# DON'T DREAM
## Chapter 4: Rules of Death
---
I've always known I was going to die young.
Not in a morbid, cry-for-help kind of way—more like a quiet certainty that lived in my bones, whispering that the universe and I had an understanding. I pushed limits. I chased edges. I danced with gravity and speed and the thin membrane between alive and not-alive, and someday, inevitably, the music would stop.
What I never expected was to die in a government facility, hunted by my own classmates, fighting over the right to dream.
Life has a sick sense of humor.
My name is Kai Chen. I am seventeen years old, I have a 2.3 GPA that my parents have given up crying about, and I am currently the reluctant leader of approximately twenty-three terrified teenagers who think I have answers.
I don't have answers. I have adrenaline, a death wish I'm trying to suppress, and an inexplicable certainty that if anyone's going to get us out of this nightmare, it won't be Tyler Morrison and his fascist book club.
It's been forty-seven hours since the gas first knocked us out.
It's been six hours since the Phase Three announcement.
And it's been approximately thirty seconds since I realized we were completely, utterly screwed.
---
**0800 HOURS - THE ANNOUNCEMENT**
The screens flickered to life with the precision of a military operation.
We'd gathered in the cafeteria—our faction, the ones who'd chosen democracy over Tyler's dictatorship—waiting for the "additional instructions" the system had promised. Twenty-three faces watched the nearest display, their expressions ranging from exhausted terror to the thousand-yard stare of people who'd already processed more horror than any human should.
Ayla stood beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from her skin. She hadn't slept in... I'd lost track. Days? Her insomnia, the thing that had always seemed like a curse, had become her superpower. While the rest of us fought our biology every ninety minutes, she simply... existed. Awake. Alert. Untouchable by the dreams that killed.
I envied her. I also worried about her, because the human brain wasn't designed for this, and sooner or later, even Ayla's defenses would crack.
The screen resolved into that familiar black background, white text, distorted voice.
"*Attention, subjects. Phase Three protocols are now in effect.*"
Here we go.
"*During Phase Three, all subjects will be organized into competing teams. Team Alpha consists of subjects aligned with Tyler Morrison. Team Beta consists of subjects aligned with Kai Chen.*"
I felt twenty-three pairs of eyes swivel toward me. Great. Now I was officially a team captain in the death Olympics.
"*Teams will compete for limited resources. Each day, challenges will be issued. The winning team will receive compound allocation, food supplies, and access to safe zones. The losing team will receive reduced allocations and increased environmental pressure.*"
"Environmental pressure," Mira muttered beside me. "They mean they'll drug us harder. Make it impossible to stay awake."
"*Additionally, team leaders will be held accountable for team performance. If a team fails to meet minimum thresholds, the leader will face elimination.*"
The words landed like a physical blow. Not just my team at risk—*me*. Personally. If we lost badly enough, I died.
No pressure.
"*First challenge will commence at 1200 hours. Details will be provided to team leaders directly.*"
The screen flickered, displaying a new section of text.
"*Final note: The Noctis Oversight Committee is monitoring all subjects in real-time. Attempts to disable surveillance equipment, access restricted areas without authorization, or collaborate with opposing teams will result in immediate elimination.*"
"*Welcome to Phase Three. May the best team survive.*"
The screen went dark.
For a long moment, no one spoke. Then Jason Reeves—who'd been quietly analyzing everything since his catastrophic mistake with the console—said what we were all thinking:
"They're turning us into gladiators. Entertainment for whoever's watching."
"The Noctis Oversight Committee," Ayla repeated, her voice distant. "That's who's running this. Not an automated system—people. Actual people, watching us die and adjusting the rules to make it more interesting."
"More *efficient*," I corrected. "They're not doing this for fun. They're doing it for data. We're test subjects, remember? The deaths, the conflicts, the competition—it's all part of the experiment."
"What kind of experiment needs teenagers to kill each other?"
"The kind that creates weapons." Mira pulled out a document—one of the papers she'd recovered from the pharmaceutical wing. "I found this last night. It's a project overview from the original DREAMLESS research. Listen to this: '*The ultimate goal of the DREAMLESS Initiative is to produce operatives capable of extended deployment without psychological degradation. By eliminating REM sleep and its associated emotional processing, subjects will maintain combat effectiveness indefinitely while remaining immune to trauma, guilt, and moral hesitation.*'"
"Soldiers who never dream," Jason said. "Soldiers who can kill without conscience."
"Soldiers who can be controlled," I added. "Because if you can't dream, you can't imagine alternatives. You can't question orders. You just... execute."
The horror of it settled over us like a shroud. We weren't just fighting for our lives—we were fighting against becoming weapons. Tools of a government that viewed human consciousness as a bug to be fixed rather than a feature to be preserved.
"What do we do?" someone asked from the back of the group. "How do we win against... against all of this?"
I looked at Ayla, at Jason, at Mira. I looked at the frightened faces of my teammates—people I barely knew, people who were counting on me to have answers I didn't possess.
And I did what I always did when I was terrified and out of options.
I lied.
