“Have you used that name a-”

“I’ve used it three times. Once with Order, once with you, and once when I stole a few supplies from a small gang,” I said through gritted teeth. “I think it’s safe to say that you didn’t find him, Rosita. He found us.”

Rosita left out a small laugh of her own. “He went snooping around. Someone like him can find the way even with only a few breadcrumbs. And now he’s going to bring in people? Well, we’re going to bring in people of our own.”

“You can’t possibly mean those pathetic zealots your cousin led?” I snapped at her. “The idiot was stupid enough to attack Greece the single week Alpha Surge was there. He isn’t the kind of person we need for this.”

Rosita just smirked. “Not just him, no. There was an assortment of people I met in prison during my brief time there. People that I promised I’d come back for when I got out of that hellhole. The type of people that are desperate enough to follow us, follow you, in this crazy quest to bring forth a villainous utopia.”

“How can you know that? We can’t afford to take chances here.”

“They’re crazy enough to believe you. Or they are like me and they want to see something–someone–shake up this stale world we live in.”

I sighed at Rosita’s words. This was too risky. Going back to prison, a prison Rosita barely broke out of and she got lucky. But then again, what choice did we have? Crisis would be a valuable ally but he was also a ticking time bomb we couldn’t avoid. And having an actual following behind us–loyal allies–would be the best countermeasure against whatever thugs he brought himself.

“Come back to base. If we are to bust those fools out of prison, we need a plan.”

–

This was a dream.

It couldn’t be anything else. I refused to believe it was anything else.

I was staring at my dead body in an endless black void. That in itself was a telltale sign that I was in a nightmare. I’d seen similar images pop up in my head almost nightly. It could even be called routine at this point.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

And yet I still found myself clenching my hands and desperately trying to control my breathing. I was going to wake up at any moment now, I was-

“No you won’t,” said someone behind me. It was a distorted voice, one that sounded almost otherworldly.

I turned back around to see myself standing there. It was another me, one that was wearing a white suit with black armour covering his chest, shoulders, legs and lower arms. He was also wearing a red cape, which was somehow flowing in spite of the fact that there was no wind present. If I were honest, it looked kind of cool in spite of the whole situation.

Wait, why was I focused on the costume here?

“The mind works in mysterious ways, doesn’t it? This-this is what you want to be, isn’t it?” said the other me as he vanished. And, almost immediately after, soft crying could be heard from behind me.

Crying that I recognised.

“But you can never escape what you are.”

I turned back around to where my body had been, only to see that a younger Maria had taken its place. She was laying on the floor, clutching the left side of her face. A younger version of myself was standing near her, my eyes wide and arm stretched and trembling.

No, no, no, no, no!

I hadn’t been back there in so long-I hadn’t had a nightmare like this since I was fifteen years old and now-now-I was back.

“Alex.”

I couldn’t be back.

“Alex!”

Suddenly I was sitting up in my bedroom, sweating through my clothes, and clutching on my bed for dear life. I was breathing heavily, looking around for anyone in my room. Thankfully, nobody was there. After I steadied my breathing I checked the time on my phone, seeing that it was only three am.

“Fuck it all.” I opened a notebook I had on my desk, flipping to a page with the number fifteen on it. I quickly erased it, and wrote down fifteen. It had been fifteen nights.

Fifteen nights since I made up with Iraklis.

Fifteen nights in a row that I had been seeing that exact nightmare.

I let out a long sigh and laid back down on my bed, eventually managing to go back to sleep, and that was a difficult process all by itself. It took thirty minutes of thrusting around, and was filled with all sorts of smaller nightmares, but I somehow managed to get through the night without waking up my parents.

I spent the morning locked up in Iraklis’s room, helping him pack his things in awkward silence. He was leaving early in order to get himself situated in the dorms and get used to the area. He would be leaving today, and I wouldn’t be there to see him off.

It honestly hurt, but Jensen had called Birgit and myself to the gym for some important announcement, and I couldn’t cancel–no matter how hard I tried. I suppose it hadn’t really hit either of us, but this was the last time we’d see each other in person for a long time.