# DON'T DREAM
## Chapter 3: The Circular Room
---
There's a particular kind of silence that exists only in places where terrible things have happened.
It's not the absence of sound—that would be too simple, too clean. It's the *presence* of silence, thick and suffocating, pressing against your eardrums like the building itself is holding its breath. Waiting. Remembering.
The circular chamber had that silence.
We stood at the entrance—me, Ayla, Kai, and Connor—staring at the room where everything had begun. The chairs were still arranged in their concentric circles, still fitted with those nightmare helmets. The console at the far end still blinked with lights that had no business being active in a "decommissioned" facility.
And Derek Holston's body was still lying on the floor where we'd left him, because who among us had the stomach to move it?
"Well," Kai said, his voice cutting through the oppressive quiet with forced lightness, "this is exactly as terrifying as I remembered. Really captures that 'human experimentation chic' aesthetic."
"Not the time," Connor muttered.
"It's always the time. Humor is a coping mechanism. I read that somewhere." Kai stepped into the room, his footsteps echoing off the domed ceiling. "Besides, if I don't make jokes, I'll start screaming, and that seems counterproductive."
He wasn't wrong. The urge to scream—to give voice to the primal terror clawing at my hindbrain—was nearly overwhelming. But screaming wouldn't find answers. Screaming wouldn't save anyone.
So instead, I followed Kai into the chamber, forcing my eyes away from Derek's twisted form, focusing on the console that represented our only hope.
---
The console was more complex than I'd realized during our first, gas-interrupted visit.
Multiple screens, most dark but a few displaying scrolling data I couldn't immediately interpret. A keyboard that looked almost normal but had additional keys marked with symbols I didn't recognize. Sliders, dials, switches—an interface designed for functions far beyond standard computing.
"This is the environmental control hub," I said, tracing cables from the console to ports in the walls. "The sedative dispersal, temperature regulation, everything that's been manipulating our sleep cycles—it all runs through here."
"Can you shut it down?" Connor asked. He'd positioned himself near the door, watching the corridor behind us, his grief channeled into vigilant paranoia.
"Maybe. If I can figure out the interface." I sat down at the console, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. "This isn't exactly Windows."
"Take your time," Ayla said, but her voice was tight. "We have... actually, I don't know how much time we have. The ninety-minute cycles are getting harder to maintain. People are slipping through."
The weight of that statement settled over me. Every minute I spent puzzling over this console was a minute someone back in the lobby might fall into REM sleep. Might dream. Might die.
No pressure.
I started with the active screens, trying to make sense of the data streams. Most of it was numerical—measurements, I assumed, though of what I couldn't say. But one screen caught my attention: a grid of icons, each one labeled with what looked like a name.
*HOLSTON, D. - TERMINATED*
*MARTINEZ, S. - TERMINATED*
*WHITMORE, F. - ACTIVE/STAGE 2*
*CHEN, A. - ACTIVE/STAGE 1*
*MORRISON, T. - ACTIVE/AWAKE*
"It's tracking everyone," I breathed. "Every student. Their sleep stages, their... their status."
Kai leaned over my shoulder, scanning the grid. "TERMINATED. That's a hell of a euphemism for 'murdered by their own nightmares.'"
"Look at this." I pointed to a cluster of icons in one corner, all showing the same status: *ACTIVE/STAGE 3*. "Stage 3 is deep sleep. Pre-REM. These people are about to start dreaming."
"How many?"
I counted. "Fifteen. Fifteen people in Stage 3 right now."
"Then we need to wake them up." Ayla was already moving toward the door. "The rotation team needs to know—"
"Wait." My finger had found something else—a button labeled *ENV_OVERRIDE*. "I think I can access the environmental controls from here. If I can shut down the sedative dispersal—"
"Then people stop being drugged into sleep," Connor finished. "Do it."
I pressed the button.
The screen changed, displaying a new interface—sliders for temperature, humidity, air circulation, and there, highlighted in red: *ONEIRIC ENHANCEMENT AEROSOL - ACTIVE*.
"Found it." My hand was shaking as I reached for the control. "I'm shutting it down."
"Jason, wait—" Ayla's voice was sharp with sudden warning.
But I'd already moved the slider from ACTIVE to INACTIVE.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then every light in the facility went out.
---
The darkness was absolute.
Not the dim emergency lighting we'd grown accustomed to, not the pale glow of screen light—*nothing*. The kind of darkness that has weight, that presses against your eyes until you're not sure if they're open or closed.
Someone screamed. Multiple someones, actually—the sound echoing from both the chamber and the distant lobby, a chorus of terror in stereo.
"What did you do?" Connor's voice came from somewhere to my left, accusatory and afraid.
"I don't—I just tried to shut down the sedative—"
"You triggered a lockdown protocol." Ayla's voice was calmer, but only barely. "I saw it flash on the screen before everything went dark. The system has defensive measures. You tried to disable it, and it responded."
"By turning off the lights?"
"By something worse, probably. The lights are just a side effect."
As if to confirm her words, a new sound filled the chamber—a low, rhythmic pulse that seemed to come from everywhere at once. It vibrated through the floor, through the air, through my bones.
And then the helmets activated.
I couldn't see them in the darkness, but I could *hear* them—a building whine of electronics powering up, followed by crackling static that resolved into something almost like speech. Almost like whispers.
"*Sleep now. Sleep now. Sleep now.*"
The words burrowed into my brain, bypassing my ears entirely, speaking directly to the exhausted parts of my consciousness that wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and surrender.
"Don't listen!" Ayla shouted. "It's auditory programming—subliminal frequencies embedded in the static! Cover your ears!"
I pressed my hands to the sides of my head, but it didn't help. The whispers were *inside*, not outside. They were in my blood, my neurons, the very architecture of my sleep-deprived brain.
