Nathan Cole sat in his old, rusty sedan parked in the corner of the car park. The air inside the car was heavy with the smell of alcohol and old leather seats. He mumbled the same question he'd been asking himself for the last few years: "How did I get here?"
He was once considered one of the best surgeons in the country. With his skill, intelligence and determination, he was saving lives and working in a prestigious hospital. But a single mistake - or rather, a series of bad decisions - had robbed him of everything. Now he was living his life like a shadow, crushed under the weight of his past.
Just then, someone tapped on the car window. Nathan startled and turned his head. A tall, thin woman wrapped in a black coat and wearing glasses was looking at him. Her face was serious, but there was a strange curiosity in her eyes.
She took her hand away from the glass and spoke in a calm voice:
"Dr Nathan Cole, right?"
Nathan opened the door, surprised that a stranger recognised him. "Yes, but I'm not a doctor anymore. Who are you?"
The woman smiled slightly and introduced herself: "Dr Eliza Marlowe. I'm a neurologist. I've been trying to find you for a long time."
Nathan couldn't remember her name or face. "Find me? Why?"
Eliza took a step back and watched her breath evaporate in the cold winter air. "I have a proposition for you. An opportunity that I think will be good for science and good for you."
Nathan nodded reluctantly. "You've got the wrong person. I'm in no position to co-operate with science or anything else."
Eliza continued, maintaining her patience. "I'm offering you a way out of this situation, Mr Cole. My research is about expanding the limits of human perception. For this, I need a subject. I will use an experimental procedure, and if successful, perhaps we can open a new door in human history."
Nathan was torn between believing her seriousness and not. "And how would that help me?"
Eliza's face darkened for a moment. "It could free you from your past. Or at least give it new meaning."
Nathan couldn't stop thinking: If I really had nothing to lose, why shouldn't I try?
Nathan agreed to the procedure. Eliza's clinic was a minimalist nightmare of modern medicine: sterile white walls, bright lights, and cold metal surfaces. When they entered the operating room, Nathan lay down on an operating table.
"We don't know exactly what effect this procedure will have," Eliza explained. "But we will access hidden areas of your brain. We'll reveal things you have trouble seeing."
As soon as the operation began, Nathan felt a strange sense of peace. But over the next few days, things started to get strange. Small details he saw on people's faces and bodies suddenly turned into grotesque images. A cashier in a supermarket seemed to have a huge wound in her chest, but no one seemed to realise it. A boy playing in a park seemed to have his head split in two by a giant crack, but again, it was only visible to Nathan.
At first he thought it was a side effect of the surgery. But over time, he realised that these "deformations" were not just physical. They were a reflection of deep fears, traumas and repressed feelings inside people.
For several days, Nathan tried to convince himself that the grotesque images he saw were just hallucinations. But each time he was confronted with the inescapable face of reality: These visions were not just side effects, but mirrors of people's souls.
One morning, he returned to Eliza's clinic. The office had the sterile atmosphere of a modern laboratory, with medical reports on shelves and complex brain scans on monitors. When Nathan walked in, Eliza was sitting at her desk, working on a series of notes.
"You're back again," Eliza said, as if she already knew Nathan's decision. "The visions have started, haven't they?"
Nathan pulled up a chair and sat down. His hands were shaking. "Yes... but these... what... what... why do I see people like this?"
Eliza paused for a moment and approached Nathan. "These are repressed realities. A manifestation of people's deepest fears, traumas, and everything they've been hiding. You see them on the surface now, Nathan. It's evidence that the mind has made contact with the subconscious."
Nathan frowned. "But why? Why do these images hurt me like this? Seeing them... it's not a gift, it's a curse."
Eliza smiled, but it wasn't a smile of consolation. "Some truths are uncomfortable, Nathan. But this allows you to see beneath people's masks. It may feel like a curse, but used in the right way, it can be a great power."
One night, while trying to understand the control of visions, Nathan found himself in an old park in the city. As he walked through the cold air, a man caught his attention. The man was sitting on the street, trying to light a cigarette with shaking hands. As Nathan's eyes focused on the man's face, he was suddenly confronted with a terrifying sight: The man's eye sockets were empty, as if everything inside him had been consumed.
Nathan took a step back. The image stabbed into his brain like a dagger. But this time he felt something different. He could sense that the man carried a dark past. He approached him and spoke quietly:
"What are you hiding?"
The man looked puzzled at first. "What do you mean?" he replied.
Nathan felt the visions intensify this time. The scenes that flashed through the man's mind flowed like the frames of a film: loneliness, abandonment and a great betrayal. Nathan involuntarily voiced them aloud.
"Your losses have destroyed you. Abandonment, that's your biggest fear."
The man flinched and took a step back. 'You... how could you know that?'
Nathan realised now that this ability was no simple hallucination. It was a door that allowed him to tap into people's minds. But it carried not only other people, but the ghosts of his own past.
Eliza observed that Nathan's visions were becoming more and more powerful. One night she called Nathan into her lab and invited him into a deep conversation.
'Now your mind is beginning to connect not only with the subconscious, but with a collective consciousness,' Eliza said. 'This is not something the average person can withstand.'
Nathan stood up from his seat angrily. "Then why did you do it? Why did you choose me?"
Eliza replied, keeping her composure. "Because your past makes you capable of carrying it. You already have nothing but fighting for survival. It makes you strong."
Nathan took a deep breath, thinking about his own past. He knew that the visions would bring out not only others, but also his own repressed feelings of guilt and shame. But one question nagged at him: 'Does Eliza just want to observe this power, or does she have another plan?'
