# DON'T DREAM
## Chapter 1: Noctis
---
The morning tasted like beginnings.
I stood at the edge of Greystone High's parking lot, watching the chaos unfold with the detached precision of someone who hadn't slept properly in three years. The senior class swarmed around two charter buses like ants discovering sugar—backpacks swinging, phones flashing, voices colliding in that particular frequency of teenage excitement that made my temples throb.
My name is Ayla Vance. I am seventeen years old, I maintain a 4.0 GPA, and I haven't dreamed since I was fourteen.
Not properly, anyway. Not the deep, REM-soaked dreams that leave you gasping awake with fragments of impossible worlds clinging to your consciousness. My sleep—when it comes at all—is shallow, gray, more like floating in static than swimming in story. The doctors call it chronic insomnia with delayed sleep phase disorder. My mother calls it "that thing we don't talk about at dinner." I call it survival.
But today wasn't about survival. Today was about the Noctis Facility field trip, the one everyone had been buzzing about since Principal Morrison announced it three weeks ago. A decommissioned government research center, opened exclusively for Greystone's graduating class. Educational. Historical. *Once in a lifetime*, the permission slips had promised.
I didn't believe in once-in-a-lifetime anything. Life, in my experience, was a series of repeating patterns—some bearable, most exhausting, all eventually survived.
"AYLA!"
The voice hit me like a freight train wrapped in enthusiasm. I turned just in time to catch Kai Chen mid-leap, his arms wrapping around me in a hug that lifted my feet off the pavement. He smelled like cheap body spray and breakfast burritos, and despite everything—despite the bone-deep tiredness that lived in my marrow—I smiled.
"You're going to break my spine," I said.
"Your spine is indestructible. Like the rest of you." He set me down, grinning that lopsided grin that had gotten him out of detention more times than I could count. Kai was beautiful in the way that dangerous things are beautiful—sharp cheekbones, eyes the color of whiskey in sunlight, a body built for motion. He was my best friend, my opposite, and the only person who knew that I hadn't slept more than four hours straight since freshman year.
What he didn't know—what no one knew—was why.
"Did you bring the caffeine?" I asked.
He patted his backpack. "Enough energy drinks to kill a small horse. Also granola bars, because I'm responsible like that."
"You set the chemistry lab on fire last month."
"*Responsibly* set it on fire. There's a difference." He threw an arm over my shoulder, steering me toward Bus A. "Come on, let's grab the back seats before the wolves descend."
The wolves, in this case, were already descending.
---
Greystone High operated on a hierarchy as rigid and unspoken as any medieval court. At the top sat the Athletes—football players, basketball stars, the swimmers who'd brought home state championships three years running. Below them, the Social Elite—pretty faces with wealthy parents, the ones who threw parties that became legends. Then came the Academics, the Artists, the Theater Kids, each in their designated orbits.
And at the bottom, where the light barely reached, were the Invisibles. The ones who slipped through hallways like ghosts, noticed only when someone needed a target.
Kai and I existed in the strange middle ground between Academics and Invisibles. Smart enough to matter, weird enough to be left alone. It was a careful balance I'd cultivated since middle school, and it served me well.
But balances, I would learn, are fragile things.
"Move it, Chen."
The voice belonged to Derek Holston, six-foot-three of varsity quarterback wrapped in an ego the size of a small planet. He shouldered past Kai with the casual brutality of someone who'd never been told no, his letterman jacket brushing against my arm like a threat.
Kai's jaw tightened. I saw it—that flash of something dark behind his eyes, the thing he buried beneath jokes and adrenaline and reckless charm. The thing that made him climb water towers at midnight and race his motorcycle down empty highways at 3 AM.
Derek Holston had no idea how close he came to destruction in that moment.
"Derek," Kai said, his voice silk over steel. "Looking forward to watching you fail the facility's historical quiz. Should be educational."
Derek paused, turned. For a moment, the parking lot seemed to hold its breath.
Then Derek laughed—a sharp, dismissive sound—and kept walking toward his court of admirers. "Whatever, freak."
Kai's fists unclenched. I exhaled.
"You need to stop doing that," I said quietly.
"Doing what?"
"Poking bears."
He shrugged, but I saw the shadows still moving behind his smile. "Bears are boring. I prefer tigers."
This was the thing about Kai that terrified me, the secret he didn't know I knew: he wasn't looking for thrills. He was looking for endings. Every cliff he climbed, every race he ran, every fight he almost started—they were auditions for a final act he was still writing.
