Katalepsis

The Knights of Camelot Castle — bounded by their dream-wrought role, pressed to unwitting service as armed guards for a secret, sealed, sci-fi stockade, inside this grim parody of Cygnet Hospital — wriggled through the hidden loopholes and unwritten gaps in their rules and regulations, to gift me with two room numbers, two puzzled negatives, and one flat, apologetic, regretful denial.

They did their best. Even trapped in the dream they were loyal and true, more chivalrous than any real order of knighthood. But their answers only provoked more urgent questions.

The room numbers were 314-D and HS-1312; the first number referred to a regular residential room, easily accessed, but the ‘HS’ prefix apparently stood for ‘high security’ — one of the steel-doored rooms beyond those chain-link walls and nurse stations, tucked deep inside the hospital’s ridiculous anachronistic prison wing.

The two rooms belonged respectively to those I had least expected to be confined to their quarters — Zheng, and Raine.

The denial regarded ‘Lozzie’, or ‘Lauren Lilburne’ as I relented after the first attempt. The Knights could confirm that she was indeed a patient in the hospital, occupying a residential room. But they were powerless to give me the number, because Lozzie was not currently in that room. How did they know this, how did they know if a patient was in their room or not? When I tried to ask, they couldn’t answer. Both of them just stared at me, blank and mute, more Knight-like than ever.

My heart smouldered with quiet hope all the same. My strongest allies, in muscle and violence, must be either chained or changed — but Lozzie was free?

I prayed that Lozzie was unaffected by the false memories of this offensive illusion. If anybody but me could resist this, then it would be her, Lozzie the Dreamer.

The negatives were refreshingly simple: the Knights knew of no ‘Praem’, neither as patient nor staff. They’d never heard the name before.

‘Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight’ elicited no response whatsoever, just another blank stare from a pair of mirrored visors.

Was that a good sign, or a bad one? I had no idea, and no way to speculate.

I also had no way of articulating a name for the Eye’s Puppet, the fake Lozzie, the half-finished, abandoned thing which had staggered out of the black ash of Wonderland. Nor did I have a proper name for ‘Mister Squiddy’, the clay-squid thing roiling in his bucket, an artefact of Maisie’s communication, or the Eye’s ineffable behaviour. If either of them were present in the hospital I would have to recognise them in some other fashion.

“Sorry we couldn’t be of more help, Miss,” said one of the Knights, in that androgynous voice muffled behind layers of kevlar and black fabric. “We can’t leave our posts, but do feel free to stop by again, if we can do anything to assist.”

The other Knight glanced at the first, and said: “Can we do anything to help?”

The first turned to look at the second. Mirrored visors faced each other, reflecting the steel of the massive circular door behind them, marching off into miniature infinity on the curved surfaces.

“I don’t know,” said one of them. I couldn’t tell which one. Their voices were identical. “Can we help?”

“May we help?”

“Can we?”

“May.”

“Can.”

“We.”

I cleared my throat and spoke up before they could descend into a recursive loop. “It’s quite alright, thank you! Thank you both, very much!”

Both Knights turned to stare at me again. My face was reflected inside their mirrored visors. I looked so pale and greasy, wrapped in a yellow blanket, a crazy girl wandering the halls inside the prison of her mind.

I needed a shower. I wanted proper clothes. And a can of pepper spray.

“Thank you,” I repeated. “You’re doing so well. You don’t even know it, but you’re doing so, so well. I’m really proud of you both, or you all. Well done. Thank you!”

My voice shook with twinned relief and anxiety. Part of me entertained begging the Knights to accompany me on my quest — perhaps the correct Arthurian phrasing and tropes might break through their imposed roles — but I was already on thin ice. The wrong word might run afoul of their ‘regulations’, and plunge them deeper into the dream. I needed to test my theories on people who held no authority over me.

I bowed my head in thanks. One of the Knights cleared a throat, while the other shuffled booted feet. They both reacted like the armed guards they currently were — awkwardly accepting unwanted praise from a passing inmate, a crazy girl out for a stroll.

“Thank you again, thank you, thank you,” I kept repeating, backing away, bowing my head. “Thank you.”

Then I slipped around the corner, twisted on the balls of my slippered feet, and clutched those two room numbers close to my racing heart.

Raine was my first priority; she would trust and believe me against all rational evidence, no matter what. But her room — HS-1312 — was likely beyond my current resources. I needed a way past an occupied nurse station and through a padlocked chain-link gate, not to mention a way of opening one of those steel-doored cells. That meant sneaking and stealing, or killing and cutting.

Murder and mayhem was certainly an option, if I could free the inhabitant of room 314-D.

Reaching that residential room was easy enough. I employed the same technique I had developed to find the inner wings of the hospital — I kept the desired location at the front of my mind and let the corridors of Cygnet take me where they willed, leading my footsteps along squeaking lino and over creaky floorboards, up flights of rusty metal stairs and down dimly-lit back passageways, pulling me into the depths of the dream as an undertow drowns an unwary swimmer.

After about ten minutes I emerged into a bright and airy second-floor corridor, flooded by sunlight from a bank of windows which looked out over the gardens. The sunlight was still a puzzle of absurd dream-logic, for no sun glowed in the sky. There was no sky at all, only the black wrinkles of Eye-skin stretching from horizon to horizon.

But the corridor was bright and sunny, so the logic held. A couple of nurses were bustling up and down with a trolley full of fresh linen, changing bedsheets and cleaning toilets. A few girls wandered in and out of their rooms, heading off to parts unknown. Somebody was singing and humming softly in a bathroom at the end of the hallway; I paused to listen, but I didn’t recognise the voice. It wasn’t Lozzie.

