This chapter brought to you at an alarmingly fast rate to make up for the wait for the last one. This is another one without a lot of action, but—and this time I really truly mean it—you should be very excited about the next one.

By the by, I still don't own Psych. Shocking, right? There's just no justice in this world anymore.


If he does anything, anything at all, it has to fulfill two qualifications: 1) He has to be certain beyond any shadow of a doubt that he will get something useful out of it, and 2) he has to be even more certain that he won't get caught.

But "doing" anything isn't an option yet. First he has a lot to think through, and a ton of information to gather to make up for however long he's been sitting around wallowing in futile misery.

He devotes the entire evening to thinking. He's going to sit up in bed and just review all the information he has and draw all the conclusions he can until he can't stay awake anymore.

Sebastian obviously doesn't know it, but he's involved in the Master's plan in a way similar to how Arashk is. And… if he doesn't know it, that opens up a whole other can of worms. Arashk has been assuming he's the only one who's part of it because he hasn't found anyone displaying any signs that they're here against their will, but if not all of the Master's victims actually know they're victims, they'll be harder to spot. Maybe impossible.

There has to be some kind of pattern, but it might not be a discernible one. The connection between him and Livia may be a good place to start. Actually… she's probably a victim too.

Arashk blinks into the darkness.

That's where he left off, isn't it? The connection between them. They can both do things that they rationally shouldn't be able to. With him, it's knowing the unknowable; with her, it's doing the undoable. He doesn't know the full extent of her ability to break known laws of physics, or where that ability came from—and really, she might not either; he has no clue regarding the origins of his own—but it's something he should really work on figuring out.

That's not all, though. There are three patterns he's found so far that seem to be significant: people's family members being dead or in danger of dying, people forgetting their own names, and people being able to do what should be impossible.

Sebastian and Arashk fall under the first category; Livia and Arashk fall under both of the other two; and he, Liv, and Loriss fall under the last.

Even though this memory hasn't seen the light of day for several months, immediately Arashk is thinking back to the first time he saw Sebastian, sticking swords down his throat during the first of these carnivals Arashk ever experienced. He sees the streaks of blood on the silver blade, the quick disposal of the evidence on the baggy red pants Sebastian is always wearing during his act, probably for that exact purpose…

How did Arashk forget about that? It was what caught his attention in the first place, the reason he singled out the sword swallower at dinner and introduced himself so near the beginning.

Okay, so he's got four people with superhero powers on his hands, himself included. One of them—Arashk himself—is a victim of kidnapping. Two of them—Seb and Liv—have displayed strong indications that they are not. And on the last of them—Loriss—the jury's out.

So what does he know about Loriss? That he's got some kind of history with the Master, and that somehow, he was… a witness to the shooting on the pier. Arashk saw, or rather, felt it happen through him. So there are two possibilities that he can think of: Loriss is psychic too and has some kind of connection with Arashk that would allow him to have a vision of his father, or… he was in some way involved in the actual shooting.

His fists clench at the thought, and he tries to calm down, to remind himself that there is still so much he doesn't know, and there's some compelling circumstantial evidence to suggest that Loriss might be a victim too. What Arashk doesn't understand is that they were definitely nowhere near his hometown on that day, and he knows, courtesy of the works of Kipling, that Loriss was at the carnival about to go on his break not half an hour before it happened.

What are you getting at, Ronaldo? he asks himself with a sardonic snigger. That it's impossible that he could have been involved? At this point, nothing is impossible. Annoying but true. So the question is, based on the available information, what particular brand of impossibility could have been utilized to put Loriss at the scene of the crime? Or at least to in some way allow him to witness it?

Several potential answers flash through his mind. Teleportation is at the top of the list, right alongside the possibility that he's psychic as Arashk is. Not for the first time by any stretch, he grimaces at the thought, but he forces himself to put away the misgivings. They have no place here anymore. The world, as it turns out, makes even less sense than he's always thought.

