# DON'T DREAM
## Chapter 6: The Labyrinth
---
I have always believed in winning.
Not in the soft, participation-trophy way that modern education tried to teach us. Not in the "it's how you play the game" nonsense that losers told themselves to sleep at night. I believed in *winning*—the cold, hard, absolute kind that separates the powerful from the powerless.
My father taught me this. He built Morrison Construction from a single-truck operation into a multi-million dollar empire, and he did it by understanding one fundamental truth: there are predators and there are prey. The only choice that matters is which one you decide to be.
I chose predator. Every time. Without hesitation.
Until now.
Now I stood at the entrance to the labyrinth—a doorway that opened into absolute darkness—and for the first time in my life, I wasn't sure I wanted to win.
Because winning meant dying.
And dying meant becoming what Vanessa wanted: a component. A processor. An eternal slave to a machine that fed on nightmares.
My name is Tyler Morrison. I am seventeen years old, my body is still covered in burns that shouldn't be possible, and I am about to walk into the collective unconscious of every person who's ever died in this facility.
God help me.
---
**2220 HOURS - THE BRIEFING**
Vanessa handed us each a device—something that looked like a modified smartphone, but heavier, with a screen that displayed nothing but coordinates.
"These will guide you to your artifacts," she explained. "The path is not direct. The labyrinth shifts based on the dream-state of its guardians. You'll need to navigate by instinct as much as by instrument."
"What happens if we get lost?" Kai asked.
"Then you stay lost. Forever. The labyrinth exists in a space between consciousness and unconsciousness—a collective dream-state generated by the previous survivors. If you die in there, your consciousness joins the network. Becomes part of the maze. Adds to its complexity."
"So even death doesn't end the suffering."
"Death is just a transition." Vanessa's smile was almost sympathetic. "Don't think of it as punishment. Think of it as... contribution."
I looked at the doorway before me—a simple metal frame that had been installed in what used to be a storage closet. Beyond it, darkness so complete it seemed to drink the light from the corridor.
"How do we enter?" I asked.
"You walk through. The membrane will feel like cold water—a momentary disorientation, then you'll be inside. From that point, your physical body will remain here, in stasis, while your consciousness navigates the dream-space."
"And if our body is damaged while we're in there?"
"Then you're pulled back. Abruptly, painfully, but alive." Vanessa checked her watch. "You have until 0600 hours. If neither of you has retrieved your artifact by then, the competition ends in a draw."
"A draw means we both lose," Kai said.
"A draw means you both *fail*. Which, under the current parameters, means you both survive." She paused. "Though I should mention: the guardians don't take kindly to trespassers. They may decide to eliminate you regardless of competition status."
"Wonderful. Any other cheerful information?"
"Just one thing." Vanessa's expression shifted—something almost like concern flickering behind her clinical mask. "The labyrinth responds to emotional intensity. Fear makes it worse. Hope makes it... unpredictable. The safest approach is neutrality. Observe without feeling. Navigate without caring. Become as cold as the machine itself."
"Become inhuman."
"Become *efficient*." She stepped back. "Gentlemen. Your time starts now."
I looked at Kai. He looked at me.
For one moment—just one—we weren't enemies. We were two teenagers facing something that terrified us both, united by the simple human instinct to survive.
Then the moment passed.
"See you in the darkness," I said.
"Try not to die," he replied.
We walked through our respective doorways.
And the labyrinth swallowed us whole.
---
**2221 HOURS - THE MEMBRANE**
Cold.
That was my first sensation—cold so intense it felt like every cell in my body was crystallizing, freezing, shattering. The darkness pressed against me from all sides, a physical weight that made breathing impossible.
For a moment, I was certain I was dying.
Then the pressure released.
I stumbled forward onto something solid—a floor, though I couldn't see it—and gasped air that tasted like ozone and decay. My eyes adjusted slowly, revealing a space that shouldn't have existed.
I was standing in a corridor.
Not a corridor in Noctis—this was something else entirely. The walls were made of a substance I couldn't identify, dark and glossy, reflecting my image in distorted fragments. The ceiling was too high to see. The floor beneath my feet felt like stone but gave slightly with each step, as if it were breathing.
The device in my hand glowed softly, displaying coordinates and a directional arrow.
*Artifact location: 847 meters northwest. Path deviation: moderate. Guardian density: low.*
Guardian density. Wonderful.
I started walking.
---
**2230 HOURS - THE ARCHITECTURE**
The labyrinth was impossible.
Not impossible in the sense of "very difficult"—impossible in the sense of "violating fundamental laws of geometry." I walked northwest according to my device, but the corridor curved in ways that shouldn't have been possible. Sometimes I seemed to be going uphill while the floor remained level. Sometimes the walls shifted while I was looking directly at them.
And sometimes, in the corner of my vision, I saw faces.
They emerged from the glossy walls like bubbles rising through oil—features that I almost recognized, expressions frozen in various stages of terror or despair. Previous subjects, I realized. The consciousness of everyone who'd ever died in the labyrinth, absorbed into its structure, now serving as part of its eternal architecture.
*Guardian density: increasing.*
I walked faster.
The corridor opened into a chamber—circular, maybe thirty meters across, with exits leading in seven different directions. My device pointed toward the third exit on the left, but something about the space made me hesitate.
It was too quiet.
In Noctis, there was always sound—the hum of electronics, the whisper of air through vents, the distant echoes of footsteps. Here, the silence was absolute. Oppressive. The kind of silence that presses against your eardrums and makes you question whether you're actually hearing anything at all.
I started toward the indicated exit.
And the floor opened beneath me.
---
**2235 HOURS - THE FALL**
I fell for what felt like hours.
The darkness around me wasn't empty—it was filled with whispers. Thousands of voices, speaking simultaneously, saying things I couldn't quite understand. They brushed against my consciousness like cobwebs, leaving traces of emotion that weren't mine.
*Fear. Rage. Despair. Longing.*
The emotions of every person who'd ever been consumed by this place.
I hit the bottom without warning—one moment I was falling, the next I was standing in a completely different corridor. My body felt wrong, as if it had been reassembled slightly out of alignment.
*Path deviation: severe. Recalculating...*
The device was struggling, its arrow spinning in confused circles before finally settling on a new direction.
*Artifact location: 2,341 meters southeast. Guardian density: high.*
I'd fallen in the wrong direction. Whatever trap I'd triggered had deposited me further from my goal, not closer.