Room 314-D was right next to the stairwell, and neighbour to a disabled access lift. The lift itself was decayed beyond use, a cage of rust filled with broken buttons and a burst light bulb, like something from a horror game. Even in a dream I would not have stepped inside that shadowy, stinking box. The cables would likely snap, turning any occupants into rapidly descending red jelly.

Heart racing, breathing too hard, I almost skidded to a halt at room 314-D.

The door was wide open.

Zheng’s room.

I checked my excitement before peering inside, with one hand braced against the wall, forcing several slow, deep breaths down into my laboured lungs. If the pattern so far was consistent, then Zheng would be no different: she would not know me; she would probably not know herself.

But Zheng was not confined to a high security cell, which meant she was probably not a ‘violent and disruptive’ patient, and therefore not a danger to me. If I could snap her out of whatever illusion held her mind, then no nurse or guard or monster could stand in her way. No wall or door would bar her fists. She would protect me from anything while I freed the others, whatever it took. We would turn the nurses to steaming meat within the hour if we had to.

I had a number of ideas for freeing Zheng’s mind, from the marker pen in my blanket to the taste of my lips. Zheng would have to be my guinea pig.

I almost giggled, smothering a hitching laugh with a corner of my yellow blanket. Zheng would like that. Her shaman’s pet.

We would laugh about it together, when this was over, alongside Maisie.

We would, I told myself.

Whatever this dream was, we would find a way out.

I swept around the door frame and stepped over the threshold, my yellow blanket whipping out like a cape.

“Zhe—”

Her name died on my tongue.

Residential room 314-D was far more elaborately appointed than my own sad little cell. The walls and floor were consistent and clean, unbroken by any mottled intrusion, with Cygnet cartoons painted at child-height — forest scenes of bounding reindeer and friendly bears, amid deep green trees and great drifts of snow. An ultra-modern toilet stood in one corner of the room, with electronic controls for a heated seat and a bidet function.

The toilet was surrounded by white handrails. More rails were set into the walls, leading from the toilet to the bed, and from the bed to the door. An expensive motorized wheelchair stood off to one side.

The bed itself was a nightmare parody of a 19th-century medical torture device, crossed with a modern safety harness. An iron frame was covered in chains and manacles — all lying loose and unused, rusty metal snakes trailing across the floor. The mattress was equipped with dozens of canvas straps and buckles, a built-in hood, and a sort of massive wide belt across the middle, presumably for strapping down the occupant. None of those bindings were in use either, same as the metal chains. They were limp and empty, hanging down and pooling on the floor.

A tiny figure was curled up on her side, huddled beneath a thick duvet. Dark eyes blinked open, bleary with sleep, like clouded night skies.

“ … Zheng?” I said.

The girl croaked. “Uhhn?”

I crossed to her beside and stared in shock. Dark eyes rose to meet mine, faint and fatigued.

It was Zheng.

Without those eyes I would not have recognised her — dark as smouldering pitch, still knife-edged and razor-sharp, even when smothered by a blanket of exhaustion. Zheng had retained the distinctive colour of her skin, a ruddy rich red-brown, though she looked greasy and unwashed, much like myself. Her hair had grown long and messy, a flowing darkness fanned out over her pillow, desperately in need of a wash and a comb, but it was still the correct colour, black as tar.

The rest of her was unrecognisable. Zheng’s face was a different shape, soft-cheeked and round, with a mouth full of ordinary, blunt, human teeth. Beneath the covers she was slender and slight, with little of muscle or bulk on her bones.

She was shorter than me. Not even five feet.

Zheng — as she had been before the slow physical transformation wrought by her abyssal soul, before her body had undergone decades of demon-wrought change, before she had even been ‘Zheng’, when she had been nothing more supernatural than a young Yukaghir woman from Siberia, nine hundred years ago.

All at once, I put the pieces together: the handrails, the proximity to the lift, even the room suffix — ‘D’, for disabled.

The dream had robbed Zheng of her strength and vitality.

I fell to my knees, tears prickling in my eyes. Zheng’s gaze followed me like I was nothing more remarkable than a candle flame. I pressed my hands to my mouth, choking back my horror, then got a hold of myself and touched the edge of Zheng’s bed. I could not afford to freak out, or cry, or fall apart. She needed me.

“Z-Zheng?” I hissed. “Zheng, it’s me! It’s Heather! You— you won’t know, you won’t know who I am, but— oh, oh, this is almost worse than how Evee was. This is a … I can’t … ” I clenched my teeth and focused on her eyes; she was still in there, sharp and clean. “Zheng. None of this is real. I’m going to get you out of this. Do you understand? Even if you were disabled like this, even if I could never make you right again, I would still get you out. I promise. None of this is real, none of this is—”

“Shaman.”

Zheng’s voice was thin and reedy — and surprisingly soft and feminine, with none of her deep purring growl.

But I didn’t care about that. My heart did a back flip.

“Zheng?!” I put a hand on the covers, feeling for her shoulder. Her body was boney and thin, an anchor for wasted muscles. “Zheng, you know it’s me? You—”

“Shaman,” she repeated, so weak and soft. “Heather. Mm.”

I sighed with shuddering relief, almost laughing. Tears gathered in my eyes. “Zheng! Oh, oh gosh. You’re the first one who’s— wait, how much do you—”

“Inside … Eye?” she wheezed. “Dream.” She had to take a deep breath, as if each word was a mighty task. “Not real.”

“Yes!” I hissed. “Yes, Zheng, yes, that’s right!”

I leaned forward and planted a trembling kiss on her greasy cheek, then smiled at her, hard and fierce. She smiled back with a shadow of her usual passion.

