“I’m hopeful you’ll remember it all. And you’ll wake up wherever you call home. If you don’t have a home yet, it’ll be where you last fell asleep.” His terms are backward—referencing the Nightmare as waking up and the Old World as being asleep.

I need to watch out for this guy. I’m not about to trust him so quickly. Or even slowly.

“See you in a few days, Cain. Well, for you, it’ll be a few hours.”

The world blinks off like someone snuffed out the moon.

It’s cure time.

I practically leap off the couch as the scene with Luc fades from my vision—but not my memory. I relish the clarity in my mind now that I’m awake again. It’s not like when I used to wake up from a vivid dream where it trickled away like sand in a sieve. Every conversation and event is crisp in my mind, like I lived it here in the Real World.

The only things that grow more muted by the minute are my emotions. And I’m definitely okay with that.

There’s a lot of new information to sift through—Luc’s offer of a LifeSuPod and the fact that I created wings inside a dreamscape. Now that I’m awake again, the many rules drilled into my head at university come flooding back. Creating wings and a spear should have been impossible. One of the cardinal rules is that only the Draftsman can create items in the dream. It’s more than just a rule: it’s impossible to do otherwise.

Dreamscapes are programs. For a visitor to create something in the dream would be the equivalent of someone hacking a website by scribbling in the dirt with a stick.

So how did I do that?

The infection must connect me to the dreamscape somehow. But there’s no Wi-Fi where I am. I haven’t shared ImagiSerum with anyone. Can everyone in this Nightmare do something like that? Clearly not, otherwise they wouldn’t have been so shocked when I did it. More than shocked: frightened.

But Luc can do it. I assumed he’s the Draftsman, but now that I’ve done the same thing, I don’t know what to think. I can’t wrap my brain around it.

My concave stomach growls a demand for food. Luc’s pizza clearly doesn’t carry over. The memory of it on my tongue, however, does. I throw a cooked potato from the fridge into a bowl with a meager slice from my last cube of butter, then update my time card to reflect exactly how many days I’ve been infected and how many I have left.

Infected: 16

Remaining Sleeps: 6

I tear my gaze away from the paper as panic blooms in my chest, then I flip open my notebook and speed-scribble everything I can remember from this last entrance into the virus: the fight with the bull and how the swell of my emotions seemed to turn into weapons. I’m not usually quick to anger—at least I didn’t think I was. I know what anger can do here in the Real World. It’s even more dangerous in the Nightmare. There, it felt impossible to control.

Good thing it was a bull in that Arena and not a person.

If I reenter the Nightmare, will I awaken in Luc’s man-cave tower? I’m supposed to go back in eight hours. I’m curious—even anticipating a return. But no matter my new discoveries, the Nightmare Virus is still killing people. Killing me. Taking away my life and stealing my choices.

I can’t give it an inch in my mind. I must keep fighting—always fighting.

I bite away a quarter of my potato and finish entering my log. I add any remaining notes on how I plan to program the ImagiSerum. The dream code brings me back to memories of classes, back when we all still had dreams for a future. It reignites my passion of being a Draftsman for fictional worlds, video games, all our favorite adventures. I’m still not ready to accept that that future is dead.

I pop in my gum from the last time I was awake. A fresh piece would be nice, but I have four sticks left and seven Awakes. Got to ration.

Now it’s time to go to the university and finally test this cure theory. It’s as though I’ve assembled the innards of a jigsaw puzzle and finally located the pieces that make up the border.

The Fire Swamp is parked in the empty lot of Somnus University. I hope the ImagiSerum is still in the labs. It’s not hard to break into the science building.

At the beginning of this virus, people had banded together, trying to find a way to save one another. They shared necessary goods, checked in with their neighbors. But as the Nightmare spread, the panic buying began, which eventually turned into panic stealing once the stores ran out of products and business doors shut. Now people mug only for money and the hope for individual life-support machines.

LifeSuPods.

