"Atlantis"

It's been a year since Gilbert and Eve have gone missing.

In the police office I've been told that the case has gone cold.

I felt as empty as my brother's room, where window curtains didn't move in 12 months.

Another cruel, lonely summer began, when I finally forced myself to get the position of junior researcher in psychiatric hospital "Atlantis".

Officially it was an asylum for psychothic patients, who suffered severe forms of mental illness - such as paranoidal schizophrenia in its complicated forms, most often including delirium about alien invasion, magic influence and parallel realities.

Most of those diseased were murderers, accused in insanity, - or those, who were falsely accused of crimes, because they were considered "dangerous" for the government.

Gilbert admitted that these poeple were often not as mad as they were judged to be. "If doctors and patients would exchange their places, you wouldn't notice the difference, - Gilbert said. - Docs are even more insane than their wards".

"And you are not gonna do anything about it?" - I was naively wondering. Gilbert usually shrugged at that, remembering one of rebukes from his bosses, who were outraged with his innovative style of work. It was Gilbert's idea to allow patients to wear common clothes, instead of typical white pijamas. Despite the fact that he was responsible for finances, not for human resources, the department greeted his idea and realized it, to much relief of the rest of the living in "Atlantis".

Without presence of my extroverted brother, who always shared his social life with me, my life in Wise became numb, colorless. I knew all his friends. I participated in almost every party that he organized. Each family birthday and new year we spent together, unlike many other siblings, who lived with their own families, or were aparted by country borders.

Now that Gilbert was gone, I felt disconnected to the social worls - especially, to his friends. It felt like they all turned out to be his second, alternative family, to whom in his absence I was just another person out of their system. It was shocking and unpleasant, and I coped by rushing from episodes of total isolation to massive parties with people who had no idea that I have a family.

Between this and then, I never stopped making a plan on how to find my mischevous brother.

My candidacy to work in "Atlantis" was accepted not without obstacles. I had zero illusions that the bosses who bullied my brother would adore me a bit more.

However, medical staff was amazed with him.

It was just in Gilbert's nature – to be liked by every single person, who didn't perceive him as a threat to their power at work, or popularity among girls.

Since decades of its establishment, "Atlantis" was one of the places trusted in ability to keep its patients inside. The runaway of one of them at the time when my brother worked there meant that the system I was going to face began falling apart.