Where possible, Lyssa followed the open path, where roots, branches, and barren shrub did not block the way. She was not alone in this waking dream. She was flanked on either side by herself. If she looked too long at their faces she began to lose track of where she really stood. Which was she? Was she the one behind that briar patch, or the one by that dead tree? Or the one making footprints on the singular path behind her?

Singular, because the road branched ahead. She walked alongside her copies, meandering through this deadwood with two, three, four separate roads to choose from at any step. But if she took a step forward, stopped, and looked over her shoulder, she saw that there never was a choice, and that she had made one set of footprints.

The fluttering of wings returned her attention to her journey.

“You should hurry,” the bird said.

“I think I’m beginning to understand this place.”

“You always do at around this point.”

“That’s my mind up there, isn’t it?” Lyssa pointed at the island hovering above the spire. “And this, this is all me.”

“There is only ever one of us when we wake,” the bird said. “Making dilemmas are hard for a reason.”

“What are you supposed to be?”

“We don’t believe in terms until we make them to describe something that was always there. I could be the warden of your preconscious, if that pleases you.”

“Can you help me?”

The bird gestured towards the entirety of the deadwood.

“Which one?”

“The real me,” Lyssa exclaimed.

“What does that mean? Real. People aren’t static beings, they change. From day to day too, even minute to minute, although we don’t notice it as much. We go to sleep, our mind learns, incorporates the day’s experiences into ourselves, and when we wake we have become a different person.

“You’ve been here before. Every time you think you’ve been backed into a corner.”

“If you’re not going to help, I’m going to go ahead.” Lyssa strode forward, annoyed. In her haste her leg kicked against an exposed root, and she stumbled a step. Her foot fell heavily on top of the layer of dead leaves on the forest floor. The sound of crinkled leaves echoed multiple times. All her mirror copies seemed to have made similar missteps. She glanced at them in the pause, and they looked back. Instinct clicked. Lyssa broke into a run.

The paths were narrowing; she was drawing closer to the base of the spire. There were less and less choices of road to take. Her mirror copies had become closer as well. They looked at her with the same panic she looked at them. Each was as hurried as the other, and just as desperate.

Lyssa did not ask questions. She simply ran. But the trail did meander. And the closer she drew towards the spire, the louder her instinct shouted.

Only one of them could make it.

When the road meandered again, Lyssa did not follow it. Instead she dove straight into the dead thicket, directly aiming for the spire. The branches scratched and bit her. Each nick on her cheek or her hands flashed with painful memory. A sharp branch caught her shoulder, and she remembered nearly drowning in red paint at the hatches of the bombers. A bush snared her hair, and brought recollection of the flight, when Vortex took them into the air, and then the fall. She felt again the primal fear of gravity. Each hurt was a memory. Each scratch merged with her being. Each scar a lesson.

She grit her teeth, shielding her face with her arms, pushing through the woodland claws slashing her skin. Through squinted eyes she glanced at her competition. The mirror copies had thinned considerably. She was nearly upon the clearing where the base of the spire sprouted. The spire looked like tree trunks, twisted together into rope around a narrow hollow. An elevator sat at the bottom, made of metal wire, warped into the shape of a bird’s cage. It had room for one.

She gasped. The last of the branches fell away behind her; she had entered the clearing. She sprinted towards the elevator, her heart pounding. She did not reach it. The spire suddenly turned sideways. Her cheek felt the ground. A mirror copy had struck her. She grabbed the copy’s ankle and pulled her down with her. Restraining her was difficult, they were both evenly matched. The copy flung her off and pushed her onto the ground.

“I know how to do better,” she said, bearing over her. “I know how we can live.”

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“No,” Lyssa said. She grasped the copy’s neck and flipped their positions. “I can do better.”

“You’ll get us killed,” the copy said with a snarl. She threw a fist. Lyssa swatted it aside. “I’m going to be more assertive. I’m not going to let people push me around.”

“No, I need to be more careful and listen to others. I need to be more cautious.”

They glared at each other. Both had been mangled by the branches of the thicket, but in different ways. They fought for supremacy, for the right to be actualized. Both obsessed with their own means of how best to continue their life once they woke. They were so preoccupied they did not notice the elevator’s chains rumble. The bird cage’s door had closed, its singular vacancy taken. The elevator withdrew from the ground.

Lyssa watched two of her copies stop their fight to look up at her. She saw the look in their eyes. The envy, hatred, the fear. Fear that she would be the wrong one. She looked down at her hands, taking in her own set of scars she had gained from diving through the thicket. But she had been more furtive, less hasty. Patient, but not hesitant. She snuck by while those two mirror copies, torn and bleeding from the harsh lessons the woodland taught them, fought each other for the right to be real. But this was not the first time her life had been threatened; she could not make an extreme change to herself every time she felt impending doom.

