“That’s right.” His face gives a twitch of pain. “This is rotten timing. But I’m glad I’m with you.”

I kick his foot. “Don’t be a sap.”

The Nightmare takes him with a smile on his face.

It’s not like watching someone fall asleep. Tension tightens every muscle in his body. He lies like a board and, after several minutes, tiny beads of sweat line his forehead.

I sigh. He’ll be exhausted when he wakes again—possibly too tired to do the cure trial run. Hungry too.

I do busywork, check our meager food stores. I make sure I get some rest to make up for whatever lack of energy Nole will have when he wakes. I check the small chicken coop attached to the back of the tiny house—nailed straight into the siding so we wouldn’t forget it when we drove around. Three chickens, two eggs.

“Good girls.” I tell them and then boil the eggs on the small gas burner, already anticipating the burst of protein. Nole will be pleased to wake up to something other than a potato.

He shouts from the couch.

I jerk around. Nole has never made a sound when he’s trapped in the Nightmare. Never. I check the clock. It’s still a few hours until he’s supposed to wake. I cross to the couch.

“Nole?” I ask tentatively. Maybe all the time he spent working on the cure formula somehow got through to him. After all, it’s a virus of the mind. Perhaps his mind is growing in strength against the infection. Maybe it’s waking him up. Curing him.

His body jolts and he cries out again.

“Nole!” My voice rises. I shake his shoulder. “Nole, what’s going on?”

While this development worries me, it also tells me something new is happening. Nole will wake with new information. Maybe he will finally give me intel I can use to pull my weight with this cure.

Tremors rock his body, almost sending him off the couch. I push him deeper into the cushions. “Nole!” My hopeful excitement fizzles to fear that sends roots into my chest. “Nole!”

A harsh yell, then he goes still. Limp.

My hands recoil of their own accord. Did I do something to make it worse? I hardly chance a whisper. “Nole?”

No movement.

No breathing.

“Wait. Wait a second.” I grab his arm and shake it. It moves at my touch, heavy and flaccid. “Don’t you dare.” I speak more to the Nightmare than Nole but pull up his eyelid all the same.

The gray Nightmare mist