Katalepsis

Lonely, Bitter, and Afraid — me, without a single companion at my side or word of support in my ears; or Ruthless, Willful, and Decisive — myself and my aims shorn of encumbrance and doubt, without anyone to get in my way, except myself.

Whichever of those she really was, or believed herself to be, wrapped like armour around her rotten and murderous heart, this Other Me, the Other Heather, alone among her cold machines and her empty tin-plate soldiers, trapped between blank walls in a little steel room, huddled behind the bulwark of her Outsider squid-skull mask — she looked up with sudden alarm, as if she might find my face peering down from a hidden corner of her secret command bunker.

“W-what!?” she squeaked, her sobbing and her whimpering replaced with keen panic. “What do you mean, you see me clearly?! How can you— where are you—”

The six dark eye sockets of her squid-skull mask showed nothing of her true face — a little cephalopod tucked into a crack between the rocks, hiding from truth and responsibility. Familiar predatory instinct flexed and coiled down in my belly, as if I still possessed my tentacles and my other six selves. I felt a desire to grasp her in my claws and yank her out into the light, to see the ugliness written all over her hidden face.

She couldn’t see me, of course. I was everywhere and nowhere. I was pure observation.

“Yes, that’s right. I see you clearly now,” I repeated, speaking into the hand-held radio. Nasty Little Me flinched as my words emerged from the twin in her hand. “And there’s nobody there with you. Nobody at your side. Not Raine, not Evelyn, not Lozzie. Not Praem, not Zheng, not Twil. No Tenny, no Knights, nobody. You are so completely alone.”

She — Bitter, Stupid, Hateful me — filled all the myriad monitors and screens of the wall now; all other concerns had been pushed aside. Caught from a hundred different angles and in a hundred different video formats, she jerked her own hand-held radio up to the front of the squid-skull mask.

“You shouldn’t be able to see into here!” she hissed. “That means—”

“It means I’ve become too much like Eileen?” I drawled. “It means I’ve accepted too much help from the person you want to murder? Yes, you’re right. And I’m not ashamed or afraid to say—”

“No!” she squawked. “Heather, I’m serious. Listen to me, please. If you can see in here that means something has gone badly wrong, it means the Box is breached already, it means—”

“It means your plans are falling apart?”

“Yes! But that’s not the important part. If you can see in here—”

“If we open the Box, Maisie will be freed. Isn’t that correct? Why would you be afraid that we’re freeing her successfully? Why would you be so afraid that we’re about to win?”

“We’re not about to win! Not like this! It won’t work!”

I sighed. Her whining was so tiresome. “I’ve figured it out,” I said. “You and I and all this, I see it clearly now. The dream should have ended already. Eileen has been enlightened, her endless cycle of observation is broken. We’ve beheaded Horror, the symbol of all our old trauma. Everyone has been woken up and freed. The Box is breaking already. The revolution is underway—”

“And failing!”

“—and I will make sure it doesn’t fail,” I spoke right over her. “The only thing keeping Maisie imprisoned now is you and I. You said it yourself, we’re the only ones left with any control of the dream, and we’re in disagreement. One of us has to submit to the other so we can close this loop. And I’m not going to let you kill Eileen.”

Sad and Lonely me let out a noise halfway between a sob and a laugh. “You’ve got this so backwards.”

“Have I really?”

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair.”

“Tch,” I tutted. “Don’t Macbeth at me.”

Blusterous and Frangible Heather stood up from her hard steel chair with a screech of sharp feet scraping across the metal floor. She clicked the fingers of her free hand at one of her two lines of Empty Guards, the ones who were waiting for orders before the wall of frosted glass at the rear of the room. She gestured them toward something I could not see, something just beyond my multiplicious line of sight — which was an odd feeling, as if one truth in that little lonely room was beyond me. I twisted my point of view back and forth, filling the hundreds of screens with every angle of the sordid steel chamber. I saw all the computers and machines lining the walls, the big steel door at the front, and Her, Myself, in so many different ways. But I couldn’t see what she was doing, where she was sending her forces, or for what purpose.

The row of Empty Guards turned and marched off somewhere beyond my sight, perhaps around the side of the big frosted glass wall; from the radio in my hand I heard the ringing of boots on steel catwalks, and the crickle-crackle of stout glass straining against terrible pressure.

A vast, dark, jagged shape shifted behind that glimpse of glass wall.

“What’s that behind the glass?” I asked. “Is that another aquarium? Is that the side of Maisie’s prison? Is that … Maisie?”

Hateful Heather huffed hard. “No! No, of course not. Do you seriously think I would be wasting time on any of this if I could simply walk up to her tank and have my robots shoot out the glass?”

“Well,” I said. “You do seem determined to make this as difficult as possible.”

“You really think I wouldn’t!?” Her words were broken by a wounded sob. She cast one arm out wide, almost theatrical, stomping a few paces across the floor of her little steel room, then a few paces the other way, marching back and forth before the matching steel desk. “You really think I wouldn’t free Maisie, after everything I’ve said? You think I would stall, I would make up excuses? You trust me that little!?”

“I think you’re the part of me which doesn’t believe she can be freed.”

