* * *

On the ground, Sarah stared at her hands.

Shouldn’t they hurt, scratched and bleeding as they were? But there was no pain.

As if a trick of light, she blinked, and they were fine. There was an ink stain on her index finger, but no blood.

A loud noise—an explosion—sounded in the distance.

She inhaled sharply, expecting the air to offer resistance, but her lungs filled normally.

Someone offered her a hand. She was about to take it, but the flesh that emerged from the burned sleeve was red and swollen, peppered with blisters of various sizes.

The stench of charred meat invaded her nostrils. She gagged, closing her eyes as she folded unto herself.

“Sarah!”

When she opened her eyes, there was no hand with scorched flesh anywhere in sight.

The only other person in the room was still sitting where he’d been before she dozed off. He stared at her, his pen poised over an open notebook. The lingering smell of the previous patient’s perfume was still in the air.

“Sarah? Are you back?” Dr. Rutger asked.

She nodded, unsure where she would be back from.

“What did you see?”

Her gaze drifted to the window, to the reflection of her own eyes.

“Sarah,” he insisted in a low, steady voice, as if afraid to break the spell. He moved closer to the edge of his seat. “When you close your eyes so tight, what do you see then?”

Sarah picked at a loose thread on the corner of the armchair. “Things that I don’t wanna see. Stuff that makes no sense, that I wish wouldn’t be real.”

Dr. Rutger smiled. “But are they real?”

They felt real to her, but she couldn’t bring herself to admit that she wasn’t sure.

“You know, you’re the only patient I have who falls asleep during hypnosis and comes out of it all on your own.”

Sarah didn’t share his amusement at this extra oddity. She’d love to be normal for once.

He looked down at his notes. “Last session, you mentioned your panic episode at the university last year. Is that similar to what happened a few days ago, when you thought you were sleepwalking?”

“No.” She wouldn’t even have known about the sleepwalking—if that what it really was—if she hadn’t walked an entire block in the middle of the night to Jeremy’s place.

The only thing that came out of that was that now the door was going to be locked and the keys hidden away every night.

“Do you want to talk about what happened at the university last year?”

“No.”

“Other than the sleepwalking, anything else changed? Are you still struggling with believing you’re awake during your dreams and separating that from reality when you wake up?”

Sarah didn’t answer, but he seemed to gage the truth from her silence.

Dr. Rutger jotted something down on his notebook. “Have you tried any of the tricks we discussed?”

She glowered at him. “They don’t work.”

“It’s only a matter of conditioning yourself to pay attention to the details and interpreting them.”

“I do pay attention! It doesn’t make any difference. I can see my feet touching the ground, and count how many fingers I have. I can read a book and write an essay. I feel hot and cold and pain. Water feels wet when I touch it and I can remember the smell of that aseptic gray hallway. And I can taste the blood in my mouth.” She stopped talking then, trying to control her breathing. “Whether it’s simply my mind outsmarting me doesn’t matter. The tricks don’t work. I could be dreaming right now and I wouldn’t be able to tell.”

“And what have you been dreaming about lately?”

Sarah picked at the loose thread some more, then pushed it back against the fabric, worried that she’d tear it.

“As I’ve explained, it might be helpful for you to describe the dreams to me. I understand it may be unpleasant, but this is a safe place. You can tell me whatever you want. There will be no judgement.”

“Fine.” She glanced up at the clock. “But ten minutes won’t be enough for that.”

Dr. Rutger followed her gaze. “Sarah, what time does our session end?”

“Three-thirty.”

“Then why would we only have ten minutes left?”

She looked back at the clock, confused when the image didn’t match what she’d thought she’d seen a moment ago.

“We have time,” he said.

Sarah still stared at the clock.

“Tell me about your most recent dreams.”

She pressed her lips together to stop the answer that was on the tip of her tongue.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

He looked disappointed by her silence this time. “What are you so afraid of?”

“That you’ll never stop asking me questions,” she answered reflexively.

Dr. Rutger laughed. “Besides that.”

She shrugged.

“There’s nothing here for you to be afraid of.”

It was easier said than done.

“Are you still seeing your sister try to kill you?”

She shook her head, then realized that was a lie. “Once or twice.”

“But there’s been more?”

She nodded, comfortable with classifying her hallucinations as nightmares as well. “I think there’s some kind of explosion. I’m always sort of confused. Sometimes I know it’s a dream, and I know I’ve dreamed it before. But that doesn’t change anything.”

“Should it?”

She sighed. “There’s always something happening out of sight. I get pieces sometimes. People screaming, smoke, I can’t breathe. I’m not even sure all of it is part of the same puzzle. I never know where I am or what I’m doing.”

“Are you alone?”

She shook her head.

“Have you tried asking someone where you are?”

No, she hadn’t. She hadn’t thought it would matter. It was like the grayish corridors. They existed in her mind. It didn’t matter where they were supposed to be. But maybe it would give her something to focus on during the dream.

She was also curious to hear what her mind came up with as an answer to that question.

“We’ve talked about the New Nation attacks and how that could have been what initially planted this fear into your mind. Have you asked your family about any incidents you may have been exposed to when you were younger?”

“Yeah. They couldn’t think of anything that would’ve made such a lasting impression.”

No one in her immediate circle of friends and family had ever been affected by any New Nation attacks. Not even any freak accidents.

“I don’t doubt your fear is real,” he said. “We’re only trying to find a reason for it.”

“I know. I’m not complaining.”

It was a good plan, the problem was she didn’t think they were getting anywhere. The fear was there, that part was obvious enough. Several fears and foreign emotions, some she couldn’t even name. Even when she looked in the mirror. In the dreams, she saw her own face, but not herself. If that made any sense.

