You pick up the glass. You tell yourself it is one, that one is a sentence, not a verdict. It goes down sharp and familiar, and the familiarity is the problem, the body remembering a road it swore it had closed. She smiles like you have finally agreed to something. The shift is slow enough that you miss it starting. It lives first in the gap between a thought and the word for it, in how your answers come easier and land less precisely. The room does not change. The way you sit in it does, as if the space has loosened around you just enough to make everything feel unanchored. "You're not as sharp now," she says, not unkindly. "I'm fine." "You're not." You try to straighten. The movement carries too far and you steady yourself against the chair. The warmth in your chest spreads and your focus narrows until everything outside her voice goes distant. You blink, once, then again. The corner folds in around you. Nearly a year. You think of the sealed bottle under your bed you did not open, and the glass you just did, and how little distance there turned out to be between them. "Hey," she says, sharper now, leaning in. You reach for something and your hand finds nothing. The floor tilts. The last thing you register is her voice, moving away from you instead of toward you. Then everything slips. [[Cybercrime/The_Phisherman/Trance|Go under]]