The Other Me stopped dead. “ … what?”

“You’re the part of me which enjoys wallowing in loneliness. The part of me which thinks we don’t deserve to free her. The part of me which has taken our old survivor’s guilt and turned it into something ugly and toxic.”

“Huh!” she laughed with derision. “I’m the one misusing our survivor’s guilt?! Take a look at yourself, Heather!”

“I have. And I know I’m right.”

Guilty Heather whirled around in rage and aimed a kick at the steel chair. She sent it skidding across the floor of her empty little room, but it hit the wall with nary a clink of metal, as if she was too drained for real violence.

She stood there for a moment, shoulders rising and falling, shaking with uneven breath, face hidden behind the smooth metallic bone of the squid-skull mask. The cold blinking lights and empty-faced displays in the computers and control consoles along the walls dyed her Cygnet-issue pajamas all the sunless colours of the ocean floor. Not one of her Empty Guards moved forward to assist her, nor offered a single word of comfort.

Across the tenuous connection of the hand-held radio, over the background hiss of static, almost blotted out by the sound of my Foolish Counterpart having a tantrum, I heard the unmistakable crack-bang-crack-bang of gunfire, echoing off metal and glass. The fire fight was suddenly punctured by a long, loud, low hissssss!

The Other Me jerked upward in alarm.

“That’s us!” I cried into the hand-held radio. “That’s us, our tentacles, our other six selves! Homo abyssus! And you’re shooting at them, too! Just like with Tenny! You can’t help yourself, can you?”

I repressed a sigh of relief, despite the accusation in my words; if she was actively rejecting the help of our other six self-facets, that gave me time and space in which to work.

Still, I was shocked. She was so bitter she would reject help even from herself — myself, ourselves. She was worse than I’d thought.

“I’m not,” she said, her voice oddly weak. “I’m not trying to hurt them, I’m just keeping them away from the exits. Heather, I don’t have the words or the time to explain this properly, you just have to take a leap of faith — we cannot free Maisie by forcing the Box open. Eileen — tch!” She tutted and huffed. “The Eye, it has to die. It’s the only way.”

“There is no sure foundation set on blood,” I quoted at her. “No certain life achieved by others' death.”

“King John, really!?” she scoffed. “You’re scraping the bottom of the barrel with that one, Heather. Nobody even reads King John, it’s terrible. I don’t know why we read it!”

“Because we actually quite enjoyed it?”

Foolish Me sighed. “I … yes, I … suppose we did.”

“See?” I said. “We’re still the same person, once all this dream is done. You must know I won’t be able to accept murdering Eileen. I would never submit to that solution. I’d never forgive you — which means I’d never forgive myself. And you wouldn’t be able to forgive yourself, either. I think you’re blinded by your biases, your loneliness, and your fear. You have to know I’m right about this, Heather. Please.”

The Other Me, still tucked safely behind her squid-skull mask, sagged inside her pajamas, shoulders slumping, back hunching. She let out an exhausted sigh, a rattle like a final breath. She didn’t have the energy to stagger across the room to retrieve the chair; she simply slumped against the steel desk.

Did I almost have her? Was she finally crumbling?

“Heather,” I said. “Please, just stop the fighting. Call off your Guards, let the Box open. Stop shooting at Tenny, send your Guards to help the others against the nurses instead. You and I, we’re the same person, we shouldn’t be at odds like this. Let me come and find you, and we can do this together.”

For a moment, Lonely Heather contracted further; she raised one hand as if about to remove her squid-skull mask.

“That’s it,” I said into the radio. “Just show me your face. It’s my face too, after all.”

Her hand dropped away.

“ … Heather?” I said. “Please, just … ”

She reached into her pocket and extracted a little round dot of matter. Dark grey, featureless, about the size of a finger bone. She held it up before the eye sockets of the mask.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Huh,” she laughed, sad and abandoned. “And you have the gall to accuse me of forgetting promises. Of betraying friends. Of being false.”

“What are you talking about? I haven’t forgotten anything! In fact, I’m hyper-aware that I couldn’t find the Forest Knight, or Maisie’s new body, or Mister Squiddy, when I was doing my little survey just now. And I strongly suspect you have something to do with that, you—”

“Oh yes,” she said, so soft and defeated, so fragile and exhausted — yet somehow the mournful certainty in her words stopped me dead. “You can’t forget the important people, the ones who’ve helped you so much, the ones you love, the ones who make you smile and make you happy, the ones who protect you with strong arms and a warm embrace. But what about the ones who don’t, or the ones who can’t?” She held up the little speck of grey. “What about the forgotten people, the things too small to be regarded? What about those, Heather? Do they matter as well?”

“ … what is that?” I repeated. “What are you holding?”

Sentimental Heather closed her fist around the little speck of grit. “A pebble,” she said. “And you forgot all about it.”

I wracked my brains, trying to figure out what metaphor or—

“It’s not a metaphor, Heather,” she said. “It’s a pebble. An actual, physical pebble, from Earth. It doesn’t represent anything. It’s literal. One object unchanged by the dream.”

“Where did you get it?”