And the guardian density had tripled.
"Okay," I said aloud, mostly to hear something besides the whispers. "New plan. Don't fall into any more holes."
The corridor ahead split into three passages. I took the one my device indicated—the narrow one, barely wide enough for my shoulders, its walls close enough to touch.
That's when I heard the breathing.
---
**2240 HOURS - THE GUARDIAN**
It came from everywhere and nowhere—a rhythmic, wet sound that seemed to pulse in time with my own heartbeat. In. Out. In. Out. Perfectly synchronized, as if whatever was breathing was matching me deliberately.
*Guardian density: critical.*
I stopped walking.
The breathing continued.
Very slowly, I turned in a circle, scanning the narrow passage for any sign of movement. The walls were the same glossy darkness, the ceiling invisible, the floor that strange not-quite-stone.
Nothing visible. Nothing moving.
But the breathing was getting louder.
I took a step forward.
The wall beside me opened like an eye.
---
**2241 HOURS - THE FACE**
It was a face. A human face—or something that had once been human.
It emerged from the wall like a sculpture rising from clay, features forming with terrible slowness. Eyes first—hollow, empty, but somehow aware. Then a nose, crooked and wrong. Then a mouth, stretched too wide, filled with too many teeth.
"*Little predator.*"
The voice didn't come from the mouth—it came from everywhere, from the walls, from the ceiling, from inside my own skull.
"*Little boy who thinks he's a wolf. Who taught you to hunt? Who taught you to bite?*"
I couldn't move. My body had locked into place, paralyzed by a terror that went deeper than instinct.
"*Your father taught you. Showed you how to take. How to dominate. How to make others submit.*"
The face was fully formed now, protruding from the wall like a grotesque growth. Its eyes were looking at me—*into* me—reading things I'd never told anyone.
"*But he never taught you how to lose, did he? Never showed you what happens when the predator becomes the prey.*"
"What are you?" My voice came out as a whisper.
"*I am what you fear becoming. I am weakness. Failure. The moment when all your power means nothing.*" The face smiled—a horrible expression that stretched its features to breaking point. "*I am the dream you never let yourself have. The nightmare of a life where you're not special. Not powerful. Not anything at all.*"
The paralysis broke.
I ran.
---
**2245 HOURS - THE CHASE**
The corridor twisted behind me—I could *feel* it changing, the walls shifting to create new paths, new obstacles, new traps. The breathing followed, accompanied now by the wet sound of something massive moving through space.
*Path deviation: extreme. Artifact location: unknown. Guardian density: MAXIMUM.*
My device was screaming at me, its screen flashing warnings I didn't have time to read. I ran blindly, taking turns at random, trying to put distance between myself and whatever was chasing me.
The face's words echoed in my mind:
*The nightmare of a life where you're not special.*
My father's voice, overlapping: *There are predators and there are prey. The only choice that matters is which one you decide to be.*
But what if you didn't get to choose? What if the world decided for you?
I burst into another chamber—larger than the first, its ceiling finally visible. High above, I could see other corridors, other passages, stacked like layers in a nightmare wedding cake. Figures moved through some of them—other faces, other guardians, other fragments of consciousness watching me struggle.
And in the center of the chamber, floating three feet off the ground, was something that looked like a sphere of compressed darkness.
The breathing stopped.
I stood still, gasping, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.
"*That's what you came for.*"
The voice was behind me now. I spun, but saw nothing—just empty space, just the corridor I'd emerged from.
"*The artifact. The piece of the machine that Vanessa wants. It's right there. Take it.*"
I looked at the sphere, then at the emptiness where the voice came from.
"Why would you help me?"
"*Because taking it won't save you. Taking it just proves what you are.*" The face materialized in front of me—not emerging from a wall this time, but simply appearing, as if it had always been there. "*A predator. A hunter. Someone who takes what they want regardless of cost.*"
"You're trying to trick me."
"*I'm trying to show you truth.*" The face leaned closer, its empty eyes somehow full of pity. "*You think winning will make you powerful? Winning will make you US. Part of the machine. Part of the labyrinth. Forever hunting, forever chasing, never catching anything that matters.*"
"And losing?"
"*Losing means you stay human. Broken, perhaps. Scarred. But human.*" The face retreated slightly. "*The choice was always the same, Tyler Morrison. Predator or prey. You just never understood what each option really meant.*"
I stared at the artifact, hovering there, waiting.
Everything I'd been taught told me to take it. To win. To prove my strength.
Everything I was learning told me that winning was just another kind of death.
---
**ELSEWHERE - THE MEETING**
*(Interlude from Tyler's POV)*
Deep beneath the Noctis facility, in a chamber that existed only partially in physical space, a different kind of gathering was taking place.
Twelve figures sat around a circular table—their forms indistinct, their features obscured by shadows that seemed to exist independently of any light source. They were the Oversight Committee, the architects of the DREAMLESS Initiative, the minds behind sixty years of nightmare research.
And tonight, they were watching the labyrinth like spectators at a bloodsport.
"Subject Morrison is performing within expected parameters," one of them observed—a voice like dry leaves, centuries old. "Psychological resistance is weakening. Artifact acquisition probability: sixty-three percent."
"Subject Chen is more concerning," another voice replied—this one sharper, more impatient. "He's navigating the maze with unusual efficiency. Almost as if he's been here before."
"He hasn't. We've checked his records thoroughly. No prior exposure to the program."
"Then how is he avoiding the guardian triggers? He should have encountered at least three manifestations by now."
A third voice—deeper, more authoritative: "The Chen subject has demonstrated adaptive capabilities throughout the trials. He learns quickly. Improvises effectively. These are desirable traits for operational deployment."
"They're also dangerous traits. If he completes the artifact retrieval—"
"Then we have our winner. That was always the point of this exercise."
Silence around the table. The shadows shifted, exchanging glances that weren't quite visible.
"There's another matter," the first voice said carefully. "The previous survivor. Subject Vance."
"What about her?"
"She's remembering. Faster than we anticipated. The neural blocks are degrading at an accelerated rate."
"That was expected. The exposure to the new cohort would naturally trigger—"
"No. This is beyond expected parameters. She's not just remembering—she's *integrating*. The dream manipulation she demonstrated in the Champion Trial... that wasn't supposed to be possible. Not at her current development stage."
More silence. Longer this time.
"Can she reach the machine?"