"We play their game," I said, my voice steady despite the chaos in my chest. "We win their challenges. We stay alive long enough to find a weakness in their system. And then we tear the whole thing down."
It was a fantasy. A desperate, impossible fantasy.
But sometimes fantasy is all that keeps you moving.
---
**0900 HOURS - THE SURVEILLANCE**
"They're everywhere."
Jason was crouched in the corner of the cafeteria, pointing at something I couldn't see. I moved closer, following his eyeline, and finally spotted it: a tiny camera lens, no bigger than a pinhead, embedded in the junction between wall and ceiling.
"I've found seventeen so far," he continued. "And that's just in this room. The corridors have them every three meters. The bathrooms—yes, even the bathrooms—have audio sensors if not visual ones. There's no private conversation possible in this facility."
"So they heard everything we just said."
"They heard everything we've said since we arrived." Jason's expression was grim. "The 'additional instructions' that Tyler received? He probably got told where all our weaknesses are. They've been listening to us talk about our fears, our plans, our strategies—feeding it all to the other team."
"Then we stop talking about anything important."
"In a facility full of cameras and microphones? How?"
It was a good question. One I didn't have an answer for.
"There might be a way," Ayla said slowly. She'd been quiet since the announcement, her eyes unfocused in that way that meant she was accessing memories she didn't fully control. "Somewhere they can't see or hear us. Somewhere... old."
"Old?"
"From the original facility. Before all the upgrades." She pressed her fingers against her temples, wincing. "I keep... there are images. Fragments. A room with stone walls, deep underground. No electronics. No surveillance. They used it for... for something. I can't remember what."
"You've been here before," I said. It wasn't a question—we'd all suspected it since her first déjà vu moment in the circular chamber.
"I don't *know* that I've been here before. I just... remember things I shouldn't remember." Her voice was frustrated, frightened. "It's like having someone else's memories mixed in with mine. And they're getting stronger. Clearer. Ever since the gas—"
"Ever since they activated whatever neural programming they put in you," Jason finished. "You might be a previous test subject. One who survived and was... what? Released? Wiped?"
"Reprogrammed," Mira suggested quietly. "The documents mention memory modification techniques. Ways to remove traumatic experiences from subjects' minds so they could be reintegrated into society."
"Then why is she remembering now?"
"Because the gas was specifically designed to access dream-state consciousness," I said, the pieces clicking together. "Ayla doesn't dream normally—her insomnia protects her. But when they forced us into that initial sleep, whatever blocks they put in her mind started breaking down."
Ayla was staring at me with an expression I couldn't read. "You think I'm... what? A sleeper agent? Someone they planted in our school to—"
"I think you're a survivor," I interrupted. "Someone who went through this nightmare before, who escaped somehow, and who might have information buried in her brain that could save all of us. The question is: how do we access it?"
"Maybe we don't," Jason said carefully. "Maybe those memories are blocked for a reason. If she was a test subject, if she saw what happens to the winners of this experiment... she might have memories that would break her if they came back all at once."
"Or memories that would save us."
"It's not your decision to make, Kai."
"It's not yours either." I turned to Ayla. "It's hers. What do you want to do?"
She was silent for a long moment, her eyes distant, her fingers still pressed against her temples. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper.
"I want to remember. Even if it hurts. Even if it breaks me." She met my eyes. "Because whatever I forgot, it was important enough for them to take it away. And anything they don't want me to know is something we need to know."
That settled it. One way or another, we were going to unlock Ayla's buried memories.
First, though, we had to survive the challenge at noon.
---
**1100 HOURS - THE FIRST CHALLENGE**
The instructions arrived via our phones—a detailed message explaining the rules of Phase Three's inaugural competition.
"*Challenge One: Resource Acquisition*
*Two supply caches have been placed in the facility—one in the east wing, one in the west wing. Each cache contains enough Compound-7 for five subjects, plus seventy-two hours of food rations.*
*Teams will compete to secure both caches. The team that controls the most resources at 1400 hours will be declared the winner.*
*Combat between subjects is permitted. Lethal force is discouraged but not prohibited.*
*Additional rule: Any subject who falls asleep during the challenge will be immediately eliminated, regardless of team affiliation.*
*The challenge begins at 1200 hours. Prepare accordingly.*"
"Combat is *permitted*?" Connor Hayes read the message twice, as if hoping the words would change. "They want us to fight each other?"
"They want us to hurt each other," Mira corrected. "Fighting creates stress. Stress exhausts the body. Exhaustion leads to sleep. Sleep leads to—"
"Dreams," I finished. "Death. They're not just testing our ability to stay awake—they're testing our ability to stay awake under combat conditions. This is soldier training."
"What do we do?" someone asked. "Tyler's group has more fighters. More athletes. If this turns into a brawl—"
"It won't." My mind was racing, calculating angles and possibilities. "Tyler expects us to play his game—direct confrontation, winner takes all. We're not going to do that."
"Then what are we going to do?"
"We're going to be smarter." I grabbed a piece of paper and started sketching. "The caches are in the east and west wings. Tyler's faction is already in the east wing—that's their territory. They'll send most of their force to defend that cache while a smaller team goes for the west."