When I thought the Nightmare was nothing more than the dark Tunnel, I never understood why people wanted LifeSuPods to keep them trapped in there forever. But some people fear death so much they’d rather live under torture.

Now that I know there’s a whole world beyond the Tunnel, it makes a little more sense. Though I still don’t understand how the Nightmare can kill someone from the inside out. Is it a seizure? A stroke? A message telling the brain it’s over?

I step outside and jog across the darkened campus, appreciating the little moonlight I have, simply because it’s light. Moreso than the gray glow and fire in the Nightmare.

I reach the science lab and circle to where the back door is covered by several trees and some overgrown bushes. I insert my key into the padlock on the lab door. A week before his death Nole had cut the original and replaced it with a padlock of our own. Not only does it keep up appearances of security, but it also makes it look like I belong here.

Once in the lab, I pull my own personal supplies from my lunchbox-size cooler and place them on a long, empty metal table. I then visit the consecutive lab doors until I find the one with the coolers and cabinets that hold the serum. There are only six tiny jars of ImagiSerum.

I use a dead computer monitor to break the glass on the cabinet, then lift one jar from its little bed of foam. A sudden image of my hand slipping and the vial smashing on the vinyl lab floor makes my fingers tighten. No mistakes. This is my only shot.

I return to my own lab area and boot up the ImagiLife programming device, jerry-rigged to The Fire Swamp’s generator. It should power the thing for at least a couple hours.

I follow Nole’s notes like I would a recipe until I get to my own alterations. I carefully pour two vials of unprogrammed ImagiSerum into the device. Then comes the fun.

I imagine novelists or game designers or screenwriters feel this way when they stare at a blank page with nothing but the story in their head. Visuals of a whole world known only to them.

Except this time I’m not programming a world. I’m programming an alert to the brain to wake up—to leave the dreamscape. My fingers fly. I’ve done it a hundred times in my mind and a dozen times in real life. This is one thing I was born understanding.

I program the serum and then send the command for it to eject from the device. I place an empty beaker in the spot to catch it like one would a cup of coffee from a Keurig. A preparation clock shows a twelve-minute wait. I spend that time reading and re-reading and checking my math.

The serum dribbles out, looking the same as it did going in. My breathing quickens, and I stare at it for a long moment before I dare to start mixing. I stretch every neuron in my brain and take copious notes on every single action and adjustment I make.

I need Nole. I need his brain. He’d do this faster. He’d do this right.

But he’d also tell me to shut up and get the job done.

I let myself imagine what might happen if this works. I’ll have a solution. Everyone else gave up on a cure months ago. Scientists worked tirelessly on an antidote until they realized 90 percent of the world was infected. Then no one was left to work on it.

Once they gave up, what was left of the government spent trillions of dollars outfitting every pop-up hospital they could with LifeSuPods. For the elite, of course.

But Nole never lost hope, even once he was infected. That gave me the courage to hold on too. If this cure works, we’ll be the kids who rescued humanity. Nole would not die forgotten.

I also really want to live.

A night-shattering clang startles me so severely I almost drop the beaker. My head turns toward the sound, pulse slamming in my skull like the beat of a kick drum.

My alarm clock. It vibrates so hard against the metal table that it inches toward the edge. I catch it before it falls. I check its face. Once. Twice. There is no way eight hours have passed! I haven’t slept and I’ve eaten only one potato.

My blinks turn to sandpaper, assuring me that eight hours have, indeed, flown by. The Nightmare is coming for me again.

“Wait, wait.” I scrambled for my phone. It has 10 percent battery. “I’m not ready.” I plug it into The Fire Swamp generator.

My alarm ticks toward the second warning—the five-minute countdown. I open Nole’s video channel and start a Live recording. Only as I stare at myself on the screen do I realize how hard I’m breathing.

“Okay, Cain Cross here. It’s September, uh, fourth, and I’ve been infected with the virus for sixteen days. It is supposed to strike at 6:00 a.m., except . . .” I hold up the clear beaker. My hand shakes. “I have what I hope is a cure.”