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[ DREAM SCENARIO: WHITE DOOR ]
Dylan dreamed.

He dreamed of the university, of the past, and of the more recent present. He dreamed of the people there, of his family he left behind, and then he dreamed of doors. Three doors, that floated in an abstract mess of his dreams. He should pick one.

He chose, and opened the White Door.

Things swirled around him, memories, thoughts, tv shows, and then he realized he was in a cage. He had been in there for so long, alone, forgotten, abandoned. He didn't know how long he had been in there, time was all one.

"Little brother,"

Dylan looked up, his brother had come for him. His big brother. "You want to come with me?" He nodded, and Calder opened the cage. He was free, and he followed his brother outside.

Everything was so amazing outside of the cage, the air smelled fresh, the colors, oh the colors were so bright. He picked a flower, smelling it, savoring it, and then moved to stare at a butterfly. When he looked back at the flowers, they were destroyed, stomped on. Strange.

The same thing happened again, with a rosebush, and he realized that it was his brother destroying the things that he was interested in. He wanted Dylan to focus only on him, and Dylan ran.

He had to hide, had to escape. It was the only way to protect himself.

The dream shattered, and he was back in the door room.

[ DREAM SCENARIO: GOLD DOOR ]

He opened a new door, a gold door, and thoughts and feelings enveloped him again.

He was a noble, a prince, born to the kingdom and to the land. He was respected but not worship. He was no god, he was just a king, his people's king, and he tried to serve them well. His knights followed his orders, but he would never be their peer, there was always a barrier between them.

He grew old, watching as the people who he served, and who served him withered away. Life remained, and the kingdom was well. He had lived a decent life, and would die a decent king. He had done everything he had promised his people he would do. It wasn't a bad life, it just wasn't a great one either. He had managed balance.

He was content.

There was another door.

[ DREAM SCENARIO: WHITE DOOR ]

In his dreaming state, John was happy. Memories swirled through him. The solitary walks in the woods, the beauty of the river near his childhood home. The tree fort he had built with friends, the summer it had fallen apart. The people he had known, for as alone as he made himself it could never build walls high enough to keep out those he truly cared for. He was adrift in a sea of his experiences, a lifetime of tiny moments that shaped and defined him.

And he remembered the beginning of the end. The confusion, the uncertainty. Being alone in a strange, unfamiliar city so far from where he called home...

Then there were three doors. John hesitated, and opened the white door.

He was swept into a dream, one that seemed strangely familiar. He was in a room, in his cabin, but everything was still and it had been so for a long time. It was like there was nothing outside. No trees, or crickets or squirrels on the roof, no wind, no rain just... nothing. And then a familiar voice just outside the door.

John leapt forward, gladly opening the door, breaking the silence that had been his entire world up until that very point. And it was beautiful. He was filled with the same amazement he had often felt in his youth, that bright awed admiration for the sights and sounds of nature untouched by human hands. The way the trees swayed, and the sun glittered between the leaves, and for a second it was everything he could have asked for... And then it was gone. In his confusion, he turned to seeking out that amazement once more, finding it in the sparkling ripple of a creek, it's waters laughing as it flowed, yet with a clarity that revealed all the little lives that survived within it.

Then it too was gone.

John turned to his friend, the one who had brought him this beauty once more, but it was... wrong. Like the awe, the confusion and pain he felt was young, sharp and raw, not blunted by the wisdom of his years. It hurt... It hurt, and he pulled back, withdrew back into himself. Into his cabin. Into a safe place where those marvels could exist untouched by him, untouched by his inadvertently corrupting influence. He closed the door, sealing himself away. The world outside was safer in his imagination...


[ DREAM SCENARIO: VIOLET DOOR ]

The vision shattered, and he was left once more to face three doors. John took a long time choosing. The previous dream was still so fresh in his mind, and although he knew it was just a dream... it hurt. He paused, and finally pulled open the violet door, and the dream washed over him once more.

Once again there was his cabin, his home, magnified and made wild. Giant roots, great leaves providing solace from the sun, he was created to be here, and watch over this realm. And people came to him. They wanted a home. They wanted work, food, safety, shelter... He gave to them the only thing he had, the nature around them.