“Uh, okay, okay!” I whispered, hurrying and stumbling over my words. “Here’s everything I know so far. Yes, I think we’re inside the Eye somehow. I think this is a metaphor that I built, maybe with Sevens’ help, maybe to make it so we can comprehend the inside of the Eye. But it’s all gone wrong. We’re all trapped. This is a fake, a messed-up, ridiculous version of Cygnet Hospital, where I used to go when I was a child. Nobody else but you and I seem to have retained our memories. I’ve met Evee, and Twil, and the Caterpillars, and some of the Knights. But everybody’s all confused, they—”

“Mm,” Zheng croaked. “Never could. Cage my mind. Only body.”

I nodded, filled with burning resolve. Perhaps Zheng’s immunity was down to being a demon; that also boded well for Praem, wherever she’d gotten to.

“Shaman,” Zheng rasped. “Only one?”

“One?”

“Of you.”

“Ah, right.” My resolve flagged. “Yes. I don’t know why, but there’s only one of me inside my body right now.” I flapped my yellow blanket, showing her my empty flanks. “And no tentacles, either. It … it hurts, being reduced like this, being … ”

“Yes,” she croaked.

“Of course,” I hissed. “Of course you understand. Seeing you like this, it’s an insult to you. To both of us. It’s wrong. That’s why I’m so confused. I wouldn’t have made a dream like this.”

“Angry,” she rasped.

“Me too!” I whispered. “I’m furious!”

“Who is. Doing this?”

“The Eye, I suppose. Or some kind of emergent effect. I wouldn’t have purposefully crafted anything like this. I have very vague memories of Sevens helping, somehow, but she wouldn’t subject any of us to this either. And neither would the other six of me. That’s why I think something’s gone wrong, somehow.” I sighed a deep, painful sigh. “I’m going to free everyone, whatever it takes. I know where Raine is held, too, but I need help.”

I quickly explained to Zheng about the Knights, the room numbers, and everyone else’s current locations — including Evee’s ‘meeting’ with her mother. Zheng barely reacted, only blinking or grunting, soft and breathy. She didn’t even raise her head from the pillow.

“And I’m guessing you can’t get up?” I finished.

Zheng blinked instead of nodding. “No energy. Nothing. Bring meat, shaman.”

“I’ll try! But first I have an idea. This might free you. It’s worth a shot.” I fumbled inside my yellow blanket, located the black marker pen I had lifted from the dayroom, and rolled back my own left sleeve to expose the Fractal. “Give me your arm.”

Zheng could barely move. She wriggled a little under the duvet, flopping one arm forward, but I had to reach under there and help drag it free. Her skin was cold to the touch, covered in goosebumps, wrapped around withered muscle and brittle bones. I held back my outrage at this obscenity, and concentrated on copying the Fractal onto Zheng’s flesh.

It took a couple of minutes to make certain every line and angle was correct. My heart raced as I neared the end, sweat beading on my brow. Zheng stared at the pattern with squinting eyes, willing her bonds broken.

But when I finished, nothing happened.

Identical branching black lines graced our matched flesh, but Zheng remained trapped, cold and exhausted, tiny and withered, coiled beneath her bedsheets.

“Did … did I get it wrong?” I murmured, frantically comparing my Fractal with the one I had just drawn. “The lines all match. It’s perfect, it should be perfect. Oh, damn and blast! I really thought that might do it. I’m sorry, Zheng, I’m so sorry.”

Zheng slowly drew her exposed arm back beneath the covers. She blinked. “No. Apology. Just meat. Meat, shaman. Meat.”

“Meat!” I nodded sharply. “I think I can smuggle you some bacon from the mess hall. I’ll do it regardless, I promise, but Zheng, I don’t think that’ll work. Whatever’s holding us, it’s not actually physical. This is a dream, or an illusion. I need to find somebody I can break out of this, I need to figure out how. If I could only free you, then we could kill every nurse in this building and—”

Zheng grinned at those words, just like her usual self. I choked off and grinned back.

The effort sapped all Zheng’s energy, threatening her with sagging exhaustion. But she gathered everything she had left and parted her lips, about to speak—

And then we were interrupted.

“Oh! Oh dear, oh no! Oh, oh, oh!”

A bright and bubbly voice announced a new and unwanted arrival. I winced with recognition, then turned to find a familiar nurse standing in the doorway of Zheng’s room — young, blonde, and comfortably plump inside her white uniform. She had her hands planted on her hips and a frown on her soft face, regarding Zheng and me with all the indulgent irritation of an adult discovering naughty children stealing from the cookie jar.

‘A.HORROR’ tutted and stepped into the room.

“Now now,” she said. “Don’t give me that look, you two. Heather, you really should know better than to bother a long-stay patient with CFS. You’re so good with the disabled girls, usually. This isn’t like you.”

“Pardon me?” I said; I’d understood her perfectly, I was just offended.

Horror sighed. “CFS. Chronic fatigue syndrome. It means that Blossom here doesn’t have any energy, even if she’s been resting in bed all day. I thought you knew that sort of thing, Heather? You’re always so well-read on these matters. I am surprised by you, I must say.”

I was so wrong-footed that I could barely gather my thoughts; of course I knew a little about CFS — and I knew it wasn’t something treated by the real Cygnet. Whatever Zheng was suffering didn’t seem real either. She could barely lift her arms.

Instead, I frowned in shock at a major incongruence. “ … I’m sorry, ‘Blossom’?”