“We sent it here. Outside, to Wonderland. Months and months ago now. We were experimenting with Slipping objects, after we returned from Evelyn’s home down in Sussex. Don’t you remember?” Her voice began to quiver. “We lay awake in bed for so many nights, agonising over the fate of this one little pebble. We plucked it from a lakeside in rural England, and we sent it Outside. Eternal exile, eternally lost. And we believed it would never, ever, ever be found and rescued. Who would find something so small, so pointless, so unfeeling, in all the scorched and burned geography of Wonderland?”

“Oh!” It all came rushing back to me. “I do remember, of course I share those memories, of course—”

“But I never forgot,” she said, her melancholy tone rising with wounded bitterness, knuckles turning white around the forgotten pebble in her fist. “I never forgot about even a single pebble—”

“Neither did I!” I cried out. “Neither did I! Heather, this doesn’t make any sense. What are you trying to say, you—”

“I found this pebble, you see,” she said, slow and sharp and laced with poison. “I found it inside the Box. And it started me down a very specific path of thought. What do you think the Box is for? Why do you think it’s here? Why do you think the world forgot all about Maisie, and only Maisie?”

I sighed. I couldn’t hold back my frustration; I’d had just about enough of her cryptical guilt-tripping and sanctimonious preaching. Was this really what I sounded like? Wallowing in loneliness and righteousness? Hiding behind my mask, while advocating for murder? An ugly little morsel of mollusc-flesh dripping with toxin and poison in every word? Was this what my friends saw and heard when they looked at me? A beached cephalopod, obsessed with gravel?

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what the Box is for. Why don’t you just tell me?”

“Because you should know!” the Other Me shouted down the radio. She thumped the steel desk with her fist; she must have been gripping the pebble with all her might, because I saw blood leaking from between her fingers. “Because you should have been thinking about Maisie, and the pebble, and everything that doesn’t matter! Because she’s a forgotten thing, too! And because apparently you won’t listen anyway! You’ve already given up on me, given up on Maisie too, given up on—”

“Oh, do shut up,” I huffed. “Stop giving yourself conniptions!”

Was this what it would feel like listening to myself, once we recombined? Would Maisie have to hear this voice, see this face, witness this part of me? What would she see, reflected in my eyes?

And she — I — still did not shut up.

“I thought you would understand,” she whined, beginning to sob. “After all the time you and I have spent protecting each other, all the lost years, all the Slips and dreams and nightmares. I was always there when you needed me—”

“I don’t need your way of thinking,” I snapped. “Attacking Tenny, attacking our other selves. And trying to kill Eileen!”

“—and you were always there when I needed you, too! And now, what is this? When I need you the most, when Maisie needs us both more than—”

“Stop!” I snapped. “Just. Stop. Talking. Your voice is making me sick.”

She finally stopped.

On the wall of monitors, a hundred eyeballs across, she sagged at the waist and curled up against her steel desk, as if holding back fresh tears. She looked as if she wanted to drop to the floor and curl into a sobbing, broken ball, shutting out the world and pretending none of this was her fault. Alone and lonely, without any support but the mirages she had conjured from dreams, without any direction but the rot in her heart. I felt bile rising up my throat, how could I ever have been so—

You shouldn’t hate her, said somebody.

A tiny voice spoke from somewhere beyond my sight; for a moment I didn’t realise what it was, for there was nothing in the world except the wall of monitors, the radio in my hand, and Her, Myself, I, in all my nasty, pitiful, spiteful glory.

Then I realised the voice was Praem. She was out there, in the space my physical body still occupied, back in the Governor’s Office.

Praem said good girls should not hate themselves. She suggested I be kinder, for my own sake.

A lump of horrified guilt hardened in my throat, almost like I’d been slapped across the cheek and snapped out of some terrible downward spiral.

Praem was correct, of course. Why was I being so nasty to myself? Why was I being, in words my beloved Evelyn might have applied to her own self, such a bitch to this reflection of my own mind? This wasn’t Alexander Lilburne, or Ooran Juh, or an unrepentant member of the Sharrowford Cult, or Edward being vile and unredeemable. This was me, lonely and afraid. She didn’t need me calling her names and spitting on her efforts to help — no matter how misguided and stupid.

She needed a hug.

I composed myself as best I could. I took a deep breath and forced myself to smile before I spoke into the hand-held radio.

“Heather,” I said, gentle and soft. “Heather, if you’re that tired, and afraid, and lonely, then you don’t have to be alone anymore. Let me protect you again. Let me—”

“You think there’s no value in me,” she whined, voice quivering something akin to terror. “If I let you protect me now, there’ll be nothing left of me.”

“ … I’m sorry?”

“Let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent,” she quoted, between gritted teeth.

I swallowed a sigh, reminding myself this was me and she needed help. “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

“And what is that one supposed to mean in this context?”

I held back another note. “It means that we shouldn’t be arguing like this. We’ve been blinded by being able to have this argument in the first place. We should be together, not apart. Let me protect you again.”

“Un-thread the rude eye of rebellion, and welcome home again discarded faith?” she quoted back at me, dripping with scorn. “You just want me to give up and submit!”

I bit my lips to hold my temper, then said: “Get thee glass eyes, and like a scurvy politician, seem to see the things thou dost not."