"So we hit the east wing while they're divided?"
"No. We let them have the east cache. We focus everything on the west, secure it quickly, and then—" I drew a line on my crude map "—we block the corridors. Make it impossible for them to reach us without coming through chokepoints we control."
"That only gives us one cache," Jason pointed out. "If they keep the east, it's a tie. And ties might not be good enough to meet the 'minimum threshold' the system mentioned."
"It won't be a tie." I smiled, but there was no humor in it. "Because while we're defending the west wing, Ayla is going to steal their cache right out from under them."
Every eye in the room swiveled to Ayla.
"Me?"
"You're the only one who can." I turned to face her fully. "You don't sleep. You don't get tired the way we do. And you're small, quiet, used to moving through the world unnoticed. While Tyler's people are focused on defending and attacking, you slip in, grab what you can, and get out before anyone realizes you were there."
"That's... actually not a terrible plan," Jason admitted.
"It's a suicide mission," Connor objected. "If she gets caught—"
"She won't get caught." I held Ayla's gaze. "She's been invisible her whole life. Now we're going to use that."
Ayla was quiet for a moment, processing. Then, slowly, she nodded.
"I can do it. But I need a distraction. Something to draw everyone's attention away from their cache."
"Leave that to me." I grinned—my real grin this time, the one that usually preceded something stupid and dangerous. "Distraction is my specialty."
---
**1200 HOURS - THE CHALLENGE BEGINS**
The starting signal was a facility-wide alarm—three short blasts that echoed through every corridor, every room, every hidden space in Noctis.
We moved.
My team sprinted for the west wing, following the route I'd mapped out in the pre-dawn hours. Connor took point, his size and strength clearing a path. Mira and Jason flanked the group, watching for ambushes. The others—the scared, the uncertain, the people who'd never been in a physical confrontation in their lives—stayed in the protected center.
We reached the west wing in four minutes. The cache was exactly where the message had indicated: a sealed container in what had once been a break room, now stripped of furniture and repurposed as an arena.
"Get it open," I ordered. "Everyone else, defensive positions. We hold this room until 1400."
While my team worked on the container's locks, I positioned myself at the main entrance, watching the corridor for approaching threats. The sounds of distant combat echoed from elsewhere in the facility—Tyler's team, probably, securing their own cache or testing our defenses.
Good. Let them fight shadows. Let them waste energy on phantom enemies.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the east wing, Ayla was doing what she did best: being invisible.
---
**1230 HOURS - AYLA'S PERSPECTIVE**
*(Interlude from Kai's POV)*
She moved through the facility like smoke.
The east wing was chaos—Tyler's people rushing between defensive positions, shouting orders, prepared for an attack that wasn't coming. Ayla slipped between the gaps in their coverage, using the blind spots she'd mapped in her mind, the surveillance patterns she'd observed during forty-seven hours of relentless wakefulness.
The cache room was guarded by two people: a girl named Brittany who'd been Ashley Chen's closest friend, and a boy named Marcus Jr. (not actually related to the dead Marcus Webb, just unfortunately named) who'd been recruited into Tyler's inner circle for his ability to follow orders without question.
They were watching the door. They weren't watching the ventilation shaft.
Ayla had discovered the shaft during her explorations the night before—a maintenance access point hidden behind a panel that looked decorative but wasn't. She'd memorized the route, the tight turns, the places where rusted metal might creak and betray her presence.
She moved in silence, her body pressed against the shaft's metal walls, her breathing controlled. Every few meters, she paused to listen, to ensure no one was tracking her progress.
The shaft opened into a space above the cache room—a gap between the ceiling and the floor above, filled with pipes and wiring and the accumulated dust of decades. From here, she could see through a vent cover: the cache container, the guards, the door they were watching so intently.
She had maybe five minutes before someone realized the attack on the west wing wasn't coming. Five minutes to get in, grab what she could, and get out.
Ayla removed the vent cover with aching slowness, setting it aside without sound. She lowered herself through the gap, hanging by her fingers, calculating the drop.
Three meters to the floor. She could land silently if she distributed the impact correctly.
She let go.
The landing was perfect—a controlled roll that brought her up behind a structural pillar, hidden from the guards' line of sight. From here, she could see the cache container clearly: a metal box, maybe a meter square, with a simple latch mechanism.
Brittany and Marcus Jr. were still watching the door. Still waiting for enemies who would never come.
Ayla moved.
She reached the container in three silent steps, lifted the latch, and began transferring vials to the bag she'd brought. The compound-7 was stored in neat rows—ten vials, exactly enough for two more people than her team could supply.
She took all ten.
Behind her, Brittany shifted. "Did you hear something?"
"Probably just the pipes. This place is old."
"I don't know. It sounded like—"
Ayla was already moving, the full bag pressed against her chest, her feet carrying her toward the shadows beneath the ventilation shaft. She couldn't climb back up—the noise would be too loud, too obvious.
She needed another way out.
The memory surfaced like a bubble breaking the surface of still water: a door, hidden behind a filing cabinet, leading to a service corridor that connected to the central facility. She'd used it before, years ago, when she'd been—
The memory fragmented, dissolving before she could grasp it fully. But the knowledge remained: the door was there. She knew where it was.