*Sleep now. Dream now. Die now.*
"We need to get out!" Kai's hand found my arm in the darkness, pulling me toward what I hoped was the door. "The console isn't going to save us—move!"
We ran.
Or tried to run. The darkness made navigation impossible, and I crashed into a chair, then a wall, then something soft that groaned in pain—Connor, I realized, knocked to the ground by my flailing momentum.
"Sorry—I can't see—"
"Obviously!"
The whispering was getting louder, more insistent. I could feel my grip on consciousness slipping, the sedative we'd been breathing for hours combining with the subliminal assault to drag me toward the very sleep I was trying to prevent.
And then, distantly, from the direction of the lobby: more screaming.
Not fear this time. *Anguish*.
---
The emergency lights flickered back to life as suddenly as they'd died, casting the corridor in that sickly red glow that made everything look like a scene from a horror movie.
Which, I supposed, it was.
Kai was already running toward the lobby, and I followed, my heart hammering against my ribs with a force that felt like it might crack them. Behind me, I heard Ayla and Connor's footsteps, but I didn't look back. Looking back meant slowing down, and slowing down meant—
We burst into the lobby.
And stopped.
The floor was covered in bodies.
Not arranged neatly like the sleepers we'd left under supervision—*scattered*. Twisted. Some of them clearly dead, their forms marked by impossible wounds that no physical violence could have inflicted. Others still breathing, but convulsing, their eyes moving rapidly behind closed lids.
Dreaming. They were all dreaming.
"What—" Connor's voice cracked. "What happened? We were only gone twenty minutes!"
Tyler Morrison emerged from behind the reception desk, his face ashen, his usual arrogance stripped away by shock. "The lights went out. That sound started—the whispering. People just... collapsed. All at once. Like someone hit a switch."
I did this. The thought was ice water in my veins. *I triggered this. I tried to help and I made everything worse.*
"The Stage 3 sleepers," Ayla said, moving among the bodies with clinical focus. "The ones Jason saw on the console. They must have been pushed into REM by the subliminal program. All of them, simultaneously."
"Fifteen people," I said. "There were fifteen in Stage 3."
"There are more than fifteen bodies here."
She was right. I counted—quickly, desperately, hoping I was wrong—and reached a number that made my stomach lurch.
Fifteen dead. Another twelve in active REM, their dreams playing out in real-time, their bodies beginning to show the first signs of physical manifestation.
And among the dead:
Felix Whitmore, his body compressed as if by invisible walls, his claustrophobic nightmare made flesh.
Ashley Chen, her face frozen in an expression of desperate screaming, but no one around her—she'd died unseen, unheard, the way she'd always feared.
Marcus Webb, Derek's teammate, his skin covered in burns that hadn't existed five minutes ago.
"No," Connor whispered, falling to his knees beside Marcus's body. "No, no, no—he was fine. He was *awake*. I saw him right before the lights—"
"The pulse knocked everyone out," Kai said grimly. "Awake or not. The whole facility became one giant sleep-induction device."
Because of me. Because I'd tried to be smart, tried to find a solution, tried to *debunk* the system like it was just another podcast topic to be analyzed and explained.
Lily's face flashed in my mind again. *You didn't listen. You never listen.*
"We need to wake the survivors," Ayla commanded, her voice cutting through my spiral of self-recrimination. "Before their dreams progress. Jason—"
"Don't." Mira Santos had appeared from somewhere, her eyes red, her body trembling. "Don't give him any more responsibilities. He's done enough."
The accusation landed like a physical blow. I opened my mouth to defend myself, to explain that I'd been trying to help, that I couldn't have known—
But what was there to say? Fifteen people were dead. Fifteen people who'd been alive when we left for the circular chamber, who might still be alive if I hadn't touched that console.
"Mira's right." Tyler's voice was cold, the leader reasserting itself now that the immediate crisis had stabilized. "Reeves stays back. The rest of us wake the sleepers."
I watched them move among the convulsing bodies, shaking shoulders and shouting names, desperately trying to pull people back from the dreams that were killing them. Some responded—gasping awake with wild eyes and fragmented memories of nightmares interrupted. Others didn't.
Ayla caught my eye across the room. Her expression was unreadable, but she gave me a small nod—not forgiveness exactly, but acknowledgment. *You made a mistake. It doesn't make you the enemy.*
I wasn't sure I believed her.
I wasn't sure I believed anything anymore.
---
**FOUR HOURS LATER**
The final count was devastating.
Fifteen dead from the pulse. Three more who'd slipped into REM during the recovery chaos, their dreams manifesting before anyone could wake them.
Sarah Chen—no relation to Kai—had been consumed by fire that left no source. James Ortiz had suffocated, his lungs filled with what the survivors described as "solid darkness." And Priya Sharma, the quiet girl who sat in the back of every class, had simply... stopped. Her heart, her brain, everything—just ceased, as if she'd dreamed of nonexistence and her body had obliged.
Eighteen dead total. The senior class of Greystone High, reduced by more than a quarter in a single night.
And everyone knew whose fault it was.
I sat alone in a corner of the lobby, as far from the others as I could get without leaving the relative safety of the group. No one spoke to me. No one looked at me. The few times someone glanced in my direction, their eyes held accusation, grief, rage—everything I deserved.
*You did this. You killed them. You and your desperate need to find answers.*
"You're spiraling."
Kai's voice made me jump. He'd appeared beside me without warning, settling against the wall with the casual grace of someone who hadn't just watched eighteen people die.
"I'm processing," I said.
"You're blaming yourself for something that wasn't entirely your fault."
"Wasn't *entirely*—"
"The system was designed to trigger that lockdown if anyone tried to disable it. You had no way of knowing. Anyone who reached that console would have done the same thing."
