CHAPTER 1: Jake Fletcher – The Tabloid King of Newark

Rain drummed on the tin roof over the exhaust pipe of the Rayzor soda factory like a broken snare drum. That sound was the soundtrack of my life. Me, Jake Fletcher, lived in its shadow, in a brick box from the era when Newark was still a proud city. From the window of my “studio”—which was a desk framed by a view of the fire escape on the opposite wall—I watched ton after ton of sugar being dumped into the growling hoppers, destined to become oversweet, fizzy crap by tomorrow. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I was an expert at manufacturing fizzy crap, too.

My “throne” was a chair that had seen more newsrooms than I had. The backrest was held together with duct tape in a color that matched nothing. My “pay” arrived via email from editors of websites whose names any respectable journalist would only utter while wearing a mask. AmericanGlobe.com, News247.net, NowWeKnow! They paid five cents a word, and if I really hit the jackpot with an article about a local councilman getting caught with his assistant in a disassembled golf cart, I could afford a luxury. Like new toothpaste.

"Jake," Lena told me last week when I was pitching her my latest article idea—proof that the city's public transport was using old ambulances to ferry immigrants around to save money. "You're actually a king. The Tabloid King of Newark. King Jake Fletcher."

She said it with a smile, but there was sadness in her eyes. Lena worked in advertising, in one of those glass skyscrapers in Manhattan that I looked at through binoculars when I wanted to see what real life looked like. We were like our cities: separated by a river, connected by a bridge that cost a fortune and was constantly falling apart.

Those words resonated with me. The Tabloid King. It was a title I'd never chosen, but one that fit me like a glove. Jake Fletcher, crowned with sarcasm and whiskey from a plastic bottle. Until that day.

It was an article like any other. It had good potential: "The Government Might Have Just Stolen Your Sunshine." I went all in. I mentioned the real, publicly known HAARP program in Alaska, whose official purpose was ionospheric research. But then I added my own, enhanced recipe: a secret extension, "Project Cirrus," microwave transmitters disguised as wind turbines that could disperse clouds over the estates of the elite and send storms to ruin Midwestern farms so Musk could buy them cheap for his vertical farms.

It was a beautiful, suicidal piece. I published it on TedUzVime! and waited for a small ripple in the pond of internet crazies.

Instead, a tsunami hit.

Not a tsunami of acclaim. A tsunami of ridicule. A few sentences from the article were ripped out of context and flew across X like a swallow smeared with pigeon shit. "Newark conspiracy theorist Jake Fletcher claims the government is stealing the sun!" "Pay for his therapy, not his clicks!" I was a meme. I was a punchline in the caption of a photo of a rainy picnic.

The mainstream media joined in with amused condescension. Short pieces in the "Curiosities" or "The Internet is Laughing" sections. Always with a lesson about "critical thinking" and "the danger of misinformation." My apartment, usually quiet except for the grumbling of the soda factory, was suddenly filled with a suffocating sense of isolation. I was the invisible man who had suddenly become visible only as a caricature. Jake Fletcher – Clown of the Week.

That evening, Lena came home tired from work. She looked at me staring at the monitor, flooded with echoes of my own humiliation. "Jake..." she began, and I knew what was coming. Her voice was full of that kind of pity that hurts more than anger. "That weather thing... you're serious about that?" "There are facts," I grumbled into my glass of cheap whiskey. "HAARP is real." "But the rest? Jake, come on. Look at what they're writing about you. With stuff like this..." She trailed off and put her hand on my shoulder. "With stuff like this, you'll never write for the New York Times."

That was the blow that knocks a king off his throne. Not the ridicule of an anonymous mob. Those words from someone I cared about. It was a verdict. A verdict on Jake Fletcher, on my career, on my dreams, on my whole existence.

At that moment, I stopped being the Tabloid King. I was just Jake Fletcher, the Newark crazy who lived next to the soda factory and made up stupid stories about the weather.

Except I didn't know just how much that Newark crazy would soon start to resemble, terrifyingly, the very people who were laughing at him.

CHAPTER 2: A Ghost from the Past

My inbox is like my living room: overflowing with trash, occasional threats, and penis enlargement offers that wouldn't pass muster on the darkest tabloid site. I had just deleted another offer for an "exclusive" interview with a man who claimed to be Nikola Tesla's grandson and that his plans for a perpetual motion machine had been stolen, when my gaze slid to a subject line that stood out like a diamond in a dumpster.

From: Sebastian Voss

Subject: Your article. Project Cirrus.

The message body was short, clipped, almost telegraphic.

Mr. Fletcher.

I read your article. Bold. Naive, but bold. You've scratched the surface of something far deeper than you can imagine. The weather is merely a tool. It is never the goal.

If you are interested in learning who truly holds the helm, I am willing to share. My current accommodations are somewhat… permanent. Ridgewood Institutional Care. Visiting hours are on weekends.

S. Voss

Sebastian Voss.

A name that had fallen out of the history of tabloid journalism like a gold tooth. A former superstar of authorized biographies. A man who spent months in the salons of power rather than just writing about them. Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush… he even breached the wall around Elon Musk and wrote the official, polished version of his life. And then… he overplayed his hand. According to the articles, he "succumbed to immense work pressure and paranoid delusions." Ended up behind walls. A fallen star.

And now he was writing to me. About my article.

Lena would say it was a trap. That he was just another lunatic who had found a kindred spirit. But something stopped me from deleting the message. It was the tone. That self-assured, almost mentoring tone. "Naive, but bold." Like an old professor giving me a C-plus with a star.

That weekend, I drove to Ridgewood.

The care facility didn't look like something from a horror movie. It looked like something from a bureaucratic decision. A dull brick building surrounded by an overly manicured lawn that screamed, "Look how normal we are!" Inside, it smelled of disinfectant, cheap food, and resignation.

The waiting room was empty. The nurse behind the glass, whose face looked like it was also made of brick, handed me a visitor's log. "Room 4B. We're quite busy today," she said without any indication that this might be true.

Room 4B was bare. A table, five chairs, a print on the wall—some anonymous impressionist scene meant to be soothing but just feeling depressing. And then there was him.

Sebastian Voss wasn't a specter. He was a shadow. Gaunt, in paper slippers and cheap sweatpants that hung on his bony hips. But when he lifted his head, all my preconceptions shattered. His eyes. They were incredibly alive, brilliantly blue, and focused like a laser beam. They seemed like the only thing in that room that wasn't worn out.

"Voss," he said. His voice was surprisingly deep and controlled. He offered his hand. The grip was firm, too aware of its own strength.

"Fletcher. Thanks for seeing—"

"We waste time with pleasantries," he interrupted me. His gaze consumed me, analyzed me. "I read your article. It was a nice attempt. Romantic."

"Romantic?" I objected. "The facts about HAARP are—"

"Facts!" he scoffed, waving a hand as if shooing a bothersome fly. "Facts are like bricks to them. They take them and build a wall to hide behind. You pointed at that wall and said, 'Look, a wall!' I'm telling you who built it, why, and what's behind it."

He leaned across the table. I could feel his intensity, an almost physical pressure.

"Project Cirrus? The weather? That's child's play, Fletcher. A toy for ambitious colonels and naive scientists who think they're playing God. The real game is different. It's about control. Control of resources, markets, populations. Control of the truth."

His words hung in the air, thick and heavy.

"Your article wasn't about you being wrong. It was about you being almost right. And that is far, far more dangerous to them than some madman claiming he's being followed by little green men. You ignore a madman. You must destroy the one who has a piece of the truth."

In that sterile, dying room, Sebastian Voss, officially certified madman, began assembling the world into a terrifyingly coherent picture for me. And I, Jake Fletcher, the Tabloid King of Newark, believed him completely, absolutely. It was the most comfortable feeling I'd had in a long time. And also the most terrifying.

CHAPTER 3: The Systems Engineer

Voss leaned back against the table, his long, slender fingers interlaced. That peculiar, focused flame burned in his eyes, transforming the wretched visiting room into a lecture hall.

"To understand, Fletcher, you must forget about fools in tin foil hats and satanic rituals in the basements of golf resorts," he began, his voice calm and weary, as if repeating a lesson he had hoped never to have to teach again. "The true architecture of power is boring. Accountantly boring. It's about shareholders, not members. Dividends, not blood."

He paused to study my expression. "The original architect... the steward of this global portfolio... was David Rockefeller. Not some cartoonish evil genius, but a perfect systems engineer. His empire wasn't built on oil, but on relationships. On the cold, mathematical idea that the world could be managed like a well-diversified investment."

Voss delved into history as if reading from an invisible teleprompter. "Rockefeller didn't need secret societies in the traditional sense. His tools were far more effective because they were public and legitimate. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The Trilateral Commission. The Bilderberg Group."

"These weren't Masonic lodges," he continued, his voice gaining intensity. "They were informal alumni clubs for Ivy League graduates who had reached the top. A place where wealth from Wall Street, influence from Washington, and academic aura from Harvard and Yale meet at cocktail parties and closed-door meetings. The goal? To ensure the world spins in a way that is... predictable. Profitable. Stable. For them."

"And here," he said, leaning closer, his whisper now razor-sharp, "is where the true conspiracy is born. The one that actually works. It's not about evil men conspiring to take over the world. It's about utterly rational men – and a few women – coming together to ensure their definition of stability becomes the world's definition. And anyone against this stability is a destabilizing element. And an element is treated as such. Isolated. Neutralized."

"All those conspiracy theories – about a New World Order, about a global government – were right at their core, but they got the execution completely wrong. They looked for Satanists where they should have looked for bankers. They looked for rituals where they should have looked for tax laws and monetary policy. Rockefeller's true genius was in understanding: the most effective world government is the one that looks like international cooperation. The one that poses as philanthropy and global governance. His famous 1994 statement wasn't a confession; it was a joke… a 'mission accomplished' uttered over champagne. He said: 'Some people believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States… and I am grateful for that.' The world took it as a metaphor. It wasn't wrong. It was wrong in thinking it was just a metaphor."

CHAPTER 4: The Architects of the New Order

He paused for a moment, studying my expression to see if I was keeping up. "Their goal was never to rule the world from a secret underground base. It was – and is – to create conditions under which they do not have to be ruled. To make the global system – the economy, politics, the media – function stably and according to rules they wrote themselves. They call it the New World Order. We call it a cage."

"And then," he continued, his voice trembling with a slight excitement for the first time, "the system evolved. Rockefeller died. The old guard, those who still believed in some form of public service, however warped, passed on. And a new generation took over the portfolio."

"Mark Zuckerberg," I shot out, trying to keep up.

