By the third day in the Sanctuary, I finally understood why the rebels looked so glassy-eyed. It wasn't faith. It was paperwork. Endless, scrambled, nightmare-vomit paperwork that made reading Marx's appendices feel like children's bedtime stories.
Raven handed me a stack as though offering the Eucharist. "These are fragments of Bureau archives. We call them… Forbidden Knowledge."
The first page read: "Preliminary Nightmare Energy Application Test." Scribbles and erasures everywhere, but a few words were clear: "Human containers." "Stability rate: 2.3%." "Rupture."
Qi peeked over my shoulder and snorted: "So basically like winning the lottery. Either jackpot, or you splatter."
"That's why they want you," Raven said coldly. "To them, you're the 2.3%."
"More like lab rats in the 2.3% cage," I muttered, flipping further. Familiar names cropped up—Bureau officials, photos smeared in ink, faces warped into nightmare sketches: mouths split ear to ear, eyes rotted into pits.
I shoved the pages back. "Congrats, you found the truth. Now I suggest tossing it into a bonfire before my sanity beats me to it."
Raven shook her head. "We must understand it. Forbidden knowledge should not be destroyed—it must be used."
"That's exactly how every villain opens their end-of-the-world speech," Qi muttered.
The deeper we read, the worse it got. One file: "Nightmare Energy and Language Infection." They had prisoners chant certain words until they lost speech, bit their tongues, and ended up bubbling nonsense. Footnote: "Nightmare energy may spread via semantic chains."
I cursed. "Explains why elementary school readings always made me nauseous—turns out it was field testing."
Another fragment: "Nightmare Energy and the Fast-Food Industry." Apparently the Bureau spiked recipes with low-dose nightmare particles, monitoring mass mood shifts. Within a month, an entire city's diners wanted to murder their managers after burgers. A margin note read: "Side effects manageable. Profits promising."
Qi and I locked eyes. Unspoken pact: starve before we order take-out again.
Raven ignored our gagging and pressed on. "Forbidden knowledge is not merely dangerous. It is a key."
"A key to what? Humanity's coffin lid?" I shot back.
"To the true source of nightmare energy." Her tone was iron gates closing. Pages were scorched, as if someone had tried to erase them, leaving only tantalizing fragments.
Qi sighed. "Now I get why you call this place a sanctuary. After reading this junk, kneeling in prayer actually makes sense."
"Prayer is useless," Raven said, voice like a blade. "Only action matters."
I stared at the littered fragments. If forbidden knowledge grants power, step one is surviving the joke without going insane. Any organization mixing fast food, prayer, and exploding corpses in one report is already lethal by aesthetics alone.
Yet I began to see Raven's obsession. Knowledge was poison. The more who know, the faster they die. But if only you know, it becomes a weapon.
I shut the last page, exhaled like I'd just swallowed glass, and forced a smile uglier than crying. "Great. We've mastered forbidden knowledge. What's next? Reciting incantations to beat the Bureau, or spiking their lunch with nightmare seasoning?"
Raven said nothing. Her stare glimmered with something dangerous.
And in that silence, a ridiculous premonition struck me: we might really use these lousy files to push the world into a pit more absurd than the nightmares themselves.