They didn't answer for what felt like an eternity to Michael, even if it had been only a few minutes. His stomach dropped as the seconds turned into minutes.

"Listen," Michael said, "Both of you - and Sarah - have given me side glances at the mention of the Tower. I think - no, I know - that one of you has had a vision of it just like I have. So come on, spill the beans already. Then maybe we can talk about what any of us are going to do next."

He spoke with a certainty that he wasn't sure he actually had. But his bluster worked. Katie and Lucy gave him the most serious looks that he thought either of them could muster, then looked at each other. Lucy, her eyes fixed on the other girl's, seemed to ask for Katie's opinion, or for permission to say something, and then Katie gave a single, slow nod, which seemed to settle some agreement between the two. Lucy turned to Michael and reticently opened her mouth to speak.

But before she could, from behind Michael came a voice. An icy cold one.

"We've all had visions about the fucking Tower, Mike."

The blonde stood just behind Michael, having reappeared silently as he spoke. He didn't know how long she'd been there for, and while Lucy turning into some sort of demoness was unsettling, Sarah had his least favourite power out of all he'd seen so far. Or maybe it was just her attitude. Even calling him "Mike" was some sort of power play. Could she be more irritating? Judging by her expression as he turned to face her, he was probably about to find out.

"Yeah?" he said. Michael felt he had a right to feel annoyed with the three women. After all, he hadn't asked for this, to be interrogated and attacked, but here he was.

"Yeah," Sarah said, smiling. "We've all had a dream about it."

"Tell me what happened."

Katie said, "I don't want to..."

Sarah sighed.

"I'll go first. We've all had dreams about that damn tower. You know the drill. You see a black stone tower in the distance. And the thing about it, right, it's that you get the impression of this building and the... feelings associated with it." she shrugged, looking a bit distant and disturbed, but still angry.

"Right..." Michael said, urging her to continue.

"We all have the same vision up to that point, and I guess you did too, Mike..." she even emphasised his name wrong, but he let it slip. "But after that, all three of us have different visions of what happens next..."

"Well, it starts the same for me. You've seen it too. Then I get this weird vision of the world as if the whole world has ended and everything has collapsed and everyone has turned into zombies."

"What do you mean?"

"Look, it was all a dream, I know, I'm just trying to tell you the whole thing, right?" She shot Michael an annoyed glance that seemed to tell him that if he tried to correct or speak to her like that, he would be sorry for it.

He sighed, rolling his eyes at her, which she missed as she seemed to get caught up in telling the rest of her vision to Katie, rather than Michael himself. He couldn't tell if she was actually annoyed or not.

"Right. I get into this building, it's kind of run-down and everything. It looks like the Tower we see from afar but I can tell that there is something in it and it's calling out to me."

"What's inside? A thing? A person?" Michael asked. Sarah shook her head. He realised it wasn't that easy. And she couldn't put into words the thing that called out to her.

"No. It's like... a thing. But not a normal thing, you know? It's... different."

Michael frowned. He didn't really have anything to compare it to but his curiosity made him want to ask a hundred more questions, even if the girls were unlikely to answer. He settled on, "So you hear this item calling to you... What happens next?"

Sarah continued. "So I go to look for the thing. And then, it's like... It's weird, you know? It feels like there's a huge black tower there, like I said, and it feels as if I have to find something that is really powerful inside, like some kind of... item, I think? But it's also, at the same time, the place is run down. There's like these other creatures inside the tower and I'm trying to get away from them but I need to get the item before I go. I'm climbing the Tower, searching it. I get into one room where I think this thing, or the thing I have to find, might be."

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Sarah was speaking in a hurried way, clearly uncomfortable talking about it.

She went on, "But I get locked in a cage or a room by someone or something. And I feel this pain that I've failed and there's nothing that I can do."

She finished her explanation with a shiver. "I feel really bad after having the dream."

Michael watched as the usually martial girl took a few steps and slumped into one of the armchairs, and he thought that she almost looked defeated.

Katie spoke next.

"Mine's very different. It's not about finding anything or failing to find something." Her face turned from concern for her friend to a dark expression. She turned away from the blonde, almost in embarrassment. Her cheeks were rosy and that made Michael realise how pale she was outside of the pinkened blush. It seemed that even remembering the dream gave her a very strong, physical response.

