WORLD OF FICTION (WOF)

Marek refused the sedative by knocking it out of the nurse's hand. The glass vial hit the floor, rolled beneath the treatment cabinet, and stopped without breaking. Nurse Bell looked at him across the bed.

Marek kept one palm pressed over the fresh bandage around his ribs. "I said no."

"You said no after I told you what it was."

"I said no before that."

"You asked what it did."

"I can ask about a thing I don't want."

Bell crouched, retrieved the vial, and returned it to the tray. "Correct."

She marked the refusal on a physical chart. No argument followed, and nobody wrote that blood loss made Marek confused merely because his answer inconvenienced treatment.

The room had one door, one narrow window, and no bridge beneath the floor. Marek had checked all three facts six times since waking. His boots sat beside the bed where he could see them. The broken spearhead had gone to Evidence, and his armour rested in a sealed canvas bag beneath a plain tag.

Every few minutes, Story Custody printed another question on the wall. Bell covered each new prompt only after Marek saw enough to know what had appeared.

CURRENT OUTCOME: SURVIVED?

CURRENT OUTCOME: WAITING?

CURRENT OUTCOME: EXTRACTED?

Bell covered each line with plain paper. Marek had answered none of them.

Elias waited outside. Marek knew because the heavier boundary splint scraped whenever Elias shifted his right foot on the corridor stone.

"Send him away," Marek said.

Bell opened the door. Elias sat on a low chair with his injured leg extended. The replacement splint rose almost to his knee, and a clear emergency-key pouch hung from his belt.

"You heard him," Bell said.

Elias pushed himself up. The rods locked before his right knee straightened fully, and he sat back down.

"I can leave slowly."

Marek's mouth tightened. "Come in."

Bell glanced between them. "That changed quickly."

"I want to see whether he lies when I can reach him."

Elias carried the chair inside instead of pretending he could stand through the conversation. He placed it beyond Marek's arm and angled his splinted leg into the clear space beside the bed.

Marek noticed the distance. "You think I'll hit you?"

"I think you might want the option."

"That isn't an answer."

"Yes."

Marek looked at Bell. "He always does that?"

"More than before."

Elias gave her a wounded look. Bell ignored it and checked the medical tray.

Marek pointed at the folded paper on Elias's lap. "The reader."

Elias passed it over. The old public comment was short.

Did the wounded guard die? He was under the bridge and then everyone forgot him.

Elias's reply sat directly below it, preserved exactly as it had appeared publicly. Marek read the answer before moving to the correction.

Yes. It happened off-page.

The later correction followed on the same sheet. Different handwriting marked the archival copy, but the words were Elias's accepted correction.

I claimed the guard died, but I had not decided what happened to him.

Marek read all three lines twice. His thumb stopped on the first comment instead of Elias's correction.

"Who wrote this?"

"Account name was LanternSalt."

"You know them?"

"No."

"Alive?"

"Unknown."

"Did they ask again?"

"No surviving reply."

Marek held the page by one corner. "One stranger noticed."

"Yes."

"You didn't."

"I noticed while writing."

"Then removed me."

"I removed the paragraph with your name."

"Why?"

"I don't remember."

Marek stared at him. "That answer is convenient."

"It is also true."

"Did I have a surname?"

"I don't know."

"What was my job?"

"City guard."

"That is a role."

"Yes."

"What did I want?"

Elias looked at the bandage around Marek's ribs, then at the comment in his hands. "I don't remember writing it."

Marek folded the page along the line where Elias had declared him dead. "You want to apologise?"

"Yes."

"Do it later."

Elias stopped before the apology could become another thing Marek had to receive on someone else's schedule.

Marek returned the page to his lap. "I don't know what you took yet. I know you lied. I know I woke under a bridge hearing three endings. I know one reader asked where I went. That is enough for today."

"All right."

"You say that like agreement fixes something."

"It doesn't."

"Good."

Bell stepped closer to the bed. "Consent to examine the wound?"

"Yes."

She removed the outer bandage. Marek looked away from the injury, and the wound changed when his attention left it. A spear puncture narrowed into a sword cut, then spread into a burn from the bridge fire.

Bell placed three plain markers on the bedside table and turned each label toward Marek. She kept all three available without stacking one over the others.

PUNCTURE.

CUT.

BURN.

"Which hurts now?" she asked.

"Puncture."

Bell covered the other two markers. The wound settled enough for her to clean the current injury without declaring the other versions false.

Marek watched the antiseptic darken the cloth. "Why does that work?"

