"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."

- Ernest Hemingway

9:52 p.m

5 days earlier

If there was ever one thing Tim wasn't sure of, it was his hesitation of opening the door back to his home that day. He stood outside in the shadow of the night, the hallway lights having burnt out with a light drizzle of rain building up behind him. His hand was on the door handle but he could not find a good enough reason to put force behind it to open.

“Stella,” he muttered under his breath, rehearsing his speech. “I need you to help me find out what Sister's name is.”

Out loud, nothing sounded wrong with the request. It was research work on a person who had long since been dead. But his dreaded instinct clawed at him uncomfortably, keeping him on the edge as he inexplicably felt something terrible would happen if he made the request.

“Come on...” he egged himself. “Just ask her. She'll make a few calls, dig up some articles. She probably won't even meet another person while doing this. Completely safe,” yet inexplicably, he couldn't convince himself of those words.

He had half a mind to turn back but the door swung open without his effort, the handle ripped away from his grip. On the opposite of the archway, Stella stood on her crutches in one of Tim's old light blue pyjamas.

He greeted with, “You found my old clothes?”

“Yeah. Can't keep wearing the same thing for days now, can I?” she replied. “Why are you standing out there like an idiot?” she looked down to his still outstretched hands, still grasping at air. He quickly pulled them back. “You high?”

“What? No!”

“You on drugs?”

“Isn't that the same thing?”

“Are you hiding something?”

“No...” he replied truthfully. “Just a little hesitant...” he dragged and paused.

“About...asking me out?”

“What?” he exclaimed, “No! No! I'm not asking you out. Why would I at a time like this?”

“But you've considered it?”

“No!”

“Then stop beating around the bush and ask me whatever.”

“Fine. Look, I need you to help me to find out Sister's real name.”

“What?” she replied surprised. “That's it?”

Unsure of himself, Tim let out, “I...guess so.”

“Sure, I can do that. I mean, I have been trying since day one. I've came close to it but with everything that's been happening, I've put the search on hold. I can start it up again though,” she told him her situation, not one bit of hesitation with agreeing to the request. “Why would you balk at asking me that?”

“I don't know. I just have this terrible feeling in my stomach that kept telling me not to.”

She looked down at her body, checking for any sudden defects, as if a third arm would start growing out of her belly. “I look fine to me.”

“Yeah...I don't know what I was worried about,” he replied, though still unable to untie the knot in his guts. “Should we...I don't know, head in?”

In the distance, a shriek dragged into the night, the sound seemingly having been carried from beyond the neighbourhood they were in. Unlike the daily howls of drunken bar-goers or gang members, this one chilled them, drawing their attention. And in the split seconds after, reverberating murmurs began to rise around them. Murmurs that seemed to reach out from all directions.

Tim could only let out a brief, “What the hell?” before waves of screams and shouts pierced through the air.

Stella stepped out of the apartment as Tim leaned over the railings to look down at the streets. Dozens of people rushed out of the building and its neighbours, running frenziedly down the road, gathering at the junction. The crowd stood there in between green lights, staring at the city. Some pointed, others gasp. One fell to his knees and cried.

To Stella, Tim said, “Something's happening.”

Sharply, she replied, “No shit.”

Ignoring her snide, he simply said, “Let's go,” before bolting for the stairs.

“Hey!” she shouted. Her rarely raised voice enough to stop even his curiosity. He turned and she gestured to her cast covered leg. “Slow down.”

“Can't,” he told her before squatting down with his back to her. Tapping his shoulder, he signalled, “Get on.”

“You've got to be kidding me.”

When she realized he wasn't, Stella gave a sigh and dropped her crutches at the door, hopping to him on one leg. Awkwardly climbing onto his back, she buckled in as he, with a heave, got to his feet. Once stable, he made a mad dash for the stairs, pushing his momentum forward so as to make the climb with the extra human weight on his back. Two floors later, he ascended the last flight to the rooftop with heaves and pants.

