Dreamscape #874523

You stop on the sidewalk, glancing out into the street. The hot sun causes the air above the asphalt to waver. Cars speed past you, and the wind they create scrapes against your skin. 

“Lovely day, isn’t it?” you murmur to yourself. Another parade of vehicles passes by, drowning out your voice. 

You hold up your wrist and scan your vintage leather watch. “Perfect.” As intended, you’ve arrived fashionably late. 

You step into the street. 

Calmly, you head for the middle of the three-lane road. You train your eyes on the wavering air as you walk forward. Cars on both sides of the road blare their horns. You glance to the side as one driver makes a panicked dive into a different lane. As always, the chaos of New York City brings a smile to your face. 

Once you’ve reached the center of the road, the hot air swallows you. You try to hold your breath as you plunge into a vacuum, but it’s been a long time since you’ve visited headquarters, and you’re out of practice. Every ounce of air has been stolen from your lungs. To distract yourself from the burning in your chest, you listen to the horns and sirens fade away behind you. 

With a rush of cool air, your feet hit solid ground again, and you sputter out a few unsightly coughs. 

“Welcome, Operative,” says an electronic voice from the speakers. “Arrival time: Two thirty-three PM. Briefing scheduled for: two o’clock PM. Notes: File; President Purcell. << Do not be late. >> The President is awaiting you in her office.”

“Thanks, love,” you call up to the ceiling. “Please notify the Pres that I’ll be right up.”

“Yes, Operative.”

What kind of uptight office doesn’t even have elevator music? you muse to yourself, tapping your foot impatiently. The place has certainly changed a lot since Purcell took over. For one thing, every wall, staircase, and ceiling is painted a starch white. You snicker to yourself as you imagine Lydia Purcell ironing the walls as one irons a button-down shirt. 

The elevator stops on the fifth floor. “President Purcell’s office is located to your left. Please proceed to her study,” the building’s A.I. informs you.

“It was my office not too long ago, darling,” you remind it. 

“Yes, Operative.”

The glass doors slide open, revealing a room about as large as a skating rink. It is tiled white, with white leather couches and white coffee tables and of course, white walls. You don’t spend much time studying how Purcell has ruined your perfectly comfortable office. Instead, you push forward with your head held high until you stand before another set of glass doors. They open, but you stay outside until a small camera extends to scan your eye. 

“Operative,” a smooth voice greets. Purcell stands from behind her desk and extends her hand.

You ignore it. “Love how you’ve bleached the place, Lydia.”

Lydia drops her hand. “Take a seat.”

After both you and the President are seated, she speaks again. “I’m glad you came, but must you have been so late? I’m a busy woman.”

“I don’t work here anymore,” you point out. 

“I suppose not,” Lydia concedes. “Why did you come when I called, then?”

You shrug. “When the price rises to $50,000, even ex-presidents can make exceptions.”

“I’ll get straight to the point, then,” Lydia says. “We’ve lost two operatives to this dreamscape already. Neither survived long enough to locate the core. I’ve called you in with the hopes that we can complete this assignment without losing any more valuable employees.”

Your face falls at the news of losing two operatives. “Show me the scape.”

The glass panels behind Purcell’s desk light up as the A.I. searches for the correct file. After a moment, a video begins to play. The A.I. speaks over it. “File: Dreamscape #874523. Client ID: Classified.” You raise an eyebrow at that. The video shows an overhead view of an empty desert. Wind tears across the ground, creating a dust storm. At the very end is a crumbling staircase leading to dark, roiling water. “Dreamscape ID: Lucid. Core Location: Unknown. Operative Notes: File; Operative Kacey West. << Nothing and everything lives all at once. Dress warmly. >> File; Operative Andrew Hall. << Do not engage with the trees. Carry no food or drink. Remember keyword butterfly. >> You have been assigned to Dreamscape #874532.” 

“The footage for this dreamscape ends at the top of the staircase,” Purcell tells you. “It has been the no return point for our operatives. We can imagine that the core lies beyond it.”

“When can I go in?” you ask.

“Tonight.”

The type of focus you can feel sitting heavily in your stomach overtakes you as you prepare to enter the dreamscape. You haven’t gone nightmare hunting since before you were elected President of the agency. The thrill you remember is nowhere to be found when you think about this assignment. Very rarely are operatives ever lost in the process of a hunt, and even then, the first operative always provides enough information should another need to complete the mission. You can’t afford excitement if you’ll be entering a dreamscape that two highly capable operatives couldn’t traverse. 

“Operative, the Dream Course is awaiting your arrival. The President has canceled the final briefing,” the A.I. tells you. 

