I couldn't break out the reverie, my eyes were stuck to the blackened screen. It became suddenly very hard to breathe.

Oz closes the screen onto his desktop background and I blink once. Twice. Realising that there was nothing but still silence surrounding me, I became brave enough to look away, my eyes looking down at the blurring floor.

Blurry? I reach up and push away the tears before they spill. I can't cry. I won't cry.

"Kagen Ježek?" I could feel Oz's curious stare on my face.

Taking a shaky breath, my lungs painfully protesting their expansion. I was able to speak, "Yeah. When can you get the program running globally?"

"Give me a few hours to enter as many Cities as I can," Oz replies back, bringing up some new programs with weird cryptic binary running through it.

"Ok," my voice was distant as my feet took me away from this floor. I needed to get out of here for a while. I ended up back in the elevator but didn't push the buttons, just sat in the corner as I unfocused from reality.

I felt Lady somewhere in the distance of my mind. Even though she had physically sat down beside me, leaning some of her weight on me, she still felt far away.

Dreamer...

"You ok?" Seth was kneeling in front of me.

I scoff at myself, "I've been broken so many times, you'd think there'd be nothing left." Instead there's just more pieces to smash. The numbness was setting in, my brain wasn't processing anything properly.

"I don't think anyone would come out of this without a few cracks in the armour. But we have something. Something real. You aren't working from nothing as you have been since the day you arrived here."

Felt like an eternity ago, now.

"Who'd have thought it'd come from a dream."

"More like a nightmare that wouldn't shut up."

"Are you still having them?"

"No." I look Seth in the eye, "But I'm just...so tired." I've been tired for years. Tired of the running and being scared all the time; having to act brave or that I knew what I was doing and most of all; losing. Always losing. I shut my eyes, holding my head as a headache sets in, throbbing with a spiking pulse as I lean on Lady a little more.

"You should get some rest," Seth pats my shoulder before standing again. "I'll help Oz speed up the hacking. We can get it working in double time."

"Thanks," I mumble as he walks away.

"Anytime."

With that, the doors to the elevator shut behind him and X was standing there in front of the closed doors.

He came over, sitting down in silence. And that was how we stayed for a while.

I must have drifted to sleep as I feel myself waking up to something stinging me on the inside of my left elbow.

I look down and see something from a needle being injected into my system.

"Sorry." X says simply as he continues to slowly dump whatever the liquid is, into my veins. "The painkillers are wearing off."

"Couldn't you give me a tablet?" I mutter sleepily.

He shakes his head, "Ineffective."

Great. Even normal painkillers don't work on me. What am I, a drug addict?

"Incorrect. Because you have awoken your latent abilities and also because of what we have given you over the past few months, it appears you've developed a resistance to low grade pain inhibitors. Even the basic Tranqs are starting to have less of an effect on your nervous system."

"And that's...bad..."

"It's not desirable, but it's not bad."

I hiss as he pulls out the needle. It stings like a bitch!

He quickly applies pressure with his thumb onto the wound while cleaning up the needle with the free hand, "Your body will heal the opening in about three minutes."

Nurse X, I muse. Should I ask for him to kiss it better? I snort to myself.

"Something funny?" X looks at me, confused.

"Very."

"You'll feel this in about ten minutes. It's not enough time for you to walk back to the Abandoned Grounds."

"Then why didn't you wait until then?"

"You're in a lot of pain. I don't think you're processing just how bad it is."

"You say that like it's a bad thing." Not feeling pain. Not noticing that it hurts.

"Feeling hurt is what makes you alive. It allows you to react. If you do not feel, you do not live." His intensive stare was boring holes into my face.

"You say that like..." I felt like a foreign memory was surfacing like a dark mist, clouding over with tendrils pulling at me from the dark-

It suddenly retracts as if it had noticed what I was doing, "Ah, no. Kae. I...don't want you to see...too much...not yet..."

I refocused my sight back on X, "That was you?"

"More correctly, that was you. You don't have much control when you're in this state. Your wandering is a lot harder to track when your subconscious' tether is weak."

I don't even understand what he's saying. "Why don't you want me to see?" The fog must have been a memory that was surfacing...I guess? And I peaked at it...? I think. ...Did I somehow see in? Like Anne does?