"But I'm the one who actually did it." I stared at my hands, the same hands that had moved the slider from ACTIVE to INACTIVE. "Fifteen people—"
"Would have died anyway. Maybe not all at once, maybe not in that particular pulse, but the odds were against them. The Stage 3 sleepers were already on the edge of REM. The subliminal program just... accelerated things."
"That's not comforting."
"It's not meant to be." Kai sat down next to me, close enough that our shoulders almost touched. "It's meant to be true. The universe isn't comforting, Jason. It's chaotic and random and people die for stupid reasons all the time. The only thing we can control is what we do with the guilt."
I looked at him—really looked, past the jokes and the reckless energy and the mask he wore as constantly as Tyler Morrison wore arrogance. "You sound like you have experience."
"Maybe." His smile was thin. "Or maybe I'm just really good at pretending."
We sat in silence for a moment, the weight of eighteen deaths pressing down on us both.
Then Kai leaned closer, his voice dropping to barely a whisper. "Ayla and I found something. In the documents you recovered."
"What kind of something?"
"The kind we're not sharing with the group. At least, not yet." He glanced around, confirming no one was close enough to hear. "There's a section about REM suppression—pharmaceutical methods they tested on earlier cohorts. Most of them failed, but one compound showed promise. They called it Compound-7."
"And?"
"And according to the inventory logs Mira found, there's a supply of it somewhere in this facility. If we can find it—"
"We might be able to prevent REM sleep entirely." Hope flickered in my chest, fragile and uncertain. "Why aren't we telling everyone?"
Kai's expression darkened. "Because not everyone can be trusted. Did you see Tyler during the chaos? He was organizing his people, sure—but he was also counting survivors. Calculating who was still useful and who was expendable."
"You think he'd sabotage us?"
"I think he'd do whatever it takes to ensure *his* people survive. And if that means sacrificing the rest of us..." Kai shrugged. "Hierarchy doesn't disappear under stress. It intensifies."
I thought about the document I'd read in the restricted wing—the description of perfect soldiers, perfect workers, people stripped of dreams and therefore stripped of independent thought.
Tyler Morrison would have been an ideal candidate for that program.
"What do you need from me?" I asked.
"Research. You're the one who understands the science, even if you refuse to believe it's possible." Kai smiled slightly. "Ayla's working on the practical side—mapping the facility, identifying likely storage locations. But we need someone to analyze the compound data, figure out dosages, anticipate side effects. Someone good at processing information under pressure."
"I nearly got everyone killed the last time I tried to be helpful."
"So this time, be helpful without touching any buttons." He stood, offering me a hand. "We're meeting in two hours, when the others are doing the next sleep rotation. RN-7—the laboratory at the end of the restricted wing."
I took his hand and let him pull me to my feet. "Why are you trusting me? After what I did?"
Kai considered the question. "Because you're the only person here who hates being wrong more than they hate being blamed. That means you'll work harder than anyone to make sure you're not wrong again."
It wasn't a compliment, exactly. But it was true.
And truth, I was learning, was more valuable than comfort.
---
**TWO HOURS LATER**
**RN-7 - RESTRICTED WING**
The laboratory was exactly as we'd left it—filing cabinets still sealed, computer terminals still dark, that central table still scattered with the documents we hadn't had time to fully examine.
Ayla was already there when I arrived, spreading papers across the table in organized clusters. Kai followed a few minutes later, checking the corridor behind him before pulling the door shut.
"We've got maybe an hour before the next rotation," he said. "Let's make it count."
Ayla nodded, gesturing to one of the document clusters. "This is everything we have on Compound-7. Chemical composition, synthesis protocols, trial results from Cohorts 4 through 6."
I picked up the top paper and started reading. The chemistry was complex—I'd taken AP Chem, but this was graduate-level work—but the core concept was understandable. Compound-7 was designed to selectively suppress the neural activity associated with REM sleep, allowing subjects to enter restorative deep sleep without triggering the dream state.
"The early versions had problems," I said, scanning the trial reports. "Subjects experienced memory loss, emotional blunting, in some cases complete personality dissolution."
"But Compound-7 was different," Ayla said. "Look at the Cohort 6 results."
I found the relevant section and felt my eyebrows rise. "Eighty percent REM suppression with minimal side effects. They actually made it work."
"For about three weeks," Kai said grimly. "Then the subjects started dying anyway. Heart failure, mostly. The brain needs REM sleep—you can suppress it, but eventually the debt catches up."
"So this isn't a solution. It's just... buying time."
"Time is what we need." Ayla's voice was firm. "If we can suppress REM for a few days, we have a chance to find a real way out. To understand the system, find its weaknesses, *destroy* it."
"Or die of heart failure while we're trying."
"Better than dying tonight from whatever nightmare our subconscious cooks up."
She had a point. Death in a few days was objectively better than death in a few hours—it gave us options, room to maneuver, the chance to fight back instead of just surviving.
"Where's the compound stored?" I asked.
"That's where it gets complicated." Kai pulled out a facility map, one of the architectural documents we'd recovered. "According to the inventory logs, the supply should be in the pharmaceutical storage wing—here." He pointed to a section of the map I didn't recognize. "But that wing isn't on any of the standard floor plans. It's either underground or in a section of the facility we haven't found yet."
"Hidden labs within hidden labs," I muttered. "Noctis really didn't want anyone finding their secrets."
"Which means the entrance is probably disguised. Mira's been helping me analyze structural inconsistencies—places where the architecture doesn't quite add up. There's a section near the cafeteria where the walls are thicker than they should be."
"You think there's a hidden door?"
"I think it's our best lead."
The door to the laboratory creaked open, and we all froze.
Connor Hayes stepped through, his expression a mixture of suspicion and exhaustion. "Found you."
Kai moved smoothly, his body blocking the table of documents. "Connor. What are you doing back here?"
