She withdrew her augment from the drawer. The side of her head warmed as the augment made contact, ready to bridge the divide. Hesitating, she turned and watched Cassandra. It wasn’t the risk of entering dreams that froze her—it was the intimacy. The rare moments when Cassandra let her guard down, glimpses of vulnerability that felt like traps in hindsight. A faint whisper of loyalty asked her to stop.
No matter the structure, dreams stripped away illusions, revealing the truths people spent lifetimes concealing. Cassandra, the architect of her own reality, knew Sarah better than she knew herself. Still, Cassandra didn't know Sarah could dreamwalk, which could be enough to keep her safe.
Despite teaching her students to avoid dreamwalking with those who shared significant life events, Sarah had practiced this dangerous technique. Resisting the pull of shared memories required a strength she had cultivated over time. Once she entered another's dream, she was at their mercy, trapped unless she could maintain her own identity separate from the dream.
Sarah had already defied Cassandra's contract by sending the message to Ava and using the surveillance blocker underground. Now, the most dangerous act of all could be detected using her augments in Cassandra's presence. Yet, she had to know, even if it meant risking everything.
Determined, she climbed back into bed and lay beside Cassandra. Sarah ran her fingers through Cassandra's hair, tracing the curve of Cassandra's skull. Her touch was gentle, reverent, as she sought the precise point of contact—the occipital lobe. Anticipation rose as she pressed the augment near her temple with her other hand. The world around her began to shift and blur.
The bed rippled like water. Weightlessness enveloped her, intensifying in ever-growing waves. The marble floor began to liquefy, the room stretching unnaturally long. Above, the ceiling melted away, and the bedposts rose like endless pillars into a black void. She felt dizzy like floating and falling in equal measure, holding her thoughts while feeling distant whispers. The last thing she saw was Cassandra’s face, serene and distant. Where are you now?
Sarah’s stomach churned as the ground dissolved beneath her, suspending her in weightlessness. Gravity slipped away entirely, and the bed’s solidity vanished as she was engulfed by the sensation of swimming through dense, viscous air. Each movement felt delayed, as if her limbs were wading through invisible currents, the resistance amplifying her disorientation. Darkness encroached at first but quickly surrendered to an all-encompassing brightness all around her. Phantom sensations rippled through her—Cassandra’s voice, faint and jagged, began to coalesce like a sharp wind cutting through the light. The voice fragmented, a single syllable echoing relentlessly, each repetition piercing her thoughts.
Sarah steadied herself against the pull of confusion, her breath hitching. Yielding to the voice, she honed her focus, letting the noise of her other senses dim until only that syllable remained, vibrating in the center of her mind.
Ribbons of color broke through the bright void, threads that tangled with her thoughts. Sarah felt herself slipping—her breathing, her thoughts—merging through dissonance with Cassandra’s mind. Each sound echoed twice, once as her own, once as something foreign.
She experienced Cassandra’s mind, feelings, thoughts, and sensations unraveling around her. Emotions arrived first, bursting in splashes of gold and purple edged with red. Sarah grasped to name the feeling, to bring her closer: pride, achievement, royalty, passion, excitement. Then came the thoughts—rushing in like a flood, overwhelming in their dizzying speed, pulling her deeper into the torrent of Cassandra’s consciousness.
Cassandra was speaking at a podium, looking over a crowd, the world bending to her presence. Sarah felt her thoughts—the pride, the relentless calculation, her confident poise as she spoke. The crowd blurred at the edges, a faceless mass of applause and murmured admiration. But Cassandra’s focus passed across them, as they latched onto someone—Kai. He stood near the edge of the gathering, a spark of defiance in his posture. Sarah felt the pull of Cassandra’s scrutiny, a delicate weave of admiration and judgment, measuring Kai’s worth as a piece in her game. Beside him was a young Sarah. The museum unveiling, her heart jumped seeing herself. As she struggled to empty her mind of her memories and stay focused on observing the scene. The scene warbled and distorted, people elongated, and the podium in front of her widened. Pull it together, Sarah! She had practiced not being noticed which should not have shifted the dream and she worried,
As warmth enveloped her, the scene reformed. Cassandra stopped speaking, her gaze locking onto Sarah at the back of the crowd. Seeing younger herself and Cassandra's feelings towards her was disconerting. The crowd grew expectant escalating Sarah's tension, waiting for her next words. Sarah wanted the dream to change. She did not like the unsettling feeling of being the focus of the dreamer. Further, Cassandra's thoughts were guarded and impenetrable. Sarah focused her mind on the image of Maya, hoping to pull Cassandra away and inject a new path for the dream.