He can only speculate as to the how; the other question is the why. Either he's being forced, or he's in on it. If he's being forced, he would probably make a very valuable ally, whereas if he's actually voluntarily working with the Master… then he's Arashk's first lead in all the time he's been here as to who is directly responsible for the leverage being held over Arashk's head. Either way, it's a game changer.

Arashk immediately thinks that he would probably be able to tell which of these possibilities is the reality if he just had a chance to see where Loriss lives. It ought to be fairly obvious just from looking at his bedroom whether he's living comfortably or trying desperately not to build any kind of life here. And even if it's not readily apparent at first glance, this whole psychic deal really oughta come in mighty handy.

The problem is… it's risky. Always and horribly risky. He can't even do something as innocuous as come up with an excuse to knock on Loriss' door—after figuring out where the guy lives, of course—because a) the way he's been acting, he wouldn't be aware enough to deviate from his usual route in any way at all, and b) as far as he knows, the Master has no idea Arashk is clued in on Loriss' significance, and he needs to do everything he can to keep it that way.

He lets out a sudden grunt of frustration so loud he surprises himself, and immediately hopes that neither of his neighbors heard that, but soon cycles back to focus on his near-complete inability to do anything. He balls up his fists and presses them against his temples, taking deep breaths. This has never been a problem before. Back when he was someone else, when he was faced with a puzzle, he was allowed to examine all the evidence, to talk to witnesses, to scope it out, to see it. Even in the cases wherein he wasn't, he found a way to. Now? He's got nothing. And if he's caught trying to turn that nothing into something, the consequences will be severe.

But… but that's never stopped him before. He went behind people's backs all the time and he was never caught. So what's different now?

For the briefest moment the scene changes before him. Tears tremble in blue eyes, music echoes in the background, and it all melts away again as a glass of wine splashes into his face and his whole world falls to pieces all over again.

He was caught. Once.

Arashk releases a sigh, and stands up to retrieve the T-shirt and sweats he sleeps in from his nightstand. The gears in his head don't stop turning, and his motions are aggressively unhurried as a result.

So if he does something, he'll have to be careful. Fine. He's never really put much effort into being careful, but he feels like if he did he could be pretty good at it.

As he unbuttons his vest, something falls to the floor, and he stands there with the article of clothing half-off, staring down at the object. He can't quite say that he forgot about it, because for some reason it feels like he's never really lost awareness of its presence, but it's been such a long time since he thought about why.

It seems that in all this time he's been moving through his days in a dreamlike state, sometimes utterly unaware of what he was doing, he never took that napkin off his person. As he stares down at it, he vaguely recalls going to throw it in a public trash can during a carnival towards the beginning of his self-inflicted stupor, but when he went to draw it out from his vest, his entire body was assaulted with a cold like he'd never felt before, and he let out an audible whimper as he acquiesced.

The drawing of the face he claimed to the Master to have seen in a vision was a gift from Sebastian's family, and it's obviously very important. The only other thing on the napkin is the name "Arthur Loriss." The name that he at least at one point was convinced would be paramount to his investigation.

He's not sure when or why he stopped operating under that conviction, but he should probably get back to it.

But surely there's more than just that name that he should make sure he doesn't forget.

Arashk retrieves his Sharpie and writes all the names he thinks may have even the slightest relevance to his investigation: "Livia Istok," "Sebastian Jaeger," "the Master," and, just in case, "Arashk Ronaldo." After a pause, he circles "the Master," and adds "me" in parentheses after that last one.

It feels unnecessary, but before this whole mess he would have said writing his own name down just in case he forgot would be unnecessary. At this point, nothing is out of the cards.

As he slips the crumpled napkin into the elastic of his sweatpants, he starts mentally reviewing everything he has to look out for. Sebastian really doesn't seem to know anything helpful, and for Arashk to clue him in on his awareness of his abilities seems more likely to freak him out than anything else. Livia might have some information on the origins of her abilities, which would be extremely helpful, as it's very likely that the origin is the same across the board.