"Looking for answers. Same as you, apparently." Connor's eyes swept the room, taking in the papers, the map, the guilty expressions we couldn't quite hide. "What is this? A secret meeting of the Survivors' Club?"
"It's research," I said, the lie coming easier than expected. "I'm trying to understand the compound they used on us. Find a way to counteract it."
"Without telling anyone else?"
"Without getting accused of making things worse. Again." The bitterness in my voice was real, at least. "Tyler made it pretty clear I'm not welcome in group decision-making."
Connor's expression softened slightly—not forgiveness, but understanding. He knew what it was like to be on the outside of the hierarchy, even if his position as Derek's best friend had usually protected him.
"What have you found?"
I glanced at Kai, who gave an almost imperceptible nod.
"There's a compound that can suppress REM sleep," I said. "It was developed here, for the original experiments. If we can find it—"
"We might be able to stop the nightmares." Connor's voice held the first spark of hope I'd heard from him since Derek died. "Where is it?"
"That's what we're trying to figure out. There's a hidden section of the facility—"
"Near the cafeteria," Connor interrupted. "The wall that sounds hollow when you knock on it. I noticed it during the food inventory."
Ayla stepped forward. "You know where the entrance is?"
"I might. There's a fire extinguisher mounted on the wall in a weird spot—too high for practical use, at an angle that doesn't match anything else. I figured it was just bad installation, but if you're right about a hidden door..."
"It could be a disguised access panel." I felt the pieces clicking together. "Can you show us?"
Connor hesitated, glancing toward the door. "Tyler's looking for me. He wants to organize a leadership council—decide who's in charge of what, now that we've lost so many."
"A leadership council that will put him in charge of everything," Kai predicted.
"Probably. But he's got the numbers. His athletes, plus the people who are too scared to think for themselves—that's more than half the survivors."
"And the other half?"
"Scattered. Scared. Looking for someone to follow." Connor met Kai's eyes. "You could be that someone. People trust you more than they trust Tyler."
Kai laughed—a sharp, surprised sound. "People trust me? Have you *met* me?"
"They trust that you'll fight. That you won't just sit back and let things happen." Connor's voice was serious. "Tyler's all about control. You're about action. Right now, action is what people need."
The weight of the statement settled over the room. I watched Kai's expression shift—from amusement to consideration to something that looked almost like fear.
He didn't want to be a leader. That much was obvious. But he was the best option we had.
"Let's find the compound first," Kai said finally. "Then we can worry about leadership politics."
"After you find it," Connor said, "you might not have a choice."
---
**THE CAFETERIA - FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER**
The fire extinguisher was exactly where Connor described—mounted at an awkward height, tilted at an angle that served no practical purpose.
I examined it while the others kept watch, running my fingers along the mounting bracket. The metal was cold, unremarkable, but when I pressed against the base of the bracket, I felt something click.
A section of the wall swung inward, revealing a staircase descending into darkness.
"Well," Kai said, peering into the void, "that's not ominous at all. Just a secret underground passage in the murder facility. Very normal. Very safe."
"Do we have flashlights?" Ayla asked.
"Phones." Connor pulled his out, activating the flashlight function. "Battery's at forty percent, but it should be enough."
We descended.
The staircase was narrow, concrete, clearly designed for function rather than aesthetics. The air grew colder as we went deeper, carrying a chemical smell that reminded me of hospital corridors and cleaning supplies.
At the bottom, the stairs opened into a corridor lined with doors—each one labeled with alphanumeric codes similar to those in the research wing above.
"Pharmaceutical storage," I read from the nearest door. "P-1 through P-12. The compound should be here somewhere."
We split up, each taking a section of doors, opening them to reveal rooms filled with shelves and cabinets and the preserved remnants of decades-old research. Most contained nothing useful—empty vials, expired medications, equipment that had long since stopped functioning.
But P-7 was different.
"Here!" Ayla's voice echoed down the corridor. "I found it!"
We converged on her position, crowding into a room smaller than the others but carefully organized. Climate-controlled cabinets lined the walls, their displays still showing active temperature readings.
And inside one cabinet, arranged in neat rows, were vials of a pale blue liquid labeled:
**COMPOUND-7**
**REM SUPPRESSION AGENT**
**BATCH 23 - FINAL FORMULATION**
**WARNING: MAXIMUM DOSAGE 3 ADMINISTRATIONS PER SUBJECT**
"This is it," I said, reaching for one of the vials. "This could save us."
"If it doesn't kill us first," Kai added. "What was that warning about maximum dosage?"
"Probably cardiac stress." I examined the vial, noting the precise measurements marked on its side. "The brain can only tolerate REM suppression for so long before the body starts to fail. Three doses buys us... maybe seventy-two hours? Enough time to find another way out."
"Or enough time to die slightly slower."
"Kai—"
"I know, I know. Optimism. Working on it." He gestured toward the cabinet. "How much is there?"
I counted. "Twenty vials. At one dose per person, that's enough for twenty survivors to buy themselves three days."
"There are more than twenty survivors."
The statement hung in the air between us. Twenty vials. At least thirty-five people still alive in the lobby above. We couldn't save everyone—not with this, not now.
"We'll have to decide who gets the doses," Ayla said quietly. "Or find more."
"There might be more somewhere else in this wing," Connor suggested. "Other storage rooms we haven't checked."
"Split up again?"
"It's faster."
We divided the remaining doors among ourselves, each of us searching with increasing desperation. More vials existed somewhere—they had to—because the alternative was choosing who lived and who died based on our own judgment.
And none of us wanted that responsibility.
I was searching P-11, the second-to-last room in the corridor, when I heard the footsteps.
Multiple sets. Coming from the staircase.
"Someone's coming," I hissed, pulling back into the doorway. "Hide."
