The only light in the whole warehouse came from Fletcher’s silver lighter. She held it close to her face, and the low guttural flame turned the walls into a parade of thick, shifting shadows. She stood with her back to me, but the outline of the knife was visible in her hands, thin and deadly. The girl struggled in Fletcher’s grip, but she could no more break free than could a rabbit from a bear trap. “Quiet, quiet,” Fletcher murmured. “You are lost. And now you cannot be found, now you shall slip away and vanish, forgotten like a dream…”

I raised Bella into the air and fired. There was a blinding white flash and a deafening report—certainly enough to grab her attention. Fletcher whirled around, dragging the girl in front of her as a makeshift shield and ignoring her whimpers. “Who’s there?” she called. “What do you want of me?”

“That was a warning,” I said. “It’s very easy to understand. I have a gun and you don’t.” I motioned to the girl. “Let her go.”

“Oh. So it’s that.” Her eyes narrowed. “I see. How similar you are, indeed. Rare specimens.” Her nightmare flared, and for a moment the air around her bent to reveal shelves piled high with glass jars and transparent boxes, relics of other such specimens suspended inside. The girl herself seemed transfixed by the vision, pinned in place like a butterfly in a rack. “This one is so small—what concern can she be of yours?”

I shrugged. “None, really. But she doesn’t belong to you, either.”

“An impasse, then.” She flicked the knife up so that its blade rested at the girl’s throat, pressing just hard enough that a thin line of blood appeared and began to trickle down to the collar of her shirt. “That suits me well enough. I have a steady hand, but if you pull that trigger I will bleed her from ear to ear and there will be nothing you can do to stop it.”

“That was your plan coming here. Try it now and I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

“And so we talk and talk. How does it end?” she said. She was smiling, a clinical smile that didn’t reach her eyes. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all that she had anything at all to smile about. “It ends when one of us gets scared. When your resolve wavers, when that gun barrel trembles, when you are no longer so sure you have the strength to pull the trigger…”

I met her eyes, but I couldn’t match that smile. Not with the girl just beneath my sights. “Maybe it won’t be me,” I said. “You’d kill someone in the dark but I think you’re a coward who won’t do it in the light.”

“Maybe, you say. But I am a nightmare and you are only human—and in front of me I have your mirror.” She nudged the girl with her free hand. “You’re scared, aren’t you?”

She tried to nod, then winced as the blade dug in farther. She didn’t dare make a sound, but in the shards of light that danced across her face I caught the edge of a tear trickling down her cheek. Shock and fear and adrenaline were keeping her quiet and upright, enough not to draw down Fletcher’s wrath…but I didn’t think they’d last much longer. “You don’t understand anything,” I said, taking a step closer to Fletcher. “Not a damn thing. You wouldn’t. Not a jumped-up nightmare who thinks she’s strong scaring children.”

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Fletcher scoffed. “False bravado.” Well, if that was true, it was true for both of us, for her nightmare grew stronger too, digging its claws in deep. The patch on her shoulder flickered, warping into a sharp-edged red cross, snakes entwined across its center. My foot landed on clean ceramic tiles, polished so that they shone. The warehouses’ shadows seemed to fill with sinister machinery: IV stands and unwelcoming raised beds, arrays of tubes and hoses and wires which moved on their own, faceless nurses rushing past in my periphery.

Even Fletcher’s voice changed—it fell lower still, gaining an undertone of authority. “Something’s wrong with you,” she said, almost like a mantra. “Something’s wrong inside you and you don’t know what it is, that’s why you’re here…”

I forced myself to take another step towards her. “Do better,” I growled. “You think I haven’t seen worse?”

The warehouse was almost completely erased from around me. My coat crinkled at the edges like flimsy dressing-gown paper. “Nothing you can do will fix it,” she continued. “Nothing anyone can do will fix it, not even high and mighty Drakon, his own hours numbered.” She fumbled for the lighter and snapped it closed, so that we stood in utter darkness. “You are alone.”

Had her voice come from a different angle than before? She held the girl’s life in her hands, and if Fletcher slit her throat I might not hear nor know where to shoot. This was her hospital, her nightmare, where she held all the power and I had none. And she wasn’t so wrong. Somewhere deep down inside I was still a kid trapped in a never-ending nightmare, terrified and waiting to wake up. I’d seen my own face in the girl’s, and I’d known that I hadn’t escaped that fear at all. Not truly. Not as much as I pretended to the world.

But the Outscape was a hard city. I hadn’t gotten to be a scared child for very long.

I whispered a prayer and brought Bella down where I remembered Fletcher’s wrist was. I heard her shout in pain and I heard the clatter of the metal knife on the ground.

Before she could think to retrieve it, I crossed the few feet between us and grabbed the girl by the front of her shirt, yanking her free of Fletcher’s grasp and into my own. She let out a soft small gasp, which I took as a good sign she wasn’t dead.

Fletcher spat. “Clever.”

I leveled the gun out into the inky blackness. I didn’t know where I was aiming—but neither did she. “This isn’t one of your dreams,” I said. “It doesn’t matter how scared I am so long as I’m still standing.”

“You’ve won yourself nothing.”

“Go,” I said. “Get out of here. Run away. I don’t want to see you again.”

The words hung in the air. If she attacked me with the knife I didn’t know if I could fight her off. But she didn’t have the girl to shield her any longer, and evidently she decided the fight wasn’t worth it. I felt her go rather than heard her, the nightmare around me slipping away, the biting antiseptic smell giving way to the tang of seawater mixed with dust.

I sighed. I lit a cigarette. I put Bella back into my pocket.

Throughout it all the girl had stood stock-still, and precious little of the fear had drained from her face. I moved my hand to her shoulder. “Let’s go,” I said, as kindly as I could muster. “You’re coming with me.”