Sapan waited in a dimly lit room, the walls painted a dull gray, with a single fluorescent light flickering overhead, casting eerie shadows. The room had the typical setup for an interrogation, with a plain metal table and a couple of chairs.
Suddenly, the door creaked open, and a man entered. He was handsome, with a strong build, and he wore a crisp blue suit that accentuated his stature. Sporting glasses that added a touch of intellectual charm, he strolled over to the table and perched himself on the edge, his posture relaxed yet commanding.
Placing a file next to him on the table, Satoshi broke the ice. "Sapan? Or should I say Ayume?" he asked in a confident yet casual tone. Sapan's heart sank. Not many knew about his dream identity. He wondered if he was in some kind of trouble. "You look so scared and rigid. Relax, you're not in any trouble," Satoshi assured him. "By the way, my name is Satoshi," he introduced himself.
Despite the reassurance, concern still clouded Sapan's face. "Where am I?" he asked nervously. "You're in the Special Unit HQ," Satoshi replied.
Sapan's curiosity persisted. "Why am I brought here?" he inquired. Satoshi smiled gently. "Okay, let me get straight to the point," he said, rising from his perch and beginning to pace around the room as he explained the situation to Sapan. "I tried to reach out to you through your website, but I didn't hear back from you. So I got the IT guy to hack into your website, trace the admin IP, and found your address. You weren't there, but then I went to your workplace, where I found Linda." A mischievous glint sparked in Satoshi's eyes. Pausing for a moment, he suddenly leaned toward Sapan and asked, "Can you tell me if she's single?" Sapan's immediate response was, "What?"
Straightening up and adjusting his glasses, Satoshi continued, "Oh, sorry, I got distracted. We found out you were in the hospital, and you took your sweet time waking up. So we brought you here immediately once you did."
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"What were you looking for me for?" Sapan pressed. Satoshi replied, "You're a demon hunter, right? None of my colleagues believe in your work." Taking a pause, he finally sat down in the chair opposite Sapan, leaning forward and meeting his eyes. "But I do."
Satoshi opened the file, revealing a photo of a woman on the first page with the headline "Missing." Taking a deep breath, he explained, "In the last two weeks, over 32 people have gone missing, actually abducted. We haven't been able to find a trace of them. There are just a couple of eyewitnesses who claim demons took them away."
"Demons?" Sapan looked confused. "Okay, there's nothing like demons in real life. What I say I fight and kill are demons that are formed in your thoughts, that only live in your dreams. Nightmares, actually."
"I too would wish that was true," Satoshi reached for his phone in his pocket and tapped a couple of buttons before showing it to Sapan. On the screen was an image of a person or a creature, restrained with chains and kept sedated. The creature had twisted horns, a green, hard-scaled body with darker than black eyes and sharp pointed claws, and a scar on a human-like face.
[https://i.imgur.com/LVXHxnM.jpeg]
"It can't be," Sapan exclaimed in shock as he watched the video. The resemblance between the man in the video and the physical manifestation of an evolved demon in nightmares was uncanny. "How could this be possible?" he wondered.
Satoshi continued, "This man here is a senior official from the military. His name is Duncan. Only once he came to his senses as Duncan. He said he escaped from some kind of torture prison. He spoke something about nightmares that we couldn't make sense of. Since then, we have tried several times, but we couldn't awaken Duncan inside this demon's body."
Sapan realized that if these were really the demons from nightmares, it changed everything he knew about this world. "What do you want from me?" he asked Satoshi.
"I want you to get into his head, his dream, or nightmare, whatever it is. Find Duncan, and get any information you can," Satoshi spoke with determination in his eyes.