Grey of the conveyor belt. White of the directed beam of light illuminating it. Black of the darkness that enveloped both of them, eclipsing all.

  With Lucy begrudgingly submitting herself to autopilot as she ran on and on with mindless abandon, her mind drifted and fixated on this world’s monochrome reality. It was a stark difference compared to the vibrant medieval town and sinister green lighting of Kenneth’s Dream, or even the deep dark blues of Cole’s Dream. If she didn’t occasionally glimpse the blue cloth of her tunic when she looked down, or her blonde bangs swaying over her line of sight as she ran, Lucy would have thought she had gone colour blind.

  Compared to all the Dreams she had been to thus far, including her own, this one was decidedly…lonely. There was not a single sign of life anywhere, for everything Lucy had encountered was mechanical, synthetic, constructed but not birthed. Admittedly, there were the walls showing facsimiles of people, but they were just that: faint impressions, and ones so chaotically jumbled together they barely resembled anthropomorphic entities at all. Perhaps there were other people out there, but if that were the case, this overbearing darkness was vehemently effective in hiding them from view and completely isolating searching eyes from one another.

  Isolation…That was the word that finally clicked into place as Lucy sought to describe the overwhelming emotion that had been lapping at the shores of her subconscious ever since she had stepped back into the darkness of this Dream. When she was wandering aimlessly during her first visit, while walking along this conveyor belt suspended in mid-air with no one and nothing else in sight, even when she was in the middle of being chased by the machine, all of those experiences evoked a deep sense of helplessness, that there was no one else to reach out to for help.

  Sinking into the frigid depths in the middle of a deserted ocean…

  Or being enveloped by a black, coiling miasma that melted one’s figure into indistinguishable darkness…

  Both images flashed before Lucy’s eyes as she continued running, running deeper and deeper into this Dream that was both beckoning and emotionlessly remorseful, like a perfectly blank grave stone. Every hair on Lucy’s neck stood up on end, her curiosity seeking to temper everything with skepticism and rationality, but only ending up feeding her rising anxiety as one definitive question boomed in her mind over and over again.

  What was wrong with this Dreamer?

  But just before Lucy’s thoughts went haywire flitting between all the myriad possibilities brewing in her imagination, her eyes stung from sudden intense brightness, and when she readjusted her line of sight and her Ideal’s light, she saw that it was reflecting off of something shiny in the distance. As she drew nearer, she saw it was like a metal grid, or mesh, attached to the end of the conveyor belt.

  So there was an end.

  “Thank god,” Lucy said under her breath, smiling profusely as relief washed over her. Still, Lucy knew that she couldn’t let her guard down, not while she still had barely any idea about this Dream’s concepts and inner workings. Cole’s Dream had been a stormy ocean with whirlpools, a deep-sea monster, and the risk of capsizing and drowning as the main enemies; Kenneth’s Dream had been a medieval fantasy world with a corrupt monarch and her absurdly obedient soldiers as the main source of conflict at every turn. So far, Lucy only knew this Dream as having a vaguely industrial theming with a killer machine as one of the major adversaries—but what else could be lurking in the shadows? More machines? Or something else entirely, something she couldn’t even grasp because she could still barely see anything?

  The thought sent a chill down her spine, but she urged herself to keep a steady pace as she drew closer and closer to the gate. Now was the time to demonstrate her patience and willingness to endure, regardless of what obstacle was thrown at her.

  Once Lucy was within a few metres of the end of the conveyor belt, she saw that there was the familiar uniformly grey floor past the mesh, and that the mesh itself was situated below the conveyor belt. From that, she figured the mesh was meant to act as a reception point for whatever this conveyor belt was meant to deliver. It looked innocuous enough, but given that the machine that sent her here chased after people, this mesh might well have carried countless bruised and wounded bodies. Or perhaps even bodies that were beyond just being wounded.

  In alarm at that theory, Lucy traced her Ideal’s light over the mesh, scanning it with frantic speed. It was entirely spotless, shining and reflecting her light without a single dark spot from grime or, god forbid, dried blood.

  It was also completely empty.

  Lucy froze, for she was caught between two extremes of emotion. On one hand, she was glad she wasn’t being funnelled directly toward a horde of monsters lying in wait for her. But on the other hand, her hopes of finally finding the Dreamer were immediately dashed to pieces.

  She drooped her shoulders in disappointment, but decided this was ultimately still a positive outcome as she was still in relative safety. Perhaps the Dreamer had climbed out, and hadn’t gone very far from here. It was frustrating to again be robbed of their meeting, but once again she would just have to employ her patience and continue the search. At least she had the safety here to do so, at least from what she could see through this oppressive darkness.

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  But when Lucy shone her light up away from the mesh and out into the distance, she caught sight of something in the distance. It was brief—either her hand was too unsteady, or it, whatever it was, had moved—but the most she could make out was a silhouette, one vaguely of the shape of a human figure.

  Lucy’s heart raced, caught between the exhilaration of realizing the Dreamer might finally be at hand, and the fear of that not being the Dreamer and the myriad of ways that that situation could go horribly wrong. But she sucked it up and decided to believe the former to be the case as she stepped off the end of the conveyor belt—at last—and set her boots on the mesh.

