The Man Who Could Smell Thoughts – Part 2

Detective Clara Bennet: Virtue's Veneer

Detective Clara Bennet stepped into Robert Allen's luxurious apartment. He was a renowned Hedge fund Manager. Her posture was a perfect projection of control. Her badge caught the light like a symbol of justice—clean, powerful, absolute. Everyone admired her discipline, her unshakable integrity.

But inside, Clara was ravenous.

Justice, for her, had curdled into self-righteous superiority. She didn’t just arrest the guilty—she consumed them. Their downfall was her fuel, a quiet thrill no one could suspect.

Robert Allen's corpse lay sprawled on an ornate rug, frozen in terror, mouth still open in a silent scream. There were no wounds. No struggle. No sign of intrusion. Only the stench of something internal—some invisible collapse.

"No trauma," said an officer, eyes wide. "But he begged before he died. Loud."

Clara crouched beside Allen’s corpse, her gloves trembling with restrained hunger. She inhaled, imagining his fear, his unravelling. The powerful, humbled.

"Good," she whispered so quietly no one heard. "You deserved it."

She stood slowly, her eyes scanning the luxurious space—a carefully curated shrine to wealth and power. Every polished surface, every abstract painting, every silent echo of decadence mocked her. She hated this world and yet, needed it to feel powerful herself. It was the arena she chose for her war.

Dr. Julian Hart: Scholar of Shadows

In his pristine lab, Dr. Julian Hart rotated brain scans like a man savouring fine art. His colleagues called him brilliant. A humanitarian scientist. A pioneer.

Julian was none of those things.

He was a voyeur of the psyche, intoxicated by others' weakness. Every neural network he mapped was a roadmap to someone’s personal collapse.

Robert Allen’s brain scans were extraordinary. His amygdala bloated, insula cortex screaming—pure neurological torment. Fear. Guilt. Self-disgust.

Julian shivered. It was perfect.

"Someone peeled him open," he murmured. "Like a fruit. And fed him to himself."

He wasn’t horrified. He was jealous. Maybe even wanted to compete.

Behind the glass, a technician waited for instructions, unaware of the internal storm in Julian’s mind. He dismissed them with a nod. He needed solitude. Needed time to admire what had been done.

"It was art," he whispered.

He looked back at the scans, and for a flicker of a second, imagined himself in Allen’s place. Imagined what his scan would look like under duress. What secrets might emerge from his polished confidence.

He didn’t like the answer.

Therapist Laura Keller: The Facade of Compassion

Laura Keller’s office was a sanctuary of softness: muted lighting, cozy pillows, walls of praise and certificates. She was adored—by patients, peers, press.

But beneath the kindness was calculation.

Laura didn’t heal. She fed. She harvested dependence, nurtured need, fed off others’ brokenness. Every thank-you made her skin crawl with delicious contempt.

“You’ve helped me so much,” said Danielle, her patient, teary-eyed.

Laura smiled, perfect and practised. Inside, she sneered.

The session ended. Danielle left. Laura exhaled, face twisted in revulsion.

"God, you're all so easy," she muttered to the empty room, her reflection watching from the window.

She poured herself a drink and stared at her reflection.

“You’re not helping them,” she whispered to it. “You’re collecting them.”

She watched her reflection carefully. Waited for it to flinch. It didn’t. It just smiled back.

Jonas: Apex Predator in the Shadows

Across the street, Jonas breathed in the scent spilling from Laura’s office.

Hypocrisy laced with pride. Compassion soured by control. Trust infected by loathing.

He savoured it.

He no longer recoiled from the stench of contradiction. He bathed in it. Feasted on it. Every deception was a flavour. Every lie a note in his private symphony.

Laura Keller would be his first.

He tapped the notebook in his coat pocket. Three names. Three mirrors. Three meals.

Each of them masked their rot with purpose. Each believed their righteousness hid their appetite. Each would be peeled.

The Gathering Darkness

Clara, Julian, and Laura sat in a high-ceilinged conference room surrounded by glass walls, each pane reflecting a distorted version of themselves. The fluorescent lights above buzzed softly, a monotonous hum that set their nerves further on edge.

They spoke little.

Julian fidgeted with a stylus, spinning it over his knuckles, while Laura stared at a smudge on the table like it might swallow her whole. Clara, arms crossed tightly, glanced repeatedly at the entrance, her jaw clenched with quiet tension.

"Allen died of neurological overload," Julian said finally, his voice clinical but strained. "Massive synaptic collapse—amygdala, insula, thalamus, prefrontal cortex... lit up like a Christmas tree. Cognitive overload."