They came to him time and time again. They wanted security, wealth, value... He gave them his trees, his rivers, his earth and his stone. They wanted health and land and status and space, he gave them more his dwindling nature. They wanted and wanted, and began wanting from each other, wanting him to bestow his favours on them alone. He gave them more, gave them his great cabin tree, gave them the life that surrounded him... But they still wanted more. They hated him because he had given them everything, yet could not truly satisfy them. He was hated for their defects, their absences of heart...

John died softly, quietly. Alone, unloved.

[RESCUER POV]

Harrison struggled. Against the hum, against the dumb, stupidass ringing, and all he could think is here we go again. Comas and taking his memories that he'd earned, time and time again, that he wanted to keep.

It wanted to understand, but ******** it. What the ******** good did understanding do anybody. These ********. He was still human, part of him. He had a soul. He'd find Rep. He'd remember-

B0nez didn't like it either, and he felt B0nez clinging to him like a cat stuck in a tree, yowling and spitting. Back off! This is MINE, AUGH IT'S ALL OVER MY SYSTEM. BACK UPS, NEED BACK UPS, uuuuuugh it's even effecting meeeeeee noooooo this is the woooorst. I have so many pop ups and its GETTING INTO THE HARD DRIVE.

He felt himself splitting up. Being taken.

Rep, he thought, but even as he thought, it was taken, that, and another, and another, No- no until even the struggle and despair was gone, and he had been emptied and hollowed out.

[ DREAM SCENARIO: RED DOOR ]

Alice ones again finds herself in front of three new doors as the old dream shatters to pieces. Feeling just as confused as the first time she continues on with the same concept she had before, hearts. The red doors pattern creates something that resembles a heart and Alice push at the door and gets swept in like last time.

Alice is now a god. Not that she wanted to become one, but the mortals begged her. They wished for their madness to stop so they asked for death an finality. She never wanted to kill and destroy, but they left her no choice. The mortals created hollow darkness. A darkness that would destroy everything if she didn't stop it. Death was a cheap prize to pay to save the world. She knew it and such the mortals had to know it to.

It wasn't hard to kill. It was almost like tearing a wing of a butterfly. The chaos and the battle turned her into a god, one of war and destruction. The chaos of mortals birthed her and eventually it was all she knew. It consumed her.

She felt no reason to stop. Why should she? The weak mortals would eventually destroy themselves, she only sped up the process. All mortals was the same, the were no good ones, no righteous ones. So they all had to be destroyed. Only then would she stop existing, only then would the world find peace.

[Dream Scenario: BLACK DOOR]

Lee felt anger, overwhelming anger, vengeful anger. Questions darted persistently through her thoughts. Do you know how this feels? Do you realize what you are putting me through? Have you experience this state of facing these emotions consuming you, suffocating you? Well, she decidedly went about her endeavor and thus fashioned equivalents and inflicted them upon her oppressors in vengeful retaliation.

[ Rescuer POV ]

Sleep had escaped Alexei for a month now, a prisoner at large in the dank confines of his basement room, and now it had decided to pay a visit when he needed it least. Groggy, red eyes blinked open with an audible dissatisfaction. What had happened, back there on the highway?

"They did not tell you." A humming in his brain intruded, startling him from recollection. "I know their secret weapon. I will find it. Even if you do not know, it is a matter of eventuality. My knowledge increases. This is my awakening."

The last word hit like a bullet, and Lex fell again into dreams.

As far as the Hunter could remember, he'd run into one of the Delta survivors - a middle aged man, 40 by Lex's estimate, already greying and wrinkled by the sun - knocked out and muttering a name over and over. The man was heavier than Alexei had expected, coiled ropes of muscle hidden under the thick parka he wore.

Then there were only flashes of faint memory. A thick fog, a horse made entirely of vines, portals that didn't work (big shocker, there). Then he was... Well, he was here.

And slumbering yet again. Was this really the time to take a nap, Alexei? He could nearly hear the stern, Brooklyn accent chastising him, heels tapping on hardwood floor. Tapping became stomping, repeated stomping so unlike her, so aggravating, borderline maddening.