I'd found the notebook once, hidden in his locker. Pages of calculations. Heights of buildings. Depths of lakes. *How long would it take*, written in his sharp handwriting, *for the body to forget how to fight?*
He didn't know I'd seen it. He didn't know I'd started staying awake through the night not just because I couldn't sleep, but because I was afraid of what he might do while the world was dreaming.
Some secrets are too heavy to speak. You just carry them, and hope your spine is strong enough.
---
We climbed onto Bus A and made our way toward the back, navigating the minefield of extended legs and territorial stares. The bus was already a ecosystem in miniature—the front seats claimed by teacher's pets and the quietly anxious, the middle by the social strivers, and the back by those who wanted to exist outside adult supervision.
Kai and I slid into the second-to-last row, our usual spot. I pressed myself against the window, watching the parking lot empty as the last stragglers boarded.
"Mira's not here yet," Kai observed, scanning the aisle.
As if summoned by her name, Mira Santos appeared at the front of the bus, clutching a leather messenger bag like it contained state secrets. She was small—barely five-two—with dark hair pulled into a precise bun and glasses that were always slightly askew. On paper, Mira was perfect: valedictorian track, debate team captain, early admission to Stanford already secured.
In reality, Mira was drowning.
I watched her navigate the aisle, saw the way her eyes darted from face to face, cataloging threats. The slight tremor in her hands. The way she breathed—shallow, quick, like a rabbit in a room full of foxes.
Mira's secret wasn't hidden in notebooks or buried beneath jokes. Mira's secret was pharmaceutical: a cocktail of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications that she dry-swallowed in bathroom stalls between classes. Her parents didn't know. Her therapist didn't know. No one knew except me, because I'd walked in on her once during a panic attack so severe she'd clawed bleeding crescents into her own palms.
She hadn't begged me not to tell. She'd just looked at me with those too-old eyes and said, "*You understand, don't you?*"
I did. That was the worst part.
"Mira!" Kai waved her over. "Saved you a seat."
She slid into the row in front of us, turning to face us with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Sorry I'm late. I was... reviewing the facility information packet."
"You mean memorizing it," I said.
"Knowing things is the only control we have." She said it like a joke, but I heard the confession underneath.
Kai laughed, oblivious. "You two are why I don't study. Someone has to balance out the academic energy."
The bus engine rumbled to life. Through the window, I watched the second bus begin loading, its passengers a blur of faces I recognized but didn't know. Somewhere in that crowd was—
"Well, well. The conspiracy corner is assembled."
Jason Reeves dropped into the seat next to Mira with the graceless confidence of someone who'd never doubted his welcome. He was tall and lanky, with curly brown hair that perpetually looked like he'd just rolled out of bed and wire-rimmed glasses that gave him the air of a disheveled professor. He ran Greystone's most popular podcast: *Debunked*, a weekly show where he systematically dismantled everything from ghost sightings to government cover-ups.
Jason believed in nothing except evidence. He trusted nothing except logic. He was, in his own words, "the last rational man in a world gone mad."
What he didn't talk about on his podcast was the night his younger sister had died.
Lily Reeves had been eight years old, convinced that monsters lived in her closet. She'd made Jason promise to check every night, and every night, he'd opened the closet door and shown her the empty space. *See? Nothing there. Nothing to be afraid of.*
The night she died—a brain aneurysm, sudden and unstoppable—she'd called for him at 2 AM, crying about the monsters. He'd been annoyed, tired, midway through a chemistry assignment. *Go back to sleep, Lily. There's nothing there.*
She was dead by morning.
Jason had never spoken about it, but I'd seen the shrine in his room once—Lily's drawings covering one wall, her voice still saved on his phone, her belief in impossible things immortalized in crayon and construction paper. He debunked the supernatural now with the fervor of a man trying to prove something to a ghost.
*If I can prove none of it is real*, he seemed to be saying, *then there was nothing I could have protected her from anyway.*
"Jason," Kai nodded. "Ready to debunk a government research facility?"
"The Noctis Facility was a registered neurological research center operated by the Department of Defense from 1962 to 1995," Jason said, adjusting his glasses. "It was shut down due to budget cuts, not supernatural activity. The 'sinister experiment' rumors are classic creepypasta nonsense spread by people who don't understand how declassified documents work."
"You're fun at parties," Kai said.
"I don't go to parties. They're statistically more likely to result in property damage and regrettable decisions."
"My point exactly."
Mira laughed—a real laugh, for once—and something in my chest unclenched slightly. This was us. This was normal. Four broken people pretending to be whole, orbiting each other because the alternative was drifting alone.