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He jibbed, “You need...to lose weight,” to which he earned a slap across his head.

“I'm letting you feel my thigh so shut up and climb.”

And he could not argue with her reasoning. He was holding on quite tightly, mostly because he was out of and was afraid any loosened grip would mean his friend tumbling down the steps behind.

With one last leg and push, he kicked open the door to the rooftop and stepped out under the open sky, the towering stretch of skyscrapers of the city laid out before him. Though panting and sweating, his breath still managed to get taken away.

“What...” he was speechless at the sight. Slowly, he knelt down to let Stella dismount beside the entrance to the roof.

She leaned against the wall, a look of surprised etched across her face, her jaws hanging loosely. “...the hell?”

Even from where they stood, they could smell the noxious fumes of smoke and could see the black smog that continued to climb from the city streets. Flames flickered orange against the buildings' sides as bushels of fire spreads across the city. However, it was not the sight of the riot that broke out or the broken screams and shouts that seemed to echo on forever that entranced them.

A swirling mass of purple gas hung above Hotel Alexandria, the third tallest building of the city. It looked almost as if someone had ripped a hole in the sky, and the atmosphere swirled around it like water down a drain. Blue crystals, the size of two entire levels of the building, encrusted the tip of the hotel like the spikes on a mace, while thin, purple, rolling mists floated down the side of the building.

“We need to get to the dream world,” Tim said, though unable to take his eyes off the phenomenon. “We need to go, now.”

He finally managed to tear himself away from the spectacle. Returning to Stella, he let her climb onto his back again. With a much more manageable slope down and renewed energy from the mysterious event, he took the flights of stairs two at a time.

Stella asked, “What was that thing?”

“No idea,” he replied between breaths. “But...I'm sure...The Father...has something...to do with it!”

Reaching his landing, he took a sharp left into the corridor, smoothly picking up Stella's crutches from the ground as he dodged back into his open home.

Letting Stella off at the couch, he went into his bathroom in strides and pulled opened the medicine cabinet with such energy that the hinges creaked from the torque. From within, he took out a pair of syringes and the bottle of fentanyl and returned to the living room.

Sticking the needle through the rubber cap of the bottle, he asked Stella, “How much should I use?”

“What? You took it without checking?”

“I did!” he replied, drawing the liquid out of the bottle. Pulling the syringe out, he checked it for air bubbles, pushing back out some of the drugs to get rid of them as he had seen in movies. “But I'm still not a doctor,” he toyed with the needle in his hand, contemplating on the injection. He wondered if it would be better to let himself fall asleep naturally instead, but felt his blood was pumping too much to calm himself down soon enough without wasting too much time.

Stella said, “I think I should go instead. You just stay awake and on the lookout.”

“What? Why?” he questioned, a little more dramatically than he would have liked, waving his hand around. “I thought we were both going?”

“Tim, you don't have your arm in the dream world, and I don't have my leg here. Whatever situation is happening, I think we're going to need to be at our best, don't you?”

He was reluctant, the clench of his instincts from before had yet to subside and he was not comfortable with her taking the risk. Any risk. Yet, he could not find a hole in her argument.

Stella continued, “If something happens here and I can't wake up, you can carry me off. I'd even let you touch all of me,” her tone was her usual playful self, but Tim felt it carried more weight behind it and could not find it in him to rebut. “And I sure as hell can't carry you.”

Conceding the argument, Tim handed the syringe to her. “Fine. But if anything happens-”

“There is absolutely nothing I can do to warn you,” she cut him off, saving him from the embarrassment of having to think of a solution to a problem with no answer. “We're just going to have to wing it from here.”

“Your brother and I say 'wing it'. I'm not so sure I like it when you say it.”

“Tim,” she stopped him from continuing, unhesitatingly injecting the drug into her forearm. “Stop dragging. We have a magic purple sky hole to deal with.”