Grey eyes fluttered open yet again, just in time for his mouth to rip open in a guttural scream brought forth by the sharp vines coiling around his leg. Alexei scrambled, reaching out for Regal but getting nothing in response. No pistol, no strength in his body to kick or tear at the thick, organic ropes slowly pulling him to-

Himself. Themselves. The oneness that always was and forever would be. It was what he - was this a he? - had always been. They were always one, never apart, never an individual.

A faint cry from the back of the mind of the tallish one, like a lion's roar and an eagle's scream. It was nothing compared to the mass, the centrality; the nexus of Creation.

[RESCUER POV]

Lucky awoke with a start, blinking up at a blurry mass of muted colors and green. His glasses were nothing more than twisted metal and a few pieces of tenacious, jagged glass, still miraculously perched on the bridge of his nose. There was nothing he could do about them, or anything else - the cold had practically turned his blood to ice, and he could hardly move, could hardly breathe, without falling back into that deathlike abyss of nothingness he'd been torn from. For what, he only had the vaguest uncomfortable sense. He didn't even remember how he'd fallen asleep.

There was someone, something else there, but it wasn't Song. He couldn't feel her over this overbearing presence. It twisted his thoughts in on themselves to notice it, leaving his head spinning and his mind constantly skipping, repeating the same horrified realization over and over before it was neatly undone once again. He felt like he was going insane. His mind was forced to retreat, to turn away from the intrusion and helplessly panic. He felt flat, two dimensional. Like a piece of paper, words on a page being read by an impassive eye.

"They did not tell you."

It wasn't a voice - it was pure force, a crushing blow to the inside of his skull. Each word had enough force to scatter his thoughts, his memories, everything he was.

"I know their secret weapon. I will find it. Even if you do not know, it is a matter of eventuality. My knowledge increases. This is my awakening."

It was too much - and this time he couldn't pull himself together again. Darkness.

A rhythmic thumping.

His consciousness returned again blearily. There was an immediate struggle this time, but it was too late for that - hundreds of sharp thorns had pierced his leg as the plant entangled it. He was unceremoniously dragged through a network of glowing, writhing green energy. He clawed at the floor and at every passing branch, leaving a trail of red dots and lines across both palms where the thorns drew blood. He tried to focus on his surroundings, squinting through the broken remains of his glasses. They were vines, but they had been laid out with impossible precision. Coiled masses of thorns reached toward each other in a series of interlocking star formations, sending pulses of light back and forth across the network. It was like looking up into a vibrant night sky. Or like the neurons of a giant brain--

He turned away sharply. The painful pressure had returned to the inside of his head, building in intensity the longer he stared up into the branches of the massive neuron network. There was something about it that caused his whole body to be repulsed, and nauseous. And all the while he was still moving, dragged ever closer to the center.

There was no time to formulate an escape plan, to even force himself to act. He was eroding, as an endless tide of information and memories and thoughts and feelings swept through him again and again. How could he differentiate himself from so much information? He - they - were nothing more than that. Just information. And as their vision began to fade around the edges, they welcomed oblivion. It didn't matter, none of it mattered, because --

My name is Szczeosny Brzenczyszczykiewicz.

Some part of that human shell beneath them would not allow them to go quietly. The words poured out freely and unfiltered from the soon-to-be-corpse, striving to describe what they had once been.

I am a hunter, death division, intermediate trainee. I'm twenty-seven - I think. Born in Warsaw, Poland. Black hair, green eyes, a hundred and seventy centimeters tall. Myopic.

What they still fought to stay.

My father taught me how to repair watches. It always looked like magic, seeing him remove and replace each part, until I understood the way the gears fit together. He told me he always had to fix his own watch, because it was a family heirloom. I think he was trying to pass something on to me. Something he thought I would understand.

But it was pointless.

My sister's name is ---. The day before --- recruited me to become a ---, she called me. She told me that my father had ---, and my mother was ---, and that for years she had been trying to find me again. Wondering if I was even alive. It was pure luck that she had run into --- at a party, one of the only people I still talked to since childhood. He gave her my number, told her not to expect much. He was right.