Voss smirked disdainfully. "Zuckerberg? That boy selling ads for farm games and human attention? No, no. Zuckerberg is a useful idiot. A peddler of an addictive substance called 'connection.' He collects data. That's small-time fishing. The new guard doesn't want to catch fish. They want to own the ocean and charge tolls for sailing. Zuckerberg is a shopkeeper. We are talking about the architects of empire."

His eyes flashed with that fanatical light again. "A technocrat. A visionary with a god complex."

"Elon Musk," I breathed, almost breathless.

Voss nodded, like a teacher praising a moderately gifted student. "Exactly. He is not their king. That's too old-fashioned. He is primus inter pares. First among equals. And his empire… that is the cage, Fletcher. SpaceX controls the infrastructure above our heads. Neuralink will attempt to control the hardware inside our heads. And X…" He laughed shortly, hollowly. "X is the perfect tool. You call it a platform, but it's a trap. It monitors all communication, fractures society into warring tribes, and will ultimately dictate which version of truth is the permitted one. It's the smart home system for the planet, controlling the thermostat, the security cameras, and the speakers in every room. And we all gave it to him voluntarily."

I was silent. My brain struggled to process the flood of information. It sounded insane. And yet… yet it had a terrifying, internal logic. It was a business plan, not a madman's manifesto.

"You think I've gone mad," Voss stated suddenly, not as a question, but as a statement of fact."They say that about both of you," I replied.

He smiled that bitter, knowing smile. "That's precisely why you believe me. That's why you came." He stood up and walked to the window with bars. "They don't need to kill. They only need to evoke the exact feeling you have now. To make the truth sound so insane that one would rather reject it than risk one's own sanity."

He turned and looked me directly in the eyes. "You need proof. Not for the world. It is not ready yet. You need it for yourself. So that this thing doesn't let you go."

He ran his hand under the mattress of his bed and pulled out a thin, worn folder made of brown cardboard. It was almost empty. He placed it on the table in front of me.

"The first installment," he said quietly. "To assure you that what you are hearing is not the voice of a madman from an asylum."

I opened it. Inside were two documents.

The first: A scan of a page from a notebook. Scribbled but legible interview notes, written in Voss's characteristic neat handwriting. The date was from five years ago. Subject name: E.M. And in the middle of a paragraph about governance and the future of Mars, one sentence was underlined three times: "Democracy is just a transitional phase. Too slow, inefficient. We must skip it for the sake of progress."

The second: A photocopy of a handwritten page from the Bush biography. Notes in the margin, apparently from an editor or lawyer. In large letters, in red, next to a paragraph about the consequences of 9/11: "REMOVE THIS - too open. Describes 'long-term strategy', not immediate response. Could lead to misinterpretation."

I looked up. Voss was standing, watching me. In those brilliant eyes, there was no trace of madness anymore. There was only a cold, merciless calm.

"Welcome to the real matrix, Mr. Fletcher," he said softly. "Now you can no longer claim you didn't know."

His words hung in the heavy, sterile air between us like something tangible. I felt the worn cardboard of the folder under my fingers transform from mere paper into a hot ember that could burn my entire life to the ground. Voss just stood there, watching me with that unbearable, knowing calm. He didn't need to say anything else. He had already said it all.

A sudden knock on the door jerked us both out of our concentration. The door opened, revealing the same brick-faced nurse from reception. "Visiting hours are over," she announced in a monotone voice that did not know and did not care to know the meaning of the words she uttered.

Voss's expression immediately stiffened and shifted back into the mask of a disciplined patient. He nodded slightly without looking at her. "Thank you, Nurse."

He turned to me and offered his hand. His grip was brief, formal this time. "Ponder it, Fletcher. But carefully."

I stood up, shoved the damned folder under my jacket, and left the room without a single word. My legs carried me down the hallway, which suddenly seemed infinitely long and hostile. The elevator, the doors, the path across the overly manicured lawn—it was all just a blurry background.

I got into my car but didn't start it immediately. I just sat there, staring at the brick building through the windshield, at the window behind which Sebastian Voss, official madman, now remained. And I had under my arm proof that maybe, just maybe, he was the most lucid person I had ever met.

I started the engine, and the old car grumbled to life with a protesting groan. I drove away from there with the feeling that my world had just shattered into pieces. And the pieces, instead of fitting together, cut deep and maliciously.

CHAPTER 5: Normal Madness

The drive from Ridgewood to Newark became a tunnel. The fog in my head was so thick I barely registered the roaring trucks on the Turnpike. At exit 15, a red pickup with a dusty trailer hauling a lawnmower and an old couch overtook me – a grotesque image of the American dream on wheels. On the radio, a talk show host stuttered, arguing with a caller about whether Biden was senile when he ran for office or only became senile later. The irony, which would usually amuse me, slipped through my fingers this time. Under my jacket, right over my heart, the folder with Voss's "proof" burned unpleasantly. I felt like I was smuggling irradiated uranium.

The apartment welcomed me with its familiar chorus: the thrumming of the soda factory and the piercing whistle of the fridge, which for twenty years had apparently believed it was a train station. In the hallway, the neighbor's kid was banging on the door with a plastic bat until his mother yelled so loudly it echoed in my glass. I tossed my keys on the console and instinctively shoved the folder under a pile of old newspapers – an absurd attempt to hide it from… from whom? From Lena? From myself?

"Jake? Is that you?" Her voice came from the bedroom, tired but kind.

"Who else," I grumbled, opening the fridge to find something to wash away the taste of disinfectant and despair. The fridge exhaled clouds of smells: old cheese, an open jar of pickles, and a forgotten box of Chinese takeout. I grabbed a can of beer as if it were the last survivor in the war of chilled goods.

Lena appeared in the doorway, wrapped in my old bathrobe. Her gaze was soft but exhausted. "So how did it go? Did you meet that… writer?"

"I met him," I said, opening the beer can. The click sounded obscenely loud in the quiet apartment.

And then the words spilled out of me. It's impossible to stop a flood once the dam breaks. I gulped air and described Voss to her. His eyes. His calm. Rockefeller's networks. Musk's empire as a tool of control. Trump as an unpredictable element. Biden as a predictable interface. The words rushed out like wild water, trying to convey to her that terrifying, perfect logic that had seemed so clear to me in that room.

Lena listened. She didn't say a word until I finished, until I stood there with a half-empty can in my hand, gasping for breath. Her face wasn't mocking. It was… sad. Sad to the core.

"Jake," she said quietly, her voice almost lost in the roar of the soda factory. "Jake, please. Do you hear yourself?"

"I hear myself! And it finally makes sense!"

"It makes sense to a madman," she replied without anger, with infinite pity. "Jake, that man is a paranoid schizophrenic. He's locked up in a care facility. Of course it will sound logical. Paranoia is always perfectly logical inside its own bubble. That's its very nature."

"I have proof," I whispered desperately.

"You have a madman's notes," she corrected me gently. "You have sentences ripped out of context. Jake, you've always been looking for the big fish. I know that. But you've hooked yourself on a line you baited yourself."

I wanted to protest, I wanted to show her the damn folder, but at that moment my phone rang. Not my editorial number, but my private one. An unknown number.

I picked it up, glad for a reason to escape Lena's gaze.

"Fletcher," I said sharply.

"Fletcher, it's Miller from the 'Newark Star-Ledger'," a hoarse, familiar voice said. Ben Miller. Head of the local section. The guy who occasionally threw me a bone – a report on a neglected park or local government corruption when he was having a weak day. I could hear the newsroom bustle in the background: the clatter of keyboards, muffled laughter, phone rings. The sound of the normal world from which I had been exiled.

"Ben. What's up?"

"Listen, I've got a gem for you. A buddy from Fairbanks, Alaska, called me. Says there's a stir there about some strange lights. Locals are talking about UFOs, Russian drones, you know how those mountain guys get stressed. I thought – this is a job for Jake Fletcher. The Tabloid King of Newark, right?"

His voice was friendly, overly so. There was a false note in it.

"Reliable sources?" I asked mechanically.

"Of course! You want it? It's yours if you bite. You can even fly out there if you come up with a good angle."

And then, almost without a transition, his tone changed. He lowered his voice as if leaning into the microphone. "And Jake… stop messing around with that Voss guy. I get that you're looking for the big story. But going to see that… you know… that lunatic from Ridgewood… It doesn't help you. People are starting to ask questions. It's starting to look bad. For you. Understand?"

I froze. Miller knew. He knew where I had been. And he was calling to offer me a fairy tale about little green men in Alaska while subtly cutting the legs out from under my chair.

"Sure, Ben," I said, trying to make my voice sound normal. "Send me the details. I'll look into it."

I hung up. Lena was looking at me. Her expression said it all: See?

"Who was it?" she asked.

"Miller. Offered me a story. About UFOs in Alaska."

An expression of profound relief washed over her face. "That's great, Jake! That's what you're good at! Real work!"

She didn't for a second understand that it was a payoff. A bribe. A reward for stopping me from poking where I shouldn't.

I looked at her, at her genuine joy, and then at the pile of newspapers under which Voss's folder lay. Outside, a dog barked, a taxi honked somewhere on the street, and in the distance over Newark, the light of a plane heading to JFK blinked. Mundane scenery. And I stood at the crossroads of two worlds. In one, I was the Tabloid King being offered nonsense about UFOs. In the other… in the other, I was the man holding the key to the biggest story of the century. And everyone, including the woman I loved, was trying to convince me that the other world was just a madhouse.

And I wasn't sure at all which one I was actually in.

CHAPTER 6: The Garage on Long Island

Miller's offer was so transparent it hurt. UFOs in Alaska. It was a hook I decided to bite. Not for the story. For the cover. I needed a reason to be away from Newark, a reason for suddenly traveling across the country. And Alaska sounded far enough to justify any escapade.

Before my flight from JFK, I had a few hours. And one stop. Using old contacts and some dirty googling, I tracked down Adam Cole. Former personal assistant to a very, very influential senator with close ties to the Clintons. Officially now a "private consultant." Unofficially… well, that's what I was about to find out.

The meeting was arranged through three intermediaries. Location: an empty garage attached to a single-family house in Levittown, Long Island, that looked like it was waiting for demolition. The peeling doors held together only by the strength of rusty hinges; a faded kid's scooter and beer cans littered the driveway. Time: an ungodly early morning, when fog clung to the lawns and the identical houses looked like they were just waking from a bad dream.

Adam Cole wasn't what I expected. Instead of a clean-shaven, sharply dressed young man, I met a guy who was maybe forty but looked fifty. He wore a stretched-out hoodie and jeans, his eyes darting nervously. The garage smelled of diesel and fear. In the corner, an old tire and a broken radio lay on a pile of junk; the radio occasionally crackled softly, as if picking up a signal from another world.