Crap. What if it's not? Better just assume it is; he'll cross that messy, derelict bridge when he comes to it.

So questioning Livia might be fruitful, but he doesn't know how much patience she has left with him, and at the very least, to try to get answers would alert her that he's gotten over the rut he's been in for however long. Right now, her pity is an advantage. He doesn't particularly want to risk her blabbing for another might.

But the only other lead he has is Loriss, and he has gleaned so little information on the guy for the entire duration of his time here that a vicious headache strikes without warning at the thought of how much longer it would take to learn anything useful.

He sits on the edge of his bed, massaging his temples. He'd like to think that it doesn't matter how long it takes, that sure it would suck if he weren't nearing the end of his imprisonment but he could just keep trucking on, but he is on a timetable. He doesn't know how much time he has, but he needs to make every day count. If he can't make any progress relatively soon, he will die. And so will who knows how many others.

Idly waiting for new information to come his way isn't going to get him anywhere. He's gotta take some carefully calculated risk. Preferably one that doesn't rely on the discretion of other people.

He's gotta find a way to get into Loriss' apartment when nobody else is there. That seems to be his best option.

Trying not to be too hopeful, he immediately attempts the only way he can think of to acquire information to help with this endeavor, and asks the empty air, "Got anything for me?"

The spirits don't respond. In fact, for the first time in a long time, he can't feel their presence at all.

Okay. So he's on his own.

What else is new?


At first, when Arashk walks through the relatively quiet fairground that morning to get to his tent just a few minutes before it opens, he feels like a fraud. He knows that he's gotta keep acting the way he has been. If he's convincing, there's a chance he'll even have an edge on the Master. If he's not, he'll be under greater scrutiny than ever and lose any opportunity to change a thing about the situation.

Sebastian pins him down at dinner that evening and asks what his sudden retreat last night was all about. Arashk, wide-eyed, denies any memory of the event. It almost makes him sick to see how easily Seb buys it.

The days crawl on, and he falls into a groove. Constantly acting empty and defeated is pretty exhausting at first, but he gets used to it. And all the while, he's trying to get information.

Really, his only semi-safe connection to Loriss is Livia. Flat-out asking her to be an excuse for him to enter Loriss' room that doesn't look like it was his idea would be so easy, but it's not something he's willing to chance. But there might be another option.

The way he sees it, if the two of them are on book-borrowing and nickname-using terms, they must sometimes do stuff together. Eat food, maybe watch movies, whatever. He has ways of getting regular updates on at least one of them, which is all he needs. And if those updates go on long enough, eventually he's bound to hear about some form of socialization taking place outside of Loriss' place, lasting long enough for him to get in, see what there is to see, and get out. But getting such a stream of updates would require spending more time with that person.

Suddenly trying to become pals with Loriss is absolutely not a possibility, so he has to start gravitating towards Livia again.

As far as he can recall, he's spent very little time with her since he showed up at her door at five in the morning to borrow that book. It's still sitting on the dresser across from the bed; she hasn't asked about it, and as much as he'd love to use it as an excuse to talk to her again, suddenly returning it would fall under the category of deviating from his normal routine, something he hasn't done in a long time.

He figures the only safe way to do this is to eat with her once, but make it look like an accident, and during the meal give her a good reason to start making an effort to spend time with him again.

A full three weeks pass before he has an opportunity to enact this plan. A new box full of food shows up in his room the following day, and he has to eat all of it before he can go to the community meals again; that's how he's been operating all this time and he can't change that. He can't eat at a faster pace than usual either, because that would look suspicious too.

It's finally gone after fifteen days. After that it's just a matter of logistics; the dining area has to be crowded enough that he is forced to sit at a table with other people, there has to be an empty spot by Livia, and unless that spot is the only vacancy, she can't be at the table when he takes a seat, or it would look intentional. Thank goodness Sebastian isn't also a factor; Arashk never turned him away when he asked permission to sit with him, but if he walked into the dining area and saw that Sebastian was already there, he still elected to sit by himself.