The scene fractured. The bioluminescent waves on the museum's surface began to distort and break. As city leaders congratulated Cassandra on stage, Sarah's attention was drawn to Reeves. She knew she had to maintain her focus, to appear uninterested, while subtly observing his every move. Any clue, any hint about Cassandra's plans, could be crucial. She moved to keep the image of Reeves in her mind, urging the dreamer to dig deep.
The scene shifted and twisted into the museum’s climate-controlled archives. The air-cooled, the sound of Cassandra’s heels clicking against the polished concrete floor echoing below her like distant whispers. The Abacus came into view, its case vibrating faintly with contained power. Reeves stood beside Cassandra as they examined the piece and discussed a greater role. However, Sarah couldn't make out the words as her own memories of the Abacus drew her in. Not just the TruthGate incident, but earlier when she had been near-mortally wounded and had watched others die.
No, no, no... Sarah couldn't close her eyes. The Abacus immediately began vibrating, sending out energy and pulling her apart just like the day she and Kai discovered it. She strived to stay with Cassandra, her mind praying for any other image but the memories flooded into view. She focused on the day of the race underground which despite being tragic for the city, had not injured her. But she saw a younger Kai, the Kai on the day of the Abacus discovery. The pain and feelings crowded her, pulling her into her first memory. She needed Cassandra to change her dream, Cassandra! She yelled desperately hoping to be saved.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
But she wasn't saved. Cassandra's thoughts, a tempest of pride, ambition, and a chilling sense of destiny, suffocated her. As Sarah descended into her own nightmare, she could feel Cassandra's watchful gaze. "Soon," her voice echoed, a chilling reminder of the inevitable. Sarah's stomach churned as she relived the discovery of the Abacus, the moment death touched her, and fed Cassandra's obsessive hunger for power. She knew, deep down, that Cassandra was incapable of empathy or remorse. Yet, beneath the facade of control, Sarah glimpsed a vulnerable, childlike figure, a soul forever marked by disappointment and a desperate need for validation.
The dream shifted violently, as though sensing Sarah’s request. The room distorted, the furnishings and Abacus disappearing as the walls dissolved into liquid steel beams. Sarah’s feet slid as her relief pulled her forward, deeper. She stood beneath the museum’s incomplete framework, her face alight with purpose. Sarah couldn't read her feelings or thoughts. That was too close, Sarah. She tried clearing her mind but her memories continued to interfere. Of course, Kai had gotten the Abacus from Cassandra. She had forgotten, that Kai employed her as a young archeology student to find the Abacus for Reeves, but there it was in Cassandra's museum.
Sarah?
Did Cassandra just say her name?
Show me, Cassandra's words echoed in Sarah's mind. She tried forgetting everything, blanking her mind. But it was Sarah's memory that was being navigated now. Shards of images surfaced, fracturing into voids, redefining reality. Sarah saw her reflection in the panes, suspended in the dark, each version frozen mid-fall. Behind the panes, shapes—hands reaching, mouths whispering words she couldn’t hear but felt deep in her chest.
Focus, Sarah pleaded to herself, but her thoughts wouldn’t still. Fear, guilt, and anger poured forward, building into a storm the void behind. I'm here to help my friends. She struggled, again focusing on a single image of Maya. The dreamer's mind sensed foreign feelings like a predator scenting blood. She tried to clear her mind of everything but the image of Maya.
Glass fragments began to close in, again the Abacus came into view. Show me, was Cassandra's voice in her head.
Did Cassandra sense her, not the Abacus again, a shard brushed past her arm, leaving a burning cold in its wake. Another hovered near her face, refracting Cassandra’s eyes—calculating, watchful, unblinking. Sarah drew a long breath, turning inward. She wanted her thoughts to dissolve, but the Abacus appeared again as it did earlier in the museum, not dormant but active and emanating power like the day she and Kai were led to and discovered it. The vision of Maya faded, she couldn't remember what Maya looked like anymore as the Abacus sent out waves of overpowering energy.
The dreamscape shifted violently, like a kaleidoscope shaken too hard. The clean lines of the museum dissolved into shadows and damp concrete. The sudden shift made Sarah stagger, her breath catching in her chest. The maintenance tunnel stretched ahead of her, every detail so vivid it was as though she had truly returned.
