"Welcome back, Margo," Kusanagi smiled. "Slept in late today?"

Margo sat down before his desk, same SafeSpace as last time. Same blue lights engulfing the room like water in a fish tank. Veins splintered across the whites of her eyes, and dark circles hung below like shadows. Looking up at her therapist and managing a small smile, she saw a tinge of concern sneak into his otherwise welcoming expression, the teeth in his grin gritting a little tighter upon observing the sleep she lacked.

"Yes, sir," she said, voice cracking. "I used to get up at five in the morning for work. Used to have this whole routine."

"Is that so?" Kusanagi said. "What made up your routine? If you don't mind me asking."

"Waking up, exercising, practicing some self-defense moves, showering, and then heading off to work."

"What kind of self-defense moves?"

Margo shrugged. "I don't even remember. Something with a lot of grappling? It's been too long since I've been able to practice them."

"That's a shame. Exercise is a great way to get your mind off negative thoughts. And it helps build self-confidence."

"Jeez," Margo forced herself to chuckle. "I was a psychology major, and even I have a hard time believing that one."

"Well, didn't you feel more confident back when you were exercising regularly?"

"Yeah, but I was also an idiot back then who thought working at Psychwatch would be fun and schizophrenia would be the one thing I'd never have."

Kusanagi's grin disappeared as he sat up in his seat. "Remember what I said during our last session, Margo. It's important to rationalize your thoughts. You were not an idiot back then. You just underestimated something. And as for the schizophrenia, remember that it's not a curse. It's something that can be controlled and coped with."

"Right. Sorry."

"It's no problem." Kusanagi retrieved two blank canvases from beneath his desk, laying them flat on the table before his patient. "Remember these?"

"Psych Expressors," Margo said. "For visualizing my hallucinations, right?"

"That's correct. And once you've jotted all of them down, we can discuss your most notable encounters with them, as well as potential triggers. That can be one of your first goals."

"Alright," Margo said with a nod.

"Do you know how to connect your ThoughtControl piece to the canvas?"

"Yeah, give me one second."

Margo held two fingers around her piece as it hung in her ear canal. Following two beeps, the word CONNECTING... stretched across one canvas in black, fading to PIECE CONNECTED with an additional beep.

"Good!" Kusanagi chirped. "So, if I recall, you claim that one of your hallucinations was an individual you believed to be your sister?"

Margo nodded, clenching her fists as embarrassment filled her from head to toe.

"It's alright," Kusanagi said. "You know the truth now and you're working on making sure you won't be deceived like that anymore. That's why you'll use the Psych Expressor to generate an image of what she looks like."

"What would be the point?" Margo asked. "It's not like you'd be able to see her, anyway."

Kusanagi shrugged. "True. However, like all therapy, this helps you more than it's supposed to help me. For example, the primary reason we promote Cognitive Crafts amongst individuals with schizophrenia is so they can feel the relief of having something otherwise indescribable in words appear perfectly on paper. That, and it'll help reinforce that this thing you see is no more alive than the image conjured onto that canvas."

He nudged the canvas closer to Margo. "Take as long as you need and add as many details as you'd like."

The entire canvas darkened pitch-black in one fell swoop. Margo saw Kusanagi tense up in his seat. She waited for him to comprehend his mistake before proceeding.

Thin white lines straightened and curled like spiderwebs in the making, and a head and torso remained distinguishable by the time the white lines met their end. Smaller white lines trailed away from the head before tracing back to them, creating hair. Not just plain hair, however. A wavy bobcut much like Margo's, its prime distinction being its extended length down to the shoulders rather than the lower tip of the ears. Tints of dark gray brought the hair to life, doing the same job to the character's clothes and lips. Lipstick, Margo and Kusanagi realized.

The only part that remained untouched by vibrant blemishes of a spectral hue like gray were the eyes. Margo left them empty. No irises. No pupils. Just empty, black pools.

"Done," she said.

"Marvelous work!" Kusanagi said. "So this is Ellie?"

"Yes."

"This is how she looked the first time you saw her?"

"Yes, sir."

"Has she appeared again since that day?"