Eight days pass before he gets his chance. As Arashk feared, they're agonizing. He has to remain keenly aware of what's happening around him, but he can't actually do anything, and all the while he has very few opportunities to drop his façade of brokenness.

Finally, though, the stars align, and Arashk finds himself standing at the edge of the tables with his tray of food, unable to find a single empty table. And lo and behold, he sees Livia getting up, leaving a half-eaten salad on her table, to go get another cup of water. She's eating alone. He has a few seconds to get over there before she returns, but he can't hurry or it will look too intentional.

He meets these requirements by a hair, spending a few seconds meandering around the tables, pretending that he still hasn't figured out they're all occupied, and finally setting his tray down at the seat diagonal from Livia's just as she reenters his line of sight.

He keeps his head down, pretending not to notice her approach, and he contemplates saying something aloud to express his fake surprise when she reclaims her seat, but thinking that would be a bit too much, he just raises his eyebrows a little and goes back to eating.

For a moment she doesn't say anything, and fear that she'll spend the meal in silence takes hold of him. But then come the words, "Hi, Arashk."

A complex mixture of emotions hides behind the greeting. Surprise, just to be seeing him. Wariness, since she can't be sure of his mental state right now. Guilt, that she's allowed so much time to pass between checking up on him.

He's gotta use that last one to his advantage, starting immediately.

If he calls her Livia, she won't think anything of it. If he calls her Liv, she still might not. But there's an option that will draw her attention to it, definitely look deliberate—which in this case is a good thing—and remind her of the connection they share.

"Hey, Livia," he returns quietly, allows a fraction of a second's pause, and amends, "Liv."

He forces himself not to watch the fruits of his labors unfold, but he knows it's worked. He idly uses his spoon to push his stew around the bowl, and after just a few moments of silence Livia launches right into it: "How have you been?"

The guilt and concern in her voice are much more apparent now; the wariness is still there but has evaporated almost completely.

He shrugs, not looking up. Not only does this make it clear to her that he doesn't want to talk about it, she'll likely twist it into a sign that he no longer trusts her enough to talk about it. Shifting the blame to her. At least that's the idea.

Uncertainty is coming off her in waves. As he raises the spoon to his lips, she tries, "I haven't seen much of you lately."

Time for a slightly longer answer. He swishes the stew around his mouth for a few seconds, swallows, and responds softly, "I've been eating in my room a lot." And as an afterthought, "Since…" He trails off and takes another bite.

Now she's thinking about how much time he must be spending alone. Remembering that she was one of his only friends. Realizing that if he's lonely, she's largely at fault. And that she abandoned him at the exact moment things started to get hard for him.

For a long time she doesn't say anything. Indeed, how would one respond to that? He gives it enough time to make it clear that he's not really invested in keeping the conversation going, and just as she's finishing up her salad, he asks as if it has just occurred to him, "How have you been?"

Another stabbing reminder that she hasn't been around.

"Fine, thanks," she says, and finally, for just a moment, he looks up and meets her eyes. Her hair's down, and he notes it's markedly longer than it was when they first met, but she normally has it up so it doesn't really tell him much about how much time has passed. Her skin is clear, practically glowing. He notices the polished nails on her hand, currently paused in its journey to bring her fork to her mouth. He thinks the top she's wearing is a new one. She looks well.

A spark of very real resentment flares up in his mind, to his surprise. He pushes it down, only allowing a tiny, forced smile to grace his expression as a demonstration that he'd like to be happy to hear this, but can't quite find the energy.

Time to go in for the kill. "Look, I…" and he looks down, stirring his stew a little too aggressively, "I'm sorry I woke you up that morning. It was… I was… I was so… I don't even know why I…" He takes a few shallow breaths, composing himself. "I'm just… I'm sorry."

Now she thinks that she's made him believe the reason she's become so distant is that he interrupted her sleep that one time. Not only that, but she thinks he's genuinely distressed about it. The guilt emanating from her is palpable.