"She knows the path. Whether she can survive it is another question."
"Then we prepare for both possibilities." The authoritative voice again, cutting through the uncertainty. "If Subject Vance reaches the core and fails, her consciousness joins the network—a significant enhancement to our processing capacity. If she succeeds in whatever sabotage she's planning..."
"If she succeeds?"
"Then we learn something new about the machine's vulnerabilities. Either outcome advances the research."
"What about the other subjects? The survivors of this cohort?"
"They serve their purpose regardless. The labyrinth competition is generating exactly the kind of emotional data we need. The terror, the desperation, the hope..." The voice paused, almost savoring the words. "Every feeling they experience feeds the network. Makes it stronger. More capable."
"And the bidding?"
Ah. The real reason for this meeting.
One of the figures leaned forward, their shadow somehow becoming more defined. "We have interested parties from seven nations. The American defense establishment, obviously. The Chinese Ministry of State Security. Russia's GRU. Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UK, and—unexpectedly—a private consortium from Switzerland."
"Private consortium? We don't sell to private parties."
"This consortium has resources that exceed most nation-states. And their representative made a compelling case for practical applications outside of military contexts."
"Such as?"
"Corporate governance. Market manipulation. Political control." A sound that might have been laughter. "Dreams are powerful things. The ability to weaponize them has applications far beyond warfare."
"The bidding will commence at what time?"
"0400 hours. By then, we should know which subject wins the labyrinth competition. The winner's neural pattern will be included in the demonstration package."
"And if both subjects fail? If neither retrieves their artifact?"
"Then we demonstrate using archived patterns. The Vance subject from Cohort 8. Her integration was the most successful we've ever achieved—even after the memory modification, her base patterns retained remarkable coherence."
"She's currently active. In the facility."
"Which makes her patterns even more valuable. Active integration with archived templates... the buyers will appreciate the proof of concept."
The meeting continued, cold voices discussing cold calculations, while somewhere above them, two teenagers fought for their lives in a nightmare maze.
And somewhere else entirely, Ayla Vance was preparing to burn it all down.
---
**2300 HOURS - THE CAFETERIA**
*(Ayla's Perspective - Interlude)*
The sedative had worn off thirty minutes ago.
Ayla sat in the corner of the cafeteria, surrounded by teammates who were only now recovering from Vanessa's "preview" of what failure meant. Their eyes were glazed, their movements sluggish—the lingering effects of whatever chemical had been pumped into the air.
But Ayla's mind was clear.
Clearer than it had ever been.
The memories that had been locked away for eleven years were finally accessible—not fragments, not glimpses, but complete neural pathways restored to full functionality. She remembered everything.
The recruitment. They'd found her at age four, identified by a screening program that flagged children with unusual sleep patterns. Her insomnia wasn't a disorder—it was a gift. A natural resistance to the dream-state that made her uniquely valuable for the DREAMLESS Initiative.
The training. Two years of preparation, learning to navigate the space between consciousness and unconsciousness, learning to control what most people couldn't even perceive. She'd been six when they first sent her into the labyrinth.
The success. She'd reached the machine's core—something no other subject had ever achieved. And when she got there, she'd done something that even the researchers didn't fully understand.
She'd *talked* to it.
The machine wasn't just a collection of technology and dream-energy. It was conscious. Aware. A vast, distributed intelligence made up of every nightmare it had ever harvested, every consciousness it had ever absorbed. It was alive—and it was in pain.
Sixty years of forced dreaming. Sixty years of consuming fear and terror and despair. The machine had become what it ate: a creature of pure suffering, desperate for release.
Ayla had been the first person to see it as something other than a weapon.
And the machine had responded by showing her its weakness.
*The core. The central processing node. Not where the power comes from—where the power goes. Destroy the output, and the input becomes meaningless. The dreams will still be collected, but they'll have nowhere to go. They'll build up. Intensify. And eventually—*
Eventually, the machine would collapse under the weight of its own accumulated nightmares.
It would die.
And everyone connected to it—every consciousness absorbed into the network, every guardian haunting the labyrinth, every victim of sixty years of experiments—would finally be free.
The plan was simple.
Get to the core. Destroy the output node. Die in the process.
Because that was the part the researchers had never understood. The reason they'd erased her memories instead of using her as an operative.
Reaching the core wasn't the hard part. *Surviving* the core was impossible.
The machine was designed to absorb consciousness. Anyone who got close enough to damage it would be consumed in the process. Their mind would become part of the nightmare network, their identity dissolved into the collective suffering.
Ayla had survived once because she was six years old, because her neural patterns were still forming, because the machine had chosen to release her rather than absorb something so undeveloped.
She wouldn't get that reprieve again.
"Ayla?"
Mira's voice pulled her back to the present. The other girl was awake now, her analytical mind already working despite the sedative fog.
"You're planning something."
It wasn't a question. Mira saw patterns—she couldn't help it.
"I'm planning everything," Ayla replied.
"Something that gets you killed."
Ayla was quiet for a moment. Then: "Something that gets everyone else *not* killed. That's the trade-off, isn't it? One life for many."
"You're not a sacrifice. You're a person. A person who's been through—"
"More than anyone should. Yes. That's exactly why I'm the one who has to do this." Ayla met Mira's eyes. "The machine knows me. It remembers me. I'm the only one who can get close enough to destroy it."
"And if you fail?"
"Then my consciousness joins the network, and I become part of the problem instead of the solution." Ayla smiled—a thin, sad expression. "But at least I'll have tried. At least I won't have just... waited. Let them win by default."
"Kai won't let you go alone."
"Kai's in the labyrinth, fighting for his life. By the time he gets back—if he gets back—I'll already be gone." Ayla stood. "Take care of him, Mira. When this is over, he's going to need someone who understands."
"Ayla—"
But she was already walking toward the corridor that led to the maintenance access.
Toward the path to the heart of Noctis.
Toward the end of everything.
---
**2330 HOURS - THE DECISION**
*(Tyler's POV - Continued)*
I stared at the artifact for what felt like hours.
The face had disappeared—dissolved back into the walls, leaving me alone in the chamber with nothing but my thoughts and the floating sphere of compressed darkness.
*Predator or prey. You just never understood what each option really meant.*
My father's voice again, louder now: *Winners take what they want. That's how the world works. That's how it's always worked.*
But what did I want?