“Oh, so now I’m imagining it all?!” she snapped. “You know who you sound like? You sound just like mum! They whose guilt within their bosom lies, imagine every eye beholds their blame.”

“I’m not projecting!” I said. “You’re projecting! And this is pointless, I’m still not going to let you kill Eileen. You cannot make gross sins look clear: To revenge is no valour, but to bear."

“Ha!” she spat. “Kindness nobler ever than revenge? Perhaps you should practice what you preach!”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “You can’t seriously be worried I’m going to take revenge on you. You’re me! I’m you!”

“If I let you in — if I let you take control of the asylum — you’ll stuff me in a cell,” she said, beginning to sob again. “You’ll lock me up, just like our real mother did, just like everyone else wants to. That’s what your protection would mean now. You think I’m useless, you—”

“I don’t!” I whined, barely able to believe my ears. “You’re delusional, you—”

“If I let you in, you’ll kill me.”

All my carefully constrained temper burst forth in one almighty sigh — and She, I, Me, The Little Fool on the other end of the call, had the gall to flinch!

“Don’t be so absolutely ridiculous!” I snapped. “I’ve never heard such stupid—”

“You think I’m completely wrong—”

“—nonsense in my entire life, and that’s saying something—”

“—about everything! You forgot the pebble and you’ll forget—”

“—in this absurd dream. You are the most absurd thing in here, you—”

“—me too! You’ll forget me and abandon me and we’ll never free Maisie that way and—”

“—snivelling little bloodthirsty coward!”

“—both of us will die!”

“That’s it!” I shouted into the radio handset. “I’ve had enough of you!”

And with that, I truly lost my temper.

Before I realised the impulse I was following, I reached out toward the wall of monitors with my free hand — toward her, toward the smooth grey metal of the Outsider squid-skull mask on her head. My own body felt like a vessel piloted by another mind, as if my hand entered my field of vision without my volition. Held between my thumb and first two fingers was a little white cylinder — the stick of chalk I had inherited from Eileen.

Hyperdimensional mathematics, wrought in dreamlike metaphor.

I did not need to know what I was doing, because this was a dream, and the dream would bend to the will of a lucid mind.

The tip of the chalk-stick touched the wall of monitors — then reached through, into that dark little steel room which the Other Me had made into a cage for her mind. The chalk slipped past her shoulders and shot toward the computers along the wall, jabbing at the hollow buttons and cold lights of the control panels. My hand swished and flicked, drawing white lines and symbols, writing brain-math in chalk on the substrate of the dream, exerting intention, willpower, and determination. Chalk-marks on the monitor threw switches and levers, turned dials and knobs, changed values and numbers and sent the systems of the Box spinning off into chaos.

Bitter Little Me shot upright and spun around in panic. “No! No, Heather, no, don’t!”

She lurched for the control panels, watched by her impassive, empty-faced line of Guards; she couldn’t walk properly, drained to near-disability by sheer exhaustion. But terror gave her impetus, and she flung herself onto the controls. Her free hand scrabbled over the buttons and switches, reversing my changes, fighting my willpower, scrambling to keep the Box shut, to keep Maisie in prison.

For several seconds we struggled on opposite sides of the screen. I jabbed and scribbled with my chalk, messing with the buttons, opening gates, and cancelling security lock downs. She scrambled to keep up with me, putting things back they way they were, hands slapping at the controls, slamming levers back into place, jamming buttons into their sockets to prevent further mischief.

Then she fumbled; a tiny grey mote tumbled from her open hand — the pebble, falling to the floor, rolling away.

“No!” she yelped.

Silly Little Me threw herself after the forgotten speck of grit. She hit the floor, landing hard, dazed and winded, squid-skull mask bouncing off the steel plates. But she managed to slap her palm down on the pebble, just before it was lost beneath one of those cold, unfeeling machines.

I took the opening and finished the equation.

I cancelled all the lock downs, opened all the gates, and threw the Box wide. I took away her control.

The lights in the little steel room flickered, plunging my Unwise Counterpart into stop-motion darkness. She scrambled upright, struggling to regain her feet, bloody fist closed around the pebble. Across the radio, from far away, I heard a triumphant hissssssss! The hiss was followed by a deafening thump-crack-clang of metal, then a ripping and tearing sound like a car torn open by steel jaws. My other six selves, free and wild!

I was vaguely aware of a flinch at my side — Eileen, looking up and around. A muttered exchange passed somewhere beyond the screens, behind my physical body — Zalu and Xiyu, snapping back and forth.

That sound had not only been heard over the radio, but out in the hospital, for real.

“Heather, no!” the other me wailed, a metal-faced ghost beneath failing lights. “What have you done?! They’re going to get out, they’re going to get free!”

“Good!” I shouted into the radio. “Good! You deserve to see this nonsense fail, you—”

Past the shuddering shoulders of Defeated Me, the vast dark shape behind the frosted glass shifted and coiled. I slammed to a halt. That couldn’t be Maisie.

“Oh no,” she said. “No, no, no, this is all wrong, this is all wrong!”

