Sonata rarely had cause to visit the main floor of her building, preferring to keep to her own rented office space upstairs. Like her patients, she generally preferred privacy. But her patients had been more distracted than usual lately, reporting a wide variety of confusing phenomena upon entering the building, ever since it had been purchased by the mysterious new owners, and the bank that used to occupy the ground floor became… something else. She still wasn't sure what, exactly, that was, even now that she was sitting in the middle of it, having come down to see for herself, and perhaps file a complaint. Not that she expected such a submission on her part would end up anywhere but the trash bin. There was far more at play here than mere unruly neighbors. The person she'd been directed to speak with was almost certainly not a person, although he looked more like one than most of the others in attendance. She thought about bringing up the elephant in the room, which was certainly not an elephant, but she felt its many eyes following her, and though it didn't appear to have ears, she suspected it could hear every word she said, if not also her thoughts. Best to be cordial, she thought, explain the situation politely, request courtesy in the future, and get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. After all, she couldn't be sure that these not-quite-people hadn't once been actual people, who'd maybe wandered in to use an ATM that was no longer there and found themselves unwilling or unable to leave, as some hideous influence began to silently transform their cells, a slowly gathering exponential flood of derangement…