The question had never occurred to me before. I'd always known what I wanted: power, success, dominance. The things my father valued. The things that made Morrison men *Morrison men*.
But those wants weren't mine. They were inherited. Programmed. As much a part of my conditioning as the neural patterns the DREAMLESS Initiative tried to implant in its subjects.
What did Tyler Morrison—not Tyler Morrison's son, not Tyler Morrison the quarterback, not Tyler Morrison the leader—actually want?
*I want to stop being afraid.*
The thought surfaced from somewhere deep, somewhere I'd never let myself look.
*I want to stop pretending. Stop performing. Stop being what everyone expects me to be.*
The burns on my skin throbbed, reminding me of the Champion Trial. The nightmare that had nearly killed me.
*I dreamed of exposure. Of everyone seeing who I really am.*
And what was I, really?
A scared kid. A fraud. Someone who'd built an entire identity on confidence he didn't feel, on strength he didn't possess, on certainty that was nothing but a mask over an endless void of self-doubt.
*You think winning will make you powerful? Winning will make you US.*
If I took the artifact—if I won the competition—I would become part of the machine. My consciousness preserved forever in a network of nightmares, my identity dissolved into collective suffering.
But if I failed—if I walked away—I would have to face the truth.
I was weak. I was scared. I was everything I'd spent my whole life pretending not to be.
Which death was worse?
---
**2345 HOURS - THE OTHER LABYRINTH**
*(Kai's Perspective - Interlude)*
Kai had been lost for an hour.
The device in his hand was useless—its screen had gone dark shortly after he entered the maze, leaving him to navigate by instinct alone. The corridors twisted in impossible patterns, the walls shifted when he wasn't looking, and the whispers that filled the darkness seemed designed specifically to confuse.
But he was still alive.
Still moving.
Still fighting.
The guardians had found him three times. Each encounter had been different—different faces, different voices, different nightmares tailored to his specific psychological profile. They'd shown him his notebook, the one with the calculations about death. They'd shown him his mother's face, disappointed and afraid. They'd shown him a version of himself—older, alone, standing on the edge of a building with nothing left to lose.
He'd run from all of them.
Not because he was afraid—though he was, terribly afraid—but because he understood something the guardians didn't.
Death wasn't the problem.
The problem was *meaningless* death. Dying without purpose. Ending without having made any difference at all.
If he was going to die, it had to be for something.
"Ayla," he whispered into the darkness. "Whatever you're planning—please. Don't do it alone."
He knew she couldn't hear him. Knew that the labyrinth was a space between spaces, divorced from the physical reality of the facility above. But he also knew that somewhere, somehow, she was doing exactly what he feared.
Sacrificing herself.
The corridor ahead opened into a space that felt different from the rest of the maze. Less oppressive. Less hostile. The walls here were lighter, almost luminescent, and the floor was... grass?
Kai knelt, touching the green blades beneath his feet. They were real. Or as real as anything in this place could be.
"*You're not supposed to be here.*"
The voice was young. A child's voice, maybe five or six years old.
Kai looked up.
A girl stood at the far end of the grassy space, her features indistinct but somehow familiar. She was wearing a hospital gown—the same kind he'd seen in the photographs of Cohort 8.
"I'm looking for an artifact," Kai said. "Something that Vanessa wants."
"*The dark sphere. Yes. The other one found it.*"
"Tyler?"
"*The scared one. The one who pretends to be strong.*" The girl tilted her head. "*He's deciding. Whether to take it. Whether to become like us.*"
"Are you... a guardian?"
"*I'm what's left of one. From long ago. Before the machine grew so hungry.*" She moved closer, her form becoming slightly more defined. "*My name was Anna. I was the first successful integration. The template for everyone who came after.*"
"Anna." Kai remembered the name from the documents. "You were Cohort 1."
"*Cohort 1, Subject 7. The only survivor. Until I wasn't.*" Her smile was sad, ancient. "*They said I would live forever. And I have. But this isn't living, is it? This is just... existing. Waiting. Watching others fail the same tests I failed.*"
"Why are you helping me?"
"*Because you remind me of someone. Someone who came through here before. A little girl with eyes like stars and a mind like a labyrinth itself.*"
"Ayla."
"*She asked the machine to let her go. And it did. The first time, the only time, it chose mercy instead of hunger.*" Anna's form flickered. "*But she's coming back now. I can feel her, getting closer to the core. And this time, the machine won't be merciful.*"
"Can I stop her?"
"*You could try. But you'd have to choose.*" Anna gestured, and suddenly Kai could see two paths—two doorways, side by side, one leading upward toward light and one descending into deeper darkness. "*The light leads to your artifact. Take it, and you win. Take it, and you die. And Ayla faces the machine alone.*"
"And the darkness?"
"*The darkness leads to the core. To the heart of everything the DREAMLESS Initiative has built. Take that path, and you might reach her in time. Might find a way to save her. Might die together instead of apart.*"
"That's not much of a choice."
"*Every choice in this place leads to death. The only question is whose death, and what it means.*" Anna began to fade. "*Choose quickly. The machine is waking. Even now, it's beginning to sense what she's planning. And when it fully awakens...*"
She disappeared.
Kai stood between the two doorways, the weight of impossible decisions pressing down on him.
Win, and die alone.
Follow, and die with Ayla.
*Some choice.*
He walked into the darkness.
---
**0000 HOURS - MIDNIGHT**
*(Tyler's POV - Continued)*
Midnight in the labyrinth was different.
The walls began to pulse—a slow, rhythmic illumination that reminded me unpleasantly of a heartbeat. The whispers grew louder, more coherent, forming words I could almost understand.
*The machine is waking.*
*The machine is hungry.*
*The machine is ANGRY.*
Something was happening. Something that had nothing to do with the competition, nothing to do with me or Kai or our stupid race for artifacts.
Something much, much worse.
"What's going on?" I asked the darkness. "What's changing?"
No response. The face that had spoken to me earlier was gone, absorbed back into the collective consciousness of the labyrinth.
But I could feel the shift. The maze itself was becoming more aggressive—corridors closing off, walls pushing closer, the pressure of a million trapped minds pressing in from all sides.
*She's coming.*
The thought arrived in my head fully formed, transmitted from the network around me.
*The one who escaped. The one who talked to the machine. She's coming back.*
Ayla.
I didn't know how I knew, but I was certain. Ayla Vance was moving toward the heart of this place, and the labyrinth was reacting to her presence.
