“Do you hear that?”

With a dour scowl, Harper Mellows snatched his participation prizing from the counter of the internet cafe that he’d chosen to be the stage for this Sunday night’s bout of humiliation.

It took Harper about seventeen years, which, to be fair, only about twelve of which he’d spent as a self-aware human being, to realize that he was a bit of a glutton for punishment. His specific style, while theoretically allowing for a higher skill ceiling than any of the other players present, paled in comparison to players who were just plain better than him. Fundamentals won out over gimmicks every time, no matter how much he insisted that playing in a 'unique' way was more honorable than being a slave to the meta. But even as he watched his best friend take first place with a well-timed bolt of lightning to his opponent’s face, he was getting ready to get out of there as fast as he could with the coveted sixteenth placing. He came in with high expectations for himself tonight, and his mood was thoroughly soured.

“Bloody hell,” Andrew hissed, as they traded the warmth of the heat conditioned building for the biting winds that tore through the streets of Melbourne this time of night. The sun had already gone down, and despite being the middle of spring, Harper even felt a few droplets of rain run down the back of his jacket. The internet cafe isolated them from the outside world for a few precious hours - the second they stepped out, he was assaulted by the sound of peak hour traffic, by the smell of exhaust that somehow ended up in Harper’s face, and the laughter of girls standing outside a nearby nightclub.

“Bloody hell, alright,” he agreed quietly, bracing his chest against the wind. He wasn’t sure if Andrew was talking about his performance or the weather, but it probably applied either way. In the same way, Harper wasn’t sure whether the stepping in an icy puddle not five meters into their walk, or the sub-zero needles that shot up his leg as a result, was the shit cherry on top of it all. Before long, they were just another two faces in the crowd, swept along as foot traffic swelled at the crossing lights before being released into the street by the city’s omnipresent staccato tickers.

“Do you hear that?” Harper asked, looking over his shoulder once they were safely back on the footpath.

“Hear what?” Andrew asked, though his gaze had been long since seduced by an electronic shop’s bedazzling neon window display. Learning not to take it personally was Harper’s personal test when it came to friendship; if it weren’t the glowing sign, it would’ve been a piece of rubbish floating by or a rare sports car tearing down the street.

“That, that!” Harper insisted. The onset was so sudden and so strong that Harper initially caught it coming from within his own skull. It stopped him in his tracks, and brought on sweats that plastered his shirt to his back despite the cold weather. It started low, just below the register of the nearby cars that were idling in the middle of traffic. At first, it was more of a buzzing static than anything else, but it peaked dramatically, like a cat’s yowl, with an unmistakable human element that set the seventeen year-old on edge.

Harper craned his neck in every direction to find the source of the noise, but as soon as it had come, it went, fading below the surface of the ambient sounds of the city.

“You alright, man?” Andrew asked.

Harper needed that to remember where he was. For a second, in his delirious state, time stood still, but as he released the breath he’d been holding, no-one else seemed to be reacting. The woman sitting on the bus stop before them seemed just as bored on her phone as anyone else, and the trio of policemen on the opposite crossing didn’t look like they were on the look-out for a possible threat.

“...Yeah,” Harper eventually said. It was the sound of the City Loop grinding against its rail beneath their feet, he eventually decided. Or the sound of a girder crashing to the ground in a nearby construction site, or the cry of one of the city’s many trams shuddering to a halt just around the corner. In any case, no-one had reacted strangely to it. Neither should he, then. Right?

“Sorry.” Harper put on a smile that looked a lot easier than it was. “I think I’ve got a headache. Let’s get out of the rain.”

The too-steep escalator at Parliament Station always came across more treacherous in the rain, and the boys maintained a white-knuckle grip that still did little to settle Harper’s nerves - why bother building it that way in one of the wettest cities in the country? - though they made it down safely, so it was time to say goodbye for the night.

Another teenager sat behind them, watching the news on her phone. She wasn’t wearing headphones, so the newscaster’s voice echoed through the underground chamber quite easily.

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“While it’s important to note that there still remains no evidence that these girls have come to harm, the police say that their list of suspected causes remains frustratingly long. Anyone with any information is encouraged to contact Crimestoppers at…”

The two shared a look.