Horror answered with a sudden bubbly smile. “Oh, yes! Didn’t you know? It’s what her name translates to, in English. Blossom! I think it’s a lovely name, it’s so sweet and girly. You never hear names like that anymore. I think there’s another word in the name too, like it’s the blossom of a specific tree or something, but all the nurses just call her Blossom.” Horror waved away any complaints before they could be spoken. “You don’t mind, do you, Blossom?”

Zheng made a rasping noise. She was trying to growl with caged fury.

Horror wasn’t really listening.

A blush of outrage and sympathetic humiliation climbed my cheeks in a sudden flush of anger. Zheng’s name — ‘Zheng’ — was not her original name; it was Chinese, taken later, during her long period of captivity and enslavement. Her original name — the name of her host body, of the dead sister she had been summoned to possess by her original beloved shaman — would have been in Tundra Yukaghir, the same language that Raine had learned a few words of, as a gift to Zheng.

Zheng had never shared that name with anybody, not even me. Perhaps she didn’t want it anymore, perhaps it was not her name, or perhaps it was simply private and secret, a relic of the past, of a life she could not return to. Perhaps it was offensive, or painful. It was none of my business. I had never asked.

And here it was, mangled by a nurse, into a parody of its original form.

If this had happened in the real Cygnet, I think I would have slapped Horror across the face, and taken whatever punishment came my way. As it was, I barely restrained myself. I could help nobody if I ended up tossed in an isolation cell.

“Anyway!” Horror went nattering on, “Blossom, you should know better than to be spending energy on unnecessary things.”

“Unn,” Zheng grunted.

“Unnecessary?” I said. “I’m her friend. We’re friends. We’re talking.”

Horror tilted her eyebrows at me, unimpressed — and worse, suspicious. “It’s not nice to tell porkies, Heather. I’ve never seen you two together before. What’s gotten into you today?”

“Maybe I like making friends,” I said.

If Horror noticed the acid in my voice, she gave no sign. She sighed and smiled. “Well, maybe that’s for the better. Maybe that’s what Blossom needs — a friend to get her up and get her moving. But, oh, Heather, she’s not your sort of unwell, I’m sorry. She’s on a strict exercise and activity program, to snap her out of this over time. Or so I’m told. If you wear her out now, she’s not going to have any energy left to go for her daily walk around the garden later. Will you, Blossom?”

Zheng did not reply. She was staring at Horror with the carnivorous hatred she usually reserved for mages.

Horror went on without waiting for a reply. “Now, Heather, I’m going to have to ask you to get up, at the very least, and preferably find another new friend to bother. I’ve got to change Blossom’s sheets. So, come on, up you get, up, up!”

Horror clapped her hands together gently, then waved me up like I was a cat in the way of a minor domestic task.

I ignored her for a second, leaned over to Zheng’s ear, and whispered behind a cupped hand: “When you’re free, I’ll let you eat her. Alive and screaming.”

I pulled away. Zheng was grinning again.

Horror tutted. “Come up, I said! Get up! Heather!”

I obeyed, for now. I stood up and backed away, as if thinking about leaving the room. Horror bustled into a whirlwind of activity before I could reach the doorway — she pulled the sheets off Zheng, leaving her exposed and shivering in a set of baggy white pajamas, then bodily lifted her out of bed and deposited her into the wheelchair. Zheng sat there nodding with exhaustion, shivering all over, as Horror set about stripping the bedsheets from the mattress.

Zheng was so very tiny, smaller than me. She needed a blanket about her shoulders, or a warm lap to sit in. I moved toward her, hoping to render what help I could.

Horror paused and glanced at me.

“Heather,” she said with a tone of gentle warning “Do not make me ask you twice, please. If you want to talk to Blossom that badly, you can come back when it’s time for her walk.”

Zheng grunted through clenched teeth. I hesitated.

“Heather,” Horror warned. All the warmth left her voice. She glanced over my shoulder, at the doorway, as if for another nurse.

I backed up and raised my hands. “Fine, okay, alright.” I smiled for Zheng. “I’ll see you later, Zheng. I love you.”

Horror pursed her lips in disapproval.

Zheng opened her mouth just a crack, and murmured a single word: “Mooncalf.”

Horror frowned. “What was that? Sorry? Blossom?”

I glanced from Horror to Zheng, then back again, then spoke up to cover for Zheng’s advice. “Excuse me, nurse, but did you give that message to my sister, by the way?”

Horror tutted. “Not yet. I’m not due in the box for a while yet. Heather, are you absolutely sure you took all your medication this morning?”

“Of course I did,” I said. “I’m sorry for bothering you, nurse.”

“Oh, don’t be silly.” Horror smiled again. “I understand, it’s difficult being in here. And you don’t need to call me ‘nurse’. We’re friends, aren’t we? You can use my name, Heather.”

“Thank you,” I said, pulling a false smile. What would I even call her? ‘Horror’? “Actually, I do have something to ask you, before I go. I was wondering if you could help direct me to a different friend.”

“Oh? Somebody in particular?”

“Lozzie.”

Horror frowned, confused.

I sighed inside. “Lauren Lilburne? Do you know her room number, or where she might be spending her time today?”

Horror let her fistful of bedsheets fall to the mattress. She pulled a concerned frown. “You’re … friends … with Lauren Lilburne?”

No sense in lying; perhaps Lozzie was the local terror, always unlocking her own door from the inside and driving the nurses to madness with her antics. That would suit her wonderfully. If Lozzie was playing that role, I had to find her quickly and get her onto my side. Zheng’s coded advice was clear, and the same as my previous line of thought — breaking into Raine’s high-security cell would be a difficult challenge, but Lozzie might be easy to find. And Lozzie was a dreamer. The ‘mooncalf’ might be free.

“Yes,” I said. “Lozzie. She’s my friend.”

