A dead man. They’d left me in this room with a damned dead man.

At least it didn’t smell. Whatever preservatives they’d applied—I could see the way his skin glistened unnaturally, pulled tight over the bones so that it couldn’t break down, the tension keeping his eyes open. He stared up into space, the light sizzling down on burnt-orange pupils. He didn’t have to worry about staring up into it. He didn’t have to worry about anything ever again.

There was no way I was going to sleep, though. Not with him for a roommate.

I paced around the room, more to get away from him than because I had any direction to go in. “What the hell do you want from me?” I shouted at the walls. “You’ve given me nothing. Not his name, not where he was, not even what damn time this happened! How am I supposed to construct a case with nothing? This is ridiculous. You’ve just dredged this up to scare me, to make yourselves look better in my eyes.”

The man in the bed stared at me accusingly. I tilted my head to the side to match his torn neck and stared back. I’d never met him in my life, never seen him, never known him…but it seemed I could almost hear him talking to me. Solid argument you have there, friend. But you’ve missed the obvious; you’re asking only what Jabberwock benefits from it, and not all the rest of the questions you should be. And between the two of us, you’re the only one who can ask them. Not in much of a position to do so myself.

(Or maybe, I acknowledged, I was just losing my mind from the confinement. I’d have to deal with that later. Temporary insanity was a small price to pay for having someone to talk to.)

I sat cross-legged on the floor. “Okay,” I said aloud. “What am I missing?”

Well, friend, he said, and it seemed like the corner of his mouth turned up in a grim smile. Someone had to kill me, didn’t they?

Damn. He was right. Maybe Fletcher and Arcadia had dragged him here just to frighten me; but it sure looked like the same monster that’d torn apart Chesnes and Daleland had decided to make mincemeat of him. You couldn’t lie about that. I pulled his arm from the bed and ran my finger along one of the deep lacerations that had split it from wrist to elbow. Bile rose in the back of my throat as I peeled back the tendons, looking for evidence of barbed claws, of subcutaneous poison, of anything that would help pin down what kind of creature it might be mimicking.

No nightmare was original. Everything was drawn from the waking world, no matter how it was distorted or twisted by warped, sleeping brains. The Outscape was the mirror of every metropolis, the grim streets through which people walked unaware of the forces waiting to claim them in their sleep. This monster was somebody’s nightmare—but whose? And what had they dreamed up?

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A bestiary isn’t what you’re looking for. What good would it be to know what the creature’s called?

“I have to know what it can do,” I said. “No one has any idea. It moves like a snake; it’s got claws like a lion; it’s got a hyena’s viciousness. It’s fast and it’s smart and it’s got the whole city as its playground.”

That’s not the question. Was I killed by a roving beast? Pure bad luck? He shrugged, and the movement opened a yawning gap, like another mouth, in his neck. No. I blinked, and his body was still unmoving on the bed. I stood up, rubbing my forehead and wishing I could reach in and shove my skull back into place. I was falling apart at the seams and this damn place would continue to pry me apart unless I got out—and soon. The man on the bed had other things to worry about. Or was it intentional? Was my death ordered by someone else?

“That’s what I’d thought. Way back at the beginning. Chesnes’ death benefitted Jabberwock, it was a show of force against Drakon. But nothing they’ve done since then makes any sense if they’re in control. Why are they pursuing Robin and what she knows if they’re the ones in control?”

But who else would be?

“No one. None of the major players, at least, and then we’re back around to square one. A rogue nightmare none of us can identify.” My hair was stringy, with a gritty slickness to it that betrayed how long I’d been stuck here. “That’s why Robin’s in such trouble. Drakon and Jabberwock are scared of this damn thing, and for all they know Robin’s running around with the key locked inside her head. Even if she’s not...” I sighed. “She can’t prove it. She can’t prove what she knows or doesn’t know until someone forces her memories.

“No! That doesn’t make any sense!” I shouted. “It’s too much of a coincidence that Chesnes would be the first kill. He was the perfect target—important enough to Drakon that his death would send a message, and he was already compromised, with vials of Jabberwock in his basement. What are the odds that something else would happen to get to him before they did?”

Seems that’s left you a contradiction in terms, friend. No closer to explaining how I died—this close to their residences, I was almost certainly a Jabberwock flunky, no? One of their runners, or at least someone who knew how to look the other way. Why would they order my death? Or Daleland’s, who was nothing to them?

“Maybe you sucked.”

Funny. He laughed.

I looked away and squeezed my eyes shut. The light found its way in regardless. “No, no. Keep it together.” Then I stopped dead in the middle of the room. “Oh,” I said. “Oh. Damn. That’s just what they couldn’t do.”

Stay sane?

“You’re nothing but my own thoughts projected onto the room’s only other face. Shut up.” He didn’t move. Of course he didn’t move. “Jabberwock’s the new player—they’ve been scrabbling for any advantage, they found those Watcher things from who knows where to stand guard. They found a slavering monster and they thought it would do their bidding, they sic’ed it on Chesnes…and they lost control. That’s why it’s still roaming the streets, that’s why they’re just as frightened of where it might be hiding. It’s not just wild—it’s feral.”

So where’s it gone to ground, then?

“Somewhere close by, clearly. It might not even look like a monster. It might…” It might look human. It might have fingers, I thought, which dug into your skin like talons. It might have sharpened teeth and a predatory smile. It might purr when it talked, like a low growl in the back of its throat.

It might be everything, in short, that described Dawn Arcadia.