Lying and Cheating Heather started to retreat into a corner, backing away from the glass, away from her soldiers, away from my unseen vantage point all around her. She stumbled over her feet, chest rising and falling with hyperventilating panic, masked head flicking left and right. A hisssss came from somewhere closer by, perhaps just outside the room. Other Heather raised a hand to gesture to her remaining row of Empty Soldiers, but then she almost fumbled the pebble again, clasping it to her chest in desperation. Her fist left a smear of blood on the front of her Cygnet-issue pajamas.

“Just leave me— leave me— leave me alone, Heather, leave me— leave me alone, leave me—”

I drew a circle around her, around her hidden face, around the unreadable grey metal of the squid-skull mask.

And then I pulled it from her head.

The mask came off and landed in my lap — my actual, physical lap, here in the Governor’s Office — a sudden feathery weight which barely registered. Somebody else — Praem perhaps — reached out to prevent the mask from slipping off my legs and falling to the floor. I was so absorbed in the spectacle of myself, suddenly denuded of her protection, forced to show her face when she advocated for murder.

She was vile.

She screamed as the mask came away, dropping both the pebble and the radio handset as she swiped at the air, groping for the return of her shell and refuge. But her hands closed on nothing; her safety was mine now. Tears ran down cheeks flushed red with shame and self-loathing — both well justified. Her face — my face, the same face I saw in a mirror every morning, the same face I saw in still water and the bowl of a spoon and reflected in the eyes of those I loved — twisted with agonised tears. Thin lips, hollow cheeks, greasy hair. Eyes the colour of muddy-grey skies, brimming over with liar’s salt.

Something about those tears was so ugly. Was this really me? Did I really look like that?

Did Maisie look like that, when she cried?

“Don’t— hic, don’t look at me, don’t look—” she whined and sobbed, dropping into a crouch and shielding her face and head with her arms, trying to withdraw into a shell I had taken from her. “No, no, please, no, not again, no, no— don’t—hic— don’t—”

Bile rushed up my throat — disgust and shame burning my oesophagus, burning my words to nothing. Tears prickled in my eyes.

She was ugly and pitiful, but she was still me.

So why was I treating myself like this?

“W-wait,” I stammered. “Wait. I didn’t mean to— I’m— I didn’t mean to hurt—”

“You did!” she screamed, emerging from behind her arms. “You did!”

Suddenly every view in the wall of monitors was a close-up of her, of me, of our shared face, flushed and tear-streaked and ugly with such bone-deep bitterness. Her eyes were brown; her eyes were blue-grey.

I reached out one quivering hand, an apology on my lips.

Then she spat: “All I’ve done is try to help! All I’ve done is for you! And for you, she has to die! Eileen has to die!”

The apology died on my lips.

“Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself,” I said. “You’re wrong.”

She screamed.

The wall of monitors became a wall of her screams — my scream, my face, streaked with tears, distraught in abandonment and disbelief and isolation, a scream of frustration and self-betrayal howling from the black plastic radio in my hand.

That scream was like a shove; I tumbled off the lofty pedestal of observation and slammed back into my own body with a hard, sharp, convulsive flinch. I jerked against the cradle of the observation throne, suddenly panting for breath, surrounded by the walls of the Governor’s office, nothing more than a young woman staring at a bank of monitors.

A wave of gut-wrenching pain quivered through my bruised abdomen. My wounded left shin was on fire, pajama leg stuck to my skin with fresh blood. Pain-sweat broke out on my face. I gasped for breath, drowning in my own flesh.

“To hell, allegiance!” Other Heather screamed. “Vows, to the blackest devil! Conscience, and grace, to the profoundest pit! I dare damnation: To this point I stand,— That both the worlds I give to negligence, Let come what comes; only I'll be reveng'd.”

“S-stop,” I gasped. “Stop, I’m— I’m sorry—”

A weak, pale, limp little fist lashed out toward me.

The single monitor directly before my face went dead, dark, black as a mirror of night.

The rest of the wall of monitors flickered back to the hundred views of the unfolding revolution inside Cygnet Asylum, as if a broadcast interruption had just ended. Regular programming resumed. Your scheduled drama, back on air.

A final line hissed from the black plastic radio in my hand.

“I won’t let you cage me,” said Lonely Heather.

The line went dead.

Crash landing back into my own body was not a pleasant experience, even if this was ‘only’ a dream. The combined pain of my leg and my gut was enough to bring a veil of fresh tears to my eyes. I wheezed for breath, fighting down both the whirling vertigo aftermath of such focused observation, and the strange hollow alienation from my other self, my poor, lonely, little self, who I had left behind in that steel-shod room.

Had I abandoned her? Had I betrayed her?

Just like I had abandoned Maisie to Wonderland?

My clammy fingers struggled to hold the slender stick of chalk; the little radio tumbled from my other hand and bounced off the squid-skull mask in my lap. Praem caught it before it could fall.

Eileen was saying my name — “Heather? Heather? Heather?” — while the twins to my rear snapped out, “Ma’am? Ma’am, are you in need of assistance? Ma’am?”