She moved toward the filing cabinet, praying the hidden passage still existed.
It did.
Three minutes later, Ayla emerged in the central lobby, ten vials of Compound-7 in her bag, Tyler's faction none the wiser.
She allowed herself a small smile.
Then she ran for the west wing.
---
**1400 HOURS - VICTORY**
We won.
Not just won—dominated. By the time the challenge ended, my team controlled both caches, plus the ten additional vials Ayla had stolen. Tyler's faction was left with nothing—no compound, no supplies, no leverage.
The system acknowledged our victory with the same cold, clinical efficiency it brought to everything:
"*Challenge One complete. Team Beta victory. Resources allocated accordingly.*
*Team Alpha has failed to meet minimum performance threshold. Team leader Tyler Morrison has been assessed a warning. Additional failure will result in elimination.*"
We'd done it. We'd beaten Tyler at his own game, and we'd done it without losing a single person.
For the first time since the gas first knocked us out, I felt something that might have been hope.
It didn't last.
---
**1500 HOURS - THE RETALIATION**
Tyler Morrison did not take defeat gracefully.
We should have expected retaliation—should have prepared for the inevitable backlash from a narcissist who'd just been publicly humiliated. But we were exhausted, euphoric from our victory, too tired to think strategically.
They caught us in the cafeteria during the post-challenge rest period.
Eight of Tyler's people, including Tyler himself, moving through the doors with the coordinated precision of a military squad. They'd clearly been planning this while we celebrated.
"Hello, Kai." Tyler's voice was calm, pleasant almost. The voice of someone who'd moved past anger into something colder. "Nice win today. Very clever. The ventilation shaft trick—that was Ayla's idea, wasn't it?"
I stepped forward, positioning myself between Tyler and my team. "What do you want, Tyler?"
"What I've always wanted. Order. Structure. A system that makes sense." He smiled, and the expression didn't reach his eyes. "You see, I've been thinking about our little competition. The rules say combat is permitted. Lethal force is discouraged but not prohibited. Very specific wording, don't you think?"
"Get to the point."
"The point is this: you humiliated me today. Made me look weak in front of my people, in front of the system that's watching us. That can't stand." Tyler gestured, and his people began spreading out, surrounding our group. "So here's what's going to happen. You're going to give back everything you took—the compound, the supplies, all of it. And then you're going to publicly acknowledge that Team Alpha is the superior force."
"Or what?"
"Or we take it by force." Tyler's smile widened. "Lethal force is discouraged, remember? Not prohibited."
I looked around the cafeteria, counting bodies. My team had twenty-three people. Tyler's group had eight. On paper, we should have been able to fight them off easily.
But Tyler's eight were all athletes, all fighters, all people who'd been training their bodies for years. My team was scholars, artists, the overlooked and underestimated. We'd won the challenge through cleverness, not strength.
This wasn't a challenge. This was a beatdown waiting to happen.
"Fine," I said.
Mira grabbed my arm. "Kai, you can't just—"
"I said *fine*." I shook off her grip, my eyes locked on Tyler. "You want the supplies? Take them. You want public acknowledgment? Sure. Team Alpha is the superior force. Tyler Morrison is the greatest leader Greystone High has ever produced. Is that enough, or do you need me to bow?"
Tyler's expression flickered—surprise, maybe, that I'd capitulated so easily. "The supplies."
"They're in the back room. Take what you want."
He stared at me for a long moment, looking for the trap. Finding none, he gestured to two of his people, who disappeared into the storage area.
"This doesn't make sense," Tyler said slowly. "You're not the surrendering type, Chen. What's your angle?"
"My angle is keeping my people alive." I kept my voice flat, defeated. "You win, Tyler. You were always going to win. I was an idiot to think otherwise."
The words tasted like ash in my mouth, but I sold them—sold the slumped shoulders, the broken spirit, the complete capitulation. And Tyler, being Tyler, bought every moment of it.
"Smart," he said finally. "Smarter than I expected." He turned to leave, his people falling in behind him. "Next time you think about challenging me, remember this moment. Remember who's really in control."
They left with our supplies—not all of them, Ayla had hidden the stolen compound before the confrontation—but enough to hurt. Enough to set us back significantly.
My team stared at me with a mixture of confusion and betrayal.
"What the hell was that?" Connor demanded. "You just gave him everything!"
"I gave him what he could see," I said quietly. "Ayla, do you still have the east wing cache?"
She patted her bag. "Ten vials. Hidden before they arrived."
"Then we still have more compound than they do. And more importantly, they now think we're broken. Defeated. No longer a threat." I looked around at my team, at their exhausted, frightened, confused faces. "Tyler Morrison is dangerous because he's powerful and he knows it. But power without alertness is just an invitation to be ambushed. He thinks he's won. He thinks we're done fighting. And that means, when we strike back, he won't see it coming."
Understanding dawned in their expressions. Not forgiveness—some of them would never forgive the appearance of cowardice—but understanding.