"We have five minutes," he hissed without really looking at me. He was vaping, the steam mixing with the icy air. "Say what you want and disappear."

I pulled out my phone, where I had a screenshot ready of Voss's note about the "long-term strategy." It was a risk, but I wanted to see his reaction. "I'm interested in this. Do you know it? Do you know the context?"

Cole looked at the screen. His hand trembled. He looked away as if the image could burn him. "I don't know what you're talking about. Nonsense. Taken out of context." His voice was strained, almost squeaky.

"Sebastian Voss believed it. And now he's locked up in the loony bin," I said in a calm tone.

The name Voss hit him like a taser shot. He froze. "I don't know that man. And you should forget about him too. And everything he told you."

"Why? What's behind it?"

He laughed shortly, hysterically. "You still think it's some nice, clean business, don't you? That it's about money and power?" He finally looked at me. In his eyes was pure, unadulterated fear. "Man, drop it. Seriously. There are people here…" He trailed off and looked around as if afraid the empty garage had ears. Somewhere behind the wall, wood creaked, maybe just the wind, but Cole flinched as if he'd heard footsteps. "...people who don't sleep. And they hate it when someone pokes around. Pokes into things that should be forgotten. These aren't games. It's… it's a different league."

He pulled himself together and tossed the e-cigarette onto the concrete floor. "We never met. And if you have any sense, you'll say the same."

He turned and quickly disappeared through the back door of the garage, which creaked shut behind him. He left behind only the smell of menthol and an absolute, tangible dread. He didn't need to threaten me. His fear was more contagious than any threat. It was a perfect, self-contained mechanism. It just needed to be shown.

The drive to JFK was silent. The highway teemed with morning vans and taxis; the hazy skyscrapers of Manhattan glimmered on the horizon. Cole's words echoed in my head. People who don't sleep. Voss had offered me a grand vision of a system. Cole showed me its shadow. And that shadow was enough.

Alaska was the perfect antidote. The cold that stung my cheeks was clean and sharp, not like the damp, suffocating fear in the garage. The streets of Fairbanks felt sleepy and fragile, as if the whole town was on the edge of a winter dream. The local mountain men, a hunter with a frayed cap and a motel owner with a wind-beaten face, were thrilled that someone was interested in their "strange lights." In a dive bar with scarred tables and crooked deer antlers on the walls, they told me stories about "visitors," and you couldn't help but feel they were delighted just by the attention.

And after two days of digging, the "mystery" unraveled. Shreds of thin latex hanging from spruce branches, torn wires, and a miniature burner. Chinese sky lanterns. Released for the birthday of a fifteen-year-old boy from Fairbanks, carried dozens of miles north by the wind.

It was embarrassing, ridiculous, and absolutely perfect. I wrote a series of short, tabloid-style reports on the "progress of the investigation" – from a grand opening about mysterious forces to an anti-climactic reveal about a birthday party. It was exactly the kind of story everyone expected from me. The Tabloid King of Newark did what he does best: chased ghosts and found an empty sack.

When I sent the last article, I leaned back in the chair of a dingy internet cafe where old computers hummed like a out-of-tune orchestra, and stared at the frozen harbor. In the port, ships rocked lazily, surrounded by ice floes. I felt… empty. I was safe. I had returned to my role. I had done what everyone wanted. So why did I feel like I had just betrayed the only thing that truly mattered in my life?

Subconsciously, I reached into my backpack, where Voss's folder lay under layers of clothing. Cole's terrified whisper and Voss's prophetic words collided in my head with the triumphant smile of a fifteen-year-old kid who caused an international stir with a two-dollar lantern.

And suddenly, I didn't know what was crazier: believing Voss, or believing the world was really that simple.

CHAPTER 7: The Fool s Wind

The plane from Anchorage landed at Newark in the early morning. Droplets of ice still clung to the cabin windows, shimmering in the sun like fragile glass. The drive across the Hudson River, with the iconic silhouette of Manhattan in the fog, felt absurdly short and ordinary this time. After Alaska, after that vast, clean emptiness, Newark looked like a gray, dusty model railway. Everything was scaled down, tired, bitter. The airport bus rattled over potholes, past piles of black trash bags and billboards that once glowed but were now just peeling paint.

But one thing was unusual. A payment from the Newark Star-Ledger had landed in my account. The amount was obscenely high for my "investigation" into Chinese lanterns. It was a fee, but it smelled like a payoff. Like a reward for playing their game. I felt like a dog thrown an extra-large bone for stopping barking at the wrong person.

Lena was waiting for me at home. When I walked in, she hugged me as if I were returning from a war, not a stupid UFO trip. The apartment smelled of fresh coffee and her perfume, mingling with the ever-present dust from the soda factory. "I saw your articles!" she said, her voice full of relief. "They were great! And so… normal!" The word "normal" hung between us like redemption.

"Miller sent a hefty check," I said, tossing my backpack into the corner. I felt Voss's folder crumple in the backpack's pocket under my jacket. "That's fantastic! Jake, that's exactly what you need. Someone finally appreciating you for what you really do."

She suggested we celebrate that evening. A real dinner at an Italian restaurant downtown, a place we hadn't been to in ages. I agreed. I wanted to forget it all. Voss, Cole's fear, that oppressive feeling that I'd sold out something I actually cared about.

Before I could change, I opened my laptop to check my emails. A pile of spam, a few PR pitches… and one new email. Sender: S.Voss.

My heart sank into my stomach. My hand clenched on the touchpad. Subject: Have you thought about it?

The body of the message was empty. Just the subject. Three words that sounded like an ultimatum.

Have you thought about it?

I had. More than enough. And right now, with Lena's happy voice behind the door and the weight of that oversized check in my wallet, I didn't want to continue. I quickly closed the email, as if I could also close the thoughts it had triggered.

A few hours later, we were sitting in the cozy half-light of the restaurant. Outside, the noise of trams and distant taxi horns sounded, but inside, a different mood prevailed. The air smelled of garlic, pepper, and expensive wine. Lena was radiant. She talked about work, plans, about finally replacing that damned couch. I nodded and smiled, trying not to hear Voss's words echoing in my head like a distant but persistent alarm.

"Sorry, I need to step away for a moment," I finally said and got up from the table. The trip to the restroom was an escape.

It was quiet there, broken only by the hum of the extractor fan. The walls were tiled, some of the tiles cracked. Someone had once carved the words TRUTH IS A JOKE on the door, and someone else had covered it with a sticker of a baseball team's logo. I stood before the porcelain urinal, staring at the tiles, trying to shut off my brain.

Another man entered the room. He stood next to me. He was dressed in a well-cut but inconspicuous suit. He looked like dozens of other men in the restaurant. Neither old nor young. Unremarkable. Yet his presence felt like a weight.

He leaned forward slightly, his movement relaxed, natural. Then, without looking at me, he said in a calm, almost incidental voice that sounded clear and distinct in the silence:

"A fool's words are wind, but he who gathers them will drown in the storm."

He paused for a second, as if letting the words land. Then he zipped up, turned, and left without a single glance in my direction. His footsteps were regular, too regular.

I stood frozen. My hand stiffened in place. I heard the door close behind him. The sound of the flush sounded like a gunshot.

Have you thought about it?

Suddenly, I could think of nothing else. The random words of a stranger in the restroom. A warning. A threat. Perfectly calculated to be plausibly deniable. Exactly the kind "people who don't sleep" would use.

I returned to the table. Lena smiled at me. "Everything alright?" "Yes," I said, taking a sip of wine. It tasted like ash. "Everything's great."

But it wasn't. I had just received a second, more perfect warning. And this time, they had delivered it right to my "celebration." They knew where I was. They knew who I was with. And they were letting me know that they could. They always could.

CHAPTER 8: The Doubt

I didn't reply to Voss's email. I let the three words – Have you thought about it? – hang in my inbox like a poisoned hook. Instead, I threw myself back into the world that knew and approved of me. I wrote about the week-long garbage strike that turned the streets of Newark into slowly rotting dumps. Trash piled up on the sidewalks, bags ripped open, and cats and rats fought over pizza scraps. People wore scarves over their noses, but the sweet, rotten smell still seeped into the apartments.

I wrote a short piece about a brazen break-in at a bar near the port, where thieves had made off with an old safe containing a few thousand in cash. The owner, a fifty-something with a gray mustache, showed me the broken door, tapping his forehead as if to say it was to be expected. They were small, harmless stories. Safe.

But my brain refused to shut off. It was a machine that, once kick-started by Voss's testimony, had revved to full speed and now couldn't stop, even as I desperately pulled the brake.

I was irritable with Lena. I gave her short answers, stared at the wall when she talked to me, and tossed and turned at night while she slept a peaceful, innocent sleep. One morning at breakfast, she asked if I was sick. "Just tired," I lied. In truth, I felt a buildup of frustration and confused energy with no outlet.

Because what had seemed like a brilliantly revealed truth a few weeks ago was beginning to crumble under its own weight. And one specific hole in the whole theory bothered me the most. A little hole I kept poking my finger into, and it was dangerously widening.

Trump and Musk.

Voss had presented it with such certainty. Musk, the technocratic ruler who needs predictability. Trump, the elemental chaos that needs to be "removed." It sounded elegant. Except it was complete nonsense.

I lay awake at night ruminating on it. When Trump was running, Musk was basically giving him expert support on Twitter, advising him on strategy, they met. When Trump won, Musk joined his advisory board. Their relationship wasn't hostile at all; it was a relationship of two egomaniacs who admired each other. Musk directly benefited from Trump's election. He got contracts, influence, access. Why would he want to "remove" him?

And Biden? Voss's theory of the "predictable interface" suddenly seemed ridiculously naive. The Biden administration wasn't some smoothly functioning machine run by technocrats in the background. It was chaos of a different kind – slow, bureaucratic, often incompetent. If some dark force wanting stability was behind it, they were damn bad at their job.

That was the problem. The New World Order theory, as Voss had conveyed it, was too clean. Too perfect. It assumed a superhumanly competent, monolithic group that never makes mistakes and whose plans always work. But the real world, the world I observed daily as a tabloid journalist, was the exact opposite. It was a world of incompetence, chance, selfish interests, and constant firefighting. A world where even the most powerful people made stupid, irrational decisions that backfired.

So maybe Voss wasn't a genius who had uncovered the truth. Maybe he was just a very, very clever madman who could take fragmented pieces of reality – Rockefeller's power, the arrogance of Musk's empire, the chaos of Trump's administration – and glue them together into a perfectly logical, utterly false picture. A picture that gave his own suffering and isolation meaning.

And me? I was just another desperate man who had clung to that picture so desperately. Because giving the world a boogeyman called the NWO is easier than accepting a more terrifying truth: that the world is actually run much worse than we can imagine. That it's just an endless, chaotic mess for which no one bears real responsibility.