We scattered, each of us finding concealment behind cabinets or within alcoves. The footsteps grew louder, accompanied by voices—Tyler Morrison's voice, unmistakable in its confident authority, and others I recognized from his inner circle.
"—said they came this way. Connor was seen leaving the lobby with Kai's group."
"You think they found something?"
"I think they're hiding something. And whatever it is, we need to control it."
Control. That word again. The hierarchy's favorite concept—the thing that Tyler craved more than survival itself.
I pressed myself deeper into the shadows as the group reached the bottom of the stairs. Through a gap in the shelving, I counted: Tyler, plus four of his athletes. Five people, all of them looking for us.
All of them looking for the compound we'd just discovered.
"Spread out," Tyler ordered. "Check every room. They can't have gone far."
The footsteps dispersed.
I held my breath, listening to the sound of doors opening, cabinets being searched. Any moment now, someone would find P-7. Would see the vials. Would understand what we'd discovered—and what we hadn't shared.
*Move*, I told myself. *Get out before they find you.*
But moving meant making noise. And noise meant discovery.
I was trapped. We all were.
---
Tyler found Ayla first.
I heard the confrontation from my hiding spot—heard Tyler's sharp intake of breath, heard Ayla's steady voice trying to defuse the situation, heard it fail spectacularly.
"You found it," Tyler said, his voice echoing down the corridor. "The compound. You were going to keep it for yourselves."
"We were going to bring it back to everyone—"
"Really? Is that why you're sneaking around in secret passageways instead of sharing your discovery with the group?"
I abandoned concealment. There was no point now—Tyler had found the critical evidence, and hiding would only make us look more guilty.
I stepped into the corridor at the same time Kai and Connor emerged from their own hiding spots. Tyler's athletes moved to surround us, cutting off any escape route.
"Let me explain," Kai started.
"Explain what? That you and your little conspiracy club decided to hoard the one thing that might keep everyone alive?" Tyler's laugh was harsh, bitter. "I knew you couldn't be trusted, Chen. You and your girlfriend, your podcast boy, your—"
"We weren't hoarding anything," Connor interrupted. "We just found it. Literally minutes ago. We haven't even had time to count how much there is."
"But you weren't planning to share, were you?" Tyler stepped closer, his physical size suddenly more threatening. "You were going to 'study' it, 'analyze' it, make yourselves the gatekeepers of everyone's survival."
"That's not—"
"Save it." Tyler gestured to his people. "Get the vials. All of them. This goes back to the lobby, where *I* decide how it gets distributed."
One of the athletes—Marcus Webb's replacement, a junior whose name I'd never bothered to learn—moved toward P-7's open door.
Kai stepped into his path.
"Move," the athlete said.
"No."
The word was quiet, calm, absolutely final. Kai stood in the doorway with his arms crossed, his body language screaming *you'll have to go through me*.
"Chen—" Tyler warned.
"You're not taking this." Kai's voice was still calm, but there was something underneath it—that dark thing I'd glimpsed before, the edge that made him climb water towers and race motorcycles and court death like a persistent suitor. "Not until we've figured out the right distribution."
"And who decides that? You?"
"Everyone. Together. Like a democracy, if you've heard of the concept."
"Democracy." Tyler laughed again. "Democracy only works when everyone's equal. We're not equal, Chen. Some people are more important than others. More useful. More *necessary*."
"And let me guess—you're the one who decides who's necessary?"
"Someone has to." Tyler took another step forward, close enough now that I could see the calculated rage behind his eyes. "Your little group? You're dead weight. The insomniac with the obvious psychological issues. The know-it-all who got eighteen people killed. The grieving idiot who can't accept that his friend is gone. And you—the adrenaline junkie with a death wish. What exactly do any of you contribute?"
"Careful, Tyler." Kai's voice had gone very quiet. "You're about to say something you can't take back."
"I'm about to say the truth." Tyler smiled—not a pleasant expression. "When we get out of here, I'm going to remember who was useful and who wasn't. I'm going to remember who tried to steal resources and who followed the proper chain of command. My father is on the school board. He has connections. You think any of this just... goes away when we're rescued?"
"*If* we're rescued."
"*When*. Because I'm going to make sure the right people survive to tell the story."
The tension in the corridor was a physical thing, crackling between Kai and Tyler like static electricity waiting to discharge. I saw Kai's hands uncurl from their crossed position, saw his weight shift onto the balls of his feet.
He was about to do something very, very stupid.
"Stop," Ayla said.
The word cut through the standoff like a knife. She stepped forward, placing herself between Kai and Tyler with an authority that seemed to come from nowhere.
"This is exactly what the system wants," she continued. "Us fighting each other. Dividing into factions. Using up our energy on territorial disputes instead of focusing on survival."
"She's right," I added, finding my voice. "The DREAMLESS PROTOCOL is designed to isolate us—to make us see each other as threats instead of allies. Every minute we spend on this conflict is a minute we're not spending on finding a way out."
Tyler's eyes narrowed. "Pretty words from the guy who triggered the pulse that killed half our class."
"Pretty words from the guy who's about to start a war over medicine no one can use yet." I gestured toward the vials. "We don't even know the proper dosage. The documents talk about calibration based on body weight, metabolic factors, prior exposure to sedatives. Give someone too much and they might never wake up. Give them too little and the nightmares break through anyway."
"And you're the only one who can figure that out?"
"I'm the one who's been reading the research. If you want to experiment on your own people, be my guest—but don't blame me when they die because you were too proud to accept help."
The silence stretched, Tyler and I locked in a stare that felt like a physical confrontation. I saw him calculating—weighing his desire for control against the practical reality that I *was* the only one who'd studied the compound data in depth.