"So we're playing the long game," Jason said.
"We're playing the only game that matters." I allowed myself a small smile. "Survival."
---
**1800 HOURS - THE OBSERVATION ROOM**
We found it by accident.
Or rather, Ayla's fragmenting memories led us to it—a door hidden behind what looked like a solid concrete wall, accessible through a sequence of pressure points that her fingers seemed to know without conscious direction.
The room beyond was... impossible.
Screens covered every wall—dozens of them, maybe hundreds, each showing a different view of the facility. The cafeteria. The corridors. The circular chamber. The hidden pharmaceutical wing. Every space we'd thought was private, every conversation we'd assumed was unheard, displayed in crystal clarity.
And in the center of the room, seated before a massive control console, was a woman.
She turned as we entered, and I felt my blood freeze.
I knew that face. We all did.
Vanessa. Our tour guide. The woman who'd led us into the trap, who'd watched as the gas knocked us unconscious, who'd disappeared the moment the nightmare began.
"Hello, children," she said, her voice no longer carrying that forced, tour-guide cheerfulness. This was her real voice—cold, professional, efficient. "I was wondering when you'd find me."
I should have attacked. Should have demanded answers. Should have done *something* other than stand there, frozen, staring at the woman who'd betrayed us.
But the screens behind her showed something that stole my capacity for action.
On one of the displays, timestamped COHORT 8 - ARCHIVE, I saw a younger Ayla.
Maybe six or seven years old, strapped into one of those nightmare chairs, a helmet covering her head. Her eyes were closed, her body still, but I could see the readings on the adjacent monitor: REM activity. Dreaming.
She'd been here before. Not as a visitor, not as a student.
As a test subject.
"You remember now, don't you?" Vanessa asked, addressing Ayla directly. "The fragments have been surfacing since we reactivated the neural pathways. Soon, you'll remember everything."
"What did you do to me?" Ayla's voice was barely audible. "Why am I here? Why don't I *remember*?"
"Because you succeeded." Vanessa stood, moving toward us with the casual confidence of someone who held all the cards. "You were the first subject in forty years to survive the full DREAMLESS protocol. The first to integrate the modifications without permanent psychological damage. And when the project was suspended, you were too valuable to terminate—but too dangerous to leave unchanged."
"So you erased her memories," I said, finding my voice. "Made her forget what you did to her."
"We gave her a normal life. A chance to grow up without the weight of what she'd experienced." Vanessa's smile was almost maternal. "We were kind, in our way. Kinder than she deserved, given how many resources we'd invested in her development."
"Kind?" The word exploded out of Ayla. "You *experimented* on a child! You—"
"We created the most successful test subject in the history of the DREAMLESS Initiative." Vanessa's voice hardened. "Do you know what happens to successful subjects, Ayla? They become operatives. They serve their country. They do things that normal people can't do, because normal people are limited by conscience and trauma and the psychological weight of their actions."
"Weapons," Jason said. "You turn them into weapons."
"We turn them into *assets*. The previous successful subjects—the handful who survived earlier cohorts—are currently deployed across twelve countries. They've eliminated threats that conventional military forces couldn't touch. They've executed operations that would have broken anyone with a normal psychological profile."
"They're killers," I said.
"They're perfect." Vanessa's eyes gleamed. "And when Ayla's reintegration is complete, she'll rejoin them. She'll be the most valuable operative we've ever produced—a subject who can survive indefinitely without REM sleep, who can function under any circumstances, who has already proven her ability to adapt and overcome."
"She's not going anywhere with you."
"She doesn't have a choice." Vanessa gestured at the screens surrounding us. "None of you have a choice. You're subjects in an experiment, competing for the privilege of becoming what we need you to become. The winners get to live—as assets, serving the nation that created them. The losers... well."
She pressed a button on her console.
On one of the screens, I saw Tyler Morrison's faction gathered in the east wing. Saw the doors seal. Saw the gas begin to flow.
"No—" I lunged toward the console, but Vanessa was already stepping back, and the door we'd entered through was slamming shut.
"Phase Three's first elimination round," she announced. "Team Alpha failed to meet performance thresholds. Their leader was warned. Now he faces the consequences."
On screen, Tyler's people were collapsing. Falling into unconscious heaps as the enhanced sedative overwhelmed them.
"They're going to dream," Jason said, horror in his voice. "All of them. At once."
"Some will survive." Vanessa shrugged. "The ones with manageable fears, the ones who can fight their way out of nightmares. Those we can still use. The others... acceptable losses."
"YOU'RE MURDERING THEM!"
"I'm advancing the experiment." Vanessa met my eyes with perfect calm. "And if you interfere, I'll advance it faster. One command from me, and the same gas floods your little sanctuary. Your whole team, dreaming together. How many would survive, do you think?"
I wanted to kill her. Wanted to wrap my hands around her throat and squeeze until the light left her eyes.
But she was right. She held all the cards. We were rats in her maze, performing for her amusement.
"What do you want?" I asked through gritted teeth.
"What I've always wanted. Data. Results. The next generation of DREAMLESS operatives." She smiled. "You've proven yourself clever, Kai Chen. Resourceful. A natural leader. Those are qualities we can use."