Sometimes Cole came back to me too. That meeting in the garage, his flashes of panic, the whisper that "they" hear everything. Sometimes I thought it was the authentic terror of a man who knows more than he's allowed to say. And other times, the whole thing seemed like paranoia on the verge of collapse – a shadow play where I served as a useful audience member.

And then the restroom in the restaurant. The words of the "fool" in the suit: A fool's words are wind… Was it a calculated message, a cold signal, or just the hallucination of a man starting to drown in his own theories? To this day, I wasn't sure which was worse – a real threat, or my own mind creating it.

This thought, the thought of utter, meaningless chaos, was ultimately more terrifying than any conspiracy. And so, in dawning desperation, I looked again at that email. At those three simple words.

Have you thought about it?

Yes, damn it. I had thought. And I had reached no conclusion. Only greater fear and greater loneliness than ever before.

CHAPTER 9: A Lesson in Reality

An opportunity presented itself that seemed like the perfect cover to gather more information. An international conference on global challenges, held in one of those glass palaces near Central Park. The entrance hall resembled a temple of modern power – marble gleam, walls covered with projections of graphs and slogans about a "sustainable future." While speakers inside discussed world crises, demonstrators with signs stood outside the railings. One woman shouted at me that climate change was just another bankers' trick, handing me a leaflet printed in all caps. Security guards pushed her aside, and I continued on, a notepad in my pocket.

My task was to write a "rebellious" article – something in the vein of "the elites are once again thinking they can save the world while drinking champagne." It was exactly the kind of cynical journalism expected of me. But I saw a different opportunity. The speaker list included names from CFR circles, people connected to the world Voss had spoken of. And among them was Professor Eleanor Shaw from Columbia University, a respected expert on international relations and a former UN advisor. Her articles were praised for their "sober realism."

Under the pretext of "balancing" my report, I arranged a short interview through her assistant. I told her I was interested in the "informal dynamics of global governance." That was language she understood.

We met in the hotel café where the conference was taking place. The tables shone under the soft light of lamps; the air among the guests smelled of mingled perfumes and roasted beans. Outside the window, Central Park was reflected in the glass of skyscrapers. Professor Shaw was a woman in a sharply tailored suit, with glasses on her nose and an expression that suggested her time was more expensive than diamonds. The coffee in front of her hadn't been touched, as if afraid to disturb her concentration. A waitress hovered nearby with a notepad, but Shaw dismissed her with a single look.

I explained my angle – how can the public believe in global cooperation when they perceive it as a project of detached elites. Then I took a breath and went for it.

"Professor," I began cautiously. "I've come across certain... theories. Not about formal institutions, but about informal networks. Networks that might stretch from Rockefeller's CFR to today's technocratic visionaries like Musk. Networks whose primary goal isn't necessarily the public good, but maintaining a certain... systemic stability that benefits their interests. What is your opinion on such a hypothesis?"

She stared at me for a moment with a completely still expression. Then the beginnings of a smile appeared at the corners of her mouth. It wasn't a friendly smile. It was an expression of deep, immense contempt.

"Young man," she began, her voice smooth as ice, "you have just crossed from journalism into the realm of sci-fi and conspiracy fantasy."

She raised her cup but didn't drink. She just held it, like a symbol of something I had no right to. Behind us, piano jazz played from the speakers, meant to create an intellectual atmosphere, but to me it sounded like mockery.

"David Rockefeller wasn't a villainous genius. He was a pragmatist. The CFR isn't a secret society. It's a think tank. One of many. Yes, of course influential people meet and discuss the world. That happens in every field. But the idea that there is some conscious, coordinated plan... that is absurdly naive."

She took a sip. Her look was weary, as if explaining the laws of physics to a child who believes the moon is made of cheese. Outside, a taxi horn blared, shattering our moment of silence, but she continued with stony calm.

"Real power," she continued, "isn't in dark rooms. It's in bureaucracy. In chance. In stupid historical accidents. In some clerk in Brussels or Washington signing the wrong form. It is chaotic, shapeless, and utterly impersonal. And that's what's truly frightening about it. That there is no grand design behind it. That it's just... noise."

She leaned closer to me. Her perfume was expensive and cold.

"Your hypothesis, Mr. Fletcher, is comfortable. It gives the world order and meaning. A boogeyman you can point to. Reality is much more boring and much more disturbing. No one is driving the bus. The bus is careening on its own. And we are all just passengers inside, pretending we know where it's going."

I shook my head. "And the connections to the technocrats? Musk, his influence..."

"Elon Musk?" She laughed shortly, a sharp, dismissive laugh. "Musk is a narcissistic boy with too much money and too big an ego. His influence is a reflection of our own stupidity, our fascination with shiny toys. He is not an architect. He is a symptom. Just like Trump. Both are products of a decaying system, not its architects. You are confusing cause and effect."

She fell silent and set her cup down with finality.

"I recommend you focus on real problems. The boring ones. Taxes, regulations, bureaucracy. That's where the real power lies. And it is so immensely boring that it wouldn't occur to you to write about it in your wildest dreams."

She checked her watch. "My time is up. Have a nice day."

She rose and left, leaving me sitting with my half-cold coffee and the feeling that I had just been intellectually flogged. Her mockery wasn't hysterical. It was mockery from a position of absolute, unshakable certainty. From the position of someone who knows how the world works and sees me only as a naive fool playing detective in a jungle that doesn't actually exist.

And what she said was terrifying. Because it made terrible sense. Maybe I really was just looking for a boogeyman because the idea that the world was careening toward ruin completely randomly and without any plan was more unbearable than any conspiracy.

Professor Shaw's mockery was the most effective silencing tool I had encountered so far. Because it didn't threaten me. It merely informed me that I was ridiculous. And nothing is more deadly to a journalist than the feeling of being ridiculous.

CHAPTER 10: The Reply That Never Came

I tried. I really tried to be the man Lena knew and wanted to have at home. That evening, we opened a good whiskey, the one we'd been saving for a "special occasion." I saw it as penance. The bottle had been sitting on the shelf for months, covered in a light layer of dust, and now its cork finally gave a soft pop that felt almost ceremonial. We sat on the couch and put on some stupid crime series, which won us over with its complete dissimilarity to reality. On the screen, a cop in a leather jacket chased a criminal who left a trail like an elephant in a china shop.

Lena leaned against my shoulder, content and relaxed. I could feel her warmth, the scent of her hair, and yet I was infinitely far away. A single question flashed in my head like a stubborn virus: Have you thought about it? I tried to drown it in alcohol, in the banal dialogue on the screen, in Lena's proximity. In vain.

Outside the window, car lights flickered on the street, reflected in our dark TV screen, and mingled with the glow of the neighbor's lamp. Lena gradually began to breathe more deeply and regularly, until she finally fell asleep. Her face in the TV's gloom looked calm and innocent. I threw a blanket over her and just watched her for a while. It was the only moment when I felt the world around us was alright.

On the screen, they interrupted the series with a short news report. "Former President Donald Trump today, during a visit to Texas…" the announcer said. And then footage appeared: Trump, with his typical broad smile, walking across an airfield. And by his side, wearing an indispensable baseball cap and looking utterly self-assured, walked Elon Musk. They were smiling at each other. Trump clapped Musk on the back, said something to him, and both laughed. Then they got into a shiny, red Tesla and drove away. The camera lingered for a moment on the empty asphalt and the noise of jet engines in the background.

"Huh," I heard myself mutter. "Best friends."

It was so vulgarly clear, so right in front of my eyes. That image was a complete, perfect refutation of everything Voss had told me. No rivalry, no "removal." Just two rich men enjoying each other's company and the mutual publicity. I felt the entire flimsy construct collapsing inside me. The whole theory was nonsense.

Suddenly, the whiskey tasted disgusting. The notes of wood and smoke I usually liked had turned into something stale. I got up, left Lena sleeping, and went to the computer. The monitor's light in the dark room was mercilessly bright. Silence reigned all around, only a distant ambulance siren sounded from the street. I opened the email. Its subject: those three words.

Have you thought about it?

Yes. I had thought. And now I was sure. It was nonsense. Beautifully composed, logical, but still nonsense. And I was the fool who had fallen for it. With anger at myself and a feeling of liberating certainty, I pressed the "Reply" button. I wrote the only honest sentence that came to my mind at that moment:

I have thought about it, but it's losing its meaning for me. I'll come to see you.

It was my surrender. I intended to go there and tell him to his face. To get closure.

The morning woke me with light from the window and a dull headache from the whiskey. Lena was already up, and in the kitchen, I could hear the clinking of cutlery, the occasional hiss of a pan, and muted humming. The sound felt cozy and safe, almost like from another world. The smile on my lips froze when I saw the monitor. I hadn't shut down the computer in my anger.

A new message glowed on the screen. Subject: Re: Have you thought about it?

My heart pounded. I opened it. It wasn't in Voss's strangely formal yet personal style. It was an official, impersonal email.

Dear Mr. Fletcher,

Thank you for your interest in communicating with Mr. Sebastian Voss. We regret to inform you that Mr. Voss's access to electronic communication has been revoked due to a violation of internal regulations. Mr. Voss repeatedly abused this privileged access to send unfounded and paranoid theories to prominent public figures, thereby harassing their offices and damaging the good name of our facility.

Visits are still possible according to standard procedure. We hope you understand this measure.

Sincerely, Dr. Alban G. Finch Director, Ridgewood Institutional Care

I sat and stared at the monitor. Unfounded and paranoid theories. Harassing prominent public figures.

CHAPTER 11: The Confrontation

I left my car in the parking lot in front of Ridgewood and headed for the main entrance with a determination fueled by a mix of anger and guilt. It was a cold morning, the grass along the driveway was still wet with dew, and crows swayed lazily in the treetops. The words of the director's email still echoed in my head. Paranoid theories. Harassment. And my own naive reply.

The same stone-faced nurse from behind the reception window greeted me. Behind her, a wall clock ticked with stern precision, and the whole room smelled of a mix of disinfectant and old linoleum. "Good morning, I'm here to visit Mr. Voss," I said, trying to sound confident.

Her expression didn't flicker. "Mr. Voss is not currently permitted visitors. His medical condition has deteriorated."

An icy grip clenched my stomach. "That's not possible. Just yesterday, Dr. Finch himself wrote to me that visits are possible according to standard procedure."

Her gaze remained neutral. "I'll check with the attending physician." She turned and disappeared into a back room. I heard the clack of her heels on the tile floor, which gradually faded into silence. Minutes passed. Others came and went in front of me – an elderly man brought a bag of apples, a woman with exhausted eyes nervously rummaged in her purse. They all waited, just like me. I felt the adrenaline rising.

