Elizabeth parked her car right at the main entrance of BCU and walked with quick steps to the college.

Outside the lecture hall, a small screen announced the lecture's title. The Incarnation of Death and Fear in the Mirror of the Centuries.

Inside the lecture hall, a large image of the Loacoon group was projected on the wall by a projector, an ancient sculptural group excavated in Rome in the early 16th century. The room was darkened, and the light from the standing desk and the projector illuminated the single figure standing at the foot of the large screen. In jeans and a dark red blouse, Dr. Katherine Isles was standing at the desk looking annoyed.

Elizabeth glanced at the image of the Laocoon group on the screen. The ancient depiction was considered one of the examples of ancient sculpture at the time Renaissance archaeologists excavated it. The painting depicted Laocoon, a priest, about to be dragged into the sea by water snakes.

"Laocoon," Katherine said expansively, "had been the only one at the siege of Troy to realize that the Trojan Horse was precisely not what it appeared to be - a gift - but what it was: a, well, Trojan Horse."

Elizabeth sat down in a back row, as she had many times before while listening to Katherine's talk.

"Laocoon had previously tapped the horse with a spear and found it hollow inside. Logically, since it had to accommodate all those Greek warriors. The goddess Athena, however, wanted Troy to perish and had to keep Laocoon somehow quiet so that he would not blurt out the warning, which was quite justified. Preferably forever. She sent two sea serpents to pull Laocoon into the water. An unpleasant thing, isn't it?" Katherine paced the front row of students. "What would you do in this case?"

"Shout out loud?" asked a female student in the second row.

Katherine skillfully raised her eyebrows and pulled the corners of her mouth down. "Probably. And does the sculpture scream?"

"No."

Katherine nodded slowly. "Some say," she continued, "that the sculptor wanted to show the great calm of Laocoon silently facing his death. By the way, the Trojans were still stupid enough to believe that he was punished not for warning that the Trojan horse was a stratagem of war but for damaging the Greek gift with his spear. But that's not why I'm showing you this sculpture." She paused for a moment, as one should when making speeches. Count to three at each pause.

Elizabeth counted along herself. 21, 22, 23.

Katherine continued to speak. "There are a few other reasons that we see a lot of criminology these days, too: Violence against the weaker, as used here by the goddess against a mortal priest. Also, the viewer can gloat over the suffering of another while the viewer himself is safe.

This also happens here. And lastly, the artists make every effort to stage the horror as perfectly as possible. Almost like a horror movie today."

A young woman spoke up. "And how is it medically? With the cry?"

Katherine took a deep breath and raised her eyebrows briefly. "Medically, the sculptor is right: in death by suffocation or drowning, due to the convulsions, there are no more voice utterances. Therefore, Laocoon does not scream because he can no longer scream." She clicked to the next image, which showed the philosopher Seneca, painted by Peter Paul Rubens, standing in his bathtub, having his wrists slit by his servant. "Death," said the psychiatrist, "in antiquity, unlike today, was not a terrible finale from which we run away as long as possible, but a logical culmination of life, precisely its climax. Older people were considered a burden among the ancient Scythians since they could no longer contribute anything to society. They were expected to commit suicide at some point, as Seneca did."

"Didn't his servant do that?" asked a young woman in the third row with an old stuffed animal mascot standing on the pulpit.

Katherine frowned a little. "Right. People had servants for everything back then; even suicide was outsourced." She looked at herself in the glass doorway momentarily and straightened her trademarkless blouse. "Dying in bed was frowned upon. If you were a man, you died in battle, and if you failed in that premium version, then at least you were supposed to die by your hand. Only Christianity put a stop to this. For centuries, suicides were considered sure candidates for eternal hellfire."

A male student spoke up. "Is our society more jaded then, or is it more effeminate than previous societies?"

Katherine raised her brows again and took a deep breath. "That's hard to say. The fact is that today, due to all these Internet porn channels, every teenager knows more about sexual variations and perversions than the worst moguls and libertines of antiquity. Probably even every ten-year-old knows more positions than Emperor Nero. On the other hand, people used to be publicly executed in the marketplace. Even children watched at that time. Thank God we don't see anything like that today unless we watch some execution videos, which have recently become available in large enough numbers. But the popularity of horror films shows that we need that horror somehow." She pulled out a book and read from it. " The strongest and oldest sentiment is fear, and the strongest form of fear is fear of the unknown, said horror great H.P. Lovecraft over a hundred years ago."

Elizabeth looked at her cell phone. No news from the BPD yet. Still, she would appreciate it if her sister would slowly come to an end. But the psychiatrist kept talking. "When we watch a horror movie, the same happens as when we're really in danger. The heart rate increases, the blood vessels constrict, the bronchial tubes dilate, and we breathe faster to better oxygenate ourselves. Our blood also thickens to be prepared for possible injury and flow less rapidly. We lose our appetite, our body temperature rises, and cold sweat breaks out. At the same time, the muscles tense. These are the functions of the sympathetic system in the brain, the sympathetic nervous system. Situational responses to a danger that may threaten us."