"Fine," he said finally. "You analyze the dosages. But the distribution happens in the lobby, in front of everyone, with *my* people supervising. And if you try anything—if you prioritize your friends over everyone else—I'll make sure you never see the outside of this building."
It was a compromise. A bad one, probably—Tyler would use his control of distribution to cement his power, to make people dependent on his goodwill. But it kept us alive. It gave us access to the compound.
It bought us time.
"Deal," I said.
Kai's eyes burned with objection, but he didn't speak. We gathered the vials—all twenty of them—and followed Tyler's group back toward the staircase, the fragile alliance already cracking under the weight of what we'd agreed to.
---
**THE LOBBY - TWO HOURS LATER**
Tyler's "leadership council" was every bit as authoritarian as Kai had predicted.
He'd organized the survivors into groups—Athletes, Academics, Others—with his people in charge of each division. The compound distribution had been announced as a "lottery" system, but somehow Tyler's inner circle had ended up with guaranteed doses while everyone else had to hope their names got drawn.
Pure coincidence, according to Tyler.
"This is ridiculous," Mira muttered, huddled with our group in our usual corner. "He's basically appointed himself king of the disaster."
"He has the numbers," Kai said grimly. "And the muscle. Anyone who challenges him openly ends up 'reassigned' to the most dangerous positions."
"What positions? We're all in the same building."
"Watch rotations. Sleep monitors. The people who stay awake to wake others—but who also have to be awake longer than anyone else, burning through their energy reserves faster." Kai's jaw tightened. "He's using the system against people. Wearing down anyone who might oppose him."
"So what do we do?"
"We survive. We stay quiet. We wait for an opportunity."
"And if one doesn't come?"
Kai didn't answer. He didn't have to.
I was analyzing the compound data at a small table, surrounded by the documents we'd recovered and a calculator I'd found in one of the offices. The dosage calibrations were complex—more complex than I'd initially realized—but I was making progress.
"Body weight is the primary factor," I said, loud enough for our group to hear. "A sixty-kilogram person needs approximately 2.3 milliliters per dose. Anything more risks cardiac arrhythmia. Anything less and REM suppression drops below the effective threshold."
"How do we measure 2.3 milliliters without proper equipment?" Ayla asked.
"The vials are marked in milliliter increments. It's not precise, but it should work." I looked up from my calculations. "The bigger problem is timing. Each dose lasts approximately twenty-four hours, but the effectiveness decreases with each administration. By the third dose, we're looking at maybe sixty percent suppression instead of eighty."
"Meaning some dreams might break through anyway?"
"Meaning the longer we use this, the less reliable it becomes." I set down my pencil. "This isn't a solution. It's a patch. A temporary fix that gives us maybe three days before we're right back where we started."
"Then we use those three days to find something better," Kai said. "Or to escape entirely."
"How? The doors are sealed, the windows are reinforced, the perimeter is electrified—"
"There has to be a way." Kai's voice was fierce. "Every cage has a weakness. Every system has a flaw. We just have to find it."
The conviction in his words was almost enough to make me believe him.
Almost.
---
The first lottery distribution happened that evening.
Tyler had set up a formal process—names written on scraps of paper, drawn from a container, announced with theatrical gravity. The winners received their doses with visible relief. The losers tried to hide their despair behind stoic acceptance.
Kai's name wasn't drawn. Neither was mine, or Mira's, or Ayla's.
Connor's name came out of the container, but he gave his dose to Sophie Martinez's roommate—a girl named Elena who'd been on the edge of a breakdown since the pulse incident.
"She needs it more than me," he said when Tyler challenged the transfer. "I can stay awake. She can't."
It was a gesture of pure selflessness—the kind of thing that shouldn't have been remarkable but somehow was. In a world of calculated survival, of hoarded resources and factional power plays, Connor Hayes chose kindness.
Tyler let it happen, but his expression suggested he was filing the moment away for future reference.
---
**MIDNIGHT - DAY 2**
The night stretched into eternity.
Those of us without compound doses rotated through a brutal schedule of wakefulness—two hours of activity, thirty minutes of carefully monitored micro-sleep, back to activity before REM could engage. It wasn't sustainable. Our bodies screamed for rest, our minds flickered between alertness and hallucinatory fugue states, our tempers frayed into sharp edges that drew blood at the slightest contact.
Fights broke out. Small ones at first—arguments over food distribution, sleeping positions, the volume of someone's phone. Then larger ones, as exhaustion stripped away the social conditioning that normally kept humans from attacking each other.
Tyler's enforcers maintained order, but barely. The hierarchy was holding, but cracks were appearing.
"We need to make a move," Kai whispered during one of our brief gatherings. "Before Tyler consolidates complete control."
"What kind of move?" Mira asked.
"The compound. The real supply—not the twenty vials we found, but the larger reserves that have to exist somewhere. If we can find them and distribute them fairly..."
"Tyler will call it theft. Rebellion. He'll turn the whole group against us."
"Then we don't get caught." Kai's eyes gleamed with that dangerous light I was learning to recognize. "There are more hidden sections of this facility. More secrets. If I can find them—"
"If *we* can find them," Ayla corrected. "You're not doing this alone."
"It's safer if—"
"Nothing here is safe. At least together we have each other's backs."
Their eyes met, and I saw something pass between them—an understanding that went deeper than words, deeper than the crisis that had thrown them together. They trusted each other, I realized. Really trusted, in a way that the rest of us were still struggling to achieve.
"Fine," Kai said. "Together. But we need a distraction. Something to keep Tyler and his people busy while we search."
"I can do that," I offered.
Everyone looked at me.
"Tyler still needs me to analyze the dosage protocols," I explained. "If I find a 'problem' with the calibrations—something that requires extensive recalculation—he'll be forced to delay the next distribution. That gives you time to search without anyone noticing you're gone."
"And when he figures out you're stalling?"