The bus lurched forward. Through the window, Greystone High grew smaller, smaller, until it disappeared entirely behind a curve in the road.
We were on our way.
---
The drive to Noctis Facility was supposed to take three hours. It felt like a lifetime.
The first hour passed in comfortable chaos. Music blared from portable speakers—three different songs competing for dominance until Mr. Henley, the history teacher chaperoning our bus, threatened to confiscate all electronics. Someone started a game of truth or dare that quickly devolved into dares only, each more ridiculous than the last.
I watched Derek Holston dare his best friend, Marcus Webb, to stand up and serenade the bus. Marcus—six-five, 240 pounds of pure defensive lineman—belted out a surprisingly decent rendition of "My Heart Will Go On" while the entire bus screamed along. Even I found myself smiling.
In the middle rows, the social dynamics played out like a nature documentary. Ashley Chen—no relation to Kai—held court over her circle of followers, her perfectly manicured nails tapping against her phone as she documented every moment for her 50,000 Instagram followers. She was beautiful in that practiced, calculated way that made you wonder if she'd ever had a genuine expression in her life.
Beside her, Tyler Morrison—Principal Morrison's son, which made him functionally untouchable—scrolled through his own phone with the bored indifference of someone who'd never had to try for anything. He was handsome, rich, and utterly empty behind the eyes. Rumor had it he'd been caught with pills last semester, but the story had been buried so fast it might as well have never happened.
The hierarchy wasn't just about popularity. It was about power. And power, at Greystone, came from the ability to destroy.
"Check it out," Kai whispered, nudging me. "Drama at twelve o'clock."
I followed his gaze to where Sophie Martinez sat alone in a middle row seat, staring out the window with the fixed intensity of someone trying not to cry. Sophie was a junior who'd somehow ended up on the senior trip through some administrative error no one had bothered to correct. She was also, as of last weekend, the subject of Greystone's latest scandal.
The photos had spread through the school like wildfire—private pictures she'd sent to her boyfriend, leaked after their breakup and shared by everyone who wanted to prove they were part of the in-crowd. I'd deleted the message without opening it. Most people hadn't.
Now Sophie sat in her designated seat, alone in a bus full of people, and the weight of their glances pressed down on her like stones.
"Should we invite her back here?" Mira asked quietly.
Kai shook his head. "That would make it worse. Draw more attention."
He was right, and I hated that he was right. The best thing we could do for Sophie Martinez was pretend she didn't exist. The hierarchy demanded its sacrifices, and once you were marked as prey, kindness was just another form of cruelty—a spotlight on your weakness.
I turned away, stomach churning, and met my own reflection in the window. Dark circles under my eyes. Hair pulled back in a functional ponytail. The face of a girl who'd learned, long ago, that survival meant invisibility.
*Don't draw attention. Don't stand out. Don't dream.*
The memory surfaced before I could stop it—a flash of white walls and mechanical hums, of a room I'd never been in but somehow knew, of chairs that looked like chrysalises and voices that whispered—
I blinked, and the memory scattered like startled birds.
That was the problem with not sleeping enough. Reality got... slippery. Sometimes I saw things that weren't there. Sometimes I remembered things that hadn't happened.
Sometimes, in the gray static between waking and not-quite-sleeping, I heard a voice that sounded like my own say: *You've been here before.*
I hadn't. I was sure of it. The Noctis Facility was just a building, just bricks and history and declassified paperwork. There was nothing waiting for me there.
There couldn't be.
---
The second hour of the drive brought the hierarchy into sharper relief.
Derek Holston, bored with the serenade game, had discovered a new target: Felix Whitmore, a slight boy with thick glasses who'd made the mistake of sitting alone near the athlete's territory. I couldn't hear what Derek was saying from my spot in the back, but I could see Felix's shoulders hunching, his body trying to make itself smaller, invisible, insignificant.
Kai's jaw tightened again. His hands curled into fists.
"Don't," I said.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're thinking about doing something."
"Thinking isn't a crime."
"No, but assault is."
He turned to look at me, and for a moment, the mask slipped. I saw the real Kai underneath—the one who burned so hot with rage and grief and something that looked terrifyingly like hopelessness that he had to keep moving, keep risking, keep dancing at the edge of destruction just to feel alive.
"Someone should stop them," he said.
"Someone should stop a lot of things. That doesn't mean we can."
"So we just watch?"
I didn't have an answer. I never had an answer. That was the problem with being awake all the time—you saw everything, every cruelty and kindness and casual destruction, and you were powerless against all of it.
