The vibration subsided into dead silence. Sloane stared at the monitor as Bram Vance's lips hooked into a mocking arc that challenged every diagnostic chart on her desk. He had looked straight through the feed, straight at her. “Get Dr. Atherton,” she snapped into her comms, her voice tighter than a stretched wire. “I need a full neurological scan, stat. And prepare Room 3 for a full re-evaluation.” She didn’t wait for a response, already striding towards the door. The image of the orderly, crumpled against the wall, his arm hanging uselessly, burned in her mind. Acupressure, he’d called it. A primitive art of pressure points, utterly dismissed by modern medicine. Yet, the footage was undeniable. He had done *something*. She found Vekesh in his cell, meticulously polishing the pristine white floor with a discarded paper towel. He hummed a low, tuneless melody that grated on her nerves. The air around him felt… different. Thicker, charged, like the lingering ozone after a lightning strike. He didn’t acknowledge her until she was standing directly in front of the reinforced glass. “Bram,” she began, forcing a professional calm into her voice. “We need to talk about what happened with Orderly Jarek.” Vekesh paused, squinting at a faint smudge near the wall. “Jarek? Ah, the clumsy one. A minor obstruction. His meridians were clogged with stagnant filth, an occupational hazard for those who do not cultivate. I merely cleared the blockage.” He spoke with the casual authority of a master discussing a trivial chore, his gaze still fixed on the floor. Sloane set her teeth. “Clogged meridians? Bram, we discussed this. There are no such things. Your previous diagnosis indicated severe delusional psychosis, possibly exacerbated by substance abuse. We need to focus on your recovery. Your relatives are… concerned.” She hated the lie, but the Vance clan's sudden interest was purely an attempt to bury their scandalous heir. Her inquiries into their offshore ledgers had already turned up suspicious transfers. Vekesh finally looked up, his emerald irises dull with centuries of exhaustion. “Recovery? Child, my soul seeks only to return to the Shattered Peaks, to my disciples. This frail vessel is but a temporary inconvenience, a penance for a mandate given by the Heavens themselves.” He gestured vaguely upwards. “The Voice has spoken. I must cure the ailments of this world to earn my passage home.” [Diagnosis: Patient exhibiting heightened delusion of grandeur and persecutory ideation. Recommend increased dosage of Olanzapine.] Sloane blinked. “Bram, there is no mandate. There is no ‘Voice’. There is only your health, and our commitment to helping you stabilize.” She tried to project absolute certainty, though the subterranean shudder from minutes earlier still resonated in her calves. What if he wasn’t entirely delusional? What if… *something* had truly latched onto Bram Vance? Vekesh scoffed, returning to his polishing. “You cannot hear the Voice? A pity. It thrums with purpose. It guides me to the suffering.” His head tilted slightly, as if listening to something beyond her perception. “Ah. There. A particularly virulent affliction. A leering leech clinging to a practitioner of rudimentary communal healing.” Sloane followed his gaze to the wall monitor. A group session was underway down the hall. Nurse Kalia, known for her gentle demeanor and chronic involuntary twitches, was leading a breathing exercise. As Vekesh spoke, a faint, shimmering distortion seemed to ripple around Kalia’s feet. Sloane dismissed it as a trick of the light, a symptom of her own escalating anxiety. “Bram, you’re not making any sense,” she said, but her eyes were glued to the screen. Kalia’s spasms, usually subtle, intensified until her fingers rattled against her clipboard. The patients, already on edge, began to murmur. Vekesh spat on the linoleum. “The leech drinks her marrow and weakens her frame. And now it seeks fresh meat. Careless.” On the screen, Kalia’s shadow, usually a flat, indistinct blotch, seemed to stretch, elongate, and then detach itself from her feet. It rippled, coalescing into a vaguely humanoid, inky form. It lunged, its shadowy talons wrapping around the throat of Mr. Henderson, a quiet patient with severe panic disorder, who instantly gagged and clawed at his collar. No one else saw the creature; they saw only Henderson thrashing in asphyxiation. Sloane gasped, slamming her hand against the glass. “Open the door! Get in there!” she barked into her radio, waiting as the magnetic lock cycled through its five-second override. Vekesh, however, did not wait. He moved with a speed that defied his frail, modern body. A blur of green scrubs, he was out of his cell before the heavy door had fully retracted, snatching a wet mop from a nearby janitor’s cart. He burst into the recreation room, balancing the wet yarn like an iron-tipped spear. “Foul, cowardly vermin!” Vekesh bellowed. He thrust the sodden strings into empty space above Henderson's shoulders with rapid, percussive jabs. *Whack!