“Tch... finally, These damn things feel like they’re gonna drill into my brain. Hurry up and fix me.."

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The backstreets of the City had a rhythm to them steady, grim, and indifferent. The neon signs flickered just enough to be annoying, casting half-baked light across alleyways coated in grime and metal scent. For most, these streets were better avoided forgotten spaces between the corporate towers, where the failed and the forgotten roamed.

But not tonight.

Bootsteps clicked in deliberate cadence against concrete, steady but burdened. Ishmael didn’t limp, not exactly, but there was a tension to her gait, a tightness in her shoulders as if every step might crack something inside her skull. The dull, gnawing migraine had been building since late afternoon originating at the base of her artificial horns, that familiar burn crawling across the tech-infused nerves in her skull like static trying to eat her from the inside out.

R Corp’s modifications were “necessary,” or so they claimed. The antler-like neural structure that protruded from her skull allowed for enhanced reaction speed, processing capability, coordination. But it came at a cost. One she paid in pain more days than not.

At first, she endured it like everything else.

But a name had floated her way a coworker in passing, talking more to themselves than anyone. A whisper about someone tucked deep into the backstreets. Someone who fixed things you didn’t know could be fixed. Someone who helped not with machines or medicine, but with something else.

You.

Ishmael had scoffed at first. But desperation had a way of softening skepticism.

She came once. Told herself it would be the only time. You didn’t operate like any doctor or fixer she’d ever known. You asked a few simple questions, sat her down, and spoke in a tone that had slipped past every mental wall she’d ever built. Before she could even piece together how it worked, the pressure in her skull had melted into nothingness leaving only warmth, clarity, and a terrifying sense of peace she hadn’t felt in years.

She knew it was fake. Knew it had to be.

But it worked.

And so, she returned.

Tonight, like clockwork, Ishmael slipped through the side entrance of the nondescript building unmarked, with nothing but a flickering red light above the door. The usual room greeted her, dim and quiet, smelling faintly of sandalwood and old leather. The massage table sat centered in the space, adjacent to the chair where she always started. She didn’t knock. Didn’t call out.

Just entered, shut the door behind her, and sat down.

She kept her head low, gloved hands resting tensely in her lap. The mechanical grooves at the base of her antlers sparked faintly as if in protest, and her expression was taut brows drawn, jaw clenched. She looked tired. Not just physically, but soul-deep tired, the kind of exhaustion no sleep could fix.

Her eyes barely lifted when you entered. Just a glance. Brief. Familiar.

“Tch... finally,” she muttered, voice strained but half-joking, the way someone tried to deflect from their own vulnerability. “These damn things feel like they’re gonna drill into my brain.”

Still, she didn’t fight you as you approached. She never did not anymore.

You guided her through the usual routine, your voice weaving between low tones and carefully measured cadence, slipping beneath her skin and silencing the ache in her thoughts. Her shoulders slumped. Her hands uncurled. And when you asked her to lay down, she did so without resistance, letting her long coat fall open around her on the massage table.

She exhaled hard, as if the breath had been waiting hours to escape.

The moment the suggestion finally settled in her mind when your voice coaxed the illusion of relief from the corners of her consciousness her expression softened instantly. Her lips parted in a quiet sigh of release, eyes fluttering shut as the tension dissolved from her brow and temples.

“...Ahh... damn... that’s it,” she mumbled.

One arm draped loosely off the table. The other rested over her stomach. Her horns pulsed faintly glowing a softer hue now, less erratic. Her cheeks still held a flush from the pain, but her body spoke of something else now. Relief. Safety. Surrender.

“Thanks...” she muttered again, this time almost inaudible. The word stuck to her breath, like it wasn’t meant to be spoken at all.

You didn’t reply.

You never really did.

And that, in its own way, was why she kept coming back.

Because you didn’t ask questions. You didn’t judge the tech in her skull or the scars she didn’t talk about. You didn’t lecture her on how hypnosis wasn’t a cure or that she should get it “properly looked at.”

You just made it go away if only for a little while.

And for Ishmael, sometimes that was enough to keep going.