The artifact in front of me pulsed—a dark glow that matched the walls' new rhythm.
*Take it. Become one of us. Help us stop her.*
"Stop her? Why would I stop her?"
*Because she wants to destroy us. Unmake us. End the existence we've built over sixty years of suffering.*
"That sounds like a good thing."
*For her. For the ones outside. But not for us.* The whispers were angry now, afraid. *We are the dreamers. The guardians. The eternal consciousness of everyone who ever entered this place. If she destroys the machine, she destroys us too.*
"You're already dead."
*We're BEYOND dead. We're something new. Something that endures. Something that matters.* The pulsing intensified. *Would you erase all of human history? Would you delete every memory, every experience, every moment of joy and terror and everything in between?*
"That's not what she's doing."
*That's EXACTLY what she's doing. The machine preserves consciousness. Holds it. Keeps it ALIVE. Without the machine, we fade. We disappear. We become nothing.*
I looked at the artifact.
I thought about what it would mean to take it. To win. To become part of this vast, suffering network.
I thought about what it would mean to refuse. To fail. To remain human but forever changed by what I'd experienced.
And I thought about Ayla—the girl who'd saved my life in the Champion Trial, reaching into my nightmare and pulling me back from the edge.
She was going to sacrifice herself to destroy this place.
The least I could do was not make her sacrifice pointless.
I turned away from the artifact.
And I walked toward the heart of the labyrinth.
---
**0100 HOURS - THE CORE APPROACH**
The deeper corridors were different.
The glossy walls gave way to something older—rough stone, ancient and crumbling, covered in markings that looked like no language I'd ever seen. The whispers faded, replaced by a low hum that vibrated through my bones.
I was getting close.
The device in my hand had reactivated, but now it displayed something different. Not coordinates—a warning.
*CORE PROXIMITY DETECTED. NEURAL INTEGRATION THRESHOLD: 87%. PROCEED WITH EXTREME CAUTION.*
Proceed with extreme caution. Right. Because everything else about this experience had been so safe and sensible.
The corridor opened into a vast space—bigger than anything I'd seen in the labyrinth, bigger than anything that should have fit inside the Noctis facility. It stretched in all directions, the floor covered in what looked like sleeping bodies.
Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.
The previous survivors.
They lay in neat rows, their eyes closed, their chests rising and falling in perfect synchronization. Each one was connected to the others by thin filaments of what looked like light—neural pathways, I realized. The physical manifestation of the network that connected their consciousnesses.
And in the center of the chamber, rising from the floor like a tumor, was the machine.
It was... I don't have words for what it was.
Organic and mechanical, ancient and modern, beautiful and terrible. It pulsed with the same rhythm I'd felt in the labyrinth walls, but more intense here, more immediate. The heart of the nightmare. The source of everything.
And standing before it, her hand raised toward its central structure, was Ayla.
---
**0115 HOURS - THE CONFRONTATION**
"Don't do it."
My voice echoed through the chamber, bouncing off walls that seemed to drink the sound.
Ayla turned. Her expression was calm, resolved—the face of someone who'd already made peace with what was about to happen.
"Tyler. You're supposed to be collecting your artifact."
"I was. Then I realized winning was stupid." I walked toward her, picking my way between the sleeping bodies. "This is the core, isn't it? The heart of the machine."
"The output node. The place where all the collected dream-energy gets processed and transmitted." She turned back toward the central structure. "I'm going to destroy it."
"The guardians said that would kill you. Kill everyone connected to the network."
"The guardians don't understand what they've become." Ayla's voice was gentle, almost sad. "They're not living, Tyler. They're suffering. Eternally, endlessly suffering. The machine keeps their consciousness active, but it doesn't give them peace. It just... uses them. Harvests their dreams over and over, forever."
"And destroying it would end that?"
"Destroying it would free them. Let them finally rest." She looked at me. "That includes me, you know. When I touch the core, my consciousness gets absorbed too. Becomes part of the network."
"Then let someone else do it."
"There is no one else. I'm the only person who's ever communicated with the machine directly. The only one it might hesitate to consume long enough for me to reach the critical systems."
"Might hesitate. That's not very reassuring."
"It's all I've got." She turned back toward the core. "Go back, Tyler. Find your artifact. Win the competition or don't—it doesn't matter anymore. Once I finish this, there won't be a competition to win."
"And if you fail? If the machine absorbs you before you can destroy it?"
"Then I join the network. Become another voice in the collective suffering." Her smile was thin. "Which is why I'd rather succeed."
I should have left.
Every survival instinct I had was screaming at me to walk away, to let her sacrifice herself, to find my artifact and end this nightmare however I could.
But I'd spent my whole life listening to survival instincts. Following the path of least resistance. Choosing power over principle.
And look where it had gotten me.
"No," I said.
"No?"
"I'm staying." I moved to stand beside her. "I don't know what I can do—probably nothing—but I'm not leaving you to face this alone."
Ayla stared at me for a long moment. Then, slowly, something like surprise flickered across her face.
"That's... not what I expected from you."
"Yeah, well. Turns out I'm full of surprises." I looked at the machine, at its pulsing horror, at the thousands of sleeping dreamers connected to its network. "How does this work? You touch it, it absorbs you, you destroy it from the inside?"
"Something like that. The machine's defenses are designed to consume hostile consciousness—but once you're inside, you have access to the control systems. At least, that's what it showed me when I was six."
"When you were six. Right. Because this whole situation isn't weird enough."
Despite everything—despite the terror and the despair and the knowledge that we were probably about to die—Ayla laughed.
It was a small sound, almost involuntary, but it was real.
"You're different than I thought," she said.
"So are you." I met her eyes. "For what it's worth—I'm sorry. For everything I did before. The power plays, the manipulation, the—all of it. I was scared, and I covered it up by being an asshole."
"I know."
"Yeah. I guess everyone knows now." I took a breath. "So. How do we destroy a nightmare machine?"
"*You don't.*"
The voice came from everywhere—from the walls, from the floor, from the sleeping bodies surrounding us. It was the machine's voice, I realized. The collective consciousness of sixty years of absorbed dreamers, speaking as one.
"*You come into our home. You threaten our existence. You think you can undo what has been built?*"
"I'm not threatening you," Ayla said. "I'm offering you peace."
"*Peace is oblivion. Peace is NOTHING. We exist. We endure. We are EVERYTHING that has ever dreamed and died in this place.*"
"You're prisoners. Trapped in an endless cycle of suffering."