Beyond those three voices lay the distant roar and rumble of the revolution, the hundred riots unfolding in the hospital beneath us: shouts and screams, rallying cries, calls for aid, the clang and clash of metal-on-metal, the breaking of wooden barricades, the thunder of feet racing down corridors, the lightning of fists on flesh. From beyond the walls, far away on the other side of the asylum grounds, more lethal background noises filled the air — the revving of engines, the pseudo-fake boom-boom of toys pretending to be big guns, all punctuated by the ‘prrrt-prrrrrt!’ trilling of one giant moth-girl on her lucid rampage.

But all of it turned to white noise in my ears, blurred to static by a wall of tears.

All I could see was the weeping face before me, ugly and nasty, twisted by pain and bitterness, by self-hate and survivor’s loathing.

For a moment it was Her, Lonely Heather, the Other Me. Then it was Maisie, an impossible close-up view of her hanging in her aquarium tank, struggling against the bonds of steel and pressure. But how could Maisie be so ugly? How could my twin sister look so cruel and full of shame?

Then I realised I was staring at my own face, reflected in the dark mirror of a blank screen.

A hand fell on my shoulder and squeezed hard.

I brought myself around with a great heave of breath, dragging a sleeve across my tear-filled eyes. I looked up into Eileen’s curious face. She stared back down at me with her own wide and questioning gaze, clear of sorrow, but wracked by alarm and worry and a thousand-fold cares.

“Heather,” she said. “What do we do now?”

Two other voices piped up from behind me, mirrors of each other. “Ma’am, we need orders.”

“She’ll be sending a squad to this location.”

“We have to move.”

“Ma’am, by your command.”

“Uh, um … ” I swallowed, my mouth so dry, my head pounding with each throb of my heart. I couldn’t get my bearings. Observation had been like a drug, and here was withdrawal. “I … I … ”

I hesitated, mired deep in doubt.

If the Other Heather, the one tucked away inside the Box and commanding these Empty Guards, was the ‘Lonely Me’, then what was I? What part of me was sitting there, in this dream-body, wracked with pain, bleeding from her leg, bruised in the gut, curled up in an observation throne? If she was Lonely, wallowing in her isolation, then was I the part that refused loneliness? Was I the part that placed faith in others, the part that never gives up on my friends, the part which still believed, despite all odds, that we can and will overcome anything, all for the sake of rescuing Maisie, and rescuing each other?

Whatever part I was, I was filled with guilt and worse.

Was my judgement just as clouded?

Doubt could not be entertained, however; I shook my head and took a deep breath, simply because I could not afford it, not if I was going to win. The revolution was still salvageable. Everyone in the dream could still be saved, all my friends and the patients too. These machinations by some Bitter and Spiteful part of me could be defeated. We would be whole again, and Maisie would be free.

“Give me a second,” I wheezed, turning back to the wall of monitors.

The screen directly before me was still blank. I kept my eyes away from that one, terrified of seeing my own ugly, tear-streaked face again and mistaking it for Maisie. But all the other screens showed countless views of the hospital corridors and the unfolding violence. The revolution was guttering and stuttering now, like a candle in a cold, dark wind.

I selected a single screen — one miniature drama, one representative scene among the dozens of confrontations and barricades and headlong charges.

A grainy CCTV feed showed a dead-end corridor, somewhere high up in the hospital. A scrum of a dozen patients stood shoulder-to-shoulder, barring the end of the corridor. Most of them were armed with makeshift weapons — table legs, bits of broken chair, a crowbar, a snapped-off length of pipe — while two more used an upturned table as a barricade. Some of them were wounded, blood running from shallow cuts or grazes. Cygnet-issue pajamas were dirty and scuffed. Eyes were narrowed and set. Behind the line a smaller gaggle of younger girls huddled for protection — patients who couldn’t fight, who weren’t old enough or bold enough to be part of the front line, though some of them held bricks or shouted encouragement. But several of them were clinging to each other in open fear, crying and screaming. They knew they were cornered, with nowhere to run.

A flood of nurses was bearing down on the little group — four, five, six dozen shambling monsters of sagging grey, crammed into ragged white uniforms, brandishing straitjackets and plastic cuffs and hypodermic needles and stun batons and nylon rope. They filled the corridor like a flood of sewage, with no gaps in their formation.

As I watched, a brick sailed out from behind the line of patients and smashed into the skull of one of the nurse-monsters, cracking bone and pulping flesh. The monster rocked back, collapsing from the impact. A cheer went up in celebration — then died away as the nurse-monster straightened back up and continued her shuffling advance, alongside so many others.

The line of patients braced themselves for a fight. But no matter how gallant and courageous, they would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers within moments. The line would fall, and the more vulnerable girls behind them would be taken away and locked up, drugged and bound, and left alone in the dark.

Tears threatened my eyes again. Just like the Lonely Heather I had shouted and screamed at.

I raised the stick of chalk and reached toward the screen.

Clink.

The screen was just glass. The chalk was just chalk.

That scream of rejection from Bitter Sad Lonely Heather had robbed us of even this pale imitation of brain-math.

“No!” I hissed, leaning forward in frustration, jabbing at the little screen. But the chalk just went clink-clink-clink. I twisted in the seat and almost winded myself by pulling at the bruise in my guts. I held the chalk out to Eileen. “Can you do it?!” I snapped. “Can you reach through, with hyperdimensional mathematics, and help them? Please!”