Instinctively, you look up to the ceiling. “Did she notate why?”

“Yes. File: Cancellation note; << All known information was discussed. >> Please proceed to the Dream Course, Area #4.”

“Thanks, dear.”

When the glass doors to the Dream Course slide open, a blast of cold air hits you in the face, making your eyes water. You blink away a stray tear and step forward for the camera to scan your eye. “Access granted.” The door to the far-right glows blue. “Area #4 has been activated.”

You close your eyes and exhale. Stepping into a person’s dreamscape is different every time, but the experienced operatives know to prepare their bodies for the strangest of shocks. 

“Here goes nothing,” you murmur. You check the settings on your eye-piece one last time, and open the door to Area #4. 

Your entire body seems to waver like the hot air above asphalt you’d seen this morning. You inhale hard at the feeling, only for all the breath to be drawn from your lungs the next moment by a strong gust of wind. Your fingers tingle, and you look down to see them dissipating into dust blowing through the golden landscape. For a moment, you are nothing but a sandstorm racing through the sky. 

Your feet hit solid ground and you tumble forward, every particle gathering to form your body again. Sand stings your eyes, and you try to blink it away. Every breath scrapes like grit across your lungs. 

Finally, you acclimate enough to fully take in the Dreamscape. You were placed in the center of the desert, surrounded by nothing but sand in all directions. At the horizon, you can see the base of the staircase glowing silver in the barren sky. 

You break into a sprint, remembering the ocean of water atop the staircase. Salt or not, every inch of your body is heavy and dry and longs for the comfort of water. You push through every ache, running until the staircase is finally before you. The fire engulfing your lungs sputters out when you take the first step upwards.

The sounds of the raging winds fade away, and a smooth breeze caresses your skin as you climb the stairs. Lydia’s words echo in the back of your mind, and you remember that the top of this staircase was the point of no return for both operatives who attempted to disable this dreamscape. Even so, you push forward, determined not only for the personal triumph of overcoming this scape but also to put an end to the needless losses it has caused. Lydia’s operatives were under your own care not long ago, and you couldn’t bear for more of them to be sent to their deaths here. 

You almost slip on the top step, just barely regaining your balance as the tide pulls back. The water looks just as dark as it did in the footage this morning. Rocks jut out of the landscape, pointed and dreadful. The sky shimmers like a neverending black pool of oil. Cautiously, you step towards the rocks. Far in the distance, you can see the coast of an island. Your eyepiece analyzes the landscape, then flashes a red warning: DANGER. The fine print reads, “Rough waters.”

You grab onto a rock as a wave crashes over you, drenching your clothes and hair. Your hand slips, and you tumble into the ocean. The thick taste of mud fills your mouth. You claw the ground, looking for anything to hold onto, but the tide drags you too far out to reach the shore again. Momentary terror fills your chest, but underneath the water, you notice a silver glint. You dive down, opening your eyes despite the sting of the salt, and bang against the silver pipe underwater. An opening widens, presenting you with three choices in the form of buttons. Bird, tree, or butterfly. 

Keyword butterfly, you remind yourself. You tap the butterfly, and the pipe sucks you in. You slide through it, briefly reminded of a waterpark ride before it spits you out on the muddy shore of the island. 

As you make your way into the sickly green forest ahead, you wonder whose dream this is. The landscape is terrifying, every path leading to a new world with new horrors. Someone is stuck in here every night while operatives struggle to disable it. 

With each step into the forest, a new voice whispers incoherently in your ears. The trees wobble despite the lack of wind, swaying back and forth angrily. You avoid stepping on roots or brushing branches, remembering not to engage with the trees. 

A cry rings out through the forest, scattering the whispers for a moment. The dreamer? You lunge forward, determined to reach the center and disable this dreamscape before you face another layer of the dream. Your eye catches a shadow lumbering through the forest, and you slide to halt, remembering that you can’t be seen by the dreamer. You peer through the trees, watching the shadow move forward. Its shoulders shake as though it is crying. No human form is attached to the shadow. This dreamscape, you realize, has reduced a person to nothing but a black stain in a forest of terrors, and the person is aware of it. The ID had been Lucid, hadn’t it? Whoever they are, they are awake in their own dream with no way out. Pity surges forward from the back of your throat, and you almost call to the shadow. 

A twig snaps beneath your feet. 

A horrendous roar fills the sky. The ground trembles. You look down to see roots rising out of the soil, writhing in the air. One wraps around your foot. You clamp a hand to your mouth, suppressing a scream as the root tugs hard. 