"I'll deal with it." I shrugged, trying to project confidence I didn't feel. "He can't actually hurt me—I'm the only one who understands the chemistry. But he can hurt all of you. So stay hidden, find what you're looking for, and get back before anyone realizes you've left."
It wasn't a great plan. It wasn't even a good plan. But it was *a* plan, which was more than we'd had five minutes ago.
"Tomorrow night," Kai decided. "During the third rotation, when everyone's at their most exhausted. We move then."
Tomorrow night. Assuming we survived that long.
---
We didn't all survive that long.
At 3 AM, the screaming started again.
---
**THE DEATH OF JAMES ORTIZ (REDUX)**
I'd been wrong about James Ortiz.
When he'd died during the pulse, I'd assumed his nightmare was about darkness—the "solid darkness" that had filled his lungs. But talking to survivors who'd known him, I learned the truth was both simpler and more horrifying.
James Ortiz was afraid of being buried alive.
As a child, he'd gotten trapped in a collapsed snow fort. The darkness, the pressure, the inability to move or breathe—the trauma had stayed with him for years, manifesting in claustrophobic nightmares that he'd never fully escaped.
His lungs hadn't been filled with "solid darkness." They'd been filled with *dirt*. Compacted earth that his dreaming mind had conjured as the walls of his nightmare grave closed in.
The medical information came from Elena, Sophie's roommate, who'd been his lab partner in biology. She delivered it in the flat, dissociated tone of someone who'd processed too much horror to feel anything anymore.
"He used to tap his desk during tests," she said. "This specific pattern—SOS, I realized later. Like he was always signaling for rescue. Always trapped somewhere in his mind."
The detail was small, insignificant, but it stuck with me. All of us carried our fears like invisible brands, marked by traumas we'd never fully escaped. The DREAMLESS system didn't create our nightmares—it just made them real.
Which meant understanding our fears was the first step toward surviving them.
"We need to catalog everyone's phobias," I told Ayla. "Every trauma, every recurring nightmare. If we know what people are afraid of, we might be able to—"
"Wake them before the dream manifests," she finished. "Like we've been doing, but more targeted."
"Exactly. And maybe figure out ways to prepare them. Visualization techniques, cognitive reframing—anything that might give them an edge when the nightmare starts."
"That's... actually a good idea."
"You sound surprised."
"I'm surprised you're thinking proactively instead of reactively." Ayla's smile was slight but genuine. "It's growth."
"Near-death experiences have that effect."
We started the catalog that night, interviewing survivors in whispered conversations, building a database of terrors that we hoped would never be tested.
It wasn't enough. Nothing we did was ever going to be enough.
But it was something. And in a place like Noctis, something was worth fighting for.
---
**DAY 2 - EVENING**
The plan went wrong from the beginning.
Kai and Ayla had waited until the third rotation to slip away, exactly as we'd discussed. I'd staged my "discovery" of a calibration error in the compound dosages, requiring Tyler to postpone the evening distribution while I "recalculated" the formulas.
But Tyler was smarter than we'd given him credit for.
"Where are Chen and Vance?" he asked, appearing at my table with two of his enforcers.
I kept my expression neutral, my attention fixed on the papers in front of me. "How would I know? I've been here for the last three hours."
"They're not in the lobby. They're not in any of the designated rest areas. They're not in the cafeteria." Tyler's voice was deceptively calm. "Where are they?"
"I don't keep track of everyone's location. That's your job, isn't it?"
The comment was a mistake. I saw Tyler's expression harden, saw his hand move in a subtle gesture to the enforcers behind him.
"Search him," he ordered.
"On what grounds?"
"On the grounds that I'm in charge of security, and you're acting suspicious." Tyler stepped back as his people moved forward. "Don't resist. That would only make things worse."
They found the facility map in my pocket—the one I'd copied for Kai, marking the areas we suspected contained additional storage rooms. Tyler examined it with growing fury, his finger tracing the annotations I'd made.
"You *are* planning something." His voice was quiet now, which was somehow more frightening than when he shouted. "You and your little group. After everything that's happened, after I *let* you participate in the compound analysis, you're still trying to undermine me."
"I'm trying to find more supplies," I said. "For everyone. Not just your inner circle."
"There is no 'my inner circle.' There's the leadership council, making decisions for the good of all survivors."
"The 'leadership council' that you appointed. That answers to you. That distributes resources based on your preferences."
Tyler's smile was thin and cold. "Careful, Reeves. You're already on thin ice after the pulse incident. Don't give me a reason to push you under."
I said nothing. There was nothing to say that wouldn't make things worse.
Tyler folded the map and tucked it into his own pocket. "Find Chen and Vance," he ordered his people. "Bring them to the cafeteria. It's time we had a community discussion about loyalty."
They dragged me along as they searched, moving through the facility with methodical efficiency. My mind raced, trying to figure out how to warn Kai and Ayla, how to salvage the mission, how to keep everything from falling apart.
But there was nothing I could do. Tyler had outmaneuvered us, and now we were going to pay the price.
They found Kai and Ayla in the pharmaceutical storage wing.
---
**THE CONFRONTATION**
The "community discussion" was more like a tribunal.
Tyler had assembled all the survivors in the cafeteria—the one room large enough to hold everyone, with its institutional tables and harsh lighting and the lingering smell of pre-packaged food. He stood at the front like a prosecutor, flanked by his enforcers, while Kai, Ayla, and I were positioned facing the crowd.
"These three," Tyler announced, his voice carrying through the room, "have been secretly searching the facility for resources. Resources they intended to hoard for themselves, just like they tried to hoard the compound we found yesterday."
"That's not true," Kai said immediately. "We were looking for more supplies to share with everyone."
"Then why didn't you tell anyone? Why sneak around in hidden passages instead of organizing a proper search party?"
