Kate found herself walking along a street alone. The scene looked normal enough, but it was completely devoid of scent and sound. Despite this, she had an intense feeling of being followed. Footsteps behind her echoed in her memory, despite no sounds making themselves apparent.
She hurried her steps, glancing behind her frequently despite not seeing anything. Despite moving forward, the street seemed the same behind her, as if she was running in place. Her panic spiked, and her sense of being stalked spiked with it. The angles of the straight turned wrong. Warping, twisting from their usual rigid form.
Change of plans, Kate thought , as she ducked into an alley. It was a straight shot to the other side. She bolted as soon as she crossed the border from the street as the corridor twisted and turned until...
Dead end.
Kate looked at the wall she found herself against, aghast. It was brickwork, old. It looked like it had always belonged. She ran her hand along it. It was solid. Both along the wall and the adjoining joint. It was as if it had always been there, as if this alley was always a dead end. The bricks were cold and wet, only slightly comforting against the backdrop of the sense removed environment she found herself in. The young detective spun around, and took in her first sight of the stalker. Words echoed in her memory, as if spoken through a veil outside of the rules of this twisted landscape.
The person's silhouette was dark against the pale moonlight seeping into the alley, casting a black shadow stretching out to her feet. The voiced echoed more as if she had already heard it, rather than if it were being said out loud.
"I apologize for this, but you have something that doesn't belong to you. I can't oblige vermin making off with our Animus." The voice felt male, and as the figure in the trenchcoat silhouette raised his hand...
Kate woke in a cold sweat, her bed soaked with perspiration. What the hell was that? She tried to manually calm her breathing until she felt in control of herself. The dream felt real, not like dreams that fade when you wake, but like a memory that was so important you should never let go of it. She glanced at her side table, and the golden bauble she had snatched from the scene. The memory of fresh blood from her wounded hand when she had fished it out of the sewer didn't seem to conform to reality. The wound itself was gone already, and if not for the golden sphere sitting on her nightstand, she may have dismissed the night as another dream itself.
Animus, the curio, strange nightmares, and blood. It was all too much to think about right now. She was still hesitant to touch the thing again. It appeared to be a golden trinket, roughly the size of a pocket watch, with a swirling opaque lens covering the front. The lens was darker than she remembered, tainted with her own blood that had been spilt when she grasped the thing initially. Despite that, it had no sharp edges, only two curved loops on either side that had served as her method of pulling the thing up from its watery home with an unbent coat hanger.
Kate sighed and lay back down. It was still night out, and she was too tired to think. She returned to the covers, hoping to resume the investigation im the morning with a clear head and fresh questions.