Once you catch the Nightmare Virus, you have 22 days until you die.

That’s fact #1.

Fact #2 is that there’s no cure . . . yet.

I stare at the piece of paper held up by a cracked Zelda magnet on the half fridge inside our tiny house on wheels. Equations and scribbles and questions fill the small, lined piece of paper.

Our attempts at a cure.

Nole expects me to figure them out while he sleeps, but I’m not him. My brain doesn’t work the same way as his. He has a whole extra year of college under his belt. I can pull the “I’m younger and dumber” card when he wakes up to find I’ve made little to no progress.

He lays on the couch behind me. Dreaming, maybe.

Infected.

We call it sleep, but that’s not quite right. He’s had the Nightmare Virus for 19 days now and says it’s like being sucked into another world of darkness and fear. He calls it The Tunnel. I don’t bother to use my imagination to try to picture it because it’ll come for me eventually.

It comes for everyone.

Nole and I may have shared everything else as brothers growing up, but we haven’t shared the virus . . . yet.

I consult the math scribbles again—the math of the virus. If there’s anything I hate more than the idea of being trapped in my own mind, it’s math. Day 1 of the virus forces you to sleep in the Tunnel for 1 hour. You’re awake for the next 23 hours. Day 2 of the virus, you’re in The Tunnel for 2 hours. Then awake for 22. And so on and so forth until suddenly you’re asleep for 22 hours and awake for only 2.

That’s when you say your goodbyes.

You never wake after that. The Nightmare takes you, and you’re stuck in it until your body deteriorates or starves or someone stabs you in your infected sleep.

Dark stuff. Sorry about that.

Nole shifts on the couch. I startle, looking between him and the paper on the fridge. I’ve calculated wrong—again. I thought he wouldn’t be waking up for another hour. At least I’ll have company one hour sooner than expected. But I haven’t prepped any food.

I pull a packet of gum from my pocket, unwrap a stick, and pop it in my mouth. Dinner for me.

Nole rubs his eyes. I snatch a cooked potato from the fridge and plop it into a bowl with a slab of butter and a slice of cheddar cheese that has the moldy bits carved away. Dinner for Nole.

He’ll be exhausted. But, knowing Nole, he’ll refuse to rest. I don’t blame him. His death date is set.

He groans. “Cain.”

“Here.” I slide the potato onto the small fold-out table jutting from the wall. “There’s not enough charge to power the microwave today.”

He pushes himself up. “Are you going to eat?”

“Nah.” I gesture to the gum in my mouth. “I’m good.” It’s easier to handle our dwindling food supply and rationing when my mouth thinks it’s eating.

He doesn’t bother with a fork and scoops up the potato with his hand. “Sick yet?”

“Nope.”

He gives a sharp, relieved nod. “Figure it out?”

“Nope.”

He eyes me before biting off a chunk of potato. “Did you even try?”

I glower. “Of course I tried.” The cure. He expects me to work on it every waking hour while he’s trapped in the Nightmare. He also expects me to do algebra and calculations and all the other sorts of things that got me held back in school—plus decipher his chicken scratch.

He holds out his hand. “Notes.”

I throw him the notebook we’ve both been using for the cure. He flips to the most recent page, but then stops and goes back to a scrawl of a castle half set into a cliffside. “Cain . . .”

“I did that during break time,” I joke.

“You don’t have time for a break. If we’re going to find a cure, we have to pour everything into it.”

“I am.” Does he think I want him to die? To stay infected? Does he think I want the Nightmare to come for me? Sometimes I just need to sketch to calm my brain enough to focus.

He traces the title over the top of the castle, written in gothic font. “Ithebego.” He smiles, and we both spare a moment to acknowledge dreams before the Nightmare.

Nole is—was—going into his junior year in college, studying dream serums and fabrication. I’m still not used to thinking of it in past tense. Universities closed down only a month ago. Nole and I wanted to be Draftsmen—professionals who build dream worlds. We wanted to have our own dreamscape company: Cross Brothers Creations. With a last name like Cross, I used to joke that he was the upright beam and I was the crooked one.

We didn’t want to create the typical beach scenes or therapy escapes that permeated the wealthy circles. We were going to build kingdoms with swords and castles and dragons with themes from our favorite fandoms and books.

It would have changed the world.

It would have awoken the world.

We were going to call our own dreamscape Ithebego. It was Cain’s idea to take the letters from a string of words: In the beginning, God . . . He liked the symbolism. The first thing God did was create a home—a place. A story world. I let him have his Bible moment.

I liked the name more for how it looked on paper—and the many different ways we could pronounce it. Nole may be the science brain, but I am—was—the vision behind the worlds. The imagination, per se.

We joined the same university—me one year behind him—and both majored in Dream Drafting and Fabrication. At the very least, we’d hoped to have more access to entering dreamscapes. I’d only ever been in one, but it was enough to affect the trajectory of my life. ImagiSerum is expensive. When it first launched, every person in the world was allowed one free entry—to get an idea of what entering and adventuring in a safe dream world while fully lucid was like.

Or to make us all addicted.

Nole and I went together. Our assigned dreamscape was a mountain top—a generic world made by a low-level Draftsman. We didn’t have to worry about altitude sickness, thin air, exhaustion, danger, or even proper clothing against the elements. We paraglided off the top of the mountain. There was no fear—just exhilaration—because a person can’t get physically injured in a dream. It’s all in the mind.

The experience was intoxicating. Easily addicting. Which was why people began killing for ImagiSerum when they could no longer afford it. It turned ugly fast, but not as ugly as when the ImagiSerum started killing back.

“How are you feeling?” Nole asks, flipping past my sketch of Ithebego and finding my newest equations.

“Fine.” I shrug. “Surprised I’m not infected yet.” With just Nole and me in this tiny space it’s bound to happen eventually. Right? Does anything else matter at this point?

Nole nods and jots something down. “I think it’s because you’ve only ever had one dose of ImagiSerum. There’s not enough in your system to mutate and infect you.”

His theory makes sense. When ImagiSerum was a new phenomenon, people were eager to take injections to enter dreamscapes. They lined up and drained their savings. But now we have data on the long-term effects: traces of ImagiSerum stay in your system. Mutate. Turn into a virus and trap your mind in a dark tunnel until you die.