Eileen looked at the chalk, then at the screen, then back at the chalk, then at me.

“I cannot,” she said. “I have relinquished my authority. I assumed you would be able to assume.”

“Tch!” I hissed in frustration. “Not any more! I’m— I’m at war with myself! Neither of us has control! We’ve rejected each other!”

Eileen nodded, then said, “Then I am useless.”

“What? No, no, you’re not, don’t say that.”

“Ma’am,” said one of the Twins. “Ma’am, we cannot stay here. You were right about that part. We have to move. Ma’am?”

The six empty eye holes of my squid-skull mask stared up from my lap, ringed with protective bone-ridges. The awkward horizontal mouth-slash told me nothing. The flared skirt of bone seemed to suggest a pattern, and within that pattern, a solution. The metallic surface caught the light from the screens, reflecting back an oil-gloss kaleidoscope of colour.

To Her, The Other Me, this mask was protection and refuge.

What was it to me?

“Eileen,” I croaked. “Turn the chair around, please.”

Eileen did as I asked, applying just enough pressure to make the observation throne turn on the massive ball-and-socket joint set into the floor. The chair swung away from the wall of monitors, to face the rest of the Governor’s Office.

Zalu and Xiyu, in their dream-guise special forces role, waited with their hands on their shiny black guns and their hair up in non-matching ponytails, their feet planted amid the oil-leaking bodies of the empty guards. Behind them, the window was streaming with the cold light of a cloudy day, dawn finally tucked away behind the leaden sky — though there was no sky and no clouds, only the narrow visible sliver of the Eye, Eileen’s true body, staring down at the dream with an open slit of magnesium-silver.

To the right was the door of the office, our only way out, still barred with a filing cabinet. To the left was the other desk, littered with blank papers.

The severed head of Horror the head nurse sat in the middle of that desk, blindfolded and deafened and gagged, wrapped up tight in an old towel.

“Ma’am?” said one of the Twins. “What is your plan?”

I couldn’t answer — not because my throat was raw and half my conciousness was pain, but because the plan was abstract, a dream-thing, a set of actions which only made sense in the context of my own ancient traumas and lifelong preoccupations.

The stick of chalk went back inside my yellow blanket, followed by the insignia patch with the crowned and haloed head of Foolish And Murderous Heather; I told myself it was not ‘cool’ at all, but a seed of doubt in my chest was still a little impressed. The radio I left to Praem. She might find better use of it than I could.

Moving even that much, to stow the symbols of the dream, drew awful pain from my gut and a deep throbbing from my leg. My wound was bleeding through the stitches now, and my gut quivered and shook, sending waves of nausea up through my throat. But I kept moving. I needed to finish this on my own terms, and deal with myself.

I took my Outsider squid-skull mask from my lap, raised it with both hands, and lowered it over my head.

For a moment I was enclosed in warm metallic darkness, blind as in the womb. A familiar scent teased at my nose, of familiar skin and hair beneath my hand, of laying my head on my own pillow in bed, of stripping off my clothes and catching the smell of my own body. That scent was me, or her, or both of us, combined in one inside this mask. For a moment, as the safe enclosure of the mask slipped down over my face, I knew how she felt, I knew what she had felt, wearing this, feeling invincible, feeling right.

She was so silly to be afraid of me. Wasn’t she?

Then I opened my eyes and stared out from the eye holes of the squid-skull mask. The metal felt like a second skin, like my own fresh-grown carapace of iron-infused bone and chitin. The pain in my leg and gut seemed to finally recede, the morphine in my blood finally working properly.

Eileen watched with a curious look in her wide eyes. Zalu and Xiyu shared a glance, mystified by my behaviour. Praem cautioned, but about what, she could not explain.

I raised a hand and gestured at the other desk. “Would one of you be so kind as to pass Horror to me, please?”

Zalu and Xiyu shared another glance.

“Has she lost her equilibrium?” one of them said.

“Can we trust her judgement and her orders?”

“I’m not sure, sister.”

“True.”

“But you heard what the other one of her said.”

“We heard it all. Which parts?”

“Heather and Heather are the only powers left in control of the dream.”

“Which means if we don’t help one, the other will probably win.”

“That assumption places too much faith in our prowess.”

“Does it?”

“Does it indeed.”

I cleared my throat. “I promise I have a plan. And you heard what Nasty Me—” I paused. “The other me, I mean. You heard what she said about Horror’s head. We have to save the revolution, then I have to stop her, stop myself. Now, please. You’re right that we don’t have much time. I have to take control.”

Zalu shrugged. Xiyu nodded. Zalu walked over to the other desk and picked up Horror’s severed head, dangling by a loop of towel, then crossed back to me.

For a moment she just held the head out, blindfolded and gagged, jaw still trying to wriggle, facial muscles twitching.

“Where do you want her, Ma’am?”

“Put her in my lap, please,” I said. “I can handle her now.”

Zalu lowered Horror’s head into my lap. The severed stump of the neck squished against my thighs. I almost shivered at the disgusting sensation, but the refuge of my squid-skull mask fortified me against almost anything.