When the nurse returned, I was ready. "Well?" "I'm afraid it's confirmed. No visits."

That's when I snapped. "That's nonsense! I'm an accredited journalist conducting an interview with Mr. Voss! And you're preventing me from doing so!" I raised my voice only slightly, but in the quiet hall, it sounded like a gunshot. The older woman beside me gasped and clutched her purse tighter.

"What's all this commotion?" a calm, authoritative voice said behind me.

I turned. A man in a perfect white coat, with a sharply trimmed gray beard and glasses that gave him an air of infallible intellect. He looked exactly like the kind of man who would sign that email. Behind him, the nurse who had left earlier flashed by, now standing by the door like a silent shadow.

"Fletcher, accredited journalist," I said, trying not to show how much his arrival had thrown me.

"I know who you are, Mr. Fletcher," the man said with a slight, kind smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I am Dr. Finch. I'm afraid Mr. Voss is currently very agitated. His paranoid delusions have deepened. A visit would not be suitable for him or for you."

I looked directly into those cold eyes. I felt the lie. I felt that perfect, smooth manipulation. And suddenly I knew that to back down meant to lose forever.

"I insist nonetheless," I said firmly.

Dr. Finch studied me for a moment. His smile faded but remained professional. "Very well," he said finally, as if granting me an immense favor. "But I must warn you. And try not to stress him. Any agitation could have… adverse consequences."

The nurse led me in silence down a hallway that seemed longer and more hostile than ever before. The fluorescent lights on the ceiling buzzed relentlessly, and every few steps I passed doors with small metal plaques. Behind one, I heard muffled laughter; behind another, desperate banging. The mix of sounds unsettled me more than tomb-like silence.

She stopped in front of room 4B. "Five minutes," she hissed and walked away.

I stepped inside. Sebastian Voss was sitting on the bed, his back against the wall, staring out the window with bars. The window was framed by heavy gray curtains, their edges slightly worn. On the bedside table stood a half-finished cup of water, and next to it lay a notebook without a cover, its pages filled with tight handwriting.

He didn't look agitated. He looked utterly calm. Too calm. When he turned, his eyes were as brilliant as ever, but in their depths was a new, profound weariness.

"Mr. Fletcher," he greeted me in a quiet but clear voice. "Have you thought about it?"

I stood before him. "Yes. I have thought. But it still doesn't make sense to me. Trump is giving Musk the best publicity, they're seen together, they act like… friends. Why would he want to remove him? Why would he even help him gain power in the first place?"

Voss looked at me with an expression bordering on pity. Then he smiled faintly. "When the June 14th assassination attempt failed, the FBI and Secret Service started guarding Trump much more closely. He became harder to reach. The best strategy is to keep your greatest enemy constantly in sight. And even have him do your advertising in the process. It's genius. You control him, you weaken his image by associating him with yourself… and you wait for an opportunity."

I sat and stared at him. And suddenly, that image of Trump and Musk on TV made no sense at all. It wasn't proof that Voss was lying. It was proof that he was right. A truth for which they had just locked him in isolation and severed his last connection to the world.

And with my naive reply, my surrender, I had practically signed his sentence.

CHAPTER 12: Confession in the Bar

I left Ridgewood with my head full of Voss’s warnings and terrifyingly logical explanations. The wind pressing into the old maples along the driveway creaked through the branches, as if it wanted to drown out my doubts. I felt the weight of the promise I had given him. To verify. To begin publishing. To warn Trump. That last idea felt the most insane of them all.

“Be careful,” Voss warned me as I was leaving. His eyes, still sharp despite everything, were deeply troubled. “You won’t get to Trump. He’s surrounded by layers of people who aren’t there to let in journalists with conspiracies. And above all… you don’t know who you can trust. Even those who pose as allies may just be… another layer of protection.”

His words echoed inside me as I walked through the gates of the institution. I felt like a player suddenly placed in the middle of a chessboard without knowing the rules, and every passerby might be a hostile piece. At the gate, an elderly guard with a paper cup of coffee let me out without interest, but his indifference only reinforced my feeling that everything here was a façade hiding another game.

A few days later, I found myself at a tech conference in one of those soulless convention centers. Concrete walls lined with plastic, the air conditioning blasting at full power, the lighting dimmed just enough to feel “professional.” It was one of those obligatory assignments—writing about the “vision of the future” according to some CEO selling yet another boring cloud platform. It felt like a string of advertising presentations where even the dullest chart was paraded as a revolution. It was a return to my old, safe life. And I desperately tried to squeeze myself back into it.

After the keynote, most of the attendees drifted into the adjoining bar. The place buzzed with people in suits, chatting in half-tones to outcompete the echo of their own laughter and the clinking of glasses. Beer was served in tall, thin glasses, though everyone pretended they were sipping champagne. I stood alone by the counter, licking my wounds from the encounters with Voss and Finch, when I saw him.

A former director of a tech firm connected to DARPA. He wore a discreet suit, tie loosened, hair neatly combed but thinning. He was a man whose name I knew from articles about espionage scandals and futuristic weapons systems that had never been officially confirmed. Now he was retired. He looked worn, as if life had wrung him dry, but his eyes still scanned the room with analytical precision, as though mapping every corner.

By chance, we ended up next to each other. I exchanged a few pleasantries about the conference—typical phrases about the speakers, the weather, the organizational chaos. I offered him a drink. He bought the next one. After the third whiskey, which softened the edge of his professional reserve, he began to talk.

I hadn’t pushed him. I merely mentioned that I was interested in the “broader context” of technological progress, in ethics. He seized it.

“Of course something like that exists,” he said suddenly, almost nostalgically, staring into his glass as if it held his past. “It always has. Rockefeller, Bilderberg… those old men, it was about personal ties, about fine-tuning the system. Today it’s… different. Smoother. Less personal. More algorithmic.”

I raised my eyebrows, trying to look only mildly curious. “Algorithmic?”

“Power,” he said simply. “It’s no longer about meetings in wooden libraries. It’s about data. About the flow of capital following predictable patterns. About platforms that shape reality on their own. It’s like… gravity. You don’t see it, but it keeps you on the ground.”

“And people like Musk?” I risked asking.

He laughed—short, humorless. “Musk? A brilliant madman. A wild card. The system doesn’t try to destroy him. That would be wasteful. The system tries to… absorb him. Exploit him. His madness, his ego, his ability to push boundaries—all of it are incredibly valuable commodities. He thinks he’s changing the world. And he’s right. But he’s not changing it for himself. He’s changing it for them. It’s the perfect symbiosis. He’s the screaming face of progress. They are the ones holding the reins and direction.”

His tone was neither angry nor frightened. It was a tone of deep, almost resigned acceptance. The voice of a man who had seen it from the inside, understood it, and… made his peace with it. He even seemed to take a questionable pleasure in the elegance of the mechanism.

“And it can’t be stopped?” I asked, my own excitement stifled by his cold resignation.

He looked at me, truly looked at me, for the first time. There was something like pity in his eyes. “Stopped? Young man, you still don’t understand. It’s not about stopping it. It’s about knowing how to move within it. Like in a storm. You can’t stop the wind. You can only learn to build ships that don’t sink in it.”

He finished his drink and placed the glass on the counter. The bartender whisked it away instantly, as if erasing the very trace of our conversation. “It was nice talking with you. Good luck.”

He turned and left, leaving me standing with an icy knot in my stomach. He hadn’t confirmed Voss’s specific theory. He had confirmed something far more terrifying. He confirmed that the system Voss had spoken of truly existed. But it wasn’t a monolith. It was a living, breathing organism, one that had absorbed even its apparent enemy, Elon Musk, and turned him into just another organ in its body.

And that man’s tone—the fondness mixed with resignation—was the most effective silencing tool imaginable. Because he wasn’t offering me a fight. He was offering me only a sad, wise shrug. And that was priceless.

CHAPTER 13: Silence

The new information from the former DARPA director gnawed at me. It was a different perspective, colder and more sophisticated than Voss's passionate revelation, but it confirmed the core of it. I felt an urgent need to consult with him. I needed to tell him. I needed to hear what he would say. He was the only person who would understand.

With the receiver pressed to my ear, I listened to the monotonous ringing of the line to Ridgewood. My heart was racing. A stifling silence filled the apartment around me, broken only by the occasional crackle of the old refrigerator and the distant sound of ambulance sirens heading to Newark hospital from the street. Finally, the line connected.

"Ridgewood Sanitarium, good afternoon," said the receptionist's voice, the same stony voice as always.

"Hello, this is Jake Fletcher. I'd like to be connected to Mr. Sebastian Voss's room. It's urgent."

There was a brief silence on the other end. I heard papers rustling, or maybe she was just pretending to check something. Then her voice returned, smooth and impenetrable as ice. "I'm sorry. Mr. Voss is currently unable to take a call."

"What does that mean? Why is he unable?"

"His current medical condition does not permit it. Have a nice day." Click. The line went dead.

I sat there with the silent receiver in my hand. Unable. Those two words sounded terrifyingly vague. It could mean anything. That he was sedated. That he was in a coma. That he was dead.

The next morning, I went to Ridgewood in person. The journey felt endless. At an intersection, I was delayed by a blocked truck carrying pallets of fruit that had spilled onto the road, and I sat there in traffic while people collected oranges as if it were an ordinary day. Every traffic light, every turn delayed me from the answer I so desperately needed.

When I finally parked in the hospital lot, the wind scattered fallen leaves across the cracked asphalt. A faded sign hung above the entrance to the sanitarium, and a man in overalls stood by the doors smoking a cigarette—he watched me with an empty, dull gaze, as if he stood there every day watching everyone who came and went.

The same nurse behind the glass window. Her face showed not a hint of surprise when she saw me.

"Mr. Voss," I blurted out before she could say anything. "I need to speak with him. It's urgent."

She looked at me with her dead, professional gaze. "Mr. Fletcher, Mr. Voss's condition has deteriorated radically. He was transferred to a specialized facility last night."

The air left my lungs. "Transferred? Where? To what facility?"

"I'm afraid I cannot tell you that. The family expressly did not wish it."

"Family?" I was taken aback. "What family? To my knowledge, Mr. Voss was divorced and childless. He has no family."

Her lips tightened into a thin, disapproving line. "I'm sorry, Mr. Fletcher. Information regarding a patient's transfer and location is subject to medical confidentiality and the family's wishes. I cannot tell you more."

Through the glass window, I caught a glimpse of my own reflection—exhausted, with dark circles under my eyes. It looked like I was staring at a stranger.