She realized she’d been drawing a strange pattern on the inside of her wrist with her other thumb. It felt familiar and comforting, though she didn’t know why. She did it again, on purpose this time, pulling at the sensation to draw the memory out.

It was almost there… like a name being sounded out until the brain got it right…

Without warning, something grabbed her insides and squeezed.

* * *

“Shoo!”

Sarah looked up from the screen to find Cypher waving a hand towards her. “What?”

“How is this not clear? Shoo!” He stopped, crossing his arms. “I was told to send you back to your room if you tried to do any work.”

“It’s all low-level stuff.” She wasn’t confident enough to deal with anything that might be really important. “I was sorting through last week’s emergency calls.”

“Go rest. That’s the one good thing about being grounded, isn’t it?”

“I was bored.” Not to mention, she was afraid of being alone with her thoughts.

“If you don’t go back to your room, I’ll tell Unicorn. No, wait. She’s still out. I’ll tell Pegasus.”

“What are you? Five?” Unicorn was out since that morning, but she should be back soon. Pegasus was at the compound, but he’d been pretty busy lately. “Fine, I’ll go be bored out of my skull in my room.”

“Don’t worry, there’s no shortage of work waiting for whenever you’re good.”

That’s assuming she’d ever be good. Maybe she should join the cleaning crew instead.

Sarah waved at him, heading back to her room.

The last couple of days since they’d told Athena about some of her problems had been an odd mix of talking to the doctors, having any and every test imaginable done, and long periods of nothing. She hadn’t gone into details, but she told them she’d thought she’d seen things that weren’t there and that she was having trouble identifying whether she was awake or not.

During all that mess, she’d barely managed to talk to Pegasus, a result of their mismatched schedules. She found she wanted to see him. And despite not having any answers about how she truly felt about him, there was one long conversation she owed him still.

A growing sense of anxiousness had been dominating her waking hours, and having so much idle time was not helping it at all. If Athena’s theory that all this was a nervous breakdown, then feeling anxious was bound to be counterproductive. But well, she wouldn’t be in this mess if she could simply tell her mind to cut it out.

She got to her room just as the intercom sounded. “I wasn’t misbehaving,” was the first thing she said.

Pegasus’ laughter sounded clearly on the other end. “That’s not what I heard.”

Cypher really had a big mouth.

“What’s up?”

“I was wondering how things went with Dr. Blue and Athena.”

She pressed her forehead against the wall. “So far, they haven’t found anything wrong with me. Athena thinks it’s a nervous breakdown. She wants me to go see one of the doctors over at Center tomorrow. Dr. Blue wants to run some more tests so he could see inside my brain, which I guess is fine unless he’s into vivisection.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. Even we have rules about animal cruelty.”

She stuck her tongue out at the intercom since he wasn’t in sight.

“Any more nightmares?” he asked.

“Not since our last talk.”

“That’s good.”

Sarah heard a few voices in the background, but couldn’t identify them. “Are you still working?”

“I have 56 minutes. I was thinking of heading over to the garden. How about you meet me there?”

“Sure. I’ll wait for you there.” It would give her some time to gather the courage to bring up the kiss. Kisses?

She groaned, speeding up her pace down the hallway. She turned a corner and almost ran into Pegasus. “Did you run here?”

His sudden appearance did nothing to calm her speeding heart, but he was undisturbed. “Heading to the garden?”

She nodded, matching his pace.

An intercom sounded as they passed it. Reminded of the cameras watching their every move, she pointed at herself with a questioning look at the ceiling before answering the intercom.

“Phoenix, you and Pegasus are needed upstairs,” Michael said. “We’ve got a call.”

“I’m grounded.”

“Not today apparently.”

Pegasus shrugged. “We’ll check it out.”

When they arrived at Comm, Cypher was nowhere in sight. Michael directed them to the briefing room.

Sarah trailed behind Pegasus. “Should we be okay with this?”

He paused. “I know you’re worried after what happened last time, but don’t let that fear take over.”

Sarah followed him into the briefing room. Without better options, she listened intently as Griffon went over the mission basics. Local police had pursued what they believed to be New Nation members into a department store and now hostages had been taken inside. Disguised as an emergency response unit, they were supposed to take over the situation from the local police.

“Capture them if possible, but no taking unnecessary risks.” Griffon turned to them. “Any questions?”

“I thought I was still grounded,” Sarah said.

“You are,” he answered impatiently. “But we’re shorthanded, so you’ll have to humor us.”

“Just try not to get anyone killed,” Scorpion said.

Sarah couldn’t even protest. As Mermaid could attest, that jab was more than deserved.

The group moved out, but Sarah lingered behind, struggling with her conscience.

Would they really be better off without her if it meant they were one person short? The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach didn’t really offer anything in terms of a reliable answer.

“You good to go?” Pegasus asked.

“Yeah, I guess.” Would that constitute a lie?

“Focus on the task at hand.” He winked at her, handing her a gun. “And when in doubt, shoot the bad guys.”

She laughed. “Thanks. Very helpful. You should be an instructor.”

“You’ll be fine.”

Regardless of the truth in them, his words comforted her. In an automatic motion, she placed a hand on his chest, leaning in as if to kiss him. She hadn’t realized that’s what she’d meant to do until he jerked away. Confusion showed in his eyes for a moment.

Never mind not being able to blush, she was sure she was all shades of red now. She tried to still her emotions, pretending nothing had happened. Thankfully, Pegasus turned away. She didn’t meet his gaze again, didn’t even look at the others, afraid everyone would read her expression.

Whatever the catalyst for this newest embarrassment, she really needed to get her act together. She didn’t mean to be playing a game of hot and cold, and catching him by surprise in the middle of a mission was not what she wanted.

She needed to have an honest talk with Pegasus. But right now, she needed to focus on the job.

They could talk when they got back. There was no rush.