The walls wept with moisture, the sickly green light pooling across the slick ground. The air was damp and stagnant, pressing down on her like a physical weight. She could hear them—the soft murmur of the team’s voices, Kai’s steady commands, Josephine’s clipped observations. And the Stylus. Its eerie glow continued to brighten ahead of her, casting jagged shadows through the tunnel-like teeth waiting to snap shut.
This was her memory. She felt herself moving, but not by her own will. Cassandra was here, somewhere, pulling the dream’s strings, watching Sarah’s memory for her purposes, curiosity.
“Energy signature strengthening,” Sarah’s heard her voice echo, sharp and precise, but hollow. She remembered saying it, yet the words felt foreign now, a recording of a version of herself she barely recognized. She looked down, seeing Stylus’s refracted light on her clothes. She was a shadow in her memory, watching herself move through the motions.
"The scene unfolded just as she remembered: the chamber opening, the glowing glyphs, and the circuit-etched door feeding on hidden power. Yet beneath it all was an undercurrent of her excitement at the time blending with the pain she knew was coming. Cassandra, please don't, she pleaded as her mind pulled her into dread. She wasn’t just remembering.
Then it came—the moment she had tried to bury. The Abacus sat on its floating shelf, impossibly still, impossibly wrong. The Stylus’s glow grew unbearable outside the room, and the air in the chamber began to warp, bending around the device as if it were consuming reality itself.
Sarah felt the jolt in her chest, electric and paralyzing. The words tore from her lips: “The resonance is building.” She remembered backing away as the energy built into physical waves erupting in force—the ceiling cracking, the blast ripping through them like a scream. The weight of Josephine’s cry of pain, the sight of bodies crumpling to the floor, all of it crashed over her again as everything went dark.
She could feel Cassandra’s presence, cold and unyielding. The memory wasn’t just hers anymore. She’s watching me, Sarah realized. The darkness writhed like a living thing, pulling Sarah forward with unseen hands. She was following Cassandra, dragged deeper into the mind of the woman who was now fully aware of her presence. The heat of the blast fading from her skin, and the bitter taste of ash in her mouth.
The dreamscape twisted violently, fragments of glass and memory cascading around her. The damp maintenance tunnel stretched endlessly ahead, but Sarah felt the weight of Cassandra’s presence pressing down like an iron hand. Every step forward dragged her deeper into the woman’s mind, and she realized too late that Cassandra wasn’t just watching—she was leading.
“Sarah,” the voice echoed again, sharper this time, cutting through the noise. The sound wasn’t Cassandra’s usual measured tone; it was intimate, like a whisper in her ear. It sent shivers down her spine.
She tried to break free, forcing her thoughts back to Maya, to Kai, to anything but the growing weight of Cassandra’s will. But the dreamscape resisted her, bending to Cassandra’s control. Shards of memory closed in, each reflecting Cassandra’s calculating eyes.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Cassandra’s voice resonated, cold and detached. The glass fragments around them shifted, forming a towering image of the Abacus, pulsating with power. Cassandra’s figure appeared at the center, her expression unreadable but her dominance undeniable.
Sarah gasped as the scene dissolved into darkness, leaving her floating in the void. But the Abacus remained, suspended in the void, its surface rippling with dark energy. Sarah turned away and heard music far off in the distance. Shapes move along a thread. As she moved her face closer, the thread turned into a twisting ribbon, spinning Sarah in a dizzying motion as Cassandra’s heartbeat grew within the music. Sarah held tightly as the ribbon turned to rope and grew rapidly. She could no longer hold it in her arms as it shifted into waves of light.
The air charged with tension, as the dreamscape began to coalesce slowing her. A grand room began to take shape, a view of a glittering cityscape on one side and a sprawling dance floor where people were dressed in outrageous costumes. Sarah caught her breath, as a pair of figures came into focus across the room. There was Maya, her expression bright, her laughter genuine—a rare moment of joy. She recognized the image of when she and Maya entered Cassandra's Lezchic party, but it was Cassandra who stood beside Maya, a predatory gleam in her eye, her body language an unnerving mix of warmth and calculation.
Voices overlapped, fragments of a conversation emerging. “She’s brilliant, isn’t she?” Cassandra’s tone carried an edge, though her smile was perfectly composed. As Sarah watched, Cassandra’s hand brushed Maya’s shoulder, her gaze lingering too long, her words thick with veiled insinuation. Sarah’s heart beat rapidly in her chest, the dancefloor melted so that it was just the two of them, a faint scent of jasmine permeating the air. A door appeared, beginning to close. Just before it closed, from inside, Cassandra’s voice echoed, “Such natural chemistry…”