You are falling, and falling, and falling. Air whistles past your ears. You plummet into the ocean again. Water fills your lungs, but you keep falling. The water flips you, changing your direction so that you are racing downward towards the sky. The gaping blackness threatens to swallow you whole. It tugs you in every direction, but won’t stop your fall. This time, a scream rips out of your body before you can stop it. 

Silence. Is this what it feels like to float in space, untethered and lost? You can’t breathe, but you are too tired to fight for air anyway. Your eyes sink closed, and the nothingness disappears. 

Behind your closed eyelids, a white door hangs suspended by a single star. In your mind’s eye, you walk forward, clutching the handle and swinging the door open. 

“Hello?” you call. Your voice echoes back to you. Hello, hello. “I’m lost, aren’t I?” you whisper to yourself. In every direction is nothing but nothingness. There is no way out. 

“Think, Operative,” you mutter. Every dream has a glitch. In every dream, there is a point past which you cannot continue. You need to find the waking point and disable the core of the dream before it really does swallow you. For each mission, there are eight hours before the waking point disappears. Your eyepiece tells you that you have used six. 

You walk for what feels like hours. Time doesn’t seem to exist here. No matter how many steps forward you take, you feel as though you haven’t moved. How much farther must you go before you reach the core of the dreamscape?

There. Ahead lies a folded corner, like someone dog-eared the dream itself. The eyepiece zooms in on it, blinking green to confirm the tag isn’t just a trick of the light. Your limbs feel heavy despite your weightlessness in the space-like scape, but you force yourself to keep walking, not daring to take your eyes off the fold should it disappear if you look away. 

You kneel down the pull the corner up. It rips like paper, revealing another layer of the dream. You tear at it until your fingers bleed with papercuts, making just enough room for you to step into the next layer of the dreamscape. The hole in the space layer reveals a watery image of a monarch butterfly’s wing. Tenderly, you tap your foot on the wing. You withdraw when the wing flutters as though the butterfly is trapped. 

“Sorry,” you murmur to the creature, placing both feet on its wing. It flutters again, too weak to knock you off balance. You can feel its wing begin to rip under your weight. Sadness nudges at the back of your mind at the thought of destroying the only beautiful thing you’ve found in this dream, but you don’t have time to find another way. 

You wince and push your fingers through the thin wing, tearing it open enough for you to fall through. You watch as the butterfly starts to fade into dust, disappearing into the black sky. This time you are expecting the fall, but something catches your eye as the butterfly evaporates. One of its eyes descends with you instead of vanishing with the rest of it. 

You stretch your hand out, struggling to reach the orb. You fall faster than it does, becoming farther away with every second. There’s no way for you to reach it. Instead, you look down. The treetops of the island’s forest stare up at you, daring you to crash through their foliage. The sky teems with storm clouds threatening to break. I need a way back up, you think to yourself. 

There’s only one way you can think of. You land with all your weight on a tree branch, gasping as it knocks the breath out of your lungs. The tree creaks. Biting your lip, you extend your hand to one of the leaves on the branch and tear it off. 

The same horrible roar as before tears through the forest. You shut your eyes tight as the branch wraps around your ankle, and before you can prepare, the tree launches you back into the sky. 

You force your eyes open, scanning the stormclouds for the butterfly eye. The short window of time before you begin to descend again is closing, but you reach out as far as you can into the oily black atmosphere. 

The orb lands in the palm of your hand perfectly, and your drop begins. 

Eyes clenched shut against the wind, you clutch the butterfly eye to your chest. It pulses like it has its own heartbeat, and you nod to yourself. This is the living core of the dreamscape. 

You squeeze, and it shatters. 

When you land, it is on solid white tile. You lay on the floor of the Dream Course for a moment, shocked. Your eyes blink open and you suck in a gasp of air.

“Dreamscape #874523 has been disabled. Congratulations, Operative,” the A.I. announces. 

You can’t help but say out loud, “That’s all?”

“Yes, Operative,” the A.I. replies. 

After another moment, you push yourself up off the floor and stumble through the glass doors. Lydia Purcell stands outside, hands clasped in front of her and a rare smile plastered on her face. “A brilliant success.”

“Did you expect anything less?” you ask, leaning on the wall for support. The feeling of falling hasn’t faded yet--you suspect it might take days. 

“Of course not,” Purcell replies. “Operative, the council and I would like to offer you a full-time position, in celebration of your triumph today.”

“Lydia,” you deadpan. 

“Operative?”

“You can take that offer and toss it into the abyss I just found in Area #4. All I want is a nap.”