"Fight, Flight, Fright?" one of the students asked.

Katherine looked in depth at him and pointed briefly. "Right. Fight or flight or play dead. With boring lectures, we're usually left with 'Fright,' which is playing dead."

Some of the students laughed heartily.

Katherine smiled a little. "Then there's the parasympathetic system. Rest and digest, and that's the autopilot. It lowers heart rate and blood pressure and decreases lung volume, and that causes some of us to have asthma attacks in the morning hours."

"Why is that?"

"Mucus production is increased. At the same time, the airways become narrower because we don't need as much lung volume. The sympathetic nervous system opens the bronchi, and the parasympathetic system closes them again. As a result, we have to cough."

"Or take asthma inhalers," said the student with the mascot. And she held up an aspirator.

Katherine pursed her lips and pulled the corners of her mouth down. "So, what are the side effects?"

"Sometimes tremors and heart palpitations."

The doctor nodded slowly. "That's because of the adrenaline and the stuff that puts us in attack mode."

"That's in the asthma inhaler?"

"Yes. The problem with asthma is narrow airways: rest and digest. When we put our organism back into attack mode, the airway widens. After all, we need oxygen. And that goes with adrenaline." She looked around. "First, the excitement. And then the calm!"

"That means we're happy at the end?" another student asked.

Katherine nodded slowly. "That's how it is in a thriller." At that moment, Elizabeth knew her sister had seen her. "And that's how our brains work. The feelings of happiness are stronger the more scared we are before. It's like Halloween: the scare is followed by candy."

xxx

Elizabeth had her sister state the facts in terse terms in the car.

Katherine took a deep breath and listened intently as she looked at Elizabeth and the road alternately. "Bloody gloves, then some violent fantasies. And a strange cardboard box he had with him?" she summarized.

Elizabeth opened her mouth, closed it immediately, then pulled the corners of her mouth down as she focused on the road. "Yeah, the guy was totally out of it. Just walked across a four-lane road without looking. And caused pretty bad car accident in the process."

"Real painless, that guy," Katherine said, shaking her head.

Elizabeth nodded slowly. "Yeah, he just crossed the street from south to north. In rush hour traffic, without traffic lights or crosswalks, and just as if there was no car traffic."

"Reminds me of the tourists in Boston."

Elizabeth overheard the interjection. "A truck had to swerve and crashed into the front of a hotel because of it. Fortunately, no one was hurt."

"And how is this guy doing now?" wanted to know Katherine.

"He has a slight head wound. And is pretty dazed, which I think has more to do with the drugs he's been popping."

Katherine sighed, sounding almost exhausted. "All right, let's take a look at this fellow."

xxx

Dr. Carter was in the process of drawing blood from the still-unknown man. The man was barely hurt, and the paramedic had taken the truck driver instead.

Carter nodded to Elizabeth and Katherine. Two officers, Blake and Lopez, had to restrain the man, who kept rocking back and forth. There was a large splatter of blood on the white wall.

"Whose blood is that?" asked Elizabeth without mincing words, a little shocked.

"His own," Carter replied tonelessly, pointing at the junkie. "Just as I was attaching the tourniquet --"

"The tourniquet?" the detective asked with furrowed brows.

"Yeah, what we use to tourniquet the vein when we draw blood. This rubber tube. Sort of a compress." He looked up at the ceiling for a moment to collect his thoughts. "Anyway, when that was on, and then I hit the vein, he pulled the needle out. That's when it spurts."

Katherine shook her head slowly.

Elizabeth took a deep breath. "Do you know who he is by now?" she asked.

"I don't know," Blake, one of the officers, said, trying not to shuffle the fidgeting man too ungently back to his seat with Dr. Carter. "No identification, nothing."

"And did he say why he was traveling with that box?"

"Neither did he. Other than babbling and yelling, there wasn't much usable there." Blake shrugged.

"The box is sacred to him, though," Carter said, raising his eyebrows. "We were only able to take it from him with a lot of 'resistance."'

Elizabeth looked around searchingly. "Where's the box now?"

Carter wiggled his head. "We sent that one to the BPD lab. Who knows what's in there. Could be something explosive, after all. Detective Simms is there with a couple of guys." He pulled open a needle. "The first sample is already being tested. Unfortunately, one of the devices failed during the quantitative measurement, and we need a second blood sample to repeat the measurement."

"And approximately? How does it look?"

"According to initial statements from the lab, he has more drugs in his blood than all of Colombia."

"Wow."

"I --," the junkie began. "I'm all ... all right." He yanked on the tourniquet again, and Carter almost slipped with his syringe.