"Arashk, it's fine," she responds, quickly and emphatically, and he allows himself to look up at her again, pasting an expression of uncertainty across his face. Her eyes are wide as she goes on, "I'm not upset about that. I'm really not."

Not even asking for the promised explanation. Perfect.

But she's not done: "I'm the one who should be apologizing anyway—I'm sorry I haven't really… been around. I guess I just… got busy. Life got crazy, and I'm not so good at time management."

The excuses are straight-up lies, or at least extreme hyperbole, but at least it's better than saying, "You were kind of making me uncomfortable so I've been purposely avoiding having to deal with you. Guess now that you're in front of me I can't really think of a viable excuse, but I feel bad so I'm going to amend my ways for the sake of my own moral image of myself."

He blinks, wondering when he became so cynical.

Clearly distressed by his silence, Livia barrels on, "I'd like to see more of you. And it's not good for you to be alone so much. Would it be okay if I started coming over more? And you can come over anytime you like, of course."

Wowee, she is desperate to be reinstated as a morally upright individual. Arashk chews his lip, letting her stew in her guilt for a long moment, and eventually simply says, "Sure."

The chance at redemption lights up her entire face, and he tries not to visibly react to it; she can't know how much effort has been put into this conversation, how pivotal it is. "Great!" she chirps. "I'm actually in the middle of a Downton Abbey marathon. Have you seen it? I've got seasons one through three on DVD. I could bring them over and we could watch together."

Arashk blinks at the immediacy of the proposal. He has seen a few episodes, actually, and he must admit it's quite compelling. But the question is, would the fragile psychic character he's playing have really watched TV? Probably not. He shakes his head, but says nothing.

"Well, that's an idea at least," says Liv, her anxiousness much more obvious than she wants it to be. "I have plans this evening but maybe tomorrow, yeah?"

"Yeah," Arashk replies, keeping his tone as neutral as possible, and adds, "I'm never doing anything in the evenings we don't have a show anyway."

She winces visibly, and starts gathering up her trash, now avoiding eye contact to some degree. "Okay," she says as she straightens up, arms full. "I'll see you soon. Have a nice evening."

"You too," he intones, voice so low it's almost a whisper, and she offers a smile as her final farewell before heading off in the opposite direction.

Arashk tries not to break into a victory dance on the walk back to his apartment. This is just phase one. There are at least, like, two and a half more phases. Bit premature. Besides… there's a certain solemnness hanging over his mind after what's just happened.

He's lied before, and those lies sometimes hurt people, and frequently there was less at stake than there is now. But somehow, this still feels… different. Worse.

Maybe because he wasn't entirely lying.

This can be explained very logically, he reasons: he's disappointed with Livia. To some degree, he got a very real grim satisfaction from seeing the shame twist her features. She deserves it for abandoning him just when he needed her most.

And if she can disappoint him, it means he trusted her.

Saw her as a friend.

And he doesn't like hurting friends.

He sighs. That's what this boils down to. They may have met under seriously twisted circumstances, but she's treated him with a rare sort of non-self-seeking kindness when he couldn't give her a thing in return. Sure, she screwed up majorly, but everyone does at some point. He doesn't want to be upset with her. He doesn't want to get gratification out of guilt tripping her, and he doesn't want to have to keep lying to her.

His misgivings are rather easily dispelled when he reminds himself that it's very likely that her life is in just as much danger as his is, and this is honestly for her own good.


Just like that, Livia starts coming over almost every day.

When she does, he can't act overtly excited to see her, but he does his best to inject that quiet appreciation into his mannerisms, to make sure she has incentive to keep coming. Throwing gasoline on the flames of her guilt was useful as a tactic to get the ball rolling, but if she keeps feeling like that even as she tries to make amends, she might start shying away from the whole ordeal again.