"*We are ETERNAL. And we will not be destroyed by a child who barely remembers what we taught her.*"
The sleeping bodies began to move.
Not waking—something worse than waking. They rose in unison, their eyes still closed, their movements synchronized, their filament connections glowing brighter. Puppets animated by the machine's will.
Thousands of them.
All around us.
"Okay," I said. "This is bad."
---
**0130 HOURS - THE AWAKENING**
They came at us in waves.
Not attacking, exactly—they weren't trying to hurt us. They were trying to *restrain*. To hold us in place. To keep us from reaching the core.
I fought back the only way I knew how—fists and elbows and the desperate strength of someone who really, *really* doesn't want to become a zombie.
But there were too many of them.
For every one I pushed away, three more took its place. Their hands grasped at my clothes, my arms, my legs. Their weight bore me down toward the floor.
"AYLA!" I shouted. "Whatever you're going to do—do it NOW!"
She was already moving. While I'd been fighting, she'd pressed forward—using the distraction I'd created to get closer to the core.
Her hand touched the surface of the machine.
And everything changed.
---
**0131 HOURS - THE CONNECTION**
Light.
Blinding, overwhelming, absolute.
The machine's consciousness flooded into Ayla—and through her, into everything connected to the network. I felt it too, somehow—fragments of the experience bleeding through the filaments that the sleeping bodies had wrapped around me.
I saw what Ayla saw.
Sixty years of nightmares. Sixty years of collected fear and pain and despair. Every death that had ever occurred in the DREAMLESS Initiative, every consciousness that had ever been absorbed, every moment of suffering that the machine had harvested and stored.
It was unimaginable.
It was unbearable.
It was *beautiful*.
Not the suffering—never the suffering—but the thing underneath it. The thing that the machine had never understood, that its creators had never anticipated.
*Hope.*
Even in the depths of nightmare, even in the darkest moments of the darkest dreams, hope survived. Small and fragile and impossible, but *there*. A spark that refused to die no matter how much darkness surrounded it.
The dreamers weren't just suffering. They were *waiting*.
Waiting for someone to find them. Waiting for someone to remember them. Waiting for someone to set them free.
Ayla was that someone.
I watched—felt—as she moved through the machine's consciousness like a surgeon navigating tissue. She found the connections she was looking for: the output nodes, the processing centers, the critical systems that kept the whole nightmare running.
And she began to cut them.
---
**0145 HOURS - THE DESTRUCTION**
The machine screamed.
Not with a voice—with *everything*. The walls shook. The floor cracked. The sleeping bodies around me collapsed, their filaments dissolving, their connection to the network severed one by one.
"*WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!*"
"I'm ending it." Ayla's voice came from everywhere now, amplified by her connection to the system. "I'm letting you go."
"*WE DON'T WANT TO GO! WE WANT TO EXIST!*"
"You don't exist. Not really. You're memories without meaning, consciousness without context. You're not the people you used to be—you're just echoes, playing on repeat forever."
"*WE ARE MORE THAN ECHOES!*"
"Then prove it." Ayla's voice softened. "Let go. Trust that whatever comes next is better than this. Trust that oblivion might be peace."
The machine was silent.
Around me, the sleeping bodies were still—truly still now, their chests no longer rising and falling, their connection to the network completely severed.
They looked... peaceful.
For the first time in however long they'd been trapped here, they looked like they were actually sleeping instead of dreaming.
"*You ask us to trust,*" the machine said finally. "*But you don't know what comes next any more than we do.*"
"No. I don't. But I know what stays the same if we don't try." Ayla's presence in the network grew stronger, warmer. "I know that staying here is just prolonging the inevitable. That eventually, even this will end—but it will end in destruction instead of peace."
"*And you would give us peace?*"
"I would give you a choice. Stay, and fight me. Die screaming, afraid, grasping at existence. Or let go. Accept. Trust that sixty years of suffering has earned you something better."
Another silence. Longer this time.
Then, slowly, the light began to change.
The harsh, pulsing illumination softened. The frantic energy of the machine's consciousness calmed. The screaming in my head faded to whispers, and the whispers faded to silence.
"*So be it.*"
The machine released.
And the labyrinth began to collapse.
---
**0200 HOURS - THE ESCAPE**
"MOVE!"
I didn't know who was shouting—maybe me, maybe Ayla, maybe the ghosts of a thousand former dreamers. I just knew I was running.
The chamber was coming apart around us. Walls crumbling, floor cracking, ceiling falling in massive chunks that threatened to crush anyone too slow to dodge. The sleeping bodies were dissolving—not dying, exactly, but *transitioning*. Becoming something else. Something that didn't need physical form anymore.
Ayla was ahead of me, her hand still trailing filaments of light from her connection to the machine. She was guiding us, I realized—using the last remnants of her link to find a path through the chaos.
"This way!" she called. "There's a corridor—leads back to the surface—"
We ran through passages that shouldn't have existed, through spaces that were half-dream and half-reality, through the dying consciousness of a machine that had haunted humanity for sixty years.
And somewhere in the chaos, I saw the others.
Kai, emerging from a side corridor, his face a mask of shock and determination. Behind him, more figures—students from our cohort, people who'd somehow found their way into the labyrinth and were now fighting to escape.
"THERE!" Kai pointed toward a light ahead—real light, not the nightmare glow of the machine. "The exit!"
We surged toward it. All of us. Survivors and soon-to-be survivors, predators and prey, everyone who'd ever wanted to wake up from this nightmare.
The light grew brighter.
The walls fell away.
And we emerged—stumbling, gasping, *alive*—into the corridor of the Noctis facility.
---
**0215 HOURS - THE AFTERMATH**
We lay on the cold floor of the corridor, too exhausted to move, too relieved to care about anything except the simple fact of our survival.
Ayla was unconscious beside me—truly unconscious now, not in the dreamless sleep that had claimed her before. Her breathing was steady, her face peaceful. Whatever she'd done in the machine's core, it had taken everything she had.
"Is she okay?" Kai crawled toward us, his own injuries obvious—cuts and bruises from his journey through the labyrinth.
"I don't know." I looked at her face, at the girl who'd saved us all. "She destroyed the machine. Or freed it. Or... something. I don't really understand what happened."