Felix Whitmore laughed at something Derek said—a high, nervous laugh that was clearly an attempt to deflect rather than an expression of genuine amusement. The laughter seemed to satisfy Derek, who clapped Felix on the shoulder with enough force to rock him forward and then turned away, bored again.
Crisis averted. For now.
In the row ahead of me, Jason was deep in conversation with Mira about the neurological research that had supposedly been conducted at Noctis. Something about sleep architecture and REM modulation and experimental consciousness studies.
"The facility was primarily focused on understanding the dreaming brain," Jason explained, his voice taking on the lecturing tone he used for his podcast. "There were some Defense Department contracts related to interrogation resistance training—helping soldiers stay functional under sleep deprivation—but the actual research was surprisingly mundane. Polysomnography studies, mostly. Brain mapping during various sleep stages."
"Then why was it shut down so suddenly?" Mira asked. "The declassified documents mention 'unforeseen ethical concerns' but never specify what they were."
Jason pushed up his glasses. "Probably something boring. Improper consent protocols, maybe. Or funding disputes that got spun into conspiracy theories after the fact. People love a good secret government experiment narrative. It makes them feel like there's a pattern to the chaos."
"And there isn't?"
"There's never a pattern. Just random events that humans desperately try to connect because we can't accept that the universe is fundamentally meaningless."
Mira was quiet for a moment. Then: "That's a lonely way to see the world."
"It's an accurate way."
I thought about Lily Reeves's drawings, the ones covering Jason's wall. The monsters in the closet that he'd promised her weren't real. The accurate, rational worldview that had told him there was nothing to fear in the dark.
Sometimes accuracy was just another word for helplessness.
---
By the third hour, the bus had settled into the drowsy quiet of extended travel. Half the students were asleep, heads lolling against windows and shoulders, earbuds trailing like technological umbilical cords. Even Derek Holston had gone silent, his entourage slumped around him in various stages of unconsciousness.
I never slept on buses. I never slept anywhere I couldn't control my environment completely—locked door, white noise machine, specific arrangement of pillows that probably qualified as obsessive-compulsive behavior. Sleep was something I negotiated with, bartered for in increments, never trusted.
Instead, I watched the landscape change.
We'd left the suburban sprawl of Greystone behind hours ago, trading strip malls and tract housing for increasingly dense forest. The trees here were old—ancient, even—their branches weaving together overhead to form a tunnel that swallowed the sunlight. The road narrowed. The GPS signal on Mr. Henley's phone, which he'd been using to track our progress, flickered and died.
"Normal," he assured the few students who noticed. "We're in a dead zone. The facility's original location was chosen specifically for its isolation."
Isolation. The word settled in my chest like a stone.
Kai had fallen asleep beside me, his head resting against my shoulder. In sleep, the sharpness left his face. He looked younger, softer, almost peaceful. I wondered what he was dreaming about. I wondered if the dreams were better than the reality he was always trying to escape.
Mira was still awake, but her eyes had gone glassy and distant in that way that meant she was fighting an internal battle I couldn't see. Her fingers tapped a rhythmic pattern against her knee—*one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four*—a counting exercise her therapist had probably taught her for managing panic attacks.
Jason had his laptop open, typing furiously even without internet access. Working on a podcast script, probably. Debunking something. Finding logical explanations for things that might not have any.
The bus turned a corner, and the forest fell away.
I saw the Noctis Facility for the first time.
---
It rose from the landscape like something that had been waiting there since before time was measured—a sprawling complex of brutalist concrete and dark glass that seemed to absorb the afternoon light rather than reflect it. The main building was three stories tall, its windows narrow and symmetrically placed like unblinking eyes. Smaller structures flanked it on either side, connected by covered walkways that reminded me, inexplicably, of arteries.
The architecture was simultaneously boring and wrong. Every angle was slightly off from what you'd expect, every proportion just different enough to create a subliminal dissonance. It was the kind of building that photographs would normalize—just another government facility, just another institutional block—but in person, there was something about it that made your hindbrain whisper *leave*.
"Whoa," Kai breathed beside me. He'd woken up when the bus slowed, and now he was pressed against the window next to me, his earlier drowsiness replaced by alert fascination. "That's... actually kind of beautiful."
"It's brutalist architecture," Jason said from ahead, but his voice had lost some of its usual certainty. "Concrete. Functional. It was popular in the sixties and seventies for government buildings."
"It looks like a bunker," Mira said quietly.