"Come on," Michael prompted.

"Mine... It's not really, um..." She cleared her throat, looking down and blushing, her skin becoming almost crimson, a huge blush coming over her face and even going down to the top of her chest.

Michael felt his stomach tighten as she continued to look away, not being able to face either him or her friends.

"I don't know. It's like I'm in some kind of building and I have a lot of, you know...

I have a lot of, like, um... pleasure."

Her face had gone so red it was like a cherry and Michael realised that she meant the vision had her being pleasured. Katie, he realised with a sudden and abrupt mental picture of the cute, petite brunette moaning with ecstasy, was being given orgasms in her vision of The Tower.

"It feels so, um, weird, right," Katie went on, trying to compose herself. "It's not really anything specific. It just feels really good and there's, uh, well. A lot of it." she laughed, then blushed even deeper. “And as it, you know, happens, I see the Tower from above, and all around the Tower forests are growing on the dead landscape…”

Michael, suddenly and vividly imagining Katie's face scrunched up in pleasure, and found it very difficult to maintain a neutral face. It wasn't the kind of image that he wanted to be having right at that moment, which was crazy, all things considered. But this wasn't the time for anything like that.

"It feels like the whole tower is vibrating or shaking," Katie continued. "Like a lot of energy is coming through me and then it just, like... goes."

There was an awkward silence. Katie clearly felt ashamed of having the vision, but Sarah looked to have no such embarrassment, though the two of them, in Michael's opinion, seemed to be hiding something. Like the story they'd given was an incomplete picture. He'd have to work with them and find out what it was that was missing.

Michael turned his head to Lucy. The red haired woman had said very little for a long time and, though he felt guilty for it, he thought it might have had to do with the fact that her power wasn't exactly like Katie and Sarah's, in the respect that she was also some sort of dragon monster. Maybe that would explain the shame and silence. He'd seen people feel uncomfortable with a disability, but that wasn't really what he thought it was.

"Well, what about your dream?"

She shrugged and didn't say anything for a long moment.

"You have to tell me," Michael said. He couldn't believe the situation. "I can tell that you know something more about it."

Sarah said, "Lucy had a dream that, I guess, kind-of combined our two visions, right Luce?" Lucy didn't reply but Katie, at her friend's side, took over the conversation. She seemed eager to have something to do other than think about her vision.

"Lucy had a dream or vision," the brunette hurriedly explained, "where there's a man in the tower that she describes as being kind-of like a King, you know? But there is something inhuman and alien about him, right?" she gave Michael a look that made him blush as he tried to get his previous vision of Katie out of his mind, before she turned to Lucy who sat in her own chair, head in hands.

"I'm inside the tower and there is some sort of force in it that calls to me and makes me go into this building, and inside there is a huge throne room and, well..." Lucy's cheeks went a bit red and Michael felt a pang of guilt at what was obviously an unpleasant memory, and maybe he should stop it.

"...well, there's this King of the Tower and I am... his servant. I guess you would call it. But then I kind-of snap out of it, as I'm there and the man lets me go and I feel my body, well..." she shot a look to Michael and Sarah as though she was worried what they'd think. "...transform. I become the dragon, kind of. And I fly off into the distance and there is this dead and dry landscape around us and I capture some people in this world, where everyone has gone missing."

Lucy took a big breath before she went on. "Then I take these people to him. Then it's like the beast inside me comes back, like it wants me to kill all of them. And I'm just about to when this guy stops me and he lets the people I captured free, I think. Then I realise that the King has a hold on a chain which he had on me but he's let go of, and then I wake up and... it feels horrible." She finished, then gave Sarah a very intense, hard look, that said that she'd had enough.

Katie took over, saying, "So yeah. That's the story, really, we all had visions about The Tower, right, but none of us know what they mean."

"Or," Sarah added, "any way that we could actually go find it or get there."

"Except..." Michael started.

"What?" Sarah replied, in a snide way that he was starting to think was her way of making it known she wasn't comfortable talking to someone about this. The other girls didn't look at all happy to have Sarah, it seemed, as their representative.

"I have a map. In my mind.”

Michael heard his words hang in the air. It felt, to him, as though his whole body was electric and charged and the women were giving him strange looks. They didn't look angry but confused.

"You what?"

"I know where it is." he repeated.