"We are not deciding what happened," Bell said. "We are treating what your body reports now."

"What if the body lies?"

"Then treatment changes when evidence does."

Marek considered that while Bell replaced the dressing. Story Custody printed another field on the wall.

PROTECTED SUBJECT REQUIRES STABLE HISTORY.

Bell reached for the paper cover, expecting the same refusal of custody prompts he had given all morning. Marek stopped her before she touched it.

"No," Marek said.

She stopped. "Leave it?"

"Leave that one."

The words remained visible. Marek read them from the bed.

"Stable for who?"

No response.

"Stable so I heal?"

No response.

"Stable so you can file me?"

The wall warmed instead of answering, which was answer enough for Marek. He laughed and grabbed his ribs.

"That one."

Elias watched him from the chair. Marek pointed at the custody message.

"It wants the file."

"Yes."

"You want access."

"Yes."

"You need someone from the Story."

"Yes."

Marek leaned back against the pillow. "At least you say it."

"I am not asking you."

"You are sitting in my room with the need."

Elias looked at the floor. "I can leave."

"Not yet."

Marek looked toward the narrow window. It opened only four inches.

"Wider."

Bell checked the latch. "Medical limit is four."

"Why?"

"Patients climbed out during an identity incident."

"Am I one of those patients?"

"No."

"Then wider."

Bell opened it halfway. Cold air entered from the exterior shaft. Marek took three slow breaths and stopped watching the door.

He asked for food. Medical brought sweet broth first. Marek tasted one spoonful and pushed the bowl away.

"This is dessert water."

"It has salt," Bell said.

"Then the salt lost."

Bell returned with dark bread, boiled potatoes, and a strip of roasted meat. Marek ate the bread first and kept the potatoes. Ordinary preferences entered his chart because they would matter the next time someone fed him.

DISLIKES SWEET BROTH.

PREFERS WINDOW OPEN.

BOOTS VISIBLE FROM BED.

No one interpreted the boots as trauma. They simply left them where he wanted them. Bell also wrote that he wanted the door shut while staff were outside and open while treatment was underway, because Marek kept checking the latch whenever someone disappeared behind it. He corrected her wording once: he wanted to hear the latch, not watch it. Bell changed the chart.

After the meal, Bell checked his pulse, asked where the pain was strongest, and adjusted the bed without deciding which historical wound caused it. Marek reported the ribs and lower back. She treated those current complaints, then offered the sedative again and explained the dose a second time. Marek refused again. She moved the vial away.

His eyes closed while he was still speaking. He woke seventeen minutes later with Elias gone and Eleven sitting beside the open window.

Marek reached toward the bedside table for a weapon that was no longer there. Eleven did not move closer.

"You asked Bell not to let anyone decide your history while you slept," Eleven said.

"Did they?"

"The wall tried."

Story Custody had printed a new classification beneath one of the paper covers while Marek slept. Eleven had left the cover in place until he woke.

CURRENT OUTCOME STABILISING:

WAITING.

Marek swung his legs over the side of the bed. Pain tightened his vision, but he stayed upright. Eleven stood without touching him.

"Help?" they asked.

"No."

Marek reached the wall on his own. He tore away the paper over WAITING and scratched at the word with his thumbnail until only the heading remained.

CURRENT OUTCOME STABILISING:

He returned to the bed, took LanternSalt's comment from the table, and pinned it beneath the unfinished field. The paper hung crooked because he used only one pin.

"One person looked for me," Marek said.

Eleven remained beside the window. "That does not decide what happened."

"No."

"It decides they noticed."

"Yes."

Marek climbed back into bed. Before lying down, he checked beneath the frame himself and found only stone. He looked through the half-open window, listened to the manual latch close once, and asked Bell who would remain in the room while he slept. Bell named herself and the night nurse. Eleven offered to leave; Marek asked them to stay until he finished writing.

This time, before closing his eyes, he asked Bell for paper and wrote his own limits.

NO HISTORY DECISIONS WHILE ASLEEP.

NO SURNAME ASSIGNED.

NO STORY ACCESS ACCEPTED.

WAKE ME BEFORE ANY RECOGNITION REVIEW.

Bell signed as medical witness. Eleven signed because Marek asked them to. Elias did not return to the room.

Marek slept for two hours. Bell changed the outer dressing once without altering any history field, exactly as his written limits allowed. The night nurse signed only the medical chart. When he woke, the window was still half open, his boots were still visible, and the custody wall had printed one new word beneath the unfinished outcome.

PRESENT.

He read it once and left that one.