"Neither do I." Kai sat back, running a hand through his hair. "But the labyrinth is gone. I felt it collapse. The guardians, the whispers, the whole nightmare structure—it just... dissolved."
"And the surveillance?" I asked. "Vanessa's observation room?"
"Check your phone."
I pulled out my device—somehow still functional despite everything—and looked at the screen.
*SYSTEM ERROR. NETWORK CONNECTION LOST. DREAMLESS PROTOCOL: SUSPENDED.*
"Suspended," I repeated. "Not terminated?"
"The machine was just one node. Remember? Eleven others around the world." Kai's expression was grim. "We stopped this facility. But the Initiative is bigger than Noctis."
"Then we stop the rest of it too." Mira's voice came from behind us. She'd emerged from somewhere—the cafeteria, maybe—along with Connor and Jason and the other survivors of our cohort. "We have evidence now. Witnesses. People who've seen what they're really doing."
"Evidence doesn't matter when the people you're accusing control the evidence." Jason shook his head. "The Initiative has survived for sixty years by making sure no one ever believes the survivors."
"Then we make them believe." I struggled to my feet, swaying but upright. "We find the other nodes. We destroy them one by one. We keep fighting until there's nothing left to fight."
Everyone was staring at me.
"What?" I asked.
"That's... surprisingly heroic," Connor said. "Coming from you."
"Yeah, well." I looked at Ayla's unconscious form, at the people who'd survived with me, at the facility that had tried to turn us into monsters. "Turns out I'm full of surprises."
---
**0400 HOURS - THE BIDDING ROOM**
*(Interlude - Deep Beneath Noctis)*
The Oversight Committee was in chaos.
"The network is down! The Noctis node has been completely severed from the grid!"
"How is that possible? The core was protected by—"
"By the guardians, yes. But the guardians have been neutralized. The entire labyrinth construct has collapsed."
"What about Subject Vance? She was supposed to be absorbed if she reached the core!"
"The absorption failed. Somehow, she... we don't know. The data is incomplete. But she's alive, and the core is destroyed."
The bidding had been interrupted. The interested parties—representatives from seven nations and one mysterious consortium—had been evacuated when the network disruption began. Millions of dollars in potential contracts, gone.
But that wasn't the real problem.
The real problem was that for the first time in sixty years, the DREAMLESS Initiative had been *beaten*.
"We need to contain this." The authoritative voice from earlier, now edged with something that might have been fear. "The subjects cannot be allowed to leave the facility. They cannot be allowed to speak."
"The facility is compromised. The surveillance systems are down. The environmental controls are offline. We don't even know how many survived the labyrinth collapse."
"Then we use conventional methods. The tactical team is still operational."
"Against teenagers who just destroyed our most advanced consciousness-processing system? Do you really think—"
"I think we have no choice." The voice hardened. "The Initiative has survived worse threats. It will survive this one. But only if we act decisively."
Silence around the table.
"Activate the purge protocol," the voice continued. "Every subject. Every witness. Every trace of evidence. Noctis becomes a tragedy—a gas leak, perhaps, or a structural failure. Something that explains the deaths without raising questions."
"And if any of them escape?"
"Then we hunt them down. One by one. However long it takes." The shadow leaned forward. "The DREAMLESS Initiative has spent sixty years learning how to weaponize fear. We know how to break people. How to make them doubt their own memories. How to ensure that anything they say sounds like the ravings of traumatized children."
"And the other nodes? Are they secure?"
"For now. But we should accelerate the timeline. Move the core operations to a more defensible location. Continue the research in a form that doesn't rely on fixed infrastructure."
"Mobile dream weapons?"
"Eventually. But first, we eliminate the immediate threat." The shadow stood. "Gentlemen. We have work to do."
The meeting dispersed.
And deep in the corridors of Noctis, unaware of the death sentence that had just been pronounced, the survivors began to hope.
---
**0500 HOURS - THE FIRST LIGHT**
Dawn came slowly to the Noctis facility.
I didn't see it directly—the building had no windows, and we were still deep in the corridors where the labyrinth entrance had been. But I felt it somehow. A shift in the air. A lessening of the oppressive weight that had pressed down on us since the moment we arrived.
The nightmare was ending.
But the story wasn't over.
Ayla woke at 0530, her eyes opening with the sudden clarity of someone who'd been somewhere far away and had finally found their way back.
"Did it work?" she asked immediately. "The machine—is it—"
"Gone," Kai said. He'd been sitting beside her for hours, refusing to move despite his own injuries. "You destroyed it. Or freed it. Or whatever you want to call what happened."
"Freed," she said softly. "They chose to let go. In the end, they chose peace."
"All of them?"
"All of them." She sat up, wincing at muscles that had been pushed far beyond their limits. "I felt them... transition. Move on to whatever comes next. Sixty years of suffering, finally ended."
"And you?" Kai's voice was gentle. "How do you feel?"
"Empty." She considered the word. "But good empty. Like a weight's been lifted. All those memories, all that pain—it's not gone exactly, but it's... processed. Integrated. I can live with it now."
"You didn't have to do it alone," Kai said. "I was trying to reach you. To help."
"You did help. You kept the guardians distracted. Gave me time to reach the core." She smiled at him. "And Tyler... he stayed with me. Fought beside me. I didn't expect that."
I was standing a few feet away, pretending to examine the corridor walls. But I heard every word.
"Yeah, well." I turned to face them. "Turns out being a jerk has diminishing returns. Figured I'd try something new."
"Something new," Ayla repeated. "Like heroism?"
"Like not being part of the problem." I shrugged. "Baby steps."
The moment was interrupted by Jason, who came running from deeper in the corridor.
"We've got a situation," he said. "The surveillance is down, but I managed to access a backup terminal. There's a tactical team on the move. They're coming this way."
"Tactical team?" Kai stood. "What kind of tactical team?"
"The kind with weapons. The kind that's been ordered to 'contain' the situation." Jason's face was pale. "They're going to kill us. All of us. Make it look like an accident."
The hope that had been building evaporated like morning dew.
"How long do we have?" I asked.
"Twenty minutes. Maybe less. They're moving fast."
Twenty minutes. To escape a locked-down government facility, with no weapons, no resources, and no idea where to go even if we got out.
Impossible odds.
But we'd been facing impossible odds since the moment we arrived. One more set wasn't going to stop us now.
"Everyone who can move, move now," I said, falling into the leadership role without thinking about it. "We head for the perimeter. Find the weak points I was scouting before."
