito?" (1)

They both took a quick survey of the scene, until Sasha, stepping out from under the tree cover--the grass crunched and crumbled underneath the heels of his shoes--said, "I suppose this would be the best place to find Galochio's memory vaults, if there are any to be found."

"If there's any left," Truman added, kicking aside a plank that had "nihil agis" scrawled all over it. Then, motioning to the caravans on his left, "You check that half. I'll check the rest."

The caravans weren't all that difficult to search, considering they had, for the most part, been burned down to their fragile frames. All Sasha had found in the first couple of caravans was ash, graffiti, and some skeletons belonging to some sort of small animal. He didn't particularly care to examine those too closely.

Crack.

Sasha dropped the burnt piece of plywood he'd been lifting, all of his mental focus shifting to the forest behind him. Somewhere, probably less than ten feet away, a twig had snapped. Hm...curious.

He scanned the surrounding area without finding anything out of the ordinary save for a wayward, half-dead censor hell-bent on stomping out any exposed tree roots it came across. Must have been the deer, he thought, moving on to the next--and last--caravan. This one was a little more intact than the others; the walls were all still in place, although the ceiling had caved in. Sasha was just about to step inside when there was a loud crash from the other side of the clearing.

"Hey, Nein!" Another crash, the sound of wood splintering, and a grunt from Truman. "We've got a live one here!"

Sasha bit back a sigh and some rather unflattering remarks. "I take it you've found the memory vault, sir."

After yet another crash and the heavy thunk of a safe door swinging open and hitting someone's shins, Truman answered, "Uh, yeah. Pretty sure it's the right one."

Sasha rounded the corner to find Truman sitting amongst the ruins of one of the caravans, right on top of a gray-green memory vault. The vault continued to struggle to break free and escape; Truman had to kick it every so often to keep it still.

"It looks like--" Truman kicked the vault again-- "it looks like they all crawled here to die," he said, nodding to debris at his feet. Sasha took a second look at it as he approached and noticed for the first time the small, quadrupedal safes peeking out from under burnt wood and chipped paint. All of them lay still, turned a dull gray color tinted by rust.

"Memory vaults don't just...die," he said, shaking his head.

"I've got some pretty compelling evidence that says otherwise." Truman finally hopped off the vault, walking around in front of it. "This one must be younger...whatever got to the other ones hasn't had time to kill this one yet."

"Or it could be an older memory, perhaps a primal one. Something difficult to kill."

Truman sighed. "Look, are we going to stand around debating this, or are we going to see what's inside?"

Simultaneously, they both reached inside the vault--

Nicholas Harper paced the padded white-walled room, back and forth and back and forth, counting out each step under his breath. "One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three..." His normally curly blond hair was straight and limp, plastered to the sides of his head down to his ears by sweat, and his normally bright dark blue eyes had a dull sheen to them. With every step he took, he shivered. "One thousand nine, one thousand ten..."

Leaning against the wall in the corner across from him, behind where Sasha and Truman were now standing, Oskar Galochio watched Nick's every move with a hint of concern. "You okay, Nicky?" He had an exceptionally thick accent; Sasha ended up having to translate what he said for Truman.

"Shut up." Nick rubbed some sweat off his face with the palms of his hands before it could drip into his eyes. "One thousand twenty-one, one thousand twenty-two..."

At the count of one thousand twenty-seven steps, he abruptly stopped and turned to face the door. Sasha happened to be standing in the way, but Nick stared right through him, oblivious.

It was still a full minute, however, before someone unlocked the door and opened it just wide enough for them to slip through. A tall African-American man wearing a white orderly's jacket entered the room, carrying two syringes full of a cloudy white substance. "All right, boys," he said cheerfully, closing the door behind him and locking it, "time for your medications."

Nick leveled a dull, angry glare at the man. "Shut up, Robert. I'm not paying you to be clever."

Robert chuckled. "If you say so, boss." He went first to Oskar, rolling back the sleeve on his left arm and poking around in the crook of his elbow until he found a vein. "Shift change is in ten minutes," he said, injecting the drug into Oskar's arm. Oskar winced.

"Nine," Nick corrected, rubbing his arms as if for warmth. "You're late."

"Well, sorry." Robert shrugged, rolling Oskar's sleeve back down and patting his arm. "Bit of a scuffle down on the second floor; couple of cellmates tried to kill each other. You know how it is." Next, he turned to Nick, taking his right arm and searching for a vein.

Nick breathed out a slow sigh, scratching the side of his face. He looked as if he hadn't shaved in at least a week, and he'd scratched and pulled away some of the resulting facial hair, leaving his developing beard patchy at best. "You know, if you really wanted to do something useful, you'd be giving me drugs to counter these withdrawal symptoms instead of pumping me full of this placebo crap."