"I'll never work for you."
"You already are." She gestured at the screens, at the dying students, at the nightmare we'd been trapped in since the moment we arrived. "Everything you do, every strategy you develop, every way you find to survive—it all feeds our algorithms. Helps us refine the protocol for the next cohort."
"There won't be a next cohort. We're going to destroy this place."
Vanessa laughed—a genuine, amused sound that made me want to scream.
"So many have tried," she said. "So many have failed. The DREAMLESS Initiative has survived for sixty years, through eight administration changes, twelve congressional investigations, and countless escape attempts. You're not the first subjects to think you can fight back. You're just the latest."
She pressed another button. The door behind us opened.
"Go back to your team," she ordered. "Enjoy your victory. Tomorrow brings a new challenge, with new rules, and much less room for mercy."
I wanted to stay. Wanted to find some way to stop what was happening in the east wing. But Ayla was already pulling me toward the door, her grip surprisingly strong for someone who hadn't slept in days.
"We can't save them," she whispered. "Not yet. But we can remember. We can plan. We can make her pay."
I looked back one last time—at Vanessa, at the screens, at the slow-motion massacre playing out in the east wing.
Then I let Ayla lead me away.
---
**2000 HOURS - THE AFTERMATH**
Eleven dead.
Eleven of Tyler's faction, killed by their own nightmares in the forced sleep that Vanessa had triggered. Eleven more names to add to the growing list of casualties.
Tyler Morrison wasn't among them.
He emerged from the gas with wild eyes and shaking hands, babbling about darkness and falling and a voice that wouldn't stop whispering. His leadership was broken. His faction was in tatters. The survivors who'd followed him were looking for someone—anyone—else to tell them what to do.
Some of them came to us. Others just... wandered. Ghosts in the corridors, too traumatized to function, too afraid to sleep.
We gathered our expanded team in the cafeteria and told them what we'd learned. About Vanessa. About the observation room. About the true purpose of the DREAMLESS Initiative.
About Ayla.
She stood beside me as I explained her history—or what we knew of it—her face expressionless, her hands steady despite everything.
"They modified me when I was a child," she said when I finished. "Made me into something that could survive what kills everyone else. And then they erased my memories and put me in a normal life, waiting for the day they'd need me again."
"That's why you can't sleep," Mira said softly. "It's not natural insomnia. It's programming."
"It's survival." Ayla's voice was flat. "Whatever they did to me, it made me resistant to the dream-death effect. I can enter REM sleep without the physical manifestation. The nightmares are still there—I feel them, every time I close my eyes for more than a few seconds—but they can't kill me."
"Then you're immune," Jason said. "You're the key to all of this. If we can figure out what they did to you, replicate it somehow—"
"We'd need access to the original research. The protocols they used, the modifications they made." Ayla shook her head. "That information is probably in the observation room, but Vanessa won't let us near it."
"Then we take it from her." Connor's voice was hard. "We can't just sit here waiting for the next challenge, the next elimination. We need to go on the offensive."
"With what?" I asked. "She controls the surveillance. She controls the environmental systems. She can gas any room in this facility whenever she wants. How do we fight that?"
"We don't fight it," Ayla said slowly. "We work around it."
"What do you mean?"
"The observation room isn't the only control center." She pressed her fingers against her temples, accessing more fragmentary memories. "There's another one. Older. From the original facility, before all the upgrades. I remember... I remember someone showing it to me, years ago. Telling me it was the real heart of Noctis. The place where everything began."
"Where is it?"
"I don't know. Not yet." She met my eyes. "But I'm getting closer. Every hour, I remember a little more. The blocks they put in my mind are breaking down faster now. Soon, I'll remember everything."
"And then?"
"And then we find a way to end this. All of it. The protocol, the initiative, the whole sick system." Her voice was steady, determined. "I was the first successful subject. I'll be the last."
I wanted to believe her. God, I wanted to believe her.
But as I looked around the cafeteria—at the exhausted, frightened faces of my team, at the empty spaces where dead friends should have been standing, at the cameras in the corners that recorded our every word—I couldn't shake the feeling that we were missing something.
Something important.
Something that would change everything.
---
**2200 HOURS - THE NEW RULES**
The screens activated precisely on schedule.
We'd learned to recognize the pattern by now—the flicker of electronic life, the black background, the white text, the distorted voice. Each announcement brought new horrors, new rules, new ways to die.
This one was no different.
"*Attention, surviving subjects.*"
Surviving. As if the thirty-plus people who'd died were just failed experiments, data points that didn't pan out.
"*Phase Three protocols are being adjusted based on preliminary results. The following modifications are now in effect:*
*First: Challenge frequency is increasing. From this point forward, challenges will occur every twelve hours instead of every twenty-four.*"
Murmurs of dismay rippled through the room. Twelve hours. Half the time to recover, half the time to plan, half the time to survive.
"*Second: Compound-7 allocations are being reduced. Winning teams will receive doses for three subjects instead of five. Losing teams will receive nothing.*"
The compound was our lifeline. Reducing the supply meant more people would have to face sleep without protection. More nightmares. More deaths.