She wasn't wrong. The windows were reinforced, the walls thick enough to withstand—what? Bombs? Earthquakes? Something else entirely? A chain-link fence surrounded the perimeter, topped with barbed wire that glinted in the pale sunlight. The fence was rusted in places, but still standing. Still keeping something in. Or out.
The bus pulled up to a gatehouse where a security guard in a gray uniform checked Mr. Henley's credentials. I couldn't hear their exchange through the window, but I saw the guard's face—impassive, professional, but with something behind his eyes that might have been pity.
Or maybe I imagined it. Maybe I imagined a lot of things.
The gate opened. We drove through.
Beyond the perimeter fence, the facility grounds were surprisingly well-maintained. Gravel paths wound between the buildings, punctuated by benches and the occasional concrete planter filled with flowers that seemed wrong for this climate—tropical blooms in deep purples and reds, thriving despite the Pacific Northwest chill.
"Those are nightshade flowers," Mira said suddenly. "The purple ones. They're poisonous."
"They're also pretty," Kai said. "Nature's complicated like that."
The bus shuddered to a stop in a parking lot that could have held hundreds of vehicles but currently contained only a handful of white vans and one black SUV with government plates. We'd arrived.
Around me, students stirred, gathering backpacks and phones and the scattered detritus of a three-hour journey. The earlier energy had shifted into something more subdued—an anticipatory hush that felt almost reverent.
"Welcome to the Noctis Facility," Mr. Henley announced from the front of the bus. "Please gather your belongings and exit in an orderly fashion. Our tour guide will meet us at the main entrance."
Orderly fashion. Right. Sixty-seven teenagers were about to pour out of two buses into a decommissioned government research center that studied the sleeping brain. Order was an optimistic expectation.
I grabbed my bag and waited for Kai to extract himself from the cramped seat. My heart was doing something strange—beating too fast, too hard, as if my body knew something my mind hadn't figured out yet.
*You've been here before.*
The thought came again, unbidden. I pushed it away.
---
The main entrance of the Noctis Facility was a set of double doors made of reinforced steel, painted the same institutional gray as everything else. Above them, carved into the concrete lintel, were words in Latin:
*SOMNUS EST MORS PARVA*
"Sleep is a little death," Jason translated, because of course he did. "It's a quote from various sources, but it probably referenced the facility's research focus."
"Cheerful," Kai muttered.
The doors swung open before we reached them, activated by some unseen sensor. Beyond was a lobby that might once have been impressive—high ceilings, marble floors, a reception desk that curved like a wave frozen in wood—but time and abandonment had stripped away whatever grandeur it once possessed. The walls were bare where pictures must have once hung. The reception desk was coated in a fine layer of dust. The air smelled like cleaning chemicals and something underneath that I couldn't quite name.
Something old. Something waiting.
Our tour guide emerged from a side corridor, and my first impression was that she didn't belong here. She was too bright for this place—blonde hair pulled into a cheerful ponytail, a smile that showed too many teeth, a lanyard around her neck that read "NOCTIS HERITAGE TOURS" in letters designed to look friendly.
"Welcome, welcome!" Her voice echoed off the bare walls. "I'm Vanessa, and I'll be your guide today through the fascinating history of the Noctis Facility. Please stay together, don't touch any of the equipment, and if you have questions, save them for the designated Q&A periods!"
Her enthusiasm was aggressive. Relentless. The kind of cheer that felt like armor.
"Now, if you'll follow me, we'll begin our tour in the facility's east wing, where the original administrative offices were located..."
We followed. What choice did we have?
---
The tour began with history.
Vanessa led us through corridors that twisted and turned with no discernible logic, pointing out former offices, converted storage rooms, and the occasional piece of preserved equipment behind protective glass. She spoke in that practiced patter of professional guides everywhere—dates and names and sanitized facts delivered with bouncing inflections.
"The Noctis Facility was established in 1962 as a joint project between the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense," she recited, leading us past a wall of framed black-and-white photographs. "Its primary focus was understanding the neurological mechanisms of sleep, with particular emphasis on the REM cycle and its effects on cognitive function."
The photographs showed scientists in white coats, earnest-faced volunteers hooked up to primitive-looking machines, and group shots of staff members posed before the same brutalist facade we'd driven past. Everyone was smiling. The smiles looked slightly off, but maybe that was just the photography of the era.
"The facility was at the cutting edge of sleep research during the sixties and seventies," Vanessa continued. "Many of the discoveries made here—about sleep stages, circadian rhythms, and the essential functions of dreaming—are still foundational to our understanding today."
"What about the defense contracts?" Jason asked from somewhere behind me. "The declassified documents mention military applications."