After leaving Eliza's lab, Nathan walked through the darkness of the night to an area where homeless people gathered. These people, like him, had been forced to live on the margins of society. But now Nathan could see the dark stories behind their ordinary appearances. Their visions kept his mind on constant alert.
Around a corner, an old man caught his attention. The man's face looked tired, but Nathan saw huge chains stretching out from his back. The chains dragged along the ground, their weight nearly pinning him to the ground.
Nathan involuntarily approached the man. 'Why are you carrying such a heavy load?' he asked.
The man looked up, tears in his eyes. 'What... what do you mean?'
Nathan felt the vision intensify. At the end of the chains, he saw scenes from the past: A mistake the man had made when he was young had ruined the life of someone he loved. Guilt had haunted him for years.
'You never asked for her forgiveness,' Nathan said, more like he was talking to himself. 'But forgiveness would have set you free.'
The man was startled by these words, but he began to cry. Nathan realised that these encounters were not just visions, that they touched people's deep emotional wounds. But each time he was confronted with the same question: 'How do I heal from my own wounds?'
As Nathan tossed and turned sleeplessly one night, he received a phone call from Eliza. "Come to the lab," Eliza said in a cold voice. "There's something I want to show you."
Nathan arrived at the lab to find Eliza standing in front of the monitors. There was a kind of madness in her eyes, but she didn't try to hide it. "Look," she said and pointed to one of the screens.
On the screen were Nathan's brain scans. But it showed something much more complex than an ordinary scan. There was an extraordinary increase in activity in certain areas of his brain.
"Your brain is no longer just yours," Eliza said. "We've reached deep into your subconscious, but this is just the beginning. You're part of something bigger now."
Nathan frowned. "Something bigger? What do you mean?"
Eliza switched off one of the monitors and turned to Nathan. "You're a nexus. You open a window into the dark side of the human mind, the collective unconscious. Thanks to you, we can unlock the deepest secrets of human nature."
Nathan stood up angrily. "So you're saying I'm a lab rat? I shouldn't have trusted you."
Eliza spoke calmly. "This isn't just your story. Humanity is looking for an answer, Nathan. And you could be the key to that answer."
Nathan felt the cold passion in Eliza's words. He knew he had to stop her, but he also didn't know what to do with his own traumas and this new ability.
Nathan found himself walking the streets after leaving the lab. The visions became more and more intense. He was now haunted not only by the ghosts of others, but also by the ghosts of his own past.
A scene unfolded before his eyes: a young woman lying on the operating table, blood on Nathan's hands... and then her death. This memory was the tragic event that had ended Nathan's career. For years he had repressed it, refused to forgive himself.
'It's my fault,' he muttered to himself. But the visions did not stop. The woman's face turned towards him and began to speak. "How long are you going to live with this burden, Nathan? When are you going to face yourself?"
Nathan knelt on the floor and put his head in his hands. He knew that these visions were not just images, that they were part of his own mind. But accepting their reality only drove him deeper into the pit.
The more Nathan confronted his own ghosts, the sharper and more unbearable the visions became. His visions now reflected not only the trauma of individuals, but the collective suffering of the community around him. People's repressed emotions, fears and regrets were coming to him in grotesque forms. But as Nathan began to unravel the meaning of these visions, he realised that they had a purpose: To give him a real connection with himself and others.
One night Nathan went back to the old apartment block he'd left years ago. It was a rundown building, no one seemed to live in it anymore. When he opened the door, he saw a familiar figure at the end of the corridor: his younger self. Between the cracked walls, a tired and battered version of himself stared back at him.
'Who are you kidding, Nathan?' the younger version said, his voice hard and firm. "You're going to be a saviour for all these people? You can't even admit your own mistakes."
Nathan was reliving the scene of the tragic surgery he couldn't forgive himself for. 'It was my fault,' he whispered, looking at the younger version of himself. "But I can't change my past. I can only learn to live with it."
The younger version smiled quietly and took a step back. 'Then prove it,' he said, and abruptly disappeared.
Nathan now realised that these visions were not just images, but part of his own inner journey. But this journey required not only his own salvation, but also stopping Eliza's plans.
When Nathan returned to Eliza's lab, he realised that everything was more complicated than it seemed. Eliza's research room was filled with intricate schematics and maps hung on the walls. On a table in the centre was a folder full of theories about the collective unconscious.
Eliza wasn't surprised to see Nathan. 'I've been waiting,' she said in a calm voice. 'I know you now understand the true nature of visions.'
Nathan approached the desk and picked up the file. Inside was a detailed study of Eliza's plans to control society, not just individuals. Accessing the collective unconscious meant manipulating humanity's darkest secrets.
'This... this is madness,' Nathan said. "Exposing mental wounds can be to help people. But you want to use it to control people."
Eliza smiled, but there was a cold glint in her eyes. "Nathan, people can't control their own darkness. With this power, we can change them for the better. We can create a more harmonious, more obedient society."
Nathan could sense the arrogance in Eliza's words. 'You think you're saving people? You're enslaving them.'
Eliza cocked her head mockingly. "And you, Nathan? What do you plan to do with these visions, save others when you can't even save yourself?"
Nathan decided to stop Eliza's plans. But to do that, he had to deal with the darkness in his own mind. He decided to use Eliza's technology to link himself to the centre of the collective unconscious.
Eliza warned him of the danger of this move. "If you do this, your mind could completely disintegrate. The weight of your subconscious could destroy you."
Nathan stared at Eliza. "Maybe I'm meant to be destroyed. But I can't leave that power in the hands of someone like you."
As the connection began, Nathan found himself in a maelstrom of human fears, desires and pain. Each vision was both a solution and a trap. As Eliza tried to manipulate him, Nathan found the strength within himself: to touch the darkness of others, he first had to acknowledge his own wounds.