"That's not what you're paying me for, boss," Robert answered, smiling. "You pay me to stop giving you the psychic power blocking drugs...that's just what I do." He tapped Nick's arm, dropping the empty syringe into his pocket. "Eight minutes 'till shift change."

He left the room with only a backward glance at Oskar, locking and bolting the door behind him. As soon as Robert was gone, Nick snapped to attention, spine straightening, his eyes suddenly regaining the fierce gleam Sasha remembered from years past. It still unsettled him more than a little. Nick turned to Oskar. "You still remember?"

Oskar nodded. "Nihil agis, nihil moliris, nihil cogitas quod non ego sentiam," he recited in a faltering, jerky sort of rhythm. His pronunciation was abysmal to say the least, but Nick smiled, clearly pleased.

"Good. Don't forget." He crossed the room in a few short steps--walking right through Truman like some sort of phantom--and made to grab hold of Oskar's head, but the other man stopped him, grabbing him by his wrists.

"You've still got at least seven minutes 'till--"

The corners of Nick's thin lips quirked into a strange half-smile. "I'm not paying Robert to survive, either." He patted Oskar's cheek gently. "See you on the other side, right?"

Oskar didn't get a chance to respond. Nick threw him against the wall, a red-yellow thought shield shimmering into place around them, and then the room exploded in a sudden burst of light and heat. The shockwave was so intense, Sasha covered his eyes with his sleeve--an automatic, instinctive reaction; as it was, the explosion merely flowed and dissipated around them harmlessly.

The memory deteriorated exponentially from there. The blinding whiteness never quite went away, and the only sound was a vague ringing that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Only one partially coherent image emerged from the haze, a few seconds after Sasha estimated the actual explosion had died down--a tall, emaciated figure with a thick head of blond-hair leaping down towards the building grounds, disappearing into the night.

As soon as the memory ended, Truman turned to Sasha. "We're going to have to find out if Robert survived the explosion."

"It's unlikely," Sasha said, glancing down at the vault, "but we should investigate his background in either case." He looked around at the mental landscape--the clouds seemed to have grown darker and more ominous since their arrival, the air heavy and still. Perhaps, he thought, it was going to rain. "We should also consider the possibility that Nick may have had further outside help."

Truman nodded slowly. "I thought we rounded up most of his power base and wiped out all his funding...maybe we missed something." He nudged the memory vault with his shoe. It didn't move, and had in fact started to take on a dull, gray pallor similar to the dead vaults nearby.

"Or he found someone willing to help him--the Galochios, for example."

Truman was about to ask what could possibly inspire the psychic underground's equivalent of a mob family to free the man who'd double-crossed them routinely when something in the forest hit the ground with a crash. From the sound of it, whatever had fallen was much too small and compact to be one of the massive trees that had been falling around them almost like clockwork.

"Uh--Agent Nein? Mr. Zanotto, sir? Are you even around--man, those vines grow fast...hey! That's my arm!"

Sasha quirked an eyebrow. "I wasn't aware Agent Kowalski had field clearance."

"He doesn't," Truman muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. "I swear, the second we get all this straightened out, I'm transferring him right back to San Francisco faster than he can blink."

A few seconds later, Kowalski's tall, skinny form tumbled out of the forest, dragging a mess of creeping vines along with him. "Oh. There you are. I thought you might be--"

Truman cut him off with an angry wave of his hand. "Kowalski, what the hell do you think you're doing? You don't have clearance to be here--you don't have clearance to be in anybody's head, much less one tied into such a sensitive investigation! I want you out. Now."

Kowalski seemed to shrink visibly. He was taller than Truman by at least a couple of inches, but for the moment at least he seemed very small indeed. "I--" a pause to stop and clear his throat, almost timidly-- "I'm sorry, sir, but--"

"Damn right you should be," Truman grumbled. He started to issue a few more orders, but was held back by Sasha.

"Sir," he said, watching Kowalski--who had fixed his light blue eyes on the forest floor, "it's possible Agent Kowalski just had some sort of pressing news to deliver...some development in the case, perhaps."

Kowalski was quick to nod, jumping back into the conversation. "Uh, yeah. Agent Shackley just called--your cellphone still works, by the way." He cleared his throat and continued, "You're needed back at headquarters right away."

"Did they find Harper?"

His feet shuffled anxiously. "Well, no, not exactly. But, ah--it's funny, your daughter actually mentioned this when she called earlier, and I was trying to tell you, but--"

"The point, Kowalski," Truman interrupted, voice low and strained.

"Well, sir, apparently Harper--"

Whatever Kowalski had been about to say was promptly forgotten, however, as a dark figure that was really more of a vague blur than anything solid burst out of the forest and tackled him. They went tumbling between Truman and Sasha--knocking both men nearly off their feet in the process--and smashed into a nearby caravan.