Vanessa's smile flickered—just for a moment, but I saw it. "There were some studies related to optimizing soldier performance under conditions of sleep deprivation, yes. Standard military research for the era. Nothing too exciting, I'm afraid!"
The too-bright enthusiasm was back, but now I could hear what was underneath it: deflection. There were things Vanessa wasn't saying, questions she'd been trained to redirect.
We moved deeper into the facility. The corridors widened, the ceilings rose, and the air grew progressively colder. I wrapped my arms around myself, wishing I'd brought a heavier jacket.
"This section was the main research wing," Vanessa announced, gesturing toward a pair of sealed doors. "During the facility's active years, this is where the primary experiments took place. We'll be taking a special look inside, but first—does anyone need a bathroom break?"
Several students raised their hands. Vanessa directed them down a side corridor with practiced efficiency, promising they wouldn't miss anything important.
While we waited, I drifted toward the sealed doors. Up close, I could see they were different from the others we'd passed—heavier, reinforced with metal plates, equipped with a keypad lock that still seemed to be active despite the facility's supposedly decommissioned status.
Through the small window set into each door, I could see a room beyond. A large room. A circular room, from what I could glimpse, with something in the center that caught the light.
"Impressive, isn't it?"
I startled. Vanessa had appeared beside me without my noticing, her smile somehow wider than before.
"The central research chamber," she explained. "It's the highlight of our tour. State-of-the-art equipment for its time—some of it still fascinating even by modern standards."
"Why is it still locked? If the facility is decommissioned?"
Another flicker behind the smile. "Preservation purposes. Some of the equipment is quite delicate. We don't want everyone touching everything, do we?"
She moved away before I could ask anything else, gathering the returning students and herding us toward a different set of doors—ordinary ones, unsealed, that opened into what she called the "historical exhibit hall."
I looked back at the sealed doors one more time. Through the window, I thought I saw something move.
Just a trick of the light, probably. Just my exhausted brain filling in gaps with shadows.
Still, I walked a little faster to catch up with the group.
---
The historical exhibit hall was someone's attempt to make the Noctis Facility feel educational rather than ominous. Glass display cases held equipment from various eras—EEG machines trailing wires like mechanical jellyfish, sleep masks with embedded sensors, notebooks full of handwritten observations in cramped scientific script. Posters on the walls explained the stages of sleep, the importance of REM, the dangers of chronic sleep deprivation.
I found myself stopping in front of one poster longer than the others. It showed a cross-section of the human brain, regions highlighted in different colors. "THE ARCHITECTURE OF DREAMS," the header read, and below it:
*Dreams occur primarily during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, when the brain is highly active but the body remains paralyzed. This paralysis—called atonia—prevents the dreamer from acting out their dreams, which would be dangerous.*
*During REM, the brain processes emotions, consolidates memories, and performs essential maintenance functions. Deprivation of REM sleep leads to significant cognitive and psychological decline.*
*In other words: we need to dream. Without dreams, we begin to break.*
"Cheery reading material."
Kai had appeared beside me, two cans of energy drink in hand. He offered me one. I took it.
"Just reminding myself why I'm always tired," I said, popping the tab.
"You could, you know, sleep more."
"Thanks. I hadn't considered that."
He grinned, but there was worry behind it. Kai knew about my insomnia—he just didn't know the extent of it. Didn't know about the nights spent staring at the ceiling, counting seconds, waiting for dawn. Didn't know about the fragments of almost-dreams that came anyway, gray static shot through with images I tried not to examine too closely.
*White walls. Mechanical hums. A room I'd never been in.*
"Hey." Kai snapped his fingers in front of my face. "You okay? You went somewhere else for a second."
"I'm fine. Just tired."
"Always tired."
"That's my brand."
He looked like he wanted to say something else—something real, something that would crack open the careful distance we both maintained around our respective damage—but before he could, Vanessa's voice cut through the murmur of students.
"Alright, everyone! It's time for the main event! Please follow me to the central research chamber!"
The group reformed around her like iron filings drawn to a magnet. I drained the rest of my energy drink, crushed the can, and followed.
---
The sealed doors opened with a hiss of released pressure, revealing the room I'd glimpsed through the window.
It was larger than I'd realized—large enough to hold our entire group with room to spare, circular in shape, with walls that curved upward to a domed ceiling fitted with what looked like hundreds of small lights. The lights were off now, but I could imagine how they might look activated—a constellation, maybe, or a neural map.
In the center of the room, arranged in concentric circles like some kind of technological mandala, were the chairs.
