Doctor Henry Quantos was back in his cozy little private clinic office once more, too shaken to do anything but lie on his leather couch. That was strange. That was very strange. Of course, strangeness was par for the course for La Perdita, or at least for anyone connected with Vanguard. He was not a member and had never been a member, but ever since he first met Danny Hearn so long ago that day in Mandelovia, his life had been full of strangeness. And if Vanguard had not been enough, he also had a boy magician for a son to contend with. He briefly wondered if Axel had anything to do with this but quickly put it out of his mind. The boy was no prankster and was certainly not capable of creating what he had seen. At least not yet.

It reminded him of something else he had seen, however. Not quite the same, but on two separate occasions he had been introduced to a similar apparition, a door leading to a place it should not and could not by any stretch of the imagination. It had been one of Doctor Quantos’s great unsolved mysteries, one of several which the aging scientist had locked away in the vault of his mind under the search term “not yet solved.”

He wondered if something was trying to tell him... something.

He continued to lie on his couch long after an urgent feeling that he should get up right away had begun. He felt that he should open up his office door, the one he had intentionally left open but which had slowly crept shut of its own accord. It was the only exit out of this room, with the exception of the windows, and he was no agile young man any longer. His only exit was the door. It seemed to mock him.

There are no other exits, old man. Only me.

It was all in his head, of course, but he was beginning to give way to paranoia. Was this all strangeness for strangeness’s sake, or did it have a purpose? Was it just a funny little interlude in life that had no bearing on anything else, or was it central to the story? Quantos knew none of these things. All he knew was that he could no longer put off opening that door and stepping through into whatever he would find there.

He stood up and walked hesitantly towards the door. There he stopped, and crouched down onto the floor, his old knees making popping sounds as if to remind him how incredibly long it has been since he last made a trip to the gym. His vision was not perfect, but it was fair, and he could see nothing but the carpet in the outer lobby through the crack underneath the door. There was that, yet why was he so sure that he would not see that outer lobby when he finally turned that handle?

“Just get it over with,” Henry Quantos muttered to himself. “The audience is waiting.”

He reached for the door, his body completely tense, and he slowly turned the handle, finally pulling the door inward.

Doctor Quantos relaxed somewhat as he realized he was not facing the horrible vision of the castle that had spooked him so earlier. No, instead he was presented with a much more familiar setting, yet one which seemed completely strange by its emptiness. He saw no lobby, of course, but a sprawling maze of booths, tables, and open floors, lit with gentle incandescent lights everywhere. Yet it remained mostly dark and mysterious. The strangest thing about it, except for its existence, of course, was that it was empty. Completely empty.

Or was it?

As Doctor Henry Quantos stepped over the threshold of the doorway, allowing regretfully the door behind him to close, he seemed to hear some kind of moaning. Something actually very familiar to him. And Doctor Henry Quantos stepped up his pace, following the sound. Now he knew what he had to do. He knew why he, of all people, had been chosen.