Horror bit her lower lip. “Are you … sure about that, Heather? It’s just, you’re so … sweet, and kind.”

“Yes,” I repeated. “Lozzie’s my friend. Do you know where she would be, this time of day?”

Horror puffed out a big sigh. She went back to pulling the sheets off the bed. “Well, if she’s not in her room, she’ll be in one of her usual spots, probably in one of the AV rooms, I suppose.”

“Pardon? ‘AV rooms’?”

“Audio visual,” Horror said. “You know, the TV rooms. Though if she’s in one, she’ll be alone. She does tend to drive everybody else away.” Horror tutted softly and then muttered, as if speaking to herself: “I don’t think it’s healthy, not at all, but apparently it’s part of her treatment plan, so what do I know. I’m just a nurse, after all.”

“Uh, thank you,” I said, feeling rather puzzled. What on earth was Lozzie doing to provoke this kind of reaction? I’d expected her to be a bit of a menace, but Horror’s tone was all wrong. “I’ll go now. Zheng, I’ll see you later, then.”

Zheng grunted. “Mmm. Shaman.”

I backed toward the door.

Horror shot one last concerned look at me. “Heather, do be careful, if you go looking for Lauren. You’re a sensitive soul. That’s all.”

“Thank you,” I repeated again, and scurried for the door.

Before embarking on a quest to find the suite of AV rooms, I made a quick return journey to the mess hall, preparing to keep my promise to Zheng.

The mess hall was much quieter than earlier, with only a few people left eating breakfast. Most of the hungry girls had departed, either for the dayroom, the gardens outdoors, or other parts of the dream-hospital. The nurses behind the counter had vanished too, but they had not yet cleared away all the food. A little plastic sign stood at one end of the counter, instructing the reader to ‘Help Yourself!’ in angry red letters.

And help myself I did — first to a handful of paper napkins, then to all the leftover bacon I could cram into that makeshift pouch of protective paper. I slipped the napkin-bacon-wad into my yellow robe, for later. I briefly considered returning to Zheng right away, but that might risk Horror’s wrath. Better to give her a wide berth for now.

Raine’s room was still out of reach with the tools I had to hand, so I went looking for Lozzie.

The suite of AV rooms drifted out of the depths of the hospital, just as the strange wings and Zheng’s room had done before, as if I was summoning these places from the dark corners of my own mind. I was building some theories of how this dream worked, but nothing coherent, not yet. I had to save my friends first. Theories could come later, when Evelyn could help me think.

A row of five doors stood along a plain, white-painted corridor, each one labelled ‘A/V ROOM’. Each label was followed by a number — one through four. The fifth and final door lacked a number, labelled instead with the letters ‘TH’.

Every door had a vertical window set opposite the handle, laced with wire mesh, like in a school. I peered inside, one after the other, working my way down the corridor.

A/V room 1 was occupied by a large group of older girls, watching some kind of educational video on a big screen, taking notes in identical books, just like in a classroom. They were all sat at wide desks, spaced far apart. The second room contained a large number of much younger girls, all sitting on the floor, watching some kind of Disney film on an old television mounted on a wheeled car, complete with a VCR set. I waited long enough to confirm the movie was real — or at least uncorrupted by the dream — and not showing a bunch of children some Eye-warped madness. The third room had a small group clustered around a single computer monitor; I couldn’t spy much through the window, but the video on the screen looked like a science experiment, with lots of glass bottles and tubes and smoking chemicals.

Room four was empty, lights off, screens black. I opened the door and peered around inside, but the room was unoccupied. No Lozzie hiding in any dark corners.

The little window in the fifth and final door showed a very different room inside. Flip-up seats marched downward in tiered rows, lit by the cold blue flicker of a distant screen, laid out more like a lecture hall or a theatre than a room in a hospital or school. I couldn’t see the screen itself, as the window was at a right-angle to the depths of the room.

The seats were empty. I pressed one ear to the door, but I couldn’t hear any audio.

“You better be in here, Lozzie,” I hissed. “Please, please, I need somebody at my side. Please.”

I cracked the door open and slipped through the gap, swallowed by flickering darkness.

Rows of seats dropped away toward an auditorium floor, lit from ahead by the anaemic light of a huge projector screen. A single seat was occupied — a petite figure was sprawled in the dead centre of the very front row, nothing more than another shadow in the electric gloom.

“Lozzie?” I whispered, but the figure did not react.

I raised my eyes to see what she was watching.

On the screen, a man was having his leg amputated, apparently without anaesthetic.

The video was grainy, low-resolution, probably old; a modern watermark sat in one corner, in clashing pink and blue. Three other men were holding the poor victim down while a fourth hacked at his leg with a saw. Blood was everywhere, staining the floor in great crimson puddles. The man was screaming, but the video didn’t have any audio.

I looked down in horrified disgust, sheltering my eyes with a hand.

The screen flickered, as if changing scenes. I thought it was maybe safe to look again, but it wasn’t — this new video had a different resolution, different aspect ratio, different colour balance, different watermark — but it was just as gruesome. I looked up just in time to see a car slam into the rear of a truck at full speed. A crumpled rag doll of flesh and blood exploded through the windscreen. Still no audio, totally silent.

I looked down, swallowing a horrified gasp. The screen flickered again. I looked up with sickening inevitability. On the screen a man was jerking and spasming, one hand wrapped around a fallen power line, being electrocuted to death.

A snort of laughter broke the silence, from down in the front row.

With my eyes averted from the screen and one hand sheltering my brow, I descended the auditorium steps, down into the solitary shadows at the foot of this gruesome temple.

When I reached the bottom I instantly recognised the single member of this macabre audience.