  She did so carefully, but the mesh was surprisingly sturdy, not swaying nor descending at all as her full weight came upon it. She scanned it with her light again, this time up close, and was again astonished to see that it was completely spotless without a single leftover from whoever or whatever had been deposited here previously. She knew now that this wasn’t indicative of reality, but that disparity made apprehensive well up within her as she looked up from the interlocking grid of metal lines and out across the distance where had seen…someone.

  Climbing up out of the mesh and stepping onto the floor, Lucy took a moment to appreciate that she was on stable ground again without having to consciously maintain balance the whole time and risk falling into the never-ending depths. This floor seemed to suggest that it was another part of the industrial space she had started in, rather than some separate inner Dream dimension similar to when Lucy and Ricardo had travelled into Kenneth’s past.

  Lucy used her light to scan all around the area, wondering how she was going to get back “up” to her starting elevation, for she had a strong hunch she would have to face the machine again in order to rescue the Dreamer. As she did waved her light around, it revealed the distant silhouette from before.

  And another.

  And another.

  And another.

  Lucy barely managed to cover her mouth with her hand before an expulsion of air left her. A Dream could only have one Dreamer. Perhaps there was some obscure edge case where that didn’t hold true? No, that would go against the very concept of a Dream. And based on that, it was very, very likely that Lucy had stumbled upon four other people—or entities that looked like people—lurking in the shadows at the exact place the conveyor belt dropped her off.

  Keeping perfectly still, her gloved hand still over her mouth, Lucy slowly guided her light and tried to scrutinize the figures before her for any signs of resemblance to one another. Perhaps, like Kenneth and General Hawthorn, these four were separate personas or aspects of the same Dreamer? It was wishful thinking, and it was quickly disproven when Lucy studied the distant figures more closely. One appeared to be a stocky man with a bald head, the other a slender woman with hair coming down to the middle of her back, and the other two appeared to children of perhaps early middle school age. They were all vastly different from one another, not only in their shapes but also in their manner of movement—until now.

  Until they all stopped in unison, turned to Lucy, and waved in perfect synchronicity.

  Lucy had to fight every nerve in her body to prevent screaming out or wheeling around and bolting off in the opposite direction—but to where? To the conveyor belt, where she would keep running after a beginning that almost certainly didn’t exist anymore? There was no escape. She said this to herself in order to steel her resolve, to free herself of analysis paralysis by ruling out an option, but the admission only made her joints stiffen even more as her heart felt like it was going to burst from how fast it was racing.

  Lucy didn’t know what those four were. That was a fact. But they looked like people, and they were waving to her in a manner that, when looking besides the eeriness of the situation and the way they moved in tandem, seemed like the sort of thing perfectly normal people would do to someone they saw stranded alone in a dangerous environment. Perhaps they were lost souls, too, and were calling her over for her own sake and also to have her company. Safety in numbers, after all.

  Thinking on this, Lucy brought her hand down and almost wanted to use it to slap herself. What was with her, immediately jumping the gun and assuming the people beckoning to her, who had thus far shown zero malice, were enemies out to get her? It was the kind of thought process Diana would go to, and Lucy hated to admit that perhaps she had rubbed off on her more than she would have ever liked. Finding your way through the world was easier when you weren’t trying to make an enemy of everyone, Lucy still firmly believed. And especially in this Dream where danger was omnipresent and isolation appeared to be a major inherent obstacle, it was more important than ever to champion unity and group safety as much as possible.

  Holding to that line of reasoning, Lucy brought her hand up and waved back, struggling to find the balance between looking welcoming and affable but having some restraint to show that she wasn’t completely taken by them and inviting their company. It was an acknowledgement that she had seen their gesture, and nothing more. Then she began walking forward, her Ideal unsheathed and held firmly at her side. For all that she disagreed on Diana with, she couldn’t deny that their final encounter with the queen could have gone more smoothly if she had followed Diana’s advice—or really more a command barely disguised as a suggestion—to keep her weapon out and ready. She just hoped this wouldn;’t end up provoking her new acquaintances, because the last thing she needed after having the daylights scared out of her was to be caught up in a fight of one-versus-four where her only light source required her to stay calm.

  Her eyes kept flicking to her blade, bracing herself for the moment she was swamped by darkness after being ambushed, or finding that those humanoid figures weren’t human at all, or any other scenario that would immediately break her focus. However, as sh drew close enough to make out the details of the four distant figures, her light remained steady, as did her once-trembling hand. They were ordinary people in the truest sense of the word, like a collection of folks randomly picked off the street. The man and the boy both wore T-shirts and ankle-length pants albeit of opposing colours, while the woman had on a sweater dress and the girl had a hoodie and shorts. They were all distinct, but similar in their shared sense of everyday mundanity. But what made them stand out was the other quality they all shared: wide eyes, weary with crease lines below them, suggesting a prolonged state of panic and unease. Like a clowder of cats, they followed Lucy with their wide eyes, which shimmered when Lucy’s light passed over them.