"During this process, I passed countless mirrors and glasses, and I was certain I saw myself, but I never realized anything was wrong until the alarm went off today. Thoughts that didn't belong to me flooded my mind."
"I started to become aware that I had been eroded, that what I was seeing and hearing might not be real, but I still retained a sliver of sanity, and I hoped to be able to leave the room."
"Why?" Shiller asked.
"I don't know, I don't know if these thoughts are my own, or even if I ever had such thoughts. I feel like that thing has always been in my mind."
Gordon became somewhat absent-minded again, and Shiller kept calling his name, which brought some of his sanity back. Shiller told Gordon his speculation, but he concealed the part about Peter.
Because no one knows if the current Gordon is still Gordon.
Shiller did not save Gordon because he trusted him particularly; he simply wanted to preserve the life of the sheriff for the time being. If there was a chance for things to turn around later, they might be able to clear the contamination.
"Tell me about the method you mentioned before for leaving the 19th floor," Shiller said, looking at Gordon.
"That might not have been me who told you," Gordon said, obviously trusting himself even less than Shiller did; he added, "I might have been manipulated, telling you a method that's sure to be fatal."
"Just tell me, and I'll make my own judgment."
Gordon had no choice but to swallow and begin, "This is what I've researched over the past few days. I found that something steps out of the elevator at midnight every day, but it doesn't just come to the 19th floor, it also visits other floors."
"There's a 'ding' when the elevator doors open, which means the elevator is operational again. I thought maybe we could follow behind it and get into the elevator before the doors close."
"Why not get in before it does?" Shiller said. "Take the chance while it's patrolling the corridors..."
"No." Gordon shook his head and said, "Once it comes out, the elevator doors will close, and we can't open them, so we can only rush into the elevator the moment it returns and the doors open."
"But that would be like walking into a trap."
"So it's a gamble," Gordon said. "Our speculations are similar; I also think it's a contamination detection device. Since it doesn't attack anything that's not contaminated, as long as you ensure you're not contaminated, perhaps you can coexist peacefully with it."
Shiller began to ponder. Gordon's point made some sense. If that thing outside was a contamination detection device, as long as he was certain he wasn't contaminated, it might not attack him.
But that was also hard to say because the Cthulhu Mythos itself is chaotic, not bound by any real set of rules. Moreover, there were no clear rules now; everything had to be guessed, and a wrong guess could leave him completely passive.
According to Shiller's observations, the only way to leave the 19th floor was the elevator, which he had to take no matter what. If that thing decided to attack him, there was no alternative but to fight head-on.
But he was certain he wouldn't be able to withstand it, and that related back to his origins.
The Bishop was actually a "corpse collector."
When the first Father was killed in the church, he grew even more certain that God did not exist, and hence, the Bishop was born.
In the garden behind the church, by the side and at the feet of God, he created his own graveyard.
When the blood of lively fish jumping around dried up, no longer vibrant or beautiful, they would find rest in the Bishop's Divine Country, quietly decaying in a place unknown to anyone.
To everyone who asked why he was always busy on the weekends, Shiller would say, "Sorry, I have to give thanks to God."
And then he would silently add to himself, "Thanks that God never existed."
Of all the personalities on the Magic Side, he was the one closest to Morbidity. For a long time, he worked with Hunting and Torture.
But that didn't mean he had the same level of aggressiveness as those with a Morbid personality; he was just a researcher, and asking him to fight Cthulhu monsters for three hundred rounds was a bit too much for him.
But Shiller had his own methods.
He asked Gordon the last question on his mind, "Have you seen any other living people on this floor?"
"You mean people like me?" Gordon smiled wryly and said, "I only know there should be someone living in room 1904, but I do not know what has become of him now. While I was exploring the hallway, I saw him pacing in his room, but he seemed never to leave it."
"Someone lives in room 1904?" Shiller was puzzled. The elevator chimed only twice on that side. If someone was in room 1904, were the two chimes for rooms 1904 and 1905?
But it wasn't surprising, from Gordon's description, before the alarm rang today, there were no outbreaks of abnormalities, even he himself didn't realize he was abnormal, so the criteria for judgment might be much stricter than Shiller imagined. The occupants of rooms 1901 and 1903 might have been deemed contaminated.
But if that were the case, why hadn't they been terminated yet? Could it be that they were already dead, and he was merely too preoccupied with arriving at room 1907 to notice?
Shiller returned to his room, where he had to carefully organize his thoughts and find a way out of the chaos and scattered clues.
Everything was so bizarre.
When he put all the clues together, Shiller suddenly realized something—this could all be an intricately woven trap.