The Doctor's Lie
Vera Kane - POV
The Victorian mansion on Beacon Hill looms against the pre-dawn sky like something from a Gothic nightmare, its ivy-covered walls breathing with secrets I can't name but somehow fear. Dr. Voss's private practice sits behind wrought-iron gates that should feel protective but instead remind me of a cage, ornate bars designed to keep things in rather than out.
She's waiting for me in the doorway before I even ring the bell.
"Vera, thank goodness you called." Dr. Voss pulls me inside with hands that feel like ice through my jacket. "I came as soon as I got your message."
"I didn't call you." The words slip out before I can stop them, and I watch her face for any flicker of reaction. "I never called anyone."
Her smile doesn't waver, but something shifts behind her eyes. "Of course you did, dear. You were quite distressed. Don't you remember?"
I don't. But then again, I don't remember most things anymore.
She guides me through a hallway lined with antique medical instruments—bone saws and skull drills displayed like trophies in glass cases. The air tastes of antiseptic layered over something older, mustier. Decay, maybe. Or fear that's soaked so deep into the walls it's become part of the architecture.
"Let's get you somewhere comfortable," she murmurs, her voice carrying that clinical detachment that used to soothe me but now makes my skin crawl. "Tell me about tonight's episode."
Her office reeks of old leather and something chemical that burns the back of my throat. I sink into the patient chair—more throne than furniture, high-backed and imposing—while she settles across from me with a clipboard and that predatory stillness she calls professional observation.
"I woke up in my bathroom," I begin, watching her face carefully. "With a knife to my throat."
She doesn't even blink.
"And what were you feeling in that moment?" Her pen moves across the paper in smooth, practiced strokes. "Fear? Anger? Or perhaps... relief?"
"Terror." The word comes out sharper than I intended. "I was fighting my own hands, Dr. Voss. Fighting for control of my own body."
"Mmm." She sets down her pen and stands, moving around the desk with the fluid grace of a predator circling wounded prey. "May I?"
Before I can answer, her fingers are on my face, tracing the line of my jaw with intimate familiarity that makes every nerve in my body scream wrong. Her touch is clinical, professional, but there's something underneath it that feels like ownership.
"Raven represents your suppressed survival instincts," she says, her thumb brushing across my cheekbone. "The part of you that emerged during those difficult years in crisis negotiation. You absorbed so much pain, so much trauma from the people you tried to save. Your psyche fractured to protect you."
Her fingers probe the injection sites on my arm, and I flinch away from the contact. "These are fresh."
"From tonight's session prep," she says smoothly. "The integration process requires careful calibration of your neurochemistry. I've increased your dosage—the episodes are becoming more frequent, more violent. We can't afford to lose momentum now."
"Lose momentum?" My voice sounds hollow in the high-ceilinged room. "Dr. Voss, I destroyed my apartment. I had someone else's blood under my fingernails. This isn't getting better."
"Fifty-nine days," she says, returning to her desk. "Fifty-nine days remaining in the protocol. If you miss even one session, if the neural pathways aren't properly integrated, the fragmentation will become permanent. You'll be trapped between identities forever."
The threat hangs in the air like incense, heavy and suffocating. But as she speaks, something else happens. Images flash through my mind—not memories, exactly, but impressions. Knowledge that doesn't belong to me.
I'm in a training facility I've never seen, moving through combat scenarios with deadly precision. My hands know exactly how to dislocate a shoulder, how to strike the carotid artery with surgical accuracy. Languages flow from my tongue—Mandarin, Russian, Arabic—words I've never learned but somehow understand perfectly.
And then there's him. A man whose face remains frustratingly blurred, but whose hands I know intimately. The way his fingers trace patterns on my skin, the sound of his laugh in the darkness, the taste of his mouth against mine. Not gentle, not careful, but desperate and claiming and absolutely right.
"The false memories are becoming more vivid," Dr. Voss observes, and I realize I've been staring at nothing, lost in someone else's experiences. "Tell me what you're seeing."
"Combat training." The words come out before I can stop them. "Advanced techniques. Things I've never learned."
Her stillness becomes predatory. "What kind of techniques?"
"How to kill someone with my bare hands." I meet her eyes, watching for any reaction. "How to speak languages I've never studied. How to—" I stop, some instinct warning me not to mention the man, not to give her more ammunition to use against me.
"These aren't real memories, Vera." But her voice carries an edge now, sharp enough to cut. "They're fantasy constructs, trauma responses designed to make you feel powerful when you're actually vulnerable. Crisis negotiation work doesn't involve combat training."
"Then why do I know how to break someone's neck in three different ways?"
The question hangs between us like a blade, and for the first time since I've known her, Dr. Voss looks genuinely rattled. Her hands shake slightly as she reaches for a syringe, the clinical mask slipping just enough to reveal something cold and desperate underneath.
"This will help," she says, filling the syringe with clear liquid from a vial labeled with symbols I don't recognize. "The integration process requires pharmaceutical support."
"What is it?" I try to pull away, but she's already gripping my arm with surprising strength.
"Neurological stabilizer. It will help suppress the false memory bleeds."
The needle slides into my arm before I can protest, and immediately the world starts to soften around the edges. The combat knowledge fades, the foreign languages slip away like water, and the phantom touch of unfamiliar hands evaporates from my skin.
But not completely. Something remains, buried deeper than the drugs can reach. A kernel of truth that refuses to be dissolved.
"Better?" Dr. Voss's voice comes from very far away.
I nod, though everything in me wants to fight. To document. To remember.
My hands move automatically to my jacket pocket, fingers finding the small camera I always carry. Years of photographic instinct take over, muscle memory deeper than whatever she's injected into my system. I trigger the camera blindly, hoping to capture something, anything that might help me piece together the truth later.
"Fifty-nine days," she repeats as she walks me to the door. "Don't miss any sessions, Vera. The consequences could be... irreversible."
I'm almost to the exit when I see it. A file cabinet in an alcove, partially hidden behind a Japanese screen. The label reads "Project Phoenix" in neat block letters, and through the glass front, I can see photographs clipped to manila folders.
My photograph. But not the frightened, confused woman I see in mirrors every morning. This version of me looks confident, dangerous. Predatory. Her eyes hold knowledge and secrets, and she's wearing the same leather outfit I found myself in this morning.
Beneath my photo are others. Young women, all with similar bone structure and coloring. All looking at the camera with that same dangerous confidence.
All missing the fear that's become my constant companion.
"Vera?" Dr. Voss's voice carries a warning I pretend not to hear.
"Coming," I call, but I've already taken three more pictures, the camera's silent mode capturing evidence I might not be brave enough to remember tomorrow.
As I leave the mansion, one thought echoes through the chemical fog in my brain: crisis negotiators don't have combat training.
But soldiers do.