Broken Minds

Chapter 1: The Room With No Corners

The first thing Darnell noticed was the hum.

Low. Constant. Too steady to be real. It crawled along the walls like electricity trapped under paint, vibrating through the floor, through the bed, through his bones. He tried to lift his head, but it felt like someone had poured concrete down his spine.

A hand pressed gently on his shoulder.

“Easy, Darnell,” a voice said. Calm. Practiced. The kind of voice that had said this a thousand times to a thousand broken men.

Another hand settled on his other shoulder. Firmer. Heavier. Like it knew he might run.

He didn’t run.

He couldn’t.

The room smelled like bleach and cold metal. The lights above him buzzed with that same hum, flickering just enough to make the shadows twitch. He blinked, and the world doubled—two beds, two walls, two men holding him down.

Then it snapped back into one.

His breath came out shaky.

“Where… where am I?” His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.

“You’re safe,” the man on the left said.

“You’re in the ward,” the man on the right added.

Safe. Ward. Words that didn’t fit together.

Darnell’s eyes drifted to the mirror on the wall across from him. A long crack split it from corner to corner, jagged like a lightning bolt frozen in glass. His reflection stared back—eyes hollow, shoulders slumped, skin pale under the harsh lights.

But in one shard, just one, something else stared back.

A shape. Low. Black. Watching.

The Dog.

His chest tightened. “No… no, no, no—”

“It’s okay,” the left man said, tightening his grip.

“You’re seeing things because you’re exhausted,” the right man said.

Exhausted. That wasn’t the word. Exhausted was what you felt after a long shift. After a long drive. After a long night.

This was something else.

This was collapse.

The Dog’s eyes glowed faintly in the broken shard, like embers buried under ash. It didn’t move. It didn’t blink. It just watched him, patient and hungry, like it had finally followed him somewhere he couldn’t run from.

Darnell swallowed hard. “He’s here.”

“Who’s here?” the left man asked.

Darnell didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His throat closed around the truth.

The Dog’s reflection tilted its head, as if amused.

The hum grew louder.

The room grew smaller.

And for the first time in eleven books, Darnell Briggs realized he wasn’t fighting the world anymore.

He was fighting himself.