She looked at me without blinking. It was a perfect, impenetrable wall. Officialese. Bureaucratic no. Behind her gaze, I felt no malice, no mockery. Only absolute, perfectly practiced indifference. She was just a cog in a machine that had just ground up Sebastian Voss and erased him from existence.

"I understand," I said finally, and my voice sounded strange and foreign even to me. I turned and walked out.

The sun was shining, the grass an unnaturally bright green. On a bench in front of the sanitarium, an old man in a bathrobe sat feeding sparrows pieces of a roll, as if the world around him was perfectly fine. The world looked normal. But nothing was normal.

I had no more doubts. He hadn't been transferred. He had been removed. His theories weren't paranoid delusions. They were fingerprints on glass. And he had paid for them.

The fear I had felt until now was abstract. A fear of something large and vague. Now that fear had changed. It was specific. Personal. It was the cold touch of a system that had touched someone I knew. And which had shown me it could touch me, too.

I had lost my only ally. The only person who understood me. And suddenly, I was completely alone with my truth.

CHAPTER 14: The Only Family

The atmosphere in the apartment grew thicker with each passing day. Lena stopped hiding her dissatisfaction. Her worries had turned into open frustration. The kitchen sink was constantly full of unwashed dishes, my notes and clipped articles were piled high on the table. The apartment, once a refuge, was turning into a paper tomb.

"Are you at it again, Jake? That Voss thing again?" she asked one evening when she saw me staring at a blank screen, piecing things together in my head. "Haven't you gotten enough from him?"

"Lena," I said quietly without turning to look at her. "They put him away. So he wouldn't say anything else."

She threw her hands up in a gesture of helplessness. "My God, Jake! Listen to yourself! You're as paranoid as he was! His family probably just wanted to move him somewhere he'd get better care! And more importantly, where he wouldn't be harassed by nutcases like you!"

Now I turned. "See? Family. He doesn't have one. He was divorced, childless. Who is this family?"

"So what? A distant relative! An aunt! Just someone who decided to take care of him! Please, just stop it! You're scaring me with this!"

I saw real fear in her eyes. But it wasn't fear for me. It was fear of me. Of the man she loved, who was changing before her eyes into a stranger who believed delusions. To have peace, to dispel that fear at least a little, I promised her. "Okay. You're right. I'll stop. I'll focus on normal work."

I made the promise sincerely. And I broke it before the ink of those words had dried in the air.

Instead of writing about garbage collector strikes, I started searching for Voss's ex-wife. I managed to find her through Larry, an acquaintance from the local police. I'd once left Larry's name out of an article about bribery, and he owed me for that. It was a risky game – using police resources for private research – but I had no choice.

We met in a grimy highway bar where the smell of fried chicken wings overpowered the cigarette smoke. Larry ordered a beer and, almost as an aside, slipped me a piece of paper with an address. "Haven't seen you anywhere," he said without looking up.

He whispered the name and address to me: Clara Voss, now Mitchell. She lived in a decent house in the suburbs. I sent her emails, messages, called her. She ignored everything.

I had to use a trick.

I waited for her outside the fitness center where, according to Larry, she went for yoga every Tuesday. A group of women in leggings gathered outside, laughing and discussing recipes, while Clara was the last to leave – a well-groomed woman in her late forties with a worried but resolute expression. I followed her to a small café two streets away.

The café smelled of coffee and cinnamon, an old jazz tune played on the radio in the corner. Outside the window, a yellow school bus raced by, kids sticking their tongues out behind the glass. An ordinary backdrop that sharply contrasted with the weight constricting my chest.

When she sat down with her latte by the window, I slid into the seat opposite her. "Mrs. Mitchell? My name is Jake Fletcher. I'm a friend of your ex-husband, Sebastian Voss."

She froze. Her coffee cup trembled. Quickly, instinctively, she scanned the café to see if anyone was watching or listening. "Why are you telling me this?" she hissed quietly but sharply. "I have nothing to do with that man."

"I know. And I apologize for the interruption. But... at his family's request, he was transferred to an unknown medical facility. And you... you strike me as his only real family. I wanted to inform you."

Her eyes widened in astonishment that held not a trace of a lie. "I haven't seen or spoken to Sebastian in at least two years. I'm not interested in him. And I know nothing about any transfer. Now please, go away."

Her tone was clear. Cold and decisive. I got up, apologized, and left. I was convinced this was a dead end. That she was truly out of the game. I paid my bill at the bar and walked past her table towards the door. She was staring stubbornly at her cup. But the moment I was right next to her, her head turned slightly. Her lips moved without her looking at me. I heard a barely perceptible, weary whisper that blended with the café's hum:

"Mr. Fletcher... be careful."

I stopped. I didn't even turn around to scare her.

In an even quieter voice, almost just a breath, she added: "I don't know any family. But... according to the sanitarium papers... the request was made by some cousin. His name is..." She paused, swallowed. "...one I never heard Sebastian mention a single word about in all our ten years of marriage."

Then she fell completely silent. She bent over her drink, her pretense of not knowing me was perfect.

I walked out into the sun. A homeless man sat on the sidewalk with a sign that read 'Hungry, God Bless' and chewed on a cold hotdog someone had just given him. I didn't feel triumph. I only felt an icy chill creeping up my spine. I had confirmation. A "cousin". A fictitious relative. A fake request.

I was on the right track. And Clara Voss, her fear, and her warning made it perfectly clear that this track led to a very, very dangerous place.

CHAPTER 15: A Visit with Consequences

I turned the key in the lock with a sense of heaviness I knew all too well. The hallway of the building was saturated with the smell of boiled cabbage from the ground-floor neighbor and cheap fabric softener from the laundry room one floor up. Behind the door of our apartment, an unusually deep silence prevailed. The clinking of cutlery from the kitchen was missing, the sound of the TV, the rustle of newspapers. Lena sat on the couch, motionless, her hands clasped in her lap. She wasn't looking at me. She was staring into the emptiness in front of her. The air was thick and icy, as if someone had left a window open in the middle of winter.

"Lena? What's wrong?" I asked, though I instinctively knew something terrible had happened.

She slowly raised her head. Her eyes were red and full of something more than anger. It was pure, unbridled horror. "They were here," she said quietly. Her voice trembled. "Two gentlemen. Well-dressed. Very polite."

I sank into the armchair opposite her. My heart was pounding in my throat. On the carpet, I noticed a wet smear – someone must have recently shaken the rain off their coat.

"Who?"

"They didn't say. They showed some badges. Looked... official." She swallowed. "They knew everything, Jake. They knew you visited that Voss. They knew you talked to his wife. They knew about your... investigation."

I felt my stomach turn. They had been following me. From the very beginning.

"They said," she continued, her voice mimicking their calm, almost deadly tone, "that if you continue spreading these... 'fabricated stories', you will be prosecuted. They showed me..." She stopped, her eyes filling with tears. "They showed me the statutes. 18 U.S.C. § 1038. False information and hoaxes. They said it might look like a joke, but it actually creates the impression of an impending terrorist attack or... or something terrible. And that carries a sentence of up to five years in prison. And if someone panics and gets hurt because of it, up to twenty. Or... or life."

She mumbled something about another statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1001, false statements to authorities, and some law against foreign propaganda. Her voice got lost in the noise of my own fear. All I registered was the monotonous drip of the kitchen tap, which now sounded like a countdown.

"And then... then they said the worst thing," she whispered. "They said that spreading knowingly false statements... that's not protected by free speech. That the Constitution doesn't protect it. That you're... that you're essentially without rights, Jake. If you go through with this."

She took a deep breath and finally looked me straight in the eye. Her gaze was desperate and urgent. "Promise me. Promise me you'll stop with this. Please."

I sat there, trying to process it all. This wasn't a threat. This wasn't intimidation in a garage. This was pure, unadulterated legal force. A system that would turn against you and crush you, and everyone would agree because you broke the rules. It was brilliant. And terrifying.

"Lena," I started carefully. "You know... this is actually confirmation that there's something to it. That it's something big. Voss trusted me. And it's... it's in the interest of all people. For them to know."

I saw the words hit an impenetrable wall in her eyes. She shook her head, first slowly, then more and more desperately. "Wake up, Jake! Wake up! People don't care! Most of them, anyway! And those who do care... those who want to know... they'll find out somewhere else! And those men... they'll make our lives hell! Who has ever helped us? Huh? When you lost that internship? When we sued the landlord? Who? No one! And now you're supposed to fight for 'all people'?"

She stood up, and her voice turned into a hysterical plea. "Jake, seriously... I'm really starting to think you're crazy. Like your Voss. They want to put you away not because you're right, but because you're crazy! And I... I can't live like this with you. I'm scared for you. And I'm scared of you."

It hit me like a slap. I stood before her, with the statutes ringing in my ears and the gaze of the woman I loved, who was now afraid of me. I was afraid myself. And suddenly, I didn't know what I was more afraid of. Those men in suits with laws in their pockets? Or that Lena was right? That I was just a fool who believed another fool and was now tightening the noose around my own neck?

For the first time, I truly hesitated. For the first time, I wished I had never received that email from Sebastian Voss.

From the fridge, I pulled out a bottle of Rhine Riesling we'd been saving for our anniversary. I held it like a lifeline. The wine was supposed to be an escape, to take us back to a time when our biggest worries were a broken dishwasher and a dirty window. The metal cap clinked against the countertop as I opened it – the echo rang through the apartment, unnervingly loud.

"Lena," I said as I poured the sparkling golden liquid into the glasses. My hand was shaking. "I don't know what to do."

She sat back down on the couch, hugging her knees. She suddenly looked terribly young and vulnerable. "Jake," she said softly, almost tenderly. "Forget about all those people. You don't even know them. Save us. Save us."

She was right about that. I didn't know them. They were just an abstract concept. "People". But Voss... Voss wasn't abstract. His fear was real. And now mine was too.

I raised my glass but didn't drink. I looked into it as if searching for an answer. "Lena... what if it's true?" I blurted out. The thought that had been growing in me for weeks suddenly found words. "What if those at the top have really decided there are too many people? That the population needs to be... reduced? I'm not talking about war. I'm talking about something cleaner. Some kind of disease. Something that looks like an accident."

My voice cracked. "And what if... what if we are in that group to be reduced? You and me? Because we're useless? Because we just consume resources? Or because we know about it?"

The words hung in the stale air of the apartment. Outside, the soda factory rumbled, a faithful companion of our ordinary life that now sounded like the approach of judgment. Between the rhythmic beats, I could hear the distant honk of a car and the shouts of kids playing basketball in the courtyard. The ordinary world went on, untouched by our little hell.

Lena stared at me. Her eyes, moments ago filled with tears of anger and fear, suddenly filled with something else. Astonishment. And then absolute, crushing understanding. The understanding that what was happening was worse than she thought. That it wasn't just my obsession. That I was completely lost.