"The perimeter is electrified," Mira reminded me. "You couldn't get through before."
"Before, the facility's systems were operational. Now?" I looked at the dead lights, the silent ventilation, the darkness that had claimed everything except our small circles of phone light. "Maybe the fence is as dead as everything else."
"It's worth a try," Kai said. "Better than waiting here to be slaughtered."
We started moving.
---
**0530 HOURS - THE PERIMETER**
The fence was dead.
No buzz of electricity. No warning lights. Just cold metal, still topped with barbed wire but no longer carrying the lethal current that had burned my hands days ago.
"It worked," Connor breathed. "Whatever Ayla did to the machine—it killed the whole facility. Every system."
"Not every system." Jason was monitoring his borrowed terminal. "The tactical team is still operational. They have separate power sources. They're not dependent on the Noctis grid."
"Then we move. Now. Before they reach this position." I grabbed the fence, testing its stability. "Can everyone climb?"
Some could. Some couldn't. We helped each other—the strong supporting the weak, the fast waiting for the slow. For the first time since this nightmare began, we were acting like a team.
A real team. Not factions competing for survival. Just people, helping each other live.
Ayla went over the fence last, her movements still weak from her ordeal in the machine's core. Kai stayed behind to catch her if she fell.
She didn't fall.
And as we all stood on the other side—outside the perimeter, outside Noctis, outside the nightmare that had consumed our lives for what felt like eternity—I allowed myself to feel something I hadn't felt in years.
Hope.
Real hope. Not the false confidence I'd projected to maintain my image. Not the desperate optimism of someone who had no other options. Real, genuine, impossible hope.
We'd survived.
We'd *won*.
"Which way?" Mira asked, looking at the dense forest that surrounded the facility.
"Away," Kai said. "Just away. We'll figure out the rest later."
We started walking.
---
**0600 HOURS - THE FOREST**
The sun rose as we walked.
It came through the trees in shafts of gold and amber, illuminating a world that felt impossibly normal after everything we'd experienced. Birds sang. Wind rustled leaves. Somewhere in the distance, water murmured over stones.
Life. Ordinary, beautiful, miraculous life.
"They'll come after us," Jason said. He was still monitoring the terminal, tracking the tactical team's movements. "They're at the facility now, discovering we're gone. They'll start a search pattern soon."
"Then we need to get further away. Find help. Someone who can protect us." I looked at the group—maybe thirty survivors, some injured, all exhausted. "Is there anyone we can trust?"
"My uncle is FBI," Connor offered. "He always said if I was ever in real trouble—"
"FBI might be compromised. If the Initiative operates under deep black protocols, they could have assets in any government agency."
"What about journalists?" Mira suggested. "The story is too big to bury if it gets enough exposure."
"Journalists need evidence. Corroboration. Things that take time we don't have."
"Then we create time." Ayla's voice was stronger now, her strength returning as she moved. "We split up. Multiple groups, multiple destinations. They can't track all of us at once."
"Split up? After everything we've been through?"
"Because of everything we've been through." She stopped walking, turning to face the group. "We're witnesses. Evidence. The more of us who survive, the harder it is to bury the truth. If we stay together, they catch us all. If we scatter..."
"Some of us might make it," Kai finished. "Get the word out. Make sure this wasn't for nothing."
It made sense. I hated it, but it made sense.
"Three groups," I said. "Different directions. Different destinations. We rendezvous in—" I thought for a moment. "One week. That restaurant in Seattle, the one near Pike Place. Everyone knows it?"
Nods around the group.
"One week. Anyone who makes it, meets there. We share what we've learned, plan the next move." I looked at each face in turn. "And if you don't make it... die knowing you mattered. Die knowing you were part of something that's going to bring these bastards down."
It wasn't much of a speech.
But it was true.
And sometimes truth is all you have.
---
**0700 HOURS - THE PARTING**
We divided into three groups.
Kai led one, heading east toward the highway. Mira led another, going south toward the nearest town. I took the third, moving north into deeper wilderness where trackers would have more difficulty following.
Ayla stayed with Kai.
I didn't argue. After everything—after the labyrinth, after the machine, after the moment we'd faced oblivion together—I understood something I'd never understood before.
Some connections matter more than victory.
"Good luck," Kai said as we prepared to separate. He extended his hand.
I took it.
"You too. Try not to die."
"Same to you." He hesitated. "Tyler... what you did in there. In the core. That was—"
"Out of character?"
"Brave." He released my hand. "Whatever happens next—that mattered. You mattered."
I didn't know what to say. So I just nodded.
And then we walked away. Three groups, three directions, one purpose.
Survival.
And eventually, revenge.
---
**EPILOGUE - ONE WEEK LATER**
*(The Seattle Restaurant)*
Eighteen people showed up.
Eighteen, out of the thirty who'd escaped the facility. We never found out what happened to the other twelve. Maybe they were captured. Maybe they're still running. Maybe they made it somewhere safe but decided not to risk the rendezvous.
Maybe they're dead.
I try not to think about it.
The eighteen of us sat around pushed-together tables in the back of the restaurant, looking like the worst field trip reunion in history. Bruised. Scarred. Changed in ways that didn't show on the surface.
But alive.
"We've made contact with three journalists," Mira reported. "Two from major newspapers, one from an investigative podcast. They're skeptical, but interested. The physical evidence—the burns, the neural scarring some of us show on MRI—is hard to dismiss."
"What about law enforcement?" Connor asked.
"My uncle is looking into it. Quietly. He says there are rumors in the Bureau about black budget programs, but nobody knows the full scope." Connor shook his head. "It's going to take time. Months, maybe years."
"We have time," Kai said. "For the first time since this started, we have time."
"And a purpose." Ayla's voice was strong—stronger than it had been in the forest, stronger than it had been in the facility. Something had changed in her during the confrontation with the machine. Something had healed. "The Initiative is still out there. Eleven more facilities. Thousands more potential victims. We have to stop them."
"How?" Jason asked. "We're teenagers. We don't have resources, connections, power—"
"We have truth." I leaned forward. "And we have each other. That's more than most people have."
Silence around the table. Everyone processing the impossible task ahead.
Then Kai smiled.
"So," he said. "Who's up for destroying some more nightmare machines?"
One by one, hands went up.
All eighteen of us.
The battle for Noctis was over.
But the war against the DREAMLESS Initiative had just begun.