"What could cause that?" Clara asked, more challenge than curiosity.

"Cognitive dissonance. Forced reflection. As if someone made him confront everything he was hiding—all at once."

Laura swallowed hard. "So someone… exposed him to himself?"

Julian nodded. "Someone who knew exactly what they were doing."

The silence returned, heavier now, crawling across their skin.

Clara leaned forward. "We’re not talking about a killer. We’re talking about a... predator."

Laura whispered, "A mirror."

Outside, Jonas watched from across the street, his breath fogging faintly against the cold. The scent of unease drifted toward him—shame, dread, brittle egos straining under the weight of unspoken truths.

He inhaled deeply.

The table was set.

The hunt would begin soon.

The Neuroscientist’s Collapse

Julian Hart stood alone in his lab, the sterile light bathing his skin like a spotlight on a man unmasked. The images flickering across his monitor no longer mesmerized—they accused. He had seen terror in data, tasted suffering in EEG waves. But now, his own reflection in the black screen haunted him more than any scan.

When Jonas entered, the air thickened.

“You want to understand everything,” Jonas said, stepping into the cold blue light, “but you don’t want to feel any of it.”

Julian turned slowly. “You’re not real.”

“Neither are your ethics.” Jonas held up a scan—Julian’s own, mapped in high resolution. “This is what denial looks like.”

Julian’s knees weakened. “Where did you get that?”

“You gave it to me. Not in data, but in appetite.” Jonas stepped closer. “You hide behind the science because you crave their collapse. You record it. Archive it. Replay it.”

Julian shook his head, but the tremble in his lips betrayed him.

“You called it ‘research,’” Jonas said, voice almost gentle. “But it was arousal. Control. Worship of decay.”

Julian stepped back, trembling. Memories surged—his first dissection, the fascination with death masked as curiosity, the admiration for brains in crisis. His need to understand was never neutral. It was obsession.

Jonas whispered, “You don’t want to help them. You want to become them. You want to feel what they feel—but safer. Detached. On your terms.”

Julian collapsed onto the floor, hands over his ears. But he could still hear Jonas. Could still feel every word flaying him open.

“You’re not a surgeon. You’re not a healer. You’re a voyeur dressed as a savior.”

Tears blurred the edges of his vision. He had always feared being ordinary—but this was worse.

He was necessary to no one.

Jonas watched, then turned silently. The predator had fed.

The Detective’s Resistance

Clara opened the door before Jonas could knock. She had felt him coming—not with her senses, but with something deeper. Primal. Inevitable.

She was shaking, but not from fear. From the need to prove something.

“Come to condemn me?” she asked, voice tight.

“No,” Jonas said. “To unmask you.”

She stepped aside. “Then get it over with.”

When Jonas began his probing monologue, laced with contempt and insight, Clara met his gaze and didn’t look away.

“Yes,” she snapped, interrupting. “I love seeing the guilty fall. Because they hurt people. Because someone has to feel their pain!”

Her voice cracked—not from weakness, but from something raw, half-buried in her ribs for years.

Jonas narrowed his eyes. “You justify cruelty with principle.”

Clara took a step closer. Her fists were clenched. Her voice dropped.

“And you justify yours with truth, don’t you? As if that makes you clean? You think seeing people clearly gives you the right to break them?”

A pause.

Jonas tilted his head, lips parting slightly as if to reply, but nothing came out.

Clara’s thoughts spiraled behind her steady gaze: He’s not invincible. He needs them to lie. I don’t.

“You’re not clean,” Jonas said finally.

“Neither are you,” she replied.

The silence that followed was heavy, almost reverent.

Jonas stepped back. His hunger unsatisfied. Clara’s truth had robbed him of nourishment.

She stood in the doorway long after he vanished, trembling—not from fear, but from the effort of holding her mask and her truth at once.

And for the first time, she realized they were no longer opposites.

Jonas’s Realisation

Jonas stood on a rooftop. The city below pulsed with contradiction. It was beautiful chaos. It smelled like rot.

He had feasted. But Clara had resisted.

She owned her darkness.

And that changed everything.

Jonas had believed awareness made him superior.

But Clara showed that truth didn’t always kill.

Sometimes, it made monsters stronger.

“I’m not the cure,” he murmured. “I’m the symptom.”

The Hunter Reassessed

Jonas walked the streets, no longer triumphant.

Every person he passed reeked of contradiction. But some embraced it.

Maybe the scariest thing wasn’t exposing the lie—

Maybe it was knowing it, and choosing it anyway.

Jonas inhaled.

The stench was overwhelming.

And somehow, more beautiful than ever.

END