It only took a brief moment for Sasha to orient himself and fully take in the situation. The creature, whatever it was, was so entangled with Kowalski--and rather intent on shredding him with its long, wickedly curved claws that glinted even in the fading light--that psi-blasting it without doing significant collateral damage was impossible. Instead, he reached out with telekinesis and attempted to pull the creature off--with surprisingly little success.

"Sir, it's--"

"Shielded, I noticed," Truman finished for him. "Maybe we should--"

"Uh, guys?" Kowalski had been in the process of escaping, but the creature hooked a claw into his leg and yanked him back. "Help would be good!" His voice reached up into a distressingly high pitch.

Truman turned to Sasha. "I'll pull, you shoot!"

Nodding, Sasha circled the clearing until he found what he hoped would be a good vantage point. He'd no sooner gotten into position when Truman's telekinetic hand grabbed hold of Kowalski's feet and pulled, tearing him free from the creature's grasp--and also tearing more flesh in the process. The moment Kowalski was clear, and just before the creature reared to turn and pounce on him again, Sasha shot it.

The first blast sent it flying into a fallen tree in a snarling mass, the second and third convinced it to stay where it had landed, temporarily stunned if not unconscious. Sasha immediately took up a position between the creature and his fellow agents, just in case it found a second wind.

Behind him, Truman was yelling--again--even as he helped Kowalski to his feet and tried to staunch the flow of blood. "Louis, what the hell did you think you were--"

"You asked me that already, sir," he interrupted, keeping a hand pressed against his right thigh. His first foray into the mental world, and he'd already ended up with several mental scars--Sasha didn't foresee him getting his field agent clearance any time soon. "Like I was saying--" a grunt of pain as he tried to put weight on his torn leg, then immediately thought better of it-- "they found Nick."

Sasha turned, focusing all his attention on their conversation now.

"Already?" Truman blinked, clearly surprised. "Where?"

"Uh..." Kowalski fidgeted, but whether it was out of pain or anxiety was hard to say. "Nick's wherever Razputin is. He went missing from the academy a few hours ago, and--"

The long stream of obscenities that came from Truman's mouth after that was very impressive. Sasha was rather tempted to follow suit, but managed to rein himself in at the last second.

"That's why Shackley wants us us back at headquarters," Kowalski continued--he seemed to be turning an unsettling shade of green. "He said he'll send a small group of agents up here to finish the investigation for you, sir." He paused, taking a few shuddering breaths. "You know, I don't feel so hot..."

"Mental damage," Truman said tersely. "You'll be fine." He was rooting around in his pockets, muttering something about smelling salts, when the creature loomed up behind Sasha, growling and spitting.

The creature had been large to begin with, but now--as if it were growing with every passing second--it seemed immense. It bore more than a passing resemblance to the werewolves of folklore, with its elongated, canine snout and dark red fur. But there was something in its eyes, a keen gleam of almost human intelligence, that set Sasha back on his heels. Whatever neuroses of Oskar's that had conjured it up and given it life had been deep and serious, no doubt.

"Aha!" Behind him, Truman had finally found the smelling salts and held them aloft, still keeping Kowalski steady with one hand. "Finally. We'd better get out of here, Sasha."

Sasha glanced down at his shoulder, where the creature had dribbled a fair amount of opaque, sticky-looking saliva. "Yes, we should," he answered thinly, psi-blasting the creature again--it staggered back only a few feet, more annoyed than it was wounded.

He stepped backwards, almost running into Kowalski as the man swayed on his feet and nearly passed out. Sasha dragged him back to something resembling a standing position just as the creature snarled and charged again. Truman held out a small, oval pillbox-like container, and Sasha grabbed hold of it and pulled--it snapped open, releasing a cloud of noxious fumes that made Kowalski gag.

Then everything went black.

"...nihil moliris, nihil cogitas..."

Sasha dusted off his jacket and straightened the collar, ignoring Oskar's continued ramblings. The cell was exactly as they'd left it, save for the absence of one Frederick Boole--he'd run out as soon as they returned to their own minds (or, in Kowalski's case, returned and then passed out on the floor), several guards in tow, saying something about a fight over in the building's right wing.

Truman was busy hauling Kowalski to his feet and shaking him back into consciousness, muttering things like "this is why he'll never make field agent" under his breath. "Louis! Dammit...too bad we don't have any real smelling salts."

Kowalski groaned, shaking himself awake--and then immediately regretted the motion and clutched his head in his hands. "I'm awake, sir...really." He took a few steps under his own power, then staggered right into a wall.

Sasha arched an eyebrow at him. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Oh, yeah," he answered, taking a few long seconds to catch his breath before continuing, "it's only a mild heart attack, plus a migraine. I'll be fine."

Truman promptly took the car keys from him and started for the door, pausing only briefly. "Then let's go; I'll drive, since you're in no shape to, Louis."