New tears welled in her eyes. This time, they weren't from anger. They were from pure, deep sorrow.

"Jake," she exhaled. Her voice was just a whisper, full of horror and pity. "Jake... you're really crazy."

She got up from the couch. Her body was shaking. "I... I don't even know you."

She turned and walked into the bedroom. The door closed with a quiet click that sounded worse than any argument. I was left alone with two glasses of untouched wine and the terrifying feeling that I had just lost everything that mattered to me. And it wasn't some secret society that was to blame. It was my own fear that had turned me into a stranger. Or was it the fear that showed me who I really was? I could no longer tell the difference.

CHAPTER 16: The Big Break

The emptiness left by Lena's threats and my own fear was deeper than the silence in the apartment. It was a hollow space inside me that sucked in every sound, every thought. The only thing that filled it was anger and a stubborn obsession. Pure, unyielding anger at the system that had taken Voss, and at myself for backing down.

Lena avoided me. She slept on the couch in the living room. Sometimes she woke up at night and quietly walked to the kitchen to run water for a drink, or stood by the window looking out at the empty street. The air between us was thick and icy, saturated with unspoken fears and disappointment. Every look from her said: I don't know you anymore. And every look from me was full of reproach: Why don't you believe me?

It was this deep slump, this desperate loneliness, that became my fuel. I spent days and nights sitting at the table, framed by the view of the opposite wall, while she moved quietly through the apartment like a ghost. Voss's notes, those worn scans, and my own records of the meetings with Cole, with the director from DARPA, had grown into a massive, furiously written series of articles. It was my monument to Sebastian Voss. My bomb. My defense before Lena and before myself.

I wrote not only about "Project Cirrus" and the weather. I wrote about the network. About Rockefeller and his "systematic engineering" of global stability. About the seamless handover of power from financial aristocrats to technocrats, for whom humanity is just a dataset to be optimized. About Musk as the perfect public face of this machine—a genius, unmanageable madman whose ego and vision are cynically used to build the very cage he will be imprisoned in. About how the apparent chaos of Trump and the apparent predictability of Biden actually complement each other to serve the same goal: maintaining the illusion of choice while systematically consolidating control.

And I wrote about Voss. About his piercing insight, about his disappearance. About the "family" that doesn't exist, and the fake cousin who signed the transfer request.

It was a text full of fury, but also cold, relentless logic. I connected the dots no one wanted connected. And when I wrote the last sentence, I felt both empty and triumphant. I saved it in a drawer. It was an act of pure desperation. Whatever happens, I had said it. Even if only I ever read it.

Outside, it was slowly getting dark; the street lamps clicked on and spilled orange light onto the sidewalk. In the distance, an ambulance siren wailed and then fell silent. Footsteps echoed in the hallway—the neighbor returning from the night shift—a small reminder in that monotonous silence that the world outside kept turning.

And then it happened. An email from the editorial office of The New York Observer. Not from some assistant, but from the head of news himself, Michael Prentiss. I knew his name from bylines under hard-hitting investigative pieces.

Subject: Your manuscript

My heart sank into my stomach. I opened it, expecting a legal cease and desist, a threat.

Instead, I read words that took my breath away. Prentiss was "absolutely enthralled." He called it a "groundbreaking investigative piece that changes everything," "bold, uncompromising, and brilliantly documented." They wanted it. The whole thing. And they wanted it ASAP. They offered a contract, a solid fee, the front page.

I sat in front of the monitor and read the email over and over. I felt tears of relief and victory welling up in my eyes. The New York Observer. It wasn't the New York Times, but it was a big, respected paper with an air of independence and sharper elbows. It was my breakthrough. My vindication.

I stood up. My heart was racing. I walked into the living room. Lena was lying on the couch reading, but her eyes were staring blankly at the page. The evening news was on quietly on the TV, the image reflected in her glasses without her registering what was on screen. "Lena," I said, and my voice sounded strange, trembling. "Look at this."

She looked up suspiciously. I handed her the printed email. She read it. I saw her jaw slowly drop in astonishment and disbelief. "Is this... a joke?" she asked faintly."No. They called me. They're going to publish it. The whole thing.""But... the statutes... those men...""Prentiss says their lawyers are the best. That they're not afraid of anything. That the truth is an absolute defense."

She looked at me. For the first time in weeks, I didn't see fear or pity in her eyes. I saw amazement. And a glimmer of hope. It wasn't trust yet, but it was a start. "My God, Jake..." she whispered. "So... so you were right after all...?""I don't know what I am," I interrupted her. "But I know I have to publish it."

In that moment, for the first time since that cursed visit from the two men, I believed that the truth could actually prevail. That all the risk, all the anxiety, had a purpose. That Voss hadn't died in vain. That he would get justice. And that I, Jake Fletcher, king of Newark tabloids, wouldn't end up a mere fool, but the man who uncovered the greatest conspiracy of the century.

It was a beautiful, intoxicating feeling. The last great illusion I had left. I hugged Lena and felt her body finally relax after weeks of tension. Outside, the wind blew and swayed the old clothesline on the balcony, its metal poles groaning creakily, as if warning that the calm was only an illusion.

I had no idea how fragile that illusion was. I had no idea the machinery was already in motion. That the offer was just another, more refined form of a trap. That the gate seemingly opening into a world of truth actually led only to a higher, better-guarded cage. And that my victory was merely the prelude to a definitive defeat.

CHAPTER 17: The Game Behind the Scenes

The next day, I returned from reporting on the opening of the new bike path tired, dirty, and empty. The smell of asphalt still lingered in my nose—the same asphalt that had stuck to the soles of passersby's shoes in the sun—and my ears buzled with the voice of the mayor, who had cut the ribbon with exaggerated enthusiasm for the lenses of the local cameras. The apartment was quiet. Too quiet. The soft hum of her laptop was missing, the smell of coffee that had long gone cold, and the sound of the neighbor's radio that usually seeped through the thin walls. Now, the entire floor seemed plunged into a dead silence.

"Lena?" I called out into the emptiness. Only the ticking of the old clock on the wall answered me. Its regular clicking sounded louder than usual, as if mocking my expectation.

I walked through the living room. A glass with dried red wine stood on the coffee table, a small lipstick mark on its rim. Everything was tidy, except for one small detail. On the dining table, in the middle of the empty surface, lay a single sheet of paper. A white note, with a few smudged, translucent spots in several places. Wet drops. Perhaps tears.

I picked it up. My hand was shaking.

I'm sorry, Jakub. I can't stay with you now. Have you thought about why?

It was like a punch to the solar plexus. I leaned on the table, trying to catch my breath. Those words… Have you thought about why? They were a cruel echo of Voss's question. Suddenly, it wasn't just an intellectual puzzle. It was the reason I was alone. The reason I had lost the only person I cared about.

Maybe I understood her. What could I offer her? A life in the shadow of legal paragraphs and threats? Constant fear? Watching the man she knew change into a paranoid weirdo before her eyes?

From the kitchen came the faint dripping of the tap, a sound I had never noticed before. Now it stabbed at my ears like a reproach.

What now? Get drunk on cheap beer and try to forget? Or… Or prove to her that I'm right? That my fight isn't the fight of a madman, but a fight for us, for everyone who doesn't know what's being planned against them? The latter goal seemed utterly impossible. And yet…

My philosophical musings were cut short by the sharp, urgent ring of the telephone. I picked it up, still holding Lena's note in my other hand.

"Fletcher," I said hoarsely.

"Jakub? It's Ben Miller." The voice of my editor-in-chief from the Newark Star-Ledger sounded strange. Tired. Apologetic. Too soft for his rough demeanor. In the background, I could hear the rustling of papers and the distant bustle of the newsroom, which was usually his natural habitat. "Listen… about that… that big article of yours."

My heart clenched. "Yes? It's ready. I'll send it in five minutes; it'll make the deadline."

Silence. Long, suffocating silence, broken only by the faint crackle of the phone line. "That's why I'm calling, Jakub. We can't publish it."

My head buzzed. "What? Why? Ben, this is… this is the biggest story I've ever…"

"I know what you think," he interrupted me. His voice was tense now. "But legal has gone over the whole thing. And there are… too many unsubstantiated claims. Absolutely insane accusations. The risk of libel lawsuits is… well, it's just too high. We can't risk it. It's beyond the capabilities of our small paper."

"Those are excuses, Ben!" I exploded. "We've always taken risks! When we wrote about the mayor and those contracts? That was no picnic either!"

"This is different, Jakub," he said quietly. And in his voice, I finally heard it. It was fear. Pure, undiluted fear. "This… this is a different league. Listen. Drop it. Write something about that… bike path. Wrap it up nicely. But this… forget about this story."

"Did they tell you to say that?" I asked, and my own fear turned to anger. "Did they tell you to silence me?"

"Nobody told me anything!" he snapped, but it sounded false, like a rehearsed line. In the background, I heard a door click, as if someone had just entered his office. "It's a decision from legal. And I… I have to agree with it. I'm sorry, Jakub. Really."

Click. The line went dead.

I stood in the middle of the empty apartment, holding a dead phone in one hand and Lena's tear-stained note in the other. Outside, a bus roared by, its lights briefly cutting across the room and disappearing, a reminder of a world that kept turning, with or without me.

The pressure had been applied. Perfectly. Professionally. Without a single threat. Just a "decision from legal." The gate had been closed. Officially, legally, and utterly bulletproof.

And I was left alone. With a truth I couldn't tell anyone. And with the feeling that I had just lost not only the woman I loved but also the only purpose I had left.

CHAPTER 18: Confrontation with the Truth

The return from New York was like falling from a warm dream into an ice-cold bath of reality. The excitement of meetings, promises, and respect in the Observer’s offices was replaced by the gray twilight of Newark. The train spat me out onto a filthy platform where the fluorescent lights buzzed like drowsy wasps, and the stench of urine and cheap food mixed with the smoke of brakes. The walk from the parking lot to my house led along the same neglected streets as always. Satellite dishes jutted from windows, the smell of fried chicken seeped out of ground-floor doors, and somewhere in an alley a child was crying. Even the air here was thicker, heavier.

I was just unlocking my door when a black SUV rolled to a stop behind me with absolute silence. Its tires whispered over gravel, the engine purred once and then went dead. It was so discreet, and yet so aggressively telling, that my hand froze with the key in the lock.

The SUV doors opened. Two men stepped out. Both wore perfectly tailored yet inconspicuous suits that didn’t shout but whispered authority. Their postures were relaxed yet ready. Their movements economical, not a gesture wasted. They didn’t belong in this setting any more than a diamond belongs on a landfill. These were men who belonged nowhere, yet could walk anywhere.