“You stay safe, now, okay?” Andrew said with a serious look. “I know, I know, but I don’t wanna rock up to class tomorrow and hear you’ve gone missing too. I don’t care if it’s an old lady calling you over, you stay where there’s light.”

He’d finally brought it up.

The night had stayed carefree, their outside worries quashed by the competitive atmosphere of the fighting tournament, but now that the excitement had died down, the dark cloud of the crisis gripping the region settled back above their heads like a dark cloud. It had only started as a rumour on the seediest of online tabloids, but when the disappearances grew into the tens and the girls started disappearing from the nicer areas, the public seemed to grow a lot more interested. He hadn’t been able to pass a television where updates on the story didn’t take up some part of the screen for a week now.

Still, Harper only shrugged, cool as a cucumber. “Should say the same thing to you.”

“Yeah. Right,” Andrew scoffed. He was basically twice Harper’s size, despite only being nine months older, and they both knew it. They shared a fist bump and Andrew got on the next train, with Harper’s only fifteen minutes after.

No matter how safe Harper assured himself he was, he was still immeasurably glad to make it back to a house where the front porch light was waiting for him.

Letting himself in with a key taken from under a garden gnome’s hat, and creeping past the laundry without waking his dog, he remained safe all the way up the stairs, up to when he crashed in bed without brushing his teeth. He barely had the wherewithal to throw his phone on the charger when he closed his eyes.

But when he closed his eyes, he dreamed.

~*~

In his dream, Harper was back in the city, back at the train station. It was a curious sensation, experiencing events from behind one’s own eyes while only being a voyeur with no direct influence over the events.

The Harper-Within-The-Dream said goodbye to Andrew, who looked at him with those concerned eyes, and watched as his friend left on the next train. He was left alone in the station with the cold and the damp and the rumbling of far-off trains, and the boy slid his headphones on so the sound of hardbass could drown out the storm that split the sky above the underground station.

And in his dream, Harper had the terrible feeling that he was being watched. It wasn’t a rational paranoia - he was even self-aware enough to experience embarrassment tinging his cheeks when he examined all three hundred and sixty-five degrees around him to observe absolutely nothing out of the ordinary - but still, an unseen pressure mounted on his back and spurred him onto the well-lit train that had arrived to take him away from the night.

From here, it was only a half-hour ride to his home station, and then a ten-minute walk to his house. With no-one around, he locked eyes with the print of a train conductor that smiled down on him from the far wall of the train carriage.

And finally, as he had already half-expected, he reached the point where his dream diverged from reality.

The car rattled a little as it picked up pace away from the platform, and just as his nerves settled enough to allow him to sit down, a sudden tremor practically threw him from his seat. Lights flickered, and the modulated tones of the pre-recorded intercom lady warped and stuttered.

“Now leaving Parliament Station. The-The next stop is… Mel-Mel-Mel-Melbourne-Parliament Station. Now arriving at… Parliament Station.”

The rumbling stopped, and Harper Mellows was keenly aware that he was the only person on the train.

When he stepped off, the carriage powered down with a sigh of relief and shuttered behind him. The only light now was the half-green, half-yellow lights that illuminated the station, and… the air itself. For a scenario conjured by his subconscious, the sensation was quite novel.

A magenta tint seemed to permeate the chamber regardless of light or surface, like he was on the inside of a glass neon tube. At the same time, it gathered in spots, leaving bright purple floaters that bounced and sparked against the confines of the concrete chamber. He almost touched one, though it skittered away.

Harper navigated his way to the far wall and pressed the button that promised to read out the estimated arrival of the next train, but after a brief crackle of static, the speaker just went silent, and didn’t respond to any further attempts.

The path his unconscious mind set out for him evidently didn’t involve getting home on the train.

The escalator was powered down, too. With an iron knuckle grip on the side rail to keep himself from succumbing to vertigo, Harper ascended the steps that would take him to the world above, where the sky was deep purple and full of stars.

“Oh,” he murmured, and the sound flew around his head and into the open air. A fleck of rain brushed his cheek, leaving behind a trail of startling crispness, and it was only then that he realized how dulled his senses were in the dream.

Leaving the station seemed to cause the PA to finally crackle to life above his head. Instead of a human announcement, it was a song. It was a familiar one, where choirs rejoiced, oboes blared and a glorious trumpet presided over it all.

It was only then did Harper get the floaty feeling in his stomach that told him he was waking up.