Log 03
Invisible Pattern
Every corpse speaks.
Most people simply don’t understand the language.
I do—because I have listened to too much silence.
At nine the next morning, I took Lee Mun Tseng and Cheung Man Man to the Psychological Research Laboratory affiliated with New City University Medical School.
The building was pure white, its glass reflecting the morning light. It looked harmless.
I have seen too many places like this.
Walls that are too white usually hide the dirtiest secrets.
A young assistant received us. She wore silver-framed glasses.
“Dr. Lau is waiting for you inside.”
Her tone was calm, but she avoided looking directly at us.
When we entered the laboratory, the first thing I saw was a row of metal chairs. Electrodes and headbands were mounted on their backrests.
In the center of the room, a monitor displayed the waveform of human brain activity—regular, yet unusually intense.
Dr. Lau Zi Him stood beside it.
He wore a lab coat. His expression was gentle, but his eyes were sharp like knives.
“Loke sir,” he smiled. “I’ve heard about you for a long time.”
“I hope what you heard wasn’t all bad,” I replied coolly.
“Legends in the police world are rarely about good things,” he said with a light laugh, then turned off the screen.
“We’re here to investigate a homicide,” I said directly.
“The victim, Lam Chi Ying, a student at Starlight Polytechnic. Before her death she appears to have come into contact with a drug related to your research.”
Lau Zi Him raised an eyebrow slightly.
“A hypnotic induction compound? That hasn’t entered clinical use yet. Are you certain she was exposed to it?”
I placed the small vial of powder on the table.
“You’ll know once you look.”
He opened the bottle and smelled it.
For a brief moment, his expression stiffened.
“This isn’t our final formulation.”
“But it came from your lab.”
He remained silent for several seconds before nodding slowly.
“That is possible. A batch of research samples was leaked last year. One of our volunteer assistants stole them.”
“Who?”
“Our research assistant—Chen You Ting.”
I wrote the name down.
“Where is he now?”
“He resigned. Supposedly he went overseas.”
I gave a cold laugh.
“Supposedly?”
“At least on paper.”
Mun Tseng spoke up.
“Doctor, could you explain what this drug actually does?”
“The chemical name is E-IX. It was originally designed to treat post-traumatic stress disorder—allowing patients to confront their fears within controlled dream environments to achieve therapeutic results.”
He paused.
“But a side effect emerged. Some patients became addicted.”
“Addicted?”
“To dreams.”
Lau Zi Him’s gaze fell on the vial again.
“We call that state conscious suspension. The patient gradually loses the ability to distinguish between reality and dreams… until eventually they choose not to wake up.”
I said quietly,
“Lam Chi Ying.”
He nodded.
“If she took an excessive dose, it could indeed cause cardiac arrest—because her brain believes she has already ‘left.’”
The word left echoed in my mind.
Not death.
Another form of existence.
I asked,
“And the chatroom ‘Beyond the Dream’?”
He smiled faintly.
“That isn’t an official project of ours, but I’ve heard some people there exchange dream experiences under the name of an experimental community.”
“Who runs it?”
“Solus.”
My heart tightened.
“You recognize that name?”
“Of course. That was the codename Chen You Ting used during our experiments.”
For a moment, the air in the entire laboratory seemed to freeze.
I could hear my own heartbeat.
Chen You Ting—the missing assistant, the one who stole the drug, the operator of the chatroom.
Everything began connecting.
I asked in a low voice,
“Do you have any way to contact him?”
“No. But he left behind an experimental backup system that can reconstruct the visual imagery of a subject’s dreams.”
“Dream imagery?” I frowned.
Lau Zi Him walked to a machine beside the wall and switched it on. The screen displayed a thermal map of the human brain.
“The technology is called visual reconstruction. By analyzing brainwave reflections and activity in the visual cortex, we can translate dream imagery into visual data.”
“So you can see Lam Chi Ying’s dreams?”
“If we have her neural data.”
“Forensics extracted brainwave residue samples from her body,” I said.
“In that case,” he replied quietly,
“we may be able to see… what she saw before she died.”
That afternoon at 4:00 p.m., in the morgue.
We moved the equipment into a refrigerated examination room cooled to ten degrees Celsius.
Lau Zi Him personally connected the apparatus and attached electrodes to Lam Chi Ying’s temporal lobe.
“The brain can retain residual electrical signals for up to sixty hours after death if preserved properly,” he explained.
“Like the fading echo on an old recording tape.”
The monitor lit up.
Waveforms slowly appeared.
I held my breath.
The image began forming—blurred, flickering… then gradually sharpening.
The scene was Taka Square.
Nighttime.
Neon lights flickering.
A figure slowly walked toward the steps and sat down.
Her.
Lam Chi Ying.
The image shifted slightly, as if from her perspective.
She looked up.
Across from her stood a man.
He wore a black coat.
His face blurred into light and shadow.
He smiled at her.
His lips moved.
Dr. Lau adjusted the audio signal.
The speakers emitted a faint voice.
“You should sleep now.”
The voice was low.
Gentle.
And it sent a chill down my spine.
The screen flashed white.
Then came a light.
Inside the light was a scent—jasmine and sandalwood.
The entire image dissolved into pink mist.
Then—
complete darkness.
“It’s over,” Lau Zi Him said, removing the headphones.
I remained silent.
At that moment, I was certain.
That wasn’t a dream.
It was guidance.
“She didn’t kill herself,” I said.
“But she wasn’t murdered either.”
Wai Hing’s voice came from the doorway. He leaned against the frame.
“Someone made her choose death.”
I stared at the screen. The faint afterimage still lingered.
The man’s smile.
Those words—
“You should sleep now.”
They burned into my mind.
“Solus,” I murmured.
When we returned to the station, it was already 10 p.m.
I sat at my desk reviewing her message records.
Every sentence felt like a hypnotic suggestion.
Solus: You said reality is noisy.
Lin Chi Ying: Yes.
Solus: Then stop listening.
Lin Chi Ying: But I’m afraid.
Solus: Afraid of what?
Lin Chi Ying: That I won’t wake up.
Solus: Then don’t wake up.
I turned off the screen and took a deep breath.
Outside, the night was as dark as ink.
City lights glittered after the rain like countless watching eyes.
Suddenly I remembered a case from many years ago.
Another girl.
She died with a smile.
At the time, I thought she had seen heaven in her dream.
Now I understood.
It wasn’t heaven.
It was a trap.
The phone on my desk suddenly rang.
I picked it up.
No one spoke.
Only a faint sound of breathing.
Then a voice slowly emerged.
“Loke Tin Kay… you should sleep now.”
Click.
The call ended.
I stared at the phone for a long time.
The cold echo of that voice still lingered at my fingertips.
Outside the window, the lights flickered once.
I walked to the window.
Across the street, a single light shone in the opposite building.
The light was pink.
And suddenly, a faint scent of jasmine spread through the room.
I didn’t know where the fragrance came from.
But I knew one thing.
Someone
was watching me.