It was Lozzie.

And unlike every other fellow inmate of this nightmare asylum thus far, Lozzie looked exactly like herself.

Long wispy blonde hair framed a delicate, elfin face, falling about her shoulders in a waterfall of gossamer, picking out her pale features and sweet little nose — but all was washed out, colours bleached, bled white by the baleful glare of the projector screen. Her petite and slender frame was slouched low in the middle seat of the front row — but with an awkward discomfort that I’d never seen from Lozzie before. She was always so effortlessly boneless and rubbery in reality, easy in any position — but here I had the distinct impression that she would groan and whine when she stood up, all her joints and muscles sore from the poor posture. She was even wearing her pentacolour pastel poncho — but limp and flat, stained here and there by grease or crusted food, the colours faded beneath the electric flicker of her horrible videos.

“Lozzie?” I hissed. She did not look round.

I crept toward her, but some instinct bid me keep my distance. I stopped well beyond arm’s reach.

She was staring at the screen, eyes lit from inside by scenes of violence. A miniature wireless keyboard and scroll-ball mouse sat in her lap; she was flicking through the videos herself, like some real-life repository in one the darkest corners of the internet. I wasn’t totally naive about this sort of thing — I’d heard of the so-called ‘video nasties’ and the sorts of mundane horrors one might encounter on obscure websites. Raine had warned me about that, when I’d started spending more time watching cephalopod videos. But I’d never seen anything like this with my own eyes.

And Lozzie would never have endured this. She hated violence, even when it was necessary.

A fresh video flickered onto the screen.

“Huh,” Lozzie chuckled. She barely smiled.

“ … Lozzie?” I hissed again. “Lozzie, what are you doing?”

She blinked slowly, like a sleepwalker. The projector screen flickered to a new scene, filling the auditorium with a backwash of meat-red and froth-pink light. I dared not look up.

Lozzie snorted louder; she liked this one. Her lips curled upward into a smile, as if pulled at the corners by metal hooks.

“Lozzie!” I snapped out loud, breaking the silence. “Lozzie! It’s me! Stop! Stop looking at that!”

Lozzie turned her head toward me.

She stared at a point over my left shoulder, then at my collarbone, then my belly. She blinked once, oh so very slowly, eyelids like sandpaper rasping across rock.

Her eyes were dead inside. Desensitized. Empty.

Instinct screamed at me to run, in a way I had never felt before.

There was no frisson of sexual tension in this danger, and no question of standing my ground or putting up a fight. My knees went rubbery. My stomach clenched hard. I swallowed a hiccup.

This was not the Lozzie-Thing, the Eye’s creation, the Puppet. This was not that feeling at all. This was not revulsion or disgust or even outrage at whatever had been done to this twisted vision of my beloved Lozzie. I felt only instinctive animal fear, the gut-level warning that I was alone, in the dark, with a very dangerous predator.

But I had to try, for her.

“ … L-Lozzie?” I whispered. My voice came out as a strangled squeak. “It’s me, it’s Heather, it—”

Lozzie turned away and stared at the screen again.

Then she muttered: “Should probably leeeeeeave me byyyyyy myyyyyself.”

Her voice was raw and scratchy, like she’d been screaming at the top of her lungs for hours and hours. Her attempt at a lilting, sing-song tone was sarcastic and mocking.

“No.” I screwed up all my courage. “Lozzie. It’s me, Heather. None of this is real. We’re inside the Eye. This … ” I gestured at the screen, though I did not look. “This isn’t you. You would never do this. Lozzie!”

“Not your sorta crazy crazy cray-zeeeee.”

She turned her eyes to me again and looked me up and down — and I knew she saw meat. A full-body shiver gripped me all over. I backed away, rummaging inside my yellow blanket for one of the plastic knives I’d stolen from the mess hall. Instinct screamed run, run, run!

“Lozzie?” I hissed, still unwilling to believe that gut feeling.

Lozzie smiled, horrible and empty. “Unless you wanna join in?” she said. “You should sit and watch. We could watch together. Role-play some? Wanna join in? Learn something? Come sit down.”

“No. No, thank you.”

Lozzie stirred in her seat, sitting forward, preparing to stand up.

I turned and ran.

I took the steps three at a time, hurling myself toward the exit. I slammed through the door and out into the blazing light of the AV suite corridor. I didn’t stop moving until I was back in the main entrance hallway of the hospital, surrounded by nurses and the wandering forms of other patients, all bathed in bright sunlight.

My heart was going a million miles an hour. My skin was coated in cold sweat. My hands were shaking. I stood there for several minutes, taking slow, deep, steadying breaths, trying not to hiccup.

I kept glancing back at the corridor which led to the AV rooms, fearful that Lozzie might emerge at any second.

I wanted to cry.

Somehow this was worse than everyone else so far. Lozzie, sweet and cheerful and full of bubbly energy, twisted into something genuinely dangerous, ugly on the inside, a predator cast among those so easy to prey upon.

Worse than all of that — I was afraid of her.

“I hate you,” I whispered — and I meant the Eye. “I won’t stand for this. I won’t. We are getting out of here. All of us.”

There was only one source of help left to seek out.

I went in search of room HS-1312.

I needed Raine.

The high-security prison-block rooms lay locked and barred, beyond those walls of chain-link fence and padlocked gates; my suspicions were confirmed as soon as I set my mind to the task — within minutes of setting off to find Raine, I found the way blocked by one of those fences, alongside an attendant nurse station.

Beyond the fence stood walls of grey concrete, corroded metal bars, and water-damaged brick. Bare light bulbs flickered and guttered in the thickening gloom, untouched by the sunlight outside. Heavy steel doors stood at regular intervals. Each door had a chunky-looking keyhole, a rusted handle, and a tiny sliding panel at head height.