"Several times. She's always dressed like that."

Kusanagi snapped his fingers. "And that's the loose thread! Something to spot if the psychosis becomes too much. A very common strategy practiced by patients with schizophrenia. For example, some notice the hallucination because their clothes don't get wet when it rains or animals don't react to them. But one that's surprisingly easy to miss is whether they age or only wear the same sets of clothing."

"Can the hallucinations become self-aware?" Margo asked. "Like change their physical appearance just to make life harder for me?"

"To be quite honest, it all really depends on the individual. I've yet to hear of anything like that happening to anyone with psychosis. But I'm sure you'll be alright, especially once you've learned to counteract paranoia."

Margo nodded her head, hoping she wouldn't be the first of many to endure such a case.

"Do you have anymore questions or concerns, Margo?"

Margo shook her head.

"Would you like to use another Psych Expressor?"

"I don't think I need it anymore. Pretty sure most of my hallucinations are auditory. Although, while down in the Rabbit Hole, I felt like bugs were crawling all over my skin beneath the BufferSuit."

"Yes, tactile hallucinations are very rare, but possible. It didn't last too long, did it?"

"No, not really."

"Understandable. They rarely last longer than a few minutes." Kusanagi sat back in his seat. "As for your auditory hallucinations, have you still been hearing the voices of people you know?"

Margo shook her head.

"If you mind me asking, whose voice or voices did you hear the most?"

"Ellie was the main one. Although, I think I've hallucinated phone calls with Mason."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah. And there was this one night where a man broke into my home and...oh shit! Can I still use that other canvas?"

"Absolutely," Kusanagi said, nudging the remaining blank slate towards his patient.

The artistic cycle began again. The beeps of her ThoughtControl. PIECE CONNECTED, stretching across the canvas. And like her first creation, the beige surface vanished in a sea of oil-black. When the lines and dots appeared, they were white against the charcoal backdrop, dancing across the canvas to bring Margo's subconscious to life. The results were far more simplistic than the first piece, something Kusanagi realized by the time the remaining lines halted at the bottom of the canvas, leaving behind the silhouette of a man.

The man had no face. No details on his clothes. Just edges. Rough, smooth, angled, only a toon. The thicker white, diagonal lines behind him were rays of light, the two of them realized. Presumably moonlight considering the black and white contrast. The man was a black silhouette blotting out the light, fists clenched down by his side, and smaller white lines splashed around his feet like the claw scratches of a feral creature.

"Those are glass shards," Margo told Kusanagi regarding the scratches. "But I'm not even sure if they were real, let alone the incident as a whole."

"Well, if there was glass on the floor," Kusanagi said, "wouldn't you call that evidence?"

"I don't know. My windows have regenerative glass, so the shards would've disintegrated by the time the police arrived. So even if they were real, I doubt anyone really believed me."

"If you mind me asking, how did this event play out?"

"It was three in the morning, and I heard all this noise in my apartment. Doors closing, the window shattering. And the electricity went out, too, because of that freak blizzard. At the end of May, of all things! I tried sneaking out, but I saw this guy on the canvas standing in the dark. I couldn't see his face or recognize him from anywhere, but he started talking to me about how I was keeping secrets from myself and how I was trying to put him in place somehow."

"Did his voice sound familiar?"

"Absolutely not. Didn't even sound human. All distorted and raspy."

"Did you report the incident to Psychwatch?"

"Yeah, and like I said, they said there wasn't enough evidence. The RG shards went away, and the only prints they found were my own since I was tripping and tumbling all over the place trying to escape. You know what that means? Half of the damage done to my apartment was my own fault! There are six holes burnt into the walls of my living room because of me!"

"I'm really sorry for what happened, Margo. But remember not to be so hard on yourself. We Psychwatch officers have a habit of assuming we'll always stifle our screams or remain still in the face of danger. But we're not perfect, and considering such an incident occurred while you were in such a vulnerable state, it only makes sense that you reacted this way."

Margo's shoulders slumped. "But that makes me feel like all this training was for nothing," she said. "Everyone else made me feel that way that night."