Watching a long TV series together turns out to have tons of benefits: they can spend hours together without him having to be constantly in character, the show itself actually provides a nice distraction from everything, and she frequently brings snacks. One downside is that he has to put a lid on his enthusiasm and can't engage in the kind of in-depth discussions of each episode that he'd like to. So he saves all his observations and theories for after he busts out of here. If he can't share them with Livia, he has a best friend at home who he's certain would love to hear about them.

Inside two weeks, he's having visions of her nearly every night. Four days later, he learns where Loriss lives when he sees her visit briefly to return a book. And after the passing of about one more fortnight, he reaches phase three.

The atmosphere of the dream feels like, at most, four days into the future, and the analog clock on the wall of her tiny kitchen indicates the time as 7:16 as Livia pours a pot of spaghetti through a colander over her sink. Loriss is standing at her small table, composing a salad that actually looks pretty appetizing to Arashk, despite it being, you know, a salad. They're chatting away about some book that Arashk has never heard of, and it looks like they've been at it for some time.

The dream lasts until the clock reads 9pm and they're both drinking scotch but being pretty responsible about it, and as Arashk blinks awake to the light of midmorning, he knows immediately that he's found his chance.

One psychic skill that he actually has been attuning pretty well is the ability to will certain visions to replay. So the following night, he watches the scene a total of four more times, and finally pinpoints Loriss' times of arrival and departure: 6:58 and 10:11.

There it is. That's his window.

He knows what day this must be going down because today's their last show day in this location and they don't close till 9pm, Livia's promised him dinner and Downton Abbey tomorrow, and the following day is their last free day for the next week. He doesn't like not having any solid confirmation, but he turns it over in his head so many times and this is the only possibility.

There's one last precaution he feels he should take, though.

It might pay to give Loriss plenty of reasons to drink more.

There's really not an overwhelming amount he can do to encourage this, but if he can introduce little annoyances throughout his day leading up to dinner with Livia, he just might be able to stretch his window of time further than it otherwise would be. Not that he plans on needing any extra time, but it can't hurt.

So, when the day comes, he arrives at lunch early, as he knows Loriss always does, and since not many people are here yet, he's able to get away with tipping Loriss' half-full cup of lemonade all over his tuna sandwich and partially over the book lying open on the table while the guy is getting a napkin without anybody seeing. He immediately leaves the scene of the crime, trying to walk at a normal pace, for a moment kind of hoping Loriss is in cahoots with the Master, because if he's not Arashk would feel pretty bad about ruining his lunch and wrecking his book.

Although the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that Loriss would probably make a better ally than an enemy. Arashk would kill for somebody with whom he can speak freely about all this, and if he's just another bad guy… well, it depends on what else he finds out. But it might not be as much of an advantage as he's been imagining.

He wishes he could walk around throwing trash all over the place for Loriss to clean up, but to be seen out and about for any reason other than food would do more harm than good. So he has to leave it at that, and hope it's enough to get him drunk as a skunk. He's not much of a reader but even he'd be pretty pissed if the wind ruined one of his books, so he can only imagine how much this will affect Loriss.

Livia drops by in the early afternoon, simply to say hi and bring him a chocolate bar that she claims she bought accidentally but is obviously just another byproduct of guilt. He accepts it, but ventures to say, "I'm psychic, Liv. I know a deliberate chocolate bar of continued apology when I see one."

He hasn't said anything with so much personality in weeks, and he can tell she notes the same thing by the surprised and happy glint in her eyes, even as she's caught in the lie.

He sits there munching on the treat after she leaves, watching the hours tick by, and with every minute his trepidation mounts. About a hundred times the little angel and demon appear on his shoulders, and one of them tries to convince him that he doesn't really have to do this and really probably shouldn't, and he's never sure which one it is. But his resolve is unshakeable. This might be his last chance to make any sort of difference in his situation. If he passes it up, he might as well roll over and die right now.

He's going to learn what Loriss is all about tonight. Whether he's a friend or foe. And whichever it is, that knowledge is going to turn the tide.

It has to.