If they stopped speaking for even a moment, if they faltered, it would be over. Even now, they were being disassembled by the endless current of thought and memory, each memory vanishing into the network piece by piece. Soon, there would be nothing to remember.

I had been hoping someone would believe me, or at least listen to me. I thought it was a miracle, some divine intervention that she had reached out then. I told her everything I had seen since ---. I told her I was being chased. I told her about the shadows that ---, the ones no one else could see. They spoke to me, threatened me, and if I came home now, what would they do to her? I realized on the other end of the line, she was crying. She accused me of being an addict or an alcoholic. She told me I was crazy. We argued. I hung up on her. Sometimes I think I would give anything to take that moment back and try again.

Why bother? Why fight the inevitable? This life was of no more value than the billions of others that blinked along the intricate vines. Even now, the thought process grew more disjointed, desperate. They could sense the end was near. They would welcome it.

That's why I couldn't say no when Mi---- wanted a brother. Family is - family should be about forgiveness. I don't really hate Shi---, or G---. I still can't believe S-- is dead. I can't remember what happened to her. I can't remember her name. I don't want to die like this. I don't want to die like this. I don't --

They were too close to the center. The humming was drowning out all else, even the tenacious voice of the last fragment of this singular consciousness. What little was left was ripped away like everything else, leaving behind nothing but a glassy-eyed body. It made no attempt to escape.

My name is -- my name --

And then there was silence.

[ VICTIM'S POV ]

There were three doors. Ras did not pay attention to the symbols. He only wanted to go forward, to find...

[ DREAM SCENARIO: BLACK DOOR ]

Rasputin was the CEO of a top 500 corporation. He was not a religious man, but he kept a small shrine. Her perfume. Her hair. Her portrait, set in a gold frame.

With his fingers, he lit incense. He did not say his prayers. He said a list of names, and his voice did not shake at any of the syllables.

If he had run into an old friend (of which he had few) they would not recognize him. His hair had been cropped short, and was immaculately kept. He wore suits that cost the same as a car. Not his car, but cars. He smiled, and shook hands, and they never knew the threat behind the grip of his leather gloves, that he was going to pull them straight into hell.

He kept very clean of the law. Everything was by the book. In order. He could ruin a man, piece by piece, driving him to the ledge of an office window, and emerge with clean hands. He left blood in his footsteps. He left despair in his shadow.

He had everything, of course. Everything except her. Without her, rare bottles of champagne tasted as pale as they looked. His bed, a large and custom cut mattress, stayed empty. The ones who had ruined her career were dead or ruined, the ones who cost her her life were worse. But his thirst for misery, for payment, for suffering hadn't stopped with those names.

Presidents, Vice Presidents, Assistants, Secretaries, they came and went after he had wrung ruin out their good intentions. For his rivals, it was worse. Everything was in his fists, he was a God. He squeezed his fists tightly until he could hear the creak and pop of destruction. He had everything.

He had nothing.

The dream bled into nothing, his fingernails once again becoming ragged and dirty, his hair long, his clothing old and stained. She's not dead, he thought, remembering himself, looking at his ragged sleeves and shaking in relief. She's not dead.

There was another set of doors.

[ DREAM SCENARIO: GOLD DOOR ]

He put his hand over his Queen's, interlacing their fingers as they heard another petition, this time from a Lord. When they issued decrees, they talked interchangeably or together, and rarely did they disagree.

They had a large family, and kept a full table. The Kingdom was not without difficulty, but for a kingdom, they had been blessed. It was a peaceful reign. Harvests were plenty, their people were content. They shared their marriage bed in loving accord, and watched their children and grandchildren grow. Ras would hold each new addition, kiss the soft head that smelled like milk and cloth. He would accompany his children on their lessons, or into the King's forest, showing them how to hunt. How to take responsibility. How to lead. The tapestry of their family tree grew.

They enjoyed the ripe summer blueberries, the hogs that were roasted during tournaments, the occasional goblet of mead or wine. The castle was more home than embittered battlement. As their health faded, they appointed their successor. Even in the last moments, weary and wrinkled hands still intwined, it seemed as though their hearts faltered together.