Victor woke up to the taste of copper and the sensation of being a piece of luggage.
He was strapped to the mattress. Three leather belts crossed his chest, digging into his ribs with the familiarity of a bad habit. He blinked. The ceiling wasn't white plaster. It was a Persian rug.
The floor was a wall.
"Right," Victor croaked. His voice sounded like it had been dragged through gravel. "Entropy backlash."
He remembered the basement. The Bio-Cyber Greenhouse. He had fixed the reality anchor down there, stabilized the foundations of the clinic. But physics was a zero-sum game in the Mansion. You fix the bottom, the top unravels. He had pushed the chaos upwards like a bubble under wallpaper.
Now, 'Down' was 'East'.
He fumbled with the buckles. The leather was stiff, smelling of old swe