One of them, older, with sharply cropped gray hair and a calm, almost indifferent expression, positioned himself so that he blocked my way to the house. His partner, younger, with an empty gaze, stayed slightly back, covering the flank. From a nearby yard came the bark of a dog, but it immediately fell silent, as if sensing that something foreign had entered.

“Jake Fletcher?” the older man asked. His voice was neutral, professional. He knew the answer.

“Is this a meetup for badly dressed agents?” I tried for bravado, but my voice lacked force.

The man ignored my comment. His eyes, cold and analytical, measured me. “Either you’re very intelligent, Mr. Fletcher,” he said almost thoughtfully, “or you’re a complete fool.”

He waited, in case I wanted to interrupt. When I stayed silent, he continued. “We let you through to Sebastian Voss. We knew you were going to him. We expected you’d write a neat little story about how the old man in the asylum had lost his mind. That you’d confirm the diagnosis to the public. It would have been… a tidy ending.”

His tone was mild, almost friendly, as if explaining the rules of a game I hadn’t understood. “But you… you believed him. And worse, you started blurting it out to the world. That was a mistake.”

The younger man shifted slightly. Just enough to remind me of his presence. In the shop window across the street, a fleeting reflection of his silhouette glinted.

The older man leaned a little closer. His breath smelled of mint. “So now we recommend—and I mean truly recommend—that you stick to… safer topics. Like those Chinese lanterns in Alaska. That was a nice piece. Stay with that.”

He fixed his gaze on me. His eyes were no longer indifferent. They were the eyes of a surgeon who knows exactly where to cut. “Your recent work, Mr. Fletcher, has raised concerns about your mental health in certain circles. An intense fixation on paranoid theories, connecting random events… you know the type. We would be truly sorry if you ended up like that writer. Voss. Such a sad story.”

That was the blow. Clean, perfect, absolute. It wasn’t a death threat. It was a threat of erasure. A threat to turn me into another Voss. To sideline me behind the same wall of indifference and ridicule that swallowed him. And looked at from a certain angle… it almost resembled care. Concern.

I said nothing. I couldn’t. I stood there frozen, the key protruding from the lock. An old car with a broken muffler rattled past on the street, its roar absurdly normal in that suffocating silence.

The man straightened up. His expression shifted back into a neutral professional mask. “Have a nice day, Mr. Fletcher. I trust we understand each other.”

He turned without waiting for a reply. Both got back into the SUV. The doors closed with a soft, precise click. The car departed as quietly as it had arrived.

I remained standing on the sidewalk. I could hear the thrum of the soda plant and the distant hum of the highway. In the window across the street, a face flickered, then quickly pulled back as the curtain was drawn. The world kept turning. But I no longer had a place in it. It had just been explained to me, perfectly and unassailably, that any place I might have was conditional upon my silence. And that my truth was, by definition, madness.

Slowly, I turned the key and entered the empty apartment. Yesterday’s dinner plate still sat in the kitchen, an old copy of the Star-Ledger lay on the table. I was alone. Alone with a threat that wasn’t a threat. And with a truth that had been officially declared a delusion.

CHAPTER 19: Diagnosis: Truth

Only one desperate, crazy card remained for me to play. If I couldn't publish, if no one would listen to me, then the warning had to come directly from the source. I reached out to the Secret Service. It was a desperate, suicidal move, but Voss's warning – The best strategy is to keep your greatest enemy constantly in your sight – was buzzing in my head. I had to try.

I wrote an email. Brief, factual. It referenced Voss's testimony, the "cousin," the "translation," the connection between certain technological empires and an effort to destabilize. I didn't claim to know the date and time. I claimed there was a pattern. That Trump was moving in a trap.

I sent it from a dusty café on the corner of Ferry Street, where the air conditioning whined like an old fan and the barista asked me why I kept tapping on my keyboard so frantically. I buried myself in a corner by the window, which overlooked a street full of half-crumbling facades and graffiti.

The reply came in less than three hours. Not by email. A phone call. A man introduced himself as an agent from the local office. His voice was perfectly polite and utterly empty.

"Mr. Fletcher, thank you for your concern. We take all claims regarding the safety of protectees with the utmost seriousness and investigate them thoroughly. Your information has been logged."

"You're investigating? What about—"

"Thank you for your time. Have a nice day."

Click.

Silence followed. And then I heard it. From behind the agent's professional tone, just before he hung up, I caught a muffled, stifled laugh. A single, quickly suppressed burst. It was mockery. Pure, unadulterated mockery. I was a joke to them. They were confirming Voss's thesis more perfectly than I ever could.

And at that moment, something inside me snapped. The last shred of sanity, the last restraints. If they wanted a madman, they would get a madman.

I opened X, my old, dusty lair full of conspiracies. The laptop hummed and the fan blew hot air into the room where unpaid bills and old copies of the Star-Ledger piled up on the shelves. And I started writing. One outburst after another. Everything. Names, dates, theories, connections. Rockefeller, CFR, Musk, manipulated weather, the fake cousin, Voss's translation, the threats in suits, the laughing agent. I wrote it all in long, incoherent threads, full of capital letters and exclamation points. I was furious, paranoid, completely out of control. Exactly what they wanted me to be.

People reacted. Some laughed. Some tagged me. Some, those who believed, spread it with terrifying speed. I became a living meme. A caricature of a conspiracy theorist. Jake Fletcher from Newark had completely lost his mind.

This was precisely the behavior they wanted from me. And I delivered it to them. On a silver platter.

What followed was swift. An email from my boss, Ben Miller. "Jake, what are you doing? Stop this immediately! You're destroying your reputation!" Lena called, her voice full of panic: "Jake, what's happening? Delete it!" I only answered her with another tweet about how even she might be part of it all.

And then, three days later, a clerk rang my doorbell. He wore a suit and carried a briefcase. He presented me with an official document. Based on "concerns from friends and colleagues" – not a single name was listed in the document – an urgent psychiatric evaluation of my person had been ordered to assess my competency and potential danger to myself and others.

I watched him as he had me sign the papers. Outside in the hallway, I could hear the footsteps of neighbors and the distant shouts of children playing with a ball. Life went on, only I had fallen out of it. I felt… calm. It was finished.

The evaluation lasted two hours. A small room with white walls, where the air conditioning hummed and an ambulance passed by occasionally. A psychiatrist with kind eyes and a pre-written assessment. He asked me the right questions. About my childhood. About my relationships. About my "stress." And then about my "beliefs." When I started talking about Voss, he nodded understandingly. When I mentioned Musk and Trump, he made a note on his pad.

His diagnosis was as inevitable as sunset.

Paranoid Personality Disorder.

Delusions of a grandiose nature.

Acute exacerbation due to professional stress and personal crises.

Recommendation: Immediate hospitalization in a closed ward for observation and stabilization with medication.

The pressure was no longer just a threat from unknown men in cars. It had become formalized. It got a stamp. It was dressed in a white coat and language about help, care, and safety. It was the most effective silencing tool imaginable. I was no longer a dangerous journalist. I was just a patient. The madman from Newark who made up nonsense.

And everyone who nodded along – the psychiatrist, the clerk, maybe even Ben Miller, maybe even Lena in her horror – became part of the machine. They didn't even need to know they belonged to it. It was enough that they followed procedures. That they did their jobs.

The silence-manufacturing machine worked perfectly. And my voice was lost within it.

Epilogue: Legacy

Now. I sit in the room where Voss used to sit. Room 4B. The same chair, the same table with chipped varnish, the same view through the barred window of the courtyard where a single, lonely tree fights for light. Outside, beneath it, an old patient in a gray bathrobe sits and turns a small stone over in his fingers, as if searching for a secret message inside. He sits there every day. Every day without a word. Everything here is the same. Even the smell—a mix of disinfectant, old fear, and mental resignation.

I understand his story perfectly. All too perfectly. It’s as if I’ve become the continuation of his sentence, a living addendum to his diagnosis. The system doesn’t need to kill. Killing leaves corpses, questions, martyrs. That’s inefficient and dangerous.

It’s enough to discredit. To take the truth, anchor it in a reality so terrifyingly believable, and then wrap it in the cotton wool of mockery, label it with the sticker of madness, and declare the one who proclaims it a lunatic. Isolate him. Silence him with medication that clouds thoughts and walls that absorb words. It’s cleaner. More efficient. And so comfortable for the public. The world is simpler when inconvenient truths are just manifestations of an illness.

I write these lines on the backs of old forms I’ve hidden under the mattress. The paper is crumpled; some sheets have the imprints of lunch trays or stains from the coffee they serve here in plastic cups. I write with a trembling hand when I hear the nurse making her rounds at the other end of the hallway. Her keys always jingle against the metal rail before she opens a door. Sometimes, behind the doors, you can hear the raspy laughter of a patient.

Maybe the cleaning lady will find my notes and throw them out as more of a madman's nonsense. Maybe the nurses will confiscate them during the weekly check and add them to my file as evidence of the progression of my “delusions.”

But maybe, just maybe, they will get out one day. Maybe someone will hide them in a pocket, maybe someone will read them and think: What if…? Maybe they will become my legacy. The only testimony that Jake Fletcher wasn’t always just a diagnosis in a file. That there was a man who tried to tell the truth and was erased for it.

When you read this, when you ask yourself if he was a madman or a prophet, remember one thing: The most genius conspiracy of all is not the one that remains forever secret. That would be straightforward. Too human.

The most genius conspiracy is the one that is publicly ridiculed, discredited, and labeled as madness so perfectly that even if you stumble upon it yourself, even if its logic touches you, you will convince yourself that it cannot be true. Because to accept it would mean admitting that the world is far more terrifying than you ever allowed yourself to believe. And that you, too, might just be a cog in the machine that grinds you down.

Outside the door, the clinking of the medication cart sounded. One patient swore, another began to sing an old radio song for no reason.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go for the evening medication round.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1: Jake Fletcher – The Tabloid King of Newark

CHAPTER 2: A Ghost from the Past

CHAPTER 3: The Systems Engineer

CHAPTER 4: The Architects of the New Order

CHAPTER 5: Normal Madness

CHAPTER 6: The Garage on Long Island

CHAPTER 7: The Fool s Wind

CHAPTER 8: The Doubt

CHAPTER 9: A Lesson in Reality

CHAPTER 10: The Reply That Never Came

CHAPTER 11: The Confrontation

CHAPTER 12: Confession in the Bar

CHAPTER 13: Silence

CHAPTER 14: The Only Family

CHAPTER 15: A Visit with Consequences

CHAPTER 16: The Big Break

CHAPTER 17: The Game Behind the Scenes

CHAPTER 18: Confrontation with the Truth

CHAPTER 19: Diagnosis: Truth

Epilogue: Legacy