Mallory made it home without incident. The mystic advised her that, unless she's dealing with an impractically powerful magic user, any illusion she's seeing, is one that is only for her, and being cast from nearby. The mystic sold her a clairvoyance poultice to apply above under eyes if she suspected deception. The detective put it in her coat pocket, thanked the mystic, and left a rather hefty tip "just in case you have trouble forgetting I was here".

Back in her apartment, she threw her jacket on the bed and sunk into her chair. There's just something more taxing about being pursued when you don't understand why it's happening. She was used to gunmen popping up in crime syndicate investigations and out of control suspects on the scene when she was in the Defense Force, but this was something else.

Before she even had a moment to let her mind wander, she remembered that it'd been a couple days since she checked the mailbox. She popped on a pair of fuzzy rabbit slippers and trudged down toward the elevator.

Nearly to her destination, she saw the figure of a woman in a white coat entering the room to which she was headed. As the woman turned the corner into the room she caught a glimpse of her face.
Her own face, that is.
The poultice was still in her coat upstairs, but at least she was in the habit of taking her holster off last.

Brandishing her weapon, she stepped through the doorless entry.

"You know, I came to check my mail, but I can see that I'm already down here."

The woman turned around slowly and smiled, an uncanny video of an image Mallory was only familiar with from photographs.

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Instrumentation: M-Audio Venom (bass), Roland XV5080 (bell pad), EXS24 sampler playing back some of the percussion and textures, UltraBeat (kick), Automat and Automat1beta for other synths, circuit-bent Staples "Easy Button" for noise (mostly the really high ones), and guitar pedal feedback chain for other noise textures
(the chain for this submission and the last is: OHNOHO Utter Stutter, with a Boss ME50B in the feedback loop, CopilotFX Antenna, Boss PS-5, Behringer US600, DeviEver Hyperion2, Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret, Boss DD7)
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DEPRESSION has been whupping my butt lately, holy cow, but I was able to will myself to do this. As with all of these so far, I started and finished, last day to submit. I originally had a dnb thing going with a lot of the same sounds and instrumentation, but I got really distracted from my goal, ended up with some mess of eurobeat worship with half-assed dnb drums... it took a few hours, but I eventually started myself up down a better path