"Who's everyone else?"

"I called Royce, Andrade, Mason, my mom, and Carl after it happened. The only ones who didn't make me feel like it was all my fault were my mom and Carl. But the other three acted like the phone calls never even happened! So I'm not sure if either they're just over it or don't care, or maybe that was all in my head, too. Especially since I was also talking to Ellie when it all happened."

Kusanagi exhaled. Margo felt as if she were overwhelming him.

"Hey," she said, "do you have any of those Psych Expressor journals, too? Or do I need to buy one of those?"

"Oh no, I have one right here if you'd like to use it," Kusanagi replied, and he disappeared behind his desk, keeping one hand on the sleek white surface before them. When he returned, he planted a notebook in the center of the desk, the cover a dull sheet of gray plastic.

He wedged his thumb underneath the cover and carefully lifted it, exposing the snow-white sheets within. Margo forced out a chuckle. The device looked indistinguishable from any other notebook. In fact, calling such a thing a device felt like the overstatement of the century. But, of course, the cover couldn't define the contents of the book on its own. When given the chance, Psych Expressor journals had just as much, if not more, potential than the canvases and sketchpads, granting an individual the ability to lay down the rails for their runaway trains of thought, put ramblings to paper without even laying a finger on a single sheet.

"Connects to the piece just like the canvas," said Kusanagi. "But let me know if you need help connecting it."

"I'm fine," Margo said, eyes glued to the first page as she nudged her finger against her ThoughtControl. Beeps, message across the sheet, and she had control once more.

A little too much control, perhaps.

On top of generating swarms of thoughts without the need of a single writing utensil, another perk of the Psych Expressor journals was the ability to display holographic projections of its written contents. Rectangular, translucent sheets of navy blue light propelled four inches above the journal into the air. By the time Kusanagi blinked a single blink, a wall of holographic sheets came between him and Margo.

"The mind is a busy little machine, isn't it?" he laughed, but Margo said nothing. "Let's read some of these, shall we?"

Margo retrieved her ThoughtControl piece from her ear, fearing the pile would only grow the longer she kept it in. Eyes darting from one sheet to the next, she winced upon the completion of every line of thought, ashamed the absurdity of it all only became clear when dangled before her face like keys to her shackles.

MASON'S A TYRANT, one said. DID ROYCE ACTUALLY SAY WHAT HE SAID? AND WHO IS SOFIA? said another. I FUCKING HATE ELLIE AND SHE'S NOT EVEN REAL. ANDRADE IS A NOBODY WITHOUT PSYCHWATCH AND SO AM I. WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME WHAT'S WRONG? WHY IS JACK STILL ALIVE? IS HE EVEN ALIVE? WHAT DID MASON DO TO CARL? WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE STILL IN THE DARK? WHY—

Margo brushed her hands through her hair with a groan. She remained still, her face planted in her hands and her elbows jabbing into her knees, supporting her like the legs of a boardwalk. The murmurs of her therapist on the other side of her Wall of Thoughts brought her zero comfort, not that anything else in that mandatory hour spent at Psychwatch soothed her any better. But she appreciated his honesty, how crystal clear his discomfort and frustration shone through. Anyone else might've called such a gesture unprofessional or cold, but to Margo, there was nothing better than glimpsing the true self after everything she'd been through.

"It seems you harbor some distrust in your colleagues here," Kusanagi said, eyes unmoving from the dozens of screen before him. "And I can see why. This break-in, the rally incident, the Rabbit Hole. I'm sure the life of a Neutralizer wasn't as clean as you hoped it'd be, right?"

"I never exactly expected it to be clean," Margo said, "but I thought I'd have at least a year before the job would break me."

"Why do you believe this job would have broken you?"

Margo shrugged. "I really don't know at this point. I guess I thought it would've taken longer before I ended up needing therapy myself, and not because I have schizophrenia. But hey, I bet everyone else is happy about this. They always enjoy watching the optimistic newbies grow more and more cynical."