The bird twirled around the spire, arriving at a hover outside of the cage.

“Let’s hope you made the right choice,” it said, cackling.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve left this place,” Lyssa said.

“It likely won’t be your last, if you want to keep doing your line of work. I’ll be here to watch, as always.”

It beat its wings, and then was gone. The elevator continued to rise. The higher it ascended, the closer the island grew. Fog rolled in onto the land below, shrouding it until it could no longer be seen. Or remembered.

“Where…” Lyssa muttered. She clutched her head and sat on the floor of the elevator.

Ding

The door rattled open. She stepped onto the halls of her mind mansion. From here she made the familiar jump back to reality. Her eyes opened in the real world.

The first thing she noticed was that she was a foot above the ground.

“Whoa!” She fell onto her feet.

She quickly took in her surroundings. It had grown dark. In the distance, the lights of the next break point broke the evening dimness. Her teammates glanced back at her.

“What is it?” Ecto asked.

“We made it,” Lyssa said.

“Of course we did, Eury. Thanks to you.”

“Eury?”

Ecto looked at her teammates.

“Sorry,” Ecto said. “Lyssa.”

Ironhog chuckled.

“You’re a wild one, girl.”

“We’re almost there,” Vortex said over her shoulder. “Don’t let your guard down.”

They said nothing for the rest of the way to the break point. Dread clung and grew on her with every step. She could not help but feel she had done something wrong.

Only when they set foot within the safe zone of the camp did Vortex seem to relax. Burnout exhaled deeply with relief. Ironhog stretched, grunting loudly as his large bones cracked. Ecto and Vortex exchanged glances.

“I’ll deal with it,” Vortex said. The team left for food, water, rest, whatever they needed at that moment.

“Did I do something wrong?” Lyssa asked, even as she knew the answer.

“Come with me.” Vortex led her to a tent with television screens set up. There were only a few students there. When Lyssa entered some of them did a double take. Others stared.

Vortex fiddled with a remote and turned the channel to the games.

-still hard to believe we got to witness that! I mean she came out of nowhere.

Some people are suggesting an investigation needs to be made. And that she ought to be pulled from the games.

That just sounds like salty bettors.

Maybe Tim, maybe.

The channel changed to a recording of the games. Vortex rewound to a specific point in the drone footage. She began playback a few minutes after they left the pond.

Lyssa watched helicopters drop off soldiers in powered suits near their location. All-terrain vehicles were deployed as well. The combined arms closed in on their position. A small part of her retreated in fear, wondering how they were going to get out of that situation. But the longer she watched, the more she remembered.

Her teammates fought back well. Vortex protected their back. Ecto phased into some of the vehicles, disabling them from within. Burnout melted tires and created obscuring smoke. Ironhog threw whole trees and boulders, destroying the enemy’s cover. Lyssa was more intent on what she had done. She watched herself hover twenty feet in the air, casting beams of energy from her palms, knocking the soldiers back with such prejudice that Lyssa felt squeamish even watching. A helicopter’s engines blossomed into flame at one of her beams. It had been preparing to leave and she did not let it. Vehicles were crushed and dismissed. Wherever she missed, the very landscape received a remodeling. When the fight was over, the area was a mess. Swathes had been cut out of the landscape. Trenches made dense hieroglyphs on the earth. Ruined vehicles spat smoke, some on their side, some upside down. Ecto had to phase the crew out of those ones. That was not the worst part. Throughout the fight, Lyssa had been laughing.

“I…” Lyssa wondered if she ought to say anything at all.

“You could have done away with maniacal showboating,” Vortex said. “But other than that, you did very well.”

“Did anyone get hurt?”

“Scrapes and bruises, I think.” Vortex sighed. “I’m not going to judge you. I sure as hell didn’t use all I had. I still haven’t. I do wish you’d tell me what your gifts are.”

“It’s complicated,” Lyssa said. She contemplated for a moment. She needed the trust of her teammates. But her good sense knew the implications of her gift. A half-truth then. A lie by occlusion. She took a deep breath.

The tent flaps were shoved aside. Military boots crunched as a squad of men in black stormed inside. The students stood rigid in shock. Their eyes fell on the blue insignia on their shoulders of a stylized M.A.G.E. acronym. The men stood at readied ease, their weapons by their sides, but their hands were on the grips. They moved aside for a familiar man in a brown duster.

“Director Whitworth,” Vortex greeted.

“D-Director,” Lyssa said as well.

“Nice to see you again,” Whitworth said. “Congratulations to everyone here and to come for making it so far. Lyssa? I’m going to have to ask you to come with me. Don’t worry.”

“Am I in trouble?” Lyssa asked.

Whitworth stood by the tent’s entrance and held a flap open with a welcoming smile on his face.