cages. “I’m asleep,” I murmur to myself, my knuckles going white as I continue to grip the bars. “I’m still asleep.”
That has to be what this is. Those pills I took messed me up so badly that I’m dreaming right now, and all of this isn’t real. Maybe I even dreamt up Dr. Ophidian. All of that strange encounter was just a figment of my anxious imagination readying me for the move. Really, I’m still in bed at Serenity, and I’m going to wake up any minute now.
I squeeze the metal bars, feeling the coarse texture that’s rough enough to scrape the skin of my palms. I tighten my grip even more.
“Wake up,” I mutter.
I blink hard, but I’m still stuck in this dungeon where it feels like all the warmth is being sapped out of the air and then my body.
“Wake up!” I hiss shrilly at myself, flinching when my words bounce off the walls.
“You’re not asleep.”
The gravelly voice makes me nearly jump out of my shoes as I whirl around in the darkness, my eyes landing on a figure in the cage next to mine—one I hadn’t noticed until right now.
He’s hunched against the stone wall with one knee up, his arm draped casually over it. All he has on are ragged pants, the bottoms of them frayed, while his chest is bare except for a link of iron chains that make an X across the front of his torso. Long black hair hangs around his head, blocking his face from view, and even though he’s slightly dirty and has streaks of muck marring his chest and feet, I can see that his skin tone is sage green.
He looks much too big to be stuck in the small space he’s been crammed into. His body looks like it was once toned and muscled to perfection, but now seems like he’s dropped too much weight too fast, so much so that some of his ribs are showing.
I suck in a breath as he slowly lifts his head, and his eyes flash gold in the dark. “I thought you’d be one of me. But you aren’t,” he says, his voice sounding like he hasn’t used it in a while. He adjusts his position slightly, and the sound of the metal dragging against stone scrapes against my ears like nails on a chalkboard.
I press my lips together, refusing to answer him. He’s just part of the dream, I tell myself. Either that or my flickers have just gotten much, much worse. I’m no longer seeing just monsters. This dungeon is probably nothing more than a regular patient room, and my mind has become so broken that it’s transformed it into a thing of nightmares.
“Nothing to say?” he asks.
Refusing to talk to my hallucination, I turn away from him and go to the opposite corner of my cage—no, room, I tell myself. This is just a normal room. What I’m seeing isn’t really here.
“Hmm, that’s too bad,” he murmurs, his head settling back against the stone behind him. “It’s boring sitting here day after day, but if that’s how you want to be…” he trails off, and I chance a look at him again, but his eyes are closed as he relaxes against the wall.
I cautiously study the creature my mind has created. I realize that what I thought were more dirt streaks across his abdomen is actually some sort of geometric tattoo, with matching lines and symbols on the insides of his arms.
My neighbor doesn’t say anything else, and soon, the only sounds that surround me are the inconsistent crackling from the flames in the fireplace, and my own quick breathing. I’m not sure how long I sit, waiting for my craziness to ebb, but it doesn’t. I finally make myself close my eyes, hoping that when I wake up, this will all be gone. With any luck, I’ll either wake up in Serenity or things will flicker back and I’ll finally be able to see my new ward for what it really is.
I’m jerked awake at the sound of a door slamming shut.
I jolt forward from where I was sleeping against the bars, my body immediately alert, but the dungeon hasn’t dissolved. I’m not back in some plain hospital-type room, and dread constricts my lungs, making it hard to breathe.
I barely have time to lament the fact that I’m still stuck in this nightmare hallucination when footsteps wrench my attention to them. A dark figure strides straight for my cage,