"A memory."

"Of?"

X actually sighs after a few seconds as he gives in, "Of when I killed Reed. Remember when I explained that though she was a solider based on my abilities but she lacked certain instincts?"

"I think so...?"

"IRS had something placed in her that switched off the nervous system paths that induced the feeling of pain or notice fatigue at normal limits. She was incapable of noticing anything involving body's condition and I..."

Used it to his advantage. "Why didn't you want me to see?"

"...Something unnecessary for the moment, Kae. I...don't want to show you...so much blood...death. It is a side of me that...at least I want to prevent it seen by you, for as long as I can." His other side, I felt it in the glimpses. Pure instinct in the deep dark. Nothing but destruction crying out over and over.

I look at him, was he actually ...afraid of what I would think? I let out a breath and made sure he could hear every word I said was as serious as I could ever be, "I'll wait as long as you want me to."

I gave him the power to choose when he thought he could let me in or rather I could bridge the link between us. Whatever that even means.

He looked back at me without saying anything.

I sigh, leaning my head against the wall, looking at the ceiling light, "I think your god damn pain killers are taking effect." I felt a grin creep up, no wonder I'm being all 'super serious'. I was actually feeling giddy, hyper aware that the world is spinning. I felt him reach up to press a button on the elevator but lost consciousness before I even felt the contraption moving.

--------------

I don't remember opening my eyes but I was staring out onto a soft sunset, coloured in a multitude of pinks, reds, ashen purple, bright orange and a strange blue tinge. I felt the sunlight on my skin but couldn't see the sun. I was sitting on the edge of a cliff, watching the horizon. Down below and to my side was a huge autumn forest, the colours of the fire-like plumage washed in the sunset's golden light. A soft wind makes the leaves sing, falling from the trees.

But instead of following the logic of breaking away and being carried off, they instead fly up into the sky like reverse rain.

And I'm dreaming...

And that means this autumn forest is...

"It's strange, isn't it?" A familiar voice materialised beside me, along with it was the girl with long black hair and bright questioning eyes, still wearing her school uniform.

"Zoe," I echo.

"Dreams make no sense." She was sitting beside me, lazily looking out over the edge with a leg dangling in the void drop. "But it's your garden, anyway. Must drive you mad to keep it maintained." she giggles to herself.

I look on in silence. How can I begin to talk to her, after everything I did?

"You blame yourself too much, you know."

"What?"

"Losing your family, destroying me...becoming a 'monster' as you put it. You didn't design the ways things went. But you try to fix it. I think that means your apologies are kinda wasted since it isn't something you caused."

"I still-"

"It's strange, isn't it?" She repeats, cutting me off as she looks back out over the sea of autumn trees. "You destroyed me...but maybe you didn't, well not completely. Do you think all that you absorbed from the Queen was purely what was created? Some of it was me. So, I-"

"Live on in this dreamscape." I finish. I still held fragments of her being that I kept locked away in here but I must have let some of it escape. Stupid illogical dreams don't know when to keep a lid on it.

"But it's not me. It's a memory that you created."

"From the memories of you."

"So it is me. But isn't."

I look at her properly, "Do you hate it?"

She shrugs, "It's not about like or hate. I guess..." she looks inwardly for a moment, I could feel all her thoughts passing through her head before she settled on one. "You're keeping my forest alive and with it, the memories of me. You confirm that I existed...why would I hate that?"

I didn't have a response. "I am sorry, though," I finally saying.

She groans in annoyance, "I know, already. Would you stop beating a dead horse already?" She punches me in the arm, "Geez."

And that actually hurt. "So, what brings you to me today?" I ask, normally my dreams aren't this vivid.

"Just thought you might want to talk for a bit, instead of mulling it over all by your lonesome."

Because talking to a figment of my imagination is a real step up.

"It beats talking to yourself like a crazy person, Dreamer."

Can I wake up now?

She smirks, "Whatever the Dreamer wishes."

...Whatever.

"Oh and the 'Storm's Eye will open' soon."

"What?"

"That's all I need to say."

Thank you for that helpful, random statement.

"Anytime."

...Can I seriously wake up now?