"Quite the contrary," Kusanagi said. "It's always heartbreaking watching someone lose their innocence. And yes, it is very much inevitable, especially in a job like this, but they feel for you because they were once in your place. They probably felt lied to or deceived or confused why it took so long for someone to acknowledge a flaw of some kind. So it's natural."

Margo leaned forward in her seat, hoping Kusanagi could spot her piercing gaze through the shield of navy blue between them. "Do you think there's a chance they're genuinely out to get me?" she said.

"Absolutely not. And whatever is telling you that, we need to help you learn to block it out. No one is out to get you, Margo. I promise."

"What if the person who broke into my apartment was the masked man from the Rabbit Hole?"

No response from her colleague before her.

"That only really makes the most sense!" Margo gasped. "I saw him down in the drug lab, and he knew my name! He tried telling me he was my father, but I knew that would've been a load of bullshit. But he also told me he knew they'd send me down or people like me. So I think he's been stalking me!"

"Well, uh..."

"Unless...was that drug lab not even real?"

"Oh no, that was very real, Margo. Even Nurse Louise knew you were down there. But as for everything else..."

Margo's head jerked up. "Can I use another canvas or a sketchpad? I'll show you I saw him! He even had two other people with him."

"Of course, but I believe you, Margo. Just hope you know that."

No, you fucking don't, she thought. You weren't even in the Rabbit Hole for half the mission!

Thinking it wasn't enough. She had to get it out. "You don't believe me. You were hardly even in the Rabbit Hole that day. What was that all about?"

"The route we took was not a safe one," Kusanagi said. "Masked men ambushed us, and they damaged the Sentient driving the van. So we had to figure out the rest of the route and get us there ourselves. But I'm sorry for not letting you know sooner."

"It's alright," Margo muttered.

"Would you still like to use the sketchpad?"

Margo shook her head, and Kusanagi sighed. "I really am sorry about that," he said. "I'm not trying to disregard what you have to say nor am I trying to confuse you."

"It's alright," Margo sighed, brushing her hand through her hair. "Pretty sure I'm just coming up with fake connections so I look saner by comparison."

"Being sane doesn't matter, Margo. Nobody is. Not even the commissioner. All that matters is that you know what's beneficial to you, what you feel needs improvement, and then striving to work towards making those improvements a part of the new you."

The Wall of Thoughts vanished between them, and Margo greeted Kusanagi with a smirk. "Would you tell the commissioner that to her face?" she asked. "About her not being sane?"

"Out of respect for her, no. Although, I don't believe something like that would offend her."

"You sure about that?"

With a deep breath, Kusanagi sat up straight, knuckles clenched. "It's not my job to tell you how to feel about the commissioner," he said, "and she's definitely gotten on my nerves before. But we must show her our respect at all times. She's human, like anyone else. It might sound hard to believe, but she used to attend sessions just like these."

"So she stopped going?"

"I'm afraid that is confidential."

Margo forced out a chuckle.

"But in the end," Kusanagi continued, "your healing is up to you. Your condition and the hardships you've faced both as a Psychwatch officer and as a human being overall are not your fault. But it is your responsibility to take care of yourself. That means, it's your responsibility to avoid hostility with coworkers, realizing which treatments work for you, which methods of coping are doing more harm than good, and most importantly, realizing when it's time for a change."

"Change what?" Margo asked.

"Anything at all. You decide. But think about the path you want to take before you even step foot on it. Because if you want to become a better person, you need to stick to the road. No detours to what may only seem like an easier solution."

"Sir," his patient croaked.

"Yes, Margo?"

"What is scarier: the unknown or what you already know? Royce asked me that the other day."

Kusanagi cleared his throat. "Not to sound disrespectful, but be careful around that man. I know he's dealing with immense trauma and a similarly shocking diagnosis like your own, but I can honestly say you're recovering far better than he is."

"But this is only my second session."

"Yes, but I see the potential in you, Margo. I can tell that with a little more convincing and rationalizing, you'll be dedicated to becoming a better you. But Brian Royce? I hate to say it, but apart from attending therapy, he's not doing much to help himself. He doesn't surround himself with people he trusts, and he's not the most patient of people."

"I hope he'll be alright."