She cocks her head, but she’s unnerved. Her eyes dart to the side, the tip of her tongue snaking over her dry lips.
“Why did she really send me to you?” I ask. Outside the strange rain grows heavier, thrumming against the window. A flash of green lightning casts Mia in a sickly glow, making her look for a moment like the drug addict she is in the real world.
The black oil bubbles and rises, molding into a new figure.
It’s Tila.
She’s wearing her favorite dress, green like the otherworldly lightning outside, or snake scales. She looks at me and holds out her arm.
“T,” she calls. I can feel the steady thump of my mechanical heart beneath my metal breastbone.
“This isn’t mine.” Mia’s voice is harsh. “You’re affecting my dream world now. With your own memories and fears.”
“How? I don’t feel like I’m doing anything.” Shared people aren’t meant to be able to change the dreamscape much at all if someone has plugged in first. If it’s someone else’s dream, Zealscapes are meant to be like reading a script, or watching a film on a wallscreen, except with more sensory detail. I didn’t concentrate, like I did to have Mia pull the scalpel away. I’ve never experienced anything like this.
“Fuck if I know. I never share my dreams. I’m always here on my own.” She’s shifty, though, her shoulders hunched. She’s keeping something back. Mia holds out the scalpel. “Take this. Maybe you have to exorcise her.”
I can feel her fear spiraling from her, belying her blasé words. She doesn’t like that I’ve changed her dream, much as she didn’t like it when I caused her to pull the scalpel out of the Mana-ma apparition.
My fingers close around the blade, but I don’t harm Tila. How could I? How could Mia think that I would, even hopped up full of Zeal?
“Tell me why Tila sent me to you,” I say.
Mia rocks back on her heels, shaking her head. “Get rid of her first. You’re ruining it. This isn’t my dream!” Her last word rises to a shriek, the whole room tingeing red with her anger.
The anger infects me. It pulses through me, as insistent and inevitable as my mechanical heartbeat. Mia’s not giving me what I want. I need answers.
Tila’s apparition gazes at me impassively. I ignore it. The irrational anger bursts and I rush Mia instead, knocking her down. She feels almost insubstantial beneath my hands, as if I see her healthy self but feel the wasted version of her that’s plugged into the Chair. I hold the cold scalpel to her throat. Mia swallows, and the blade nicks her neck, a small trickle of blood running down the column of her throat to pool at the hollow of her clavicle.
“Tell me, or I’ll make both your dreams and your reality a living nightmare. I’m working with people who can make life very difficult for you.” It’s a half-bluff, but it’s the only card I have.
“You’re working with them, too?” she gasps. I press the scalpel slightly harder and she winces. I don’t understand how pain translates to her inert body on the gurney, but she’s scared, and that’s enough.
“Working with who?”
“The Ratel.”
“You’re working with them?” I ask, incredulous.
“N-no!” Her wide eyes dart to Tila’s apparition. “Her.”
“You think Tila was working with them? Tell me!” The anger still pulses through me, a roiling, dangerous thing. Have I ever been this furious?
“I didn’t mean to tell him,” Mia whispers. “I didn’t want to.”
“Tell who what?”
“About Tila. It’s my fault.” She begins to gasp, almost choking in the intensity of her sobs. I feel a twinge of pity for her, for who she used to be, but I squash it down as low as it’ll go. I press the scalpel slightly harder.
“Tila found something out, and I got scared and told him. He’d never have known. All for a steady supply of Verve. I fucking hate myself. I can never escape him. Never escape. Never.” After that she can’t say anything more, sobbing so much that she hiccups. The drug is also taking a stronger hold, the lucidity fading. Her back arches and her eyes roll up in her head.
“Stay with me, Mia!” I shake her. “How did they give you Verve?”
Her eyes half-focus, and she laughs maniacally. “God, you don’t get it, do you? This isn’t a Zealscape. Why do you think you could infect my dream and change things so easily? This is Verve.”
I rock back. If her Zeal has been spiked by Verve in this lounge, that means the Ratel have been there. Fuck. Fuck. Do they know? Are they coming for us, even now, for mine and Nazarin’s bodies, prone and helpless as newborns?