There were at least twenty of them—sleek, reclining, each one fitted with a helmet-like device attached by cables to a central console. The chairs looked almost comfortable, like something you might find in a high-end spa, but the helmets ruined the illusion. They were bulky, covered in sensors and wires, designed to encase the head completely.
"Welcome to the heart of the Noctis Facility!" Vanessa announced, spreading her arms wide. "This is where the most advanced sleep research of the twentieth century took place. Each of these chairs could monitor up to twenty-three distinct measurements of neural activity, while the central console—" she gestured toward the massive computer bank at the far end of the room "—processed that data in real-time."
Students spread out through the room, drawn to different aspects of the strange space. Some clustered around the chairs, taking selfies and making jokes about brain-scanning. Others examined the console, with its array of switches and screens and blinking lights that shouldn't have been active in a decommissioned facility.
I stayed near the entrance, unable to shake the feeling that I shouldn't be here. That *none* of us should be here.
"The helmets were designed to track sleep stages with unprecedented precision," Vanessa continued, clearly hitting her rehearsed highlights. "Researchers could observe exactly when a subject entered REM sleep, and—theoretically—even glimpse something of what they might be dreaming."
"Theoretically?" Jason pushed through the crowd toward her. "What do you mean, theoretically?"
Vanessa's smile tightened almost imperceptibly. "The technology was experimental. Results varied. It's not something that was ever fully perfected before the facility closed."
"Closed," Jason repeated. "You mean shut down. Due to 'unforeseen ethical concerns.'"
"I mean closed." Her voice had lost some of its tour-guide warmth. "This facility contributed significantly to our understanding of the sleeping brain, and while all research comes with challenges, the work done here was important."
She turned away from Jason, that aggressive smile sliding back into place. "Now! If everyone would like to gather around, we have a special treat. The original equipment has been carefully restored, and we're going to demonstrate what a research session would have looked like!"
A murmur of excitement rippled through the students. Even I felt a flicker of curiosity despite my unease. Demonstrations meant activity, meant distraction from the strange weight pressing down on my chest.
Two security guards I hadn't noticed before stepped forward, taking positions on either side of the main console. They wore the same gray uniforms as the guard at the gate, and they moved with the practiced efficiency of people who did this often.
Too often, maybe.
"We'll need a few volunteers to sit in the chairs!" Vanessa clapped her hands together. "Don't worry, nothing will be activated—we just want to show you how the subjects would have been positioned!"
Hands shot up. Derek Holston, always eager to be at the center of attention. Ashley Chen, probably calculating the Instagram potential. A few others I recognized but couldn't name.
Not me. I stayed where I was, pressed against the curved wall, watching.
Kai caught my eye across the room. He raised an eyebrow: *You okay?*
I nodded. I wasn't, but nodding was easier than explaining.
The volunteers settled into the chairs, laughing as Vanessa adjusted their positions and pointed out the various sensors on the helmets she didn't actually attach. The security guards worked at the console, flipping switches in what seemed like a preset sequence.
And then the doors sealed behind us.
Not the outer doors—those had closed when we entered, which was normal. The inner doors. Doors I hadn't noticed before, recessed into the curved walls, slamming shut with a series of metallic thuds that echoed through the domed space.
"What the—" someone started to say.
The lights flickered. Once, twice. Then stabilized in a dimmer configuration that cast shadows across Vanessa's face, turning her smile into something skeletal.
"Please remain calm," she said, but her voice had changed. The forced cheer was gone. What replaced it was... resignation. Exhaustion. Maybe even pity. "This is part of the demonstration. The original research protocols required a sealed environment to ensure accuracy."
"Bullshit." Derek was on his feet, moving toward the sealed doors. "Open these right now or—"
The first hiss of gas cut him off.
It came from vents I hadn't seen, recessed into the domed ceiling above us. A pale mist, barely visible, drifting down like fog. It smelled sweet—too sweet, like artificial flowers or rotting fruit masked by perfume.
"What is that?" Mira's voice was sharp with rising panic. "What's happening?"
Vanessa didn't answer. She was already moving toward the console, where the security guards were typing rapidly, eyes fixed on screens that I couldn't see from my position. Whatever they were looking at, whatever they were doing, it wasn't the simple demonstration she'd promised.
"Everyone stay calm," Mr. Henley called out, but his voice was slurring. He stumbled, caught himself on a chair, stumbled again. "I'm sure there's a logical explanation..."
He collapsed before finishing the sentence.