Haunting sounds drifted from the gloomy deeps — wailing, manic shouting, the ghostly hint of a lost scream, all buried in a tomb of brick and rust.

Nobody was around, no nurses or patients. This nurse station was unmanned.

“There has to be a way through. There has to be,” I whispered.

I started with the little security station desk, but that turned out to be fruitless. The drawers contained nothing but string and paper-clips, no handy bunch of keys left behind by a forgetful nurse. The desktop itself hid nothing beneath a pair of damp newspapers. There was no secret button under the base of the lamp.

The chain-link gate itself presented even less solutions. The padlock was the size of my fist, attached to a metal bar three inches thick, which threaded through an opening on a metal post the diameter of Zheng’s thigh. I rattled the lock for good measure, but it neither crumbled to dust, nor fell apart in my hand.

“Tch,” I tutted with frustration. “Everything else in this place runs on Scooby-Doo logic, why can’t this?”

Everything in this fake Cygnet was trying as hard as possible to keep me away from my friends and allies, via their own memories, or medical conditions, or the intervention of that one specific nurse, Miss Horror. But thus far the dream had not resorted to brute barriers and physical obstacles, except in the case of Maisie herself.

If the Eye — or the logic of this dream-metaphor — had to keep Raine physically under lock and key, then that boded well for her utility, if only I could free her.

The dream was afraid of me reaching Raine.

“As well you should be,” I hissed.

Tugging at the chain-link wall itself just earned me sore fingers. If I had a wire-cutter or a bolt-cutter or some kind of blade, I could have opened a hole in the fence and just stepped through. I pulled out one of the white plastic knives which I’d lifted from the mess hall, then pressed it to the bare metal wire.

Nothing happened.

I sighed, bristling with humiliation. “If I had my tentacles, my other selves, my … myself, then I could just pull this gate clean off with sheer muscle power. Better yet, I’d make acid and burn through the lock. Or just use brain-math and send the whole thing Outside! Tch. Fine, then! I’ll go find a key, like this is one of Raine’s video games about shooting zombies. This is so … so silly!”

Locating a key turned out to be far easier than I expected, but obtaining it was nearly impossible.

My feet led me away from the chain-link wall, through several corridors of this dream-Cygnet, and then straight back to a second, identical entrance to the high-security prison wing.

One important difference — this nurse station was occupied. A single nurse sat behind the desk, arms folded across a meaty chest, eyes closed, fast asleep, snoring softly.

She was big and strong, with mousy hair tied back in a ponytail. Her name tag read ‘A.WALL.’

A bunch of keys dangled from her belt.

I crept closer, breathing as quietly as I could so as not to wake the nurse. The keys were looped into a heavy brass keyring, and the ring was in turn attached to an extendible line on her belt, so she could use the keys without having to unclip the whole keyring every time. I spied a small, dull, grey key which matched the colour of the padlock, hanging alone at the bottom of the bunch, like a grape ripe for plucking.

It was so obviously meant to be taken, placed there for my fingers. I silently thanked Sevens, or my other six selves, or whoever else had helped slip cracks into this dream of Cygnet.

But how was I meant to take the key?

The nurse was big and strong. She was only napping, not knocked out or sedated. She might wake at the slightest tug on her belt, and then I would be thrown into an isolation cell for poor behaviour, or worse.

If I was oh so very careful and quiet, I could probably get down on my hands and knees and crawl close enough to touch the key, but I lacked the dexterity and lightness of fingers to unhook the prize without getting caught.

A dead end.

I almost tutted out loud, but that might rouse the nurse. Everything I’d done so far, all the junk I’d picked up and stuffed inside my yellow blanket, the scant information I’d gleaned from my meetings with the others, was this all it amounted to? A dead end because I didn’t have the—

I paused, considered the contents of my blanket, and frowned.

“No,” I mouthed in silence. “No, that’s … that’s absurd. That’s … that’s computer game logic.” I paused again, then swallowed a sigh. “Well,” I mouthed. “Raine does play a lot of computer games, and it is her locked up back there. So maybe … maybe … ”

Feeling more absurd than at any other point in my entire life, I reached into the yellow blanket wrapped around my shoulders, and extracted one of the little cardboard tokens that I had taken from Evelyn’s game. I held the token between my lips, got down on my hands and knees, and crawled toward the nurse, in absolute silence.

Heart racing, sweat beading all over my skin, bowels tight with tension, I crawled closer and closer. The nurse seemed to loom over me. I watched the flicker of her eyelids, willing her to stay asleep, lost in dreams.

Finally I reached out with quivering fingertips — and held up the token, to compare it with the size of the key.

More than twice as large. Would that be enough? I had no idea. None of this was reliant on real-world logic. Outside of a dream this trick would be the height of absurdity, it would never work, it was completely stupid. I was about to do something straight out of a children’s cartoon.

I pressed the cardboard token against the key as hard as I could, bending the material and wrapping it around the metal, making sure the cardboard was pressed into the teeth of the key. I squeezed it in my fist with all my strength, until my fingers ached and my palm hurt, until the card had conformed to the shape of the key. I stayed that way for as long as I could bear, watching the nurse for any sign of awakening.

Then, when I could stand it no longer, I peeled the card away from the key. I was careful to press my makeshift copy back together as it parted around the metal.

I crawled away from the nurse, stood up on aching knees, and fled the scene of the crime.

“This is ridiculous!” I hissed to myself as I trotted through the corridors, cradling my as-yet-incomplete prize to my chest, my cheeks burning with embarrassment. “This is actual Scooby-Doo antics. I am a cartoon character. What nonsense! How am I even going to melt the— oh!”

