* * *

Sarah moved quickly, going through the motions as if following a predetermined plan. She logged out the car and grabbed the keys without issue. It was a good thing that she’d paid attention when she was leaving with Mermaid and Lore for the party—but hadn’t that also been a dream?

She memorized the exit code as fast as she could—Rainbows End Where They Return East Never Turning.

The sound of her flip-flops echoed as she ran to the car. Thankful that no one stopped her, she raced out of the compound. Ignoring traffic signs and whatever red lights she could get away with, she sped towards the place where everything took place.

Dream or not, real or not, it didn’t matter at this point.

Who was she kidding? Even if her heart came out crushed in the end, she’d still want to see Pegasus again. Even if it were a dream.

Her eyes started tearing up again.

Stop it.

She could be so calm during normal missions, but anything related to her dreams made her into a trembling, unfocused, panic-stricken mess. She hit the steering wheel, but she didn’t slow down.

From the dark corner of her mind, another thought crept forward. She’d had this sort of feeling before, with Robyn, though she hadn’t been able to pinpoint what it was. But the feeling had been right all along, hadn’t it?

Her sister had been dead and the other version of Robyn had been there to kill her.

She couldn’t ignore it, regardless of the odds.

And if there was nothing here waiting for her and Pegasus’ death was indeed a nightmare, she would lock herself up as soon as she got back to the compound. As soon as she made sure Pegasus was nowhere near this place and safe—or as safe as he could be with his choice of occupation.

Sarah turned into a narrower street and ran straight into a police barricade.

“Locals have the perimeter,” she remembered Cypher saying.

She abandoned the car in the middle of the street.

Looking up at the rooftops, she searched for anything she might recognize.

Her heart was pounding in her chest.

She needed to find Pegasus, needed to save him, even if only in her imagination.

This was the place, but where was that alley? She’d been too distraught at the time to register it.

She needed to find the rooftop of that office building. Ignoring the officer yelling at her about the car, she took off running before the plan formed in her mind. It wasn’t like she could ask the police politely to let her through.

Sarah darted into a familiar-looking building when someone was coming out and barged into the first open office she could find, startling some guy in a suit and tie enough that he spilled his coffee.

And just like that, she was out the window. Bare feet hit the pavement, her flip-flops having been lost somewhere along the way.

She turned onto a side street. Now inside the perimeter, all she had to do was find the right alley.

Running down one back street to the next, running between parked cars and over trash bags, she searched for the correct location. Her mind reexamined everything from where the sun had been up on the rooftop to where she was now in relation to the department store.

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A plane went by overhead, casting a moving shadow on the world, and she held back the urge to scream.

She was so close now. She was sure she was almost there… but time was not cooperating.

The office building she’d climbed up in the dream—was it a dream?—came into view between two smaller buildings.

Sarah forced herself to speed up, ignoring her muscles’ complaints as she remembered the configuration of how the back streets came to the alley where Pegasus was killed. There wasn’t much time.

A large, decrepit garbage container occupied the passageway between two buildings, blocking the way. Another route would cost her precious time.

She scampered up over it, paying little attention to the sudden sting on the sole of her left foot. It didn’t matter, and it would matter even less if she didn’t make it in time.

Sarah turned into what she thought was the right alley at a run. On the opposite end of the alley, two men were engaged in hand-to-hand combat.

She almost tripped over her own feet, somehow surprised by what she’d been searching for—maybe she hadn’t truly believed she’d find it until that second.

But there he was. Pegasus.

Despite the mask, she knew it was him. She recognized his fighting by now.

She didn’t slow down. She didn’t think she could.

Their fight was over before she’d crossed half the distance between them.

Pegasus had his quarry pinned against the wall, both their backs to her.

Sarah kept running, wondering if she should cry out to him. Would that only distract him and make him more vulnerable?

He had died almost exactly where he was standing now.

Three shots—all from behind.

Her heart beat faster.

Another figure came into view ahead, emerging from another alleyway not ten meters in front of her. Quietly, he raised his gun, aiming at Pegasus.

Without slowing down, Sarah screamed. She barreled into him as the first shot was fired.

They tumbled to the ground, struggling for the gun. She managed a clumsy jab at his throat, using the distraction to take his weapon.

Falling backwards away from him, she barely had time to aim as he came at her with a knife. The shot echoed between the buildings, reminding her once again of that horrible day.

She pulled the trigger again and again, shooting him until she was sure he was dead. Tears streamed down her face as she laughed. Regardless of whether it was real, she’d lost her mind, she was sure of it now.

But it had to be real—right?

She was still standing there, holding the gun aimed at the lifeless body on the ground even though there was no longer any point to it. Like a monster from a nightmare, did she expect him to rise again?

The more rational part of her was still waiting to wake up from this. It might be a long wait.

“Phoenix!” The shout registered, and she realized it was not the first time Pegasus had called her.

She turned towards him.

He was alive.

Pegasus had the other terrorist immobilized with his face turned away from her and pressed against the wall.

She felt her own face then, remembering she didn’t have her mask on. A mask? Hell, she didn’t even have shoes on.

Sarah looked up reflexively towards the office building, searching as if she expected to see herself up on the rooftop. The memory came then, of her looking down at the alley from above, but it was just in her head. There was no one there.

“Phoenix? Are you with me?”

She nodded.

Not a dream, she repeated, wondering if she believed it entirely this time.

She looked down at the gun in her hand and the dead body lying at her feet.

“We’ll deal with it later,” Pegasus said, drawing her attention back to him. He’d pulled the prisoner’s shirt over his face so he wouldn’t see her. “Are you okay to move?”

She nodded. Breathing was still difficult, but the knots in her insides were a different kind now. She couldn’t look away from Pegasus, half terrified that he would vanish in the blink of an eye. If this was still a dream, she didn’t want to wake up.

For his part, Pegasus was looking at her as if she were a rare type of dotted unicorn you only saw when the full moon rose alongside the sun. He was, of course, the rational one of the two—even if he were a hallucination.

She blinked at him after a moment. He was talking to someone over the com.

“I’m bringing him back now. Can someone take care of the body?”

Should she be worried that she’d already forgotten about that? Well, she could probably worry about that particular disturbing nuance of her psyche later. First was the part where she might be insane.

“Cypher, are we clear? I have Phoenix with me.”

There was a pause where she figured Cypher was having one of his fits.

“Are we clear?” Pegasus repeated sharply. Then he simply gestured for her to follow him. He shoved the prisoner in front of them. The man stumbled blindly ahead, shirt still covering his face.

Sarah couldn’t help one last look up at the rooftop.

Her breath caught when she saw someone looking down, exactly where she had been in the dream. The masked person watched them for a second or two, then stepped back out of sight. For a moment, her mind imagined it had been her.

Ahead, she could see the metal frame where she’d hit the back of her head after seeing Pegasus’ body.

The pain of hitting her head had been so real, but so was the sharp sting on the sole of her foot now.

There was no difference.

So… which was real?