They pushed him into the room and closed the door. Desperately, he tried the handle. It didn’t budge. They’d locked the door.

He turned and looked at the room. Concrete walls, concrete floors, a concrete ceiling that was slightly too high up for him to reach. The room itself was about five or six square meters. In the center of the room was something tall, wide and thin, hidden under a sheet.

He knew exactly what it was.

He’d heard stories about it when he was still a trainee field agent, and the people that had been driven mad by gazing into it. Simple then, he thought. I just won’t look.

This thought was running through his head even as he lifted the sheet off of the artifact. He wasn’t even thinking. Some things are so perfect that you cannot help but look, and here was the perfect mirror, perfectly made and polished to a shine. It reflected something dangerous. It showed you yourself.

Two hours later, operatives came in with a stretcher and removed the catatonic man from the room.