The rest of the plan fell into place. I hurried back to the mess hall with shaking hands and ragged breath.

The mess hall was almost completely empty. No nurses remained on duty. All the breakfast food had been cleared away

Was I too late? I had no choice but to try the experiment anyway. Only about a dozen girls were left in the room, clustered around a distant bench. They wouldn’t be able to see me at work, they were too far away.

All except—

Her.

A lone girl was sat at one of the benches nearest the food counter, leaning against the wall, not eating. Wispy blonde hair. Blue-pink-white pastel poncho.

Lozzie.

Our eyes met. Her lips curled into a lazy smile. My heart lurched to one side. I almost turned and fled — but where would I go? I could think of no other way to achieve this step.

We stared at each other for a long, long moment, as if she was daring me to run.

I turned my eyes from her and marched up to the food counters.

Metal plates were set into the white plastic — hot plates, to keep the food warm while it was served. I held a hand above one of them. Still hot!

Sheltered by my yellow blanket, I pulled out the wax candle I’d taken from one of the corridors, then used a plastic knife to cut off a small disk of wax, and let it fall onto the hot plate.

The wax melted — slowly, so slowly. I dared not check over my shoulder for nurses, nor glance at Lozzie to see if she was standing up and creeping toward me. The moment I showed hesitation or fear, she would be on me, I knew it in my gut.

The wax became a puddle of semi-transparent white goo. As soon as it was ready I used the tip of the knife to slowly transfer the wax into the cardboard key-mould.

The wax filled the mould to the very top. Just the right amount.

I tucked the result inside my yellow blanket and scurried back into Cygnet’s corridors. I glanced over my shoulder only once, to confirm that Lozzie was not following at my heels.

Two minutes later I was back at a security fence, with a chain-link gate barring my way. The desk sat empty, no nurse on duty. Beyond the wall, shadows beckoned from between the naked bulbs. Steel doors stood closed. Voices wailed in the deep.

“This is completely ridiculous,” I hissed as I took out my cooling waxen fake, wrapped in a cardboard shell. “This isn’t going to work. It’s a key made of wax, for pity’s sake. It’s going to snap off in the lock. It’s going to fall to pieces as soon as you try to insert the thing! This is … this is so very silly, Heather. Come on. Come on, you have to try it anyway. Just try. If this fails—”

“What’cha doin’?”

I whirled like a startled cat, all my little hairs standing on end.

Lozzie was behind me in the corridor, about twelve feet away. Her poncho lay flat against her sides. She was smiling like a torturer with a lost kitten, heavy-lidded eyes watching me for any sudden movements, enjoying the way I recoiled.

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t hiss. I didn’t have the right abyssal parts. I just hiccuped.

Lozzie tilted her head to one side, then to the other. “Where you going off tooooooo?” she crooned.

“Nowhere. Nowhere! Leave me … ” It hurt to say. I had to swallow. “Leave me alone.”

“Hmmmmmmm?” Lozzie purred. “Really really? I don’t thinkee so. How’s about I come with? How’s about we go for a walk—”

I drew one of the little plastic knives and held it in a sweaty fist, shaking badly. Lozzie raised her eyebrows, as if asking what I was going to do with that fragile utensil.

“Lozzie,” I said, as clearly as I could through the instinctive fear. “I love you like a sister. I need you to know that. It hurts to see you like this, and I wish I could risk freeing you first. But right now I need you to leave me alone. Go away. Please.”

Lozzie tilted her head all the way to one side, narrowing her eyes, so her hair and her poncho hung downward.

“Okaaaaaaaay,” she chirped. “Whatever-ever Heathy-heads. Laters! Catcha on the toilet!”

She twisted on one foot, waved with her poncho, and marched off around the corner. I waited a beat, for the inevitable, and Lozzie did not disappoint — she poked her head back around, shot me a very nasty grin, then vanished for real.

I waited until her footsteps receded into the hospital corridors.

Panting, covered in cold sweat, I put my knife away.

“Oh, Lozzie,” I nearly sobbed.

At least the wax was cold now.

Biting my lip, eyes scrunched up with concentration, I slowly peeled the cardboard mould open, blowing away the fragments of brown fibre stuck to the weird little blob of wax that I had wrought.

“Well,” I said out loud. “It looks sort of like half a key, I suppose?”

The padlock was heavy, more dense than it looked. I lifted it in one hand, then pushed the wax key against the hole.

The fake slid inside, like a finger into a lubricated glove.

I turned it — gently, gingerly, expecting nothing, wincing with my whole face.

Click!

The loop sprang away from the lock. I almost dropped the thing as it detached from the gate. The bar slid back with barely a touch.

The chain-link door yawned open on creaking hinges.

Darkness called me forth, from the depths of a prison.

“Oh,” I said. “Um. Okay.”

My mouth was bone-dry. My stomach was roiling. I suddenly needed to sit down for a moment, but there was no time for that, and Lozzie might return, or report me to a nurse, or something worse. I reached back to place the padlock on the nurse station desk — after all, it was a great big chunk of steel, and rather heavy. But then I paused and reconsidered. I clicked the loop back into the body of the lock; now it was a great big chunk of steel with a convenient handle.

Bad odds if somebody called my bluff. I probably couldn’t swing the padlock very hard. But it was better than a plastic knife.

I gripped my makeshift weapon, though surely my arm would quickly tire; I made certain my feet were snug inside the white institutional slippers, though they offered little comfort or protection.

I stepped over an invisible threshold, from asylum to prison.

All I had to do now was find my Raine.