"Good idea." Kowalski staggered out into the hall with Sasha following not far behind, if only to make sure he didn't fall over again. "I'll fill you in on what Agent Shackley told me on the way to the airstrip."

"Ah," Truman muttered under his breath, "competency. How refreshing."

The SUV swung around a sharp curve at more than twenty miles over the posted speed limit, forcing Sasha to latch onto the passenger side door for dear life. In the back, Kowalski slid off the seat--he'd decided against staying upright for any extended length of time, at least for the moment--and onto the floor with a groan. Truman, meanwhile, kept his eyes fixed on the road and his foot glued to the gas pedal.

"So, ah--" Kowalski climbed back up onto the seat, only to fall off again at the next sharp turn-- "Agents Marks and Armistead found the missing truck in the airport parking lot, so it looks like Nick or someone working for Nick got to him between the lot and the arrival gate."

"Security tapes?" It was more of a grunt than an actual question.

Kowalski shrugged. "They were still working on it when Shackley called, sir."

Truman passed a slow-moving semi on the right, running roughshod over the gravel shoulder. "You said something about a video--"

"Some sort of satellite video feed, yeah," Kowalski answered. He gnawed on his lower lip anxiously before continuing, "We'll be able to see it when we get back to the jet. Right now, it looks like Harper's hijacking our secure video frequency to broadcast this video of his."

"You mean to say it's being broadcast to all of our branch agencies, as well as headquarters?" Sasha asked, glancing in the rearview mirror. He thought he'd seen a police car behind them.

Kowalski nodded, ignoring a long string of profanity from Truman. "Yessir. There's also a video tape..."

"A ransom note?" Truman and Sasha both asked at once.

He fiddled with the high collar of his Psychonauts uniform, yanking it away from his throat as if it were choking him. "Ah...I guess you could call it that, sure. Agent Shackley told me Nick had it sent to your daughter, sir," he said, nodding weakly at Truman. "That's what she called about earlier."

For a moment, Truman stared straight ahead without showing any outward reaction, not even blinking. Then he let go of the wheel and whipped around in his seat, fixing Kowalski with a stare that had the agent sinking down towards the floor of the car.

Sasha promptly reached out and took the wheel to keep them from driving off the road. He also found the brake pedal and began applying some telekinetic pressure to it in order to get the car back under the legal speed limit.

"Do you mean to say," Truman began lowly, "that that raving lunatic not only knew my address, but he deliberately got my sixteen-year-old daughter involved?" Kowalski squeaked out something that might have been a "yes" in response, while in the front seat, Sasha began suggesting that Truman should either focus on driving or they should all consider updating their wills. Truman ignored him.

"He could have--she could've just as easily been kidnapped. I swear to God, if Bolt didn't get a security detail out there and get her to headquarters within five minutes, I'm going to bust him all the way down to janitor. Then I'll fire him. And possibly kill him."

"I'm sure Lili is fine, sir," Sasha said, struggling to keep his voice calm as he navigated another sharp bend in the road. "And oh, look, there's our exit. Sir, please--drive."

Truman finally turned and sat back down, taking the wheel from Sasha, who was all too happy to relinquish it. They drove the rest of the way to the airstrip in silence.

The jet was ready and waiting when Truman brought the SUV to a screeching halt next to it. Sasha slid out the door and headed for the jet immediately, muttering something about being thankful to be alive. The jet's pilot, a tall, muscular man with shaggy blond hair and a tan that suggested he'd rather be on a beach somewhere in southern California, waved to them from the cockpit as they all climbed aboard.

"Get us in the air and back to headquarters, Fahrenheit," Truman ordered, just as soon as Kowalski was settled comfortably in a seat. He still looked an uncomfortable shade of green--Sasha handed him an air sickness bag on his way to the cockpit, just in case.

Fahrenheit nodded. "Right away, Mr. Zanotto." Not glancing up from a few last minute pre-flight checks, he inclined his head towards the co-pilot's seat. "Oh, yeah, there's a vid waiting for you."

Truman slid into the indicated seat. Sasha took up hovering over his shoulder. Ignoring the invasion of his personal space for the moment, Truman flipped on the comm screen and brought up the video footage Agent Shackley had had sent to them.

As the jet took off, the screen flickered to life in oddly vivid color. Nicholas Harper stood front and center, adjusting a stage light offscreen before turning his attention to the camera. He'd shaved off his beard at some point, and his eyes had that old sharp, dangerous gleam back in them. After a minute adjustment to the camera, he smiled.

"Ah, Truman, it's been a long time...and no, Sasha, I'm not forgetting you, since I know you'll be watching. I'm just ignoring you.

"Anyway, gentlemen, I think it's time we had a little chat. Remember the last time you all got it in your heads to capture me...?"

(1) "nihil cogito?" "I think nothing?"