"Easy, man. And all right, you're not, the way you're slurring!" Carter turned to Elizabeth and Katherine. "That red stuff on his gloves is real blood, by the way. We don't know who from yet. But it's blood."

"I ... I'll be right ... at the door," the junkie said in a strange singsong.

Carter looked at him suspiciously. You could tell he didn't like the stranger's condition. The junkie looked at Carter lurkingly. Then, all at once, he jumped up. The doctor rolled his eyes. It wasn't the first time this had happened. Blake and Lopez reacted immediately. The man stood alone in front of Carter for a second, then the two officers grabbed him and shoved him back into the chair with rough force. The needle nearly slipped out of his vein again.

"Eyyy!" the junkie yelled. "I'm a free ... free man ... in ... a ... free ... Country!"

"He's been popping some serious shit," Carter said. "Maybe acid?" He looked at Katherine.

The explanation was obvious. LSD had been suspected by the other investigators, too, and it was just too familiar.

LSD, also known as lysergic acid diethylamide, was once developed by the Sandoz company for medical research. The exciting thing about this drug was that it removed the filter in the brain that sorted the information that was allowed into the brain in the first place.

If this filter didn't exist, people would live in constant stimulus overload and be unable to concentrate on anything. The filter in the brain that LSD switched off was the hypothalamus, a kind of bouncer that ensured that only relevant information entered the command center. So LSD overrode this bouncer. The brain was so overwhelmed by the resulting sensory overload that the inner and outer worlds merged. And the processing of sensory impressions suddenly took a completely different course. People could then suddenly smell sounds and taste colors, for example.

"Maybe LSD," Katherine said, looking suspiciously at the junkie. "Whereas this was, I think, more like Eastern European mushrooms or crystal meth or all of the above at once. These synthetic drugs are worse than any of those. Maybe this guy also has a drug-induced psychosis and will never return from his trip?"

Something very similar had occurred to the paramedic, Elizabeth thought.

"Angel Dust, maybe," Carter growled, shining a light into the man's pupils. "You're a medic, too. Look."

Katherine stepped closer. "His eyes --"

"... I don't like them at all," Carter added.

"Neither do I." Katherine shook her head. "Severely delayed pupillary response. And then that slurring."

"What do you think?" asked Elizabeth with furrowed brows.

"I'm guessing increased intracranial pressure," Carter sighed. Katherine nodded as well. "Either he has an intracranial hemorrhage from the accident, though I don't think so. The wound is too small for that."

"Or?"

"Or it's the results of an extreme overdose. He's developing cerebral edema, and he's getting cloudy."

Elizabeth blinked a few times. "Meaning?"

Carter removed the tourniquet, pulled the needle out of the vein, stuck a Band-Aid on the spot, tossed the needle in the trash can, and stuck a label on the last blood sample. All in mechanical motions as he spoke, movements he had done hundreds of times before. "Increased intracranial pressure. Probably due to excessive water outflow, caused by liver failure, and caused by just this overdose. The pressure goes to the brain stem. And if we don't do something, he'll quickly be unconscious. And dead in the next few hours."

"So, to the ICU?" asked Elizabeth.

"Yes, but the one with a measure of restraint," Katherine replied. "This guy is dangerous, by the looks of it. Think of the blood on the gloves. And who knows what's in the box? Certainly not a bouquet of flowers or a ring from Tiffany's." She nodded at Carter. "Do you want me to call Galloway, and you get an ambulance ready?"

Carter nodded slowly.

Katherine looked at her sister before reaching for her cell phone. Elizabeth nodded as well.

The detective knew what was coming next. Hospital of the man of measure. The man here was obviously in mortal danger. And possibly life-threatening himself. There were his bizarre speeches about staking and murdering random women. The blood on the gloves. And the cardboard box, and who knew what else. There was only one place in Boston for such cases: Bonnie's Ranch. Whoever was dangerous and declared insane according to the penal code came here.

Bonnie's Ranch was an asylum for the mentally ill, sex offenders, child molesters, and psychopaths. And some of them would never again leave the high walls that shielded the large estate. Many would never again see the light of the free world, and many would brood there in the darkness of their souls. Dreaming of raw flesh into which they sank their teeth, dreaming of twitching orifices into which they could stick something, dreaming of forbidden liquids which they drank until their souls themselves entered the eternal darkness of death. And the ruler of this world of black dreams, lost screams, and wandering eyes was Prof. Dr. Claire Galloway, Katherine's mentor.

Elizabeth had dealt with Galloway several times; the last time, she had to place a member from a Satanist cult there. A severely psychopathic and paranoid woman who wanted to say so much but was not allowed to say anything. In the end, she bit off her tongue and wrote her last words on the cell wall with her blood.

Footsteps could be heard. Katherine had just finished talking on the phone when Nick called his partner. "We looked at the box."

Elizabeth's eyebrows drew together. "And?"

He paused. "You'll have to see for yourselves."