* *Whump!* *Thwack!* He targeted specific nodes in the empty air. The atmosphere rippled like heat over asphalt, and Henderson sucked in a wet, rattling gasp as the invisible grip broke. Nurse Kalia screamed, not from fear, but from a sudden, searing agony that wracked her body. Her shaking ceased entirely, her fingers curling rigid as heat flushed through her skin. The shadowy creature, now clearly visible to Vekesh, thrashed, its form flickering, attempting to retreat back into Kalia’s own shadow. Vekesh wouldn’t allow it. He followed, his mop a relentless flail, chasing the shadow-wight across the vinyl, beating it back every time it lunged for Kalia's ankles. Sloane burst into the room, three guards hot on her heels with batons unholstered. The scene was pure lunacy: Bram Vance, soaked in gray mop water, driving the sodden yarn into empty floor space with blistering precision, while Nurse Kalia leaned panting against a chair and Henderson wheezed on the tiles. To everyone else, it looked like Bram was viciously assaulting a terrified nurse with a wet mop. “Stop it, Bram! What are you doing?!” Sloane yelled, rushing forward. Vekesh delivered a final, concussive *CRACK* that seemed to reverberate through the very floor. The shadowy form shrieked, a sound like tearing silk, and dissipated into nothingness, leaving behind a faint, acrid smell. Vekesh lowered the mop, breathing heavily. “The pestilence is banished. She is purged.” He pointed the mop at Nurse Kalia, who was now standing perfectly still, her eyes wide, her hands steady. For the first time in years, her hands were not trembling. Kalia slowly looked at her hands, flexing her fingers. “My… my palsy… it stopped.” Her voice cracked into a whisper. “It stopped.” Sloane stared, her mind reeling. The guards shifted their weight, batons hovering awkwardly in midair. Bram Vance had just beaten a nurse with a mop, and the nurse was… cured? There was no way to explain this, no way to document it without him being instantly transferred to a maximum-security ward, or worse, facing criminal charges. The Vance patriarchs would ensure it. She looked from Kalia’s miraculously steady hands to Vekesh, who now had the serene, self-satisfied look of a man who had just completed a sacred duty. Sloane made a snap decision, one that would undoubtedly haunt her for weeks. “Right,” Sloane managed, steadying her tone. “Everyone clear the hall. Nurse Kalia, report to the breakroom for the rest of shift. Henderson, over to triage. As for… Mr. Vance.” She turned toward the shift sergeant, plastering on an icy professional smile. “He was demonstrating a specialized aerobic discharge routine. Unorthodox, but evidently restorative for neuromuscular spasms. Log it under experimental kinesthetics.” [Ailment Cured: Chronic Neurological Tremors. Karma purified. Cultivation Breakthrough: Early Stage Qi Refining achieved.] Warm, golden warmth flooded Vekesh’s meridians, settling deep within his dantian. It was a familiar, comforting rush, a fraction of the power he once commanded. He closed his eyes, savoring the sensation, the promise of returning home growing stronger. But as the energy settled, a sharp, cracking sound echoed from beneath the asylum floor. It wasn’t the familiar structural groan of an old building. This was new, sharper, like stone fracturing under immense pressure. A thin, dark line snaked across the polished tile floor, expanding rapidly. From the newly formed fissure, a foul, black mist began to ooze, carrying with it the copper tang from earlier, now laced with sulfur and primeval decay. The asylum trembled again, not a sudden jolt, but a deep, grinding shudder that seemed to tear at its very foundations.

Aggressive Aerobic Therapy