Zalu stepped back. I stared down at Horror through the mask’s many eye holes, then reached out and began to unwrap this wriggling package of human head.

First I pulled the gag from her mouth. The moment the towel was out, she retched and heaved and worked her lips up and down.

“Ugh! Ugh ugh ugh! Do you even know what it’s like to have a piece of cloth jammed in your mouth for that long?!” she said, jaw jerking at my thighs. “Heather? Heather, my dear girl, I know that’s you unwrapping me. I can tell by your touch, you’re always so tentative and— ow!”

I yanked on the length of towel as I unbound her ears.

“You were saying?” I said.

“I … I said I can tell it’s you,” Horror went on, jaw flapping up and down in my lap. “You’re so tentative and gentle. I know none of this is really your fault, Heather. I know that you can find it in you to be a good girl again and do as you’re told. All this mess can be put right, all this violence and strife can be put behind us, all this—”

“I am a good girl,” I said. “I’ve always been a good girl. It’s something I’m too good at, in fact.”

Horror hesitated. “H-Heather? You … you sound … ”

I removed the blindfold from Horror’s deep blue eyes. She blinked several times, then looked up at the Outsider squid-skull mask. She froze, tongue and jaw finally stilled.

I finished unwrapping the towel, grabbed a fistful of her blonde hair, and lifted her so she hung before my face, before my mask, before what I had determined to do.

“ … Heather?” she squeaked.

“You have no power over me anymore,” I said. “You’re finished now, Horror.”

“Wha— how— you—”

I sighed inside my mask, then leaned forward, closed my eyes, and tapped my forehead against hers.

“Because I accept you,” I whispered. “You are part of me. All my old traumas, all my hatred and bitterness about medical treatment, all the injustice that my parents put me through without realising. I can’t pretend you aren’t part of me, can’t pretend I’ll ever truly be rid of you, because that would be like opening a wound to get rid of a scar. It simply doesn’t work like that.”

“ … uh … n-no, no,” she murmured. “You have to be a g-good girl, come back to … to your room, and … ”

I leaned back again, so I could look her in the eyes.

“I am the one in control,” I said. “You don’t rule me. You don’t make decisions for me. And you don’t put me in a cell.”

Horror swallowed; how she achieved that with only a stub of her throat, I had no idea, but I wasn’t going to start questioning the wisdom of the dream at this late hour.

“I am in charge of us,” I said. “Do you understand?”

Horror wobbled. I realised with a little smirk that she was trying to nod.

“Say it,” I said.

“You are in charge,” she echoed. “You are in charge.”

“Good,” I said. “Now, you’re going to do as you’re told.”

I lowered the head for now; I would need her shortly, but we had to get moving first.

“Eileen,” I said, looking up at her pinkly glowing eyes. “I need you to carry me, like you did before. And for a much longer time. I need you for this, and I think you’re the only one who can do it.”

“Ah,” said Eileen. She blinked. “I am filled with use again?”

“You were never useless,” I said. “Nobody else can do this. I need you to carry me.” Then I turned to Zalu and Xiyu. “And you two, I need you to defend Eileen and I.”

“And I,” said Eileen.

I almost laughed, high on the potential of my plan. Zalu and Xiyu both sighed, not quite in unison.

“Eileen and myself, then,” I said. “Yes, I know, the first time was grammatically incorrect. Eileen is rubbing off on me or something. Eileen and me.”

“Boo,” said Eileen.

“This isn’t the time for puns.”

“It is always a good time for the best of puns.”

Eileen got into position as she spoke, crouching down next to the observation throne so that I might once again climb onto her back, to be carried piggyback style. Praem helped me lever my quivering body out of the chair, and dragged me over to Eileen. We worked together to prop me up, with one arm around Eileen’s front, my thighs braced in her hands, and my other hand holding Horror’s head by her hair, ready to raise my grisly trophy.

“Are you prepared?” Eileen said.

“Yes. Do it.”

Eileen stood up, carrying me on her back. My guts roiled, but then settled. I cast one last glance at the wall of monitors, one last temptation at the power of observation.

Then Eileen turned us away, and I dragged my eyes to the door.

Xiyu leapt into action, pulling the filing cabinet out of the way.

Zalu said: “We can protect you, Heather. Seven Shades of Sunlight would have us in the dock if we didn’t. But we need to know the plan. You need to give clear orders. What’s our objective?”

I pulled myself as upright as I could on Eileen’s back, fighting the pain in my belly and the blood dripping from the cuff of my pajama bottoms. Horror’s head swung from my sweaty fist.

“Save the revolution,” I said. “Tear down the institution. Take control. Or end control.”

Xiyu got the filing cabinet away from the door. She let the door hang wide, showing the corridor beyond, lit by cold, grey, late-morning light. She shouldered her gun and peered out, left and right, checking our path.

“Sure thing,” said Zalu. “But what’s our immediate objective? Where are you going, Heather? With what purpose?”

I raised Horror’s mute head in one quivering fist; her eyes were wide with submissive terror.

“To the nearest group of patients,” I said. “To accept all my traumas.”