"Because you would have taken control of whatever we found. Like you did with the first batch."
Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Tyler's expression didn't change, but I saw the calculation behind his eyes—measuring the damage, adjusting his strategy.
"I 'took control' to ensure fair distribution," he said. "Something these three have repeatedly resisted. First Reeves triggered the pulse that killed eighteen people. Then they hid the compound discovery from the group. Now they're conducting secret operations without authorization. At what point do we stop giving them the benefit of the doubt?"
"At what point do we stop pretending you're not a dictator in training?" Kai shot back.
The room went silent.
Tyler and Kai faced each other across the space, two forces that had been building toward collision since the moment the gas first knocked us unconscious. I saw Kai's hands flexing at his sides, saw Tyler's enforcers shifting into ready positions.
"Be very careful what you say next," Tyler said quietly.
"Or what? You'll have your goons beat me up? In front of everyone?" Kai laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Go ahead. Show them who you really are. Show them what happens when anyone challenges your authority."
"I'm not the one who—"
"You're exactly the one who." Kai took a step forward, his voice rising. "You've spent your entire life being handed things. Daddy's money. Daddy's connections. The principal's special treatment. And now, when we're all fighting to survive, you immediately try to put yourself on top. Because that's all you know how to do."
"I'm trying to keep people alive!"
"You're trying to control who lives and who dies!"
"ENOUGH!"
The shout came from the crowd. Mira Santos pushed her way to the front, her face pale but determined.
"This is exactly what I warned you about," she said, looking at both Tyler and Kai. "Fighting each other instead of fighting the system that's killing us. Every minute we spend on this is a minute we're not spending on survival."
"Stay out of this, Santos," Tyler warned.
"No. I've been staying out of things my whole life. I've been watching, analyzing, keeping my head down while people like you run the show. And look where it got us." Mira's voice was shaking, but she didn't back down. "Eighteen people dead. Another five from the overnight rotations. We're being picked off while you two fight for dominance like this is a high school election."
"She's right," Connor said, stepping up beside Mira. "We need to work together. Not as factions—as a group. One group, with shared resources and shared decisions."
"That's what I've been trying to establish," Tyler said. "A leadership structure that—"
"That puts you at the top," Ayla interrupted. "A structure where you make the rules and everyone else follows. That's not cooperation. That's dictatorship with extra steps."
The crowd was shifting, I realized. Murmurs of agreement spreading through the assembled survivors. Tyler's control was slipping, his carefully constructed hierarchy weakening under the weight of accumulated resentment.
"Fine," Tyler said, his voice cold. "Fine. If you don't want leadership, you can have chaos. Good luck surviving without organization, without someone willing to make hard decisions. When you're all dead because you couldn't stop fighting long enough to think strategically, remember that I tried to save you."
He turned and walked away, his enforcers following.
The room erupted into noise—questions, accusations, competing voices all trying to be heard. But through the chaos, I caught Kai's eye.
He looked exhausted, triumphant, and terrified all at once.
We'd won the battle. But the war was just beginning.
---
**THAT NIGHT**
The group had fractured completely.
Tyler's faction—maybe a dozen people who believed in his leadership or were too afraid to oppose him—had claimed the east wing of the facility. They'd set up their own rotation schedules, their own compound distribution, their own isolated ecosystem.
Everyone else was left in the lobby and cafeteria, trying to organize without Tyler's authoritarian structure or his resources.
"We need to establish our own protocols," Mira said, taking charge in the vacuum of leadership. "Democratic decision-making. Shared resources. Everyone contributes, everyone benefits."
It was idealistic. Beautiful, even. And almost certainly doomed.
"Tyler took the map," I reminded her. "He knows about the hidden storage areas now. If there are more supplies to find, his people will get there first."
"Then we find something else. Something he doesn't know about."
"Like what?"
Mira pulled out a paper I'd never seen before—a document recovered from the pharmaceutical wing, apparently hidden in her clothing during Tyler's search.
"Like this," she said. "The control room. The real one—not the console in the circular chamber, but the central operations hub that monitors the entire facility. According to this schematic, it's located beneath the main building, accessible through a service tunnel that starts in the basement."
"If we can reach the control room—"
"We might be able to disable the DREAMLESS system entirely. Shut down the environmental manipulation, the subliminal programming, all of it."
It was a long shot. A desperate, probably-suicidal long shot. But it was also the first glimmer of actual hope we'd had since this nightmare began.
"When do we go?" Kai asked.
"Tomorrow. After we've rested and planned properly." Mira's expression was fierce. "This time, we're doing it right."
---
**THE MESSAGE**
At exactly 2 AM, the screens activated.
Every phone, every terminal, every display in the facility—all showing the same message, that same distorted voice delivering pronouncements like a digital god.
"*Attention, subjects. Phase Two has concluded. Twenty-three eliminations have been recorded. Phase Three will commence in forty-eight hours.*"
The room went cold.
"*Phase Three will introduce additional parameters. Subjects will be divided into teams. Teams will compete for resources. Teams that fail to meet performance thresholds will be eliminated.*"
"Competition," Kai breathed. "They want us to fight each other."
"*Team assignments will be based on current social configurations. Faction leaders will receive additional instructions at 0800 hours.*"
Additional instructions. That meant Tyler would know something we didn't—would have advantages we couldn't anticipate.
"*Remember: sleep is permitted. Dreaming is not. Survive—or be deleted.*"
The screens went dark.
In the silence that followed, I heard Tyler Morrison's voice drifting from the east wing. Distant. Triumphant.
Planning something.
Whatever came next, we weren't just fighting the DREAMLESS system anymore.
We were fighting each other.
And somewhere in the depths of Noctis, the architects of this nightmare were watching. Waiting. Recording everything for their perfect, dreamless future.