Around me, students were falling. Ashley Chen crumpled mid-selfie, phone clattering against the floor. Derek made it three steps toward the door before his legs gave out, sending him sprawling. Felix Whitmore, Sophie Martinez, dozens of others whose names I barely knew—dropping like puppets with cut strings.
The gas was thick now, swirling around us in clouds that caught what little light remained. My lungs burned. My vision blurred at the edges. Through the haze, I saw Kai struggling toward me, mouth moving in words I couldn't hear over the ringing in my ears.
I tried to move, to run, to do something—but my body wasn't responding. The floor rushed up to meet me. The last thing I saw before darkness took me was Vanessa's face, hovering somewhere above, her lips moving in what might have been an apology.
And then there was nothing.
Not sleep, exactly. Something deeper than sleep.
Something that felt, terrifyingly, like practice.
---
I dreamed.
Or I thought I did. It was hard to tell, in that gray static space between consciousness and whatever lies beneath it. Images flickered past like film frames from a damaged reel—the circular room, the chairs, the helmets. Faces I didn't recognize speaking words I couldn't hear. A sign on a wall, letters burned into my vision even as the rest faded:
**DREAMLESS PROJECT**
**ONEIRIC RESPONSE MODULATION**
**AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY**
*You've been here before*, the voice said—my voice, but wrong somehow, distorted. *You've always been here. You just don't remember.*
I wanted to argue, to insist that this was my first time, that the familiarity I felt was just exhaustion playing tricks on a sleep-deprived brain. But my mouth wouldn't work, my thoughts wouldn't form, and the gray static swallowed everything whole.
When I woke, hours or minutes or days later, my cheek was pressed against cold marble floor, and someone was screaming.
---
The lights were back to full brightness. The gas had cleared. Around me, bodies stirred as students returned to consciousness, groaning and confused and—based on the screaming—terrified.
I pushed myself upright, fighting a wave of dizziness that turned the world into a spinning kaleidoscope of too-bright colors. My mouth tasted like copper. My head throbbed in a rhythm that didn't match my heartbeat.
"Ayla!" Kai was beside me, pulling me to my feet. His face was pale, eyes wide with an emotion I'd rarely seen on him: genuine fear. "Are you okay? Can you hear me?"
"I'm fine," I said automatically, though nothing about this was fine. "What happened? Why is someone—"
The screaming had stopped. In its place was a silence more terrible, broken only by the soft sounds of crying and the shuffle of bodies as students gathered around something I couldn't see.
I pushed through the crowd, Kai following close behind. Mira was there already, hand pressed to her mouth, eyes fixed on the floor with the horrified fascination of someone witnessing something that couldn't be unseen.
I looked down.
Derek Holston lay on the ground, still in the chair where he'd sat for the "demonstration." His eyes were open, staring at nothing. His body was twisted at angles that shouldn't have been possible—limbs bent wrong, chest caved inward, as if he'd fallen from a tremendous height and the floor had been waiting to catch him.
Except he hadn't fallen. He hadn't moved at all. The chair around him was undisturbed, the helmet beside his head where Vanessa had placed it for the photo op.
Derek Holston was dead.
And he looked like he'd been broken from the inside out.
"What..." My voice came out as a whisper. "What happened to him?"
No one answered. No one could.
Vanessa was gone. The security guards were gone. The console screens were dark, and the sealed doors stood open now, revealing corridors that suddenly looked less like a historical site and more like a trap we'd walked into willingly.
Someone's phone buzzed. Then another. Then a cascade of electronic sounds as devices throughout the room came back to life simultaneously—phones that had died the moment we entered the facility, reactivating with a synchronization that spoke of deliberate control.
On every screen, the same message appeared.
White text on a black background. Simple. Direct. Impossible.
---
**WELCOME TO THE DREAMLESS PROTOCOL**
**RULE ONE: SLEEP IS PERMITTED.**
**RULE TWO: DREAMING IS NOT.**
**IF YOUR BRAIN ENTERS REM SLEEP, YOUR DEATH IN THE DREAM WILL BE MIRRORED IN YOUR REALITY.**
**THIS IS A CONTROLLED TEST.**
**SURVIVE—OR BE DELETED.**
---
The message stayed on screen for exactly ten seconds, then vanished.
In the silence that followed, I looked at Derek Holston's broken body, at the chairs arranged like sacrificial altars, at my classmates' faces—some crying, some frozen, some already calculating survival odds with the desperate speed of prey realizing the trap has closed.
*You've been here before.*
Maybe I had. Maybe some part of me had always known this was coming.
But knowledge, I would learn, is very different from understanding.
And understanding is very different from surviving.
---
**END OF CHAPTER ONE*