"*Third: Team size minimums are being implemented. Teams must maintain at least ten active subjects to remain viable. Teams that fall below minimum will be dissolved, and their members will be reassigned or eliminated at the Oversight Committee's discretion.*"
I looked around the cafeteria. My team had thirty-four people now, including the defectors from Tyler's failed faction. We were above the minimum.
For now.
"*Fourth: A new role is being introduced. Each team must designate a 'Champion'—a single subject who will face individual challenges against the opposing team's Champion. Champion challenges will occur independently of team challenges. Champions who fail will be immediately eliminated.*"
Champions. Gladiators. Single combat while the rest of us watched.
"*Champions must be designated within one hour. Failure to designate will result in random selection.*"
The announcement ended. The screens went dark.
And every eye in the room turned to me.
---
**2230 HOURS - THE CHOICE**
"I'll do it."
The words came from Ayla before I could speak.
"No." My response was immediate, visceral. "Absolutely not."
"I'm the logical choice." Her voice was calm, rational, completely at odds with the insanity of what she was proposing. "I can't die from nightmares. Whatever challenges they throw at Champions, I have a better chance of surviving than anyone else."
"We don't know that the challenges will be sleep-related. They could be anything—physical combat, puzzles, things that require you to be at full capacity. You haven't slept in days, Ayla. You're running on empty."
"I'm running on *experience*." She stepped closer, lowering her voice so only I could hear. "I've survived this place before. I don't remember how, but my body does. When Vanessa attacked Tyler's faction, I knew where to hide, how to move, which routes were safe. That knowledge is still in me, even if my conscious mind can't access it."
"And if you're wrong? If they've changed things, updated the challenges—"
"Then I die." She met my eyes unflinchingly. "But at least I die knowing I tried. That I didn't just sit here, waiting for them to pick us off one by one."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to find some flaw in her logic, some reason why she shouldn't sacrifice herself for the team.
But she was right. She was the logical choice.
And I hated it.
"There has to be another way," I said.
"There isn't. Not unless you want to send someone else. Someone who definitely won't survive." Ayla's hand found mine, squeezed briefly. "This is my choice, Kai. Let me make it."
I looked at our team—at the frightened faces, the exhausted bodies, the people who were counting on me to lead them through this nightmare. They needed every possible advantage. They needed Ayla as their Champion.
They needed me to let her go.
"Fine," I said, the word tasting like defeat. "You're our Champion. But the first sign of trouble—the first hint that you're in danger—you get out. You run, you hide, you do whatever it takes to survive. Understood?"
"Understood." But there was something in her eyes that told me she was lying. That she'd already made peace with the possibility of dying.
That she was planning something she wasn't telling me.
I wanted to press her, to demand answers. But the hour was almost up, and the screens were already flickering with the demand for our designation.
I entered Ayla's name into the system.
And somewhere in the depths of Noctis, Vanessa smiled.
---
**2300 HOURS - THE REVELATION**
"I remember something."
Ayla's voice cut through the late-night silence of the cafeteria, where a handful of us were still awake, running through scenarios for tomorrow's challenges.
"What?" I moved closer, keeping my voice low. "What do you remember?"
"The other survivors." Her eyes were distant, unfocused—accessing memories that were still fragmented, still incomplete. "The ones from earlier cohorts. Vanessa said they're deployed across twelve countries. But that's not... that's not the whole truth."
"What do you mean?"
"Some of them are still here." She pressed her fingers against her temples, wincing. "In Noctis. Underground. They never left. They're... they're being used for something. Kept in a kind of stasis, except when they're needed for—"
She gasped, her whole body going rigid.
"Ayla?" I grabbed her shoulders. "Ayla, what's wrong?"
"I see them." Her voice was barely a whisper. "Rows of them. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Sleeping in those chairs, hooked up to machines. They're... they're dreaming. All the time. Forever. Their dreams are being—" She screamed.
Just once, a short, sharp sound of pure anguish.
Then she collapsed.
"AYLA!" I caught her before she hit the ground, cradling her head, checking for pulse and breath. Both were present—steady, strong.
But she wasn't waking up.
The girl who couldn't sleep, who hadn't slept in days, was suddenly unconscious.
And somewhere in the depths of her mind, memories were finally breaking free.
---
**THE DREAMING**
*(Ayla's Memory - Fragmented)*
*White walls. Mechanical hums. The smell of antiseptic and ozone.*
*She is six years old. Or seven. Or five. Time is meaningless here, measured in sessions and tests and the long, dark periods when they make her sleep.*
*The woman—not Vanessa, someone older, someone kind—strokes her hair. "You're doing so well, Ayla. Better than anyone we've ever tested."*
*"I want to go home."*
*"Soon, sweetheart. Soon. But first, we need you to do something very important."*
*The chair. The helmet. The slow descent into darkness.*
*And then—the dreams.*
*Not her dreams. Other people's dreams. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, flowing through her mind like a river of consciousness. She sees their fears, their hopes, their deepest secrets. She experiences their nightmares as if they were her own.*
*She is drowning and falling and burning and buried.*
*She is dying, over and over, in every possible way.*
*And she is learning. Adapting. Growing stronger with each death that doesn't kill her.*
*"She's processing them," someone says. "She's not just surviving the input—she's integrating it."*
*"That's impossible. No subject has ever—"*
*"She's doing it. Look at the readings. She's turning their nightmares into data. Into... knowledge."*
*The dreams change. They become less terrifying, more controllable. She learns to shape them, to direct them, to move through the collective unconscious like a swimmer navigating currents.*
*And then she sees it.*
*The heart of Noctis.*
*A room below the room below the room. A place where the original architects of the DREAMLESS Initiative built something they didn't fully understand. A machine that doesn't just monitor dreams—it creates them. Broadcasts them. Uses them as a weapon on a scale she can't comprehend.*
*"What is this?" she asks, though no one should be able to hear her in the dream-space.*
*A voice answers. Many voices. The voices of everyone who's ever died in Noctis, preserved in the machine's memory, speaking as one.*
*"This is the beginning. And the end. This is where dreams go to become reality."*
*"I don't understand."*
*"You will. When you're ready. When you remember."*
*The memory shatters.*
---
**2345 HOURS - THE AWAKENING**
Ayla woke with a gasp, her eyes wide, her hands clutching my arms hard enough to leave bruises.
"I remember," she whispered. "I remember everything."
"What? Ayla, what do you remember?"
"The machine." Her voice was shaking. "The one they built in the deepest level of the facility. It doesn't just process dreams—it generates them. Transmits them. The whole DREAMLESS protocol, the deaths, the experiments—it's all powered by that machine."
"A dream weapon?"
"More than that. It's a dream *reality*. A way to make the impossible possible. The manifested nightmares, the deaths that mirror dreams—it's not magic, it's technology. Technology that rewrites reality based on what people believe in their deepest unconscious minds."
I stared at her, trying to process what she was saying. "That's... that's insane."
"That's what I said. What the original test subjects said. What everyone says, right before the machine proves them wrong." She grabbed my face, forcing me to meet her eyes. "Kai, listen to me. The machine is the key. If we can reach it—if we can destroy it—none of this works anymore. The dream-deaths stop. The protocol ends. Everyone survives."
"Where is it?"
"Below us. Far below. In a level of the facility that's not on any map, accessed through a passage that only a handful of people have ever used." She closed her eyes, concentrating. "I know the way. I remember the way."
"Then we go. Now. Before Vanessa realizes what you know."
"No." Ayla's voice was firm. "Not now. We need to prepare. The path to the machine is... it's not safe. There are defenses. Traps. Things that will kill us if we're not ready."
"What kind of things?"
"The other survivors. The ones I remembered, the ones in stasis." Her expression was haunted. "They're not just being stored, Kai. They're being used. As guardians. Their dreams power the machine's defenses, creating a maze of nightmares that anyone approaching has to navigate."
"A maze of nightmares. Perfect. That's exactly what I wanted to hear."
"We can get through it. I did it before, when I was six. I can do it again." She gripped my hands. "But we need time. We need to win tomorrow's challenges, to survive long enough to make the attempt. And we need to figure out how to disable the guardians without killing them—because they're not our enemies, Kai. They're victims, just like us."
"Tomorrow's challenge is in twelve hours. The Champion trial—whatever that is—could happen at any time. How are we supposed to prepare for a suicide mission into a nightmare maze while also fighting for our lives?"
"We're not." Ayla's smile was thin, exhausted, determined. "We're going to delegate. You run the team. Win the challenges. Keep everyone alive. And I'll remember everything else—every secret, every passage, every weakness in Vanessa's defenses. When the time is right, we'll move."
"And if the time isn't right? If we run out of time before we're ready?"
"Then we improvise." She squeezed my hands. "That's what you're good at, isn't it? Making impossible things possible?"
I wanted to argue. Wanted to point out that improvisation was a terrible strategy when facing a government conspiracy with sixty years of experience eliminating threats.
But Ayla was looking at me with something that might have been hope—the first real hope I'd seen since this nightmare began.
And hope, I was learning, was worth fighting for.
"Get some rest," I said. "I mean—not actual sleep, obviously, but... recover. You've been running on fumes for days. Tomorrow's going to be brutal."
"Tomorrow's going to be *interesting*." She smiled—a real smile this time. "And after that... we're going to destroy everything they've built. We're going to set everyone free."
"Everyone?"
"Everyone who's ever been trapped in this place. The current subjects. The previous survivors. The ones whose dreams have been powering the machine for decades." Her expression hardened. "They don't get to use people as batteries. They don't get to rewrite reality for their own purposes. We end it. All of it."
I believed her. God help me, I believed her.
And as I sat in the cafeteria, surrounded by sleeping teammates and watchful cameras and the ever-present threat of death, I allowed myself to imagine something I hadn't imagined since the gas first knocked us out.
A future.
A way out.
A chance to dream without dying.
It was probably a fantasy. A desperate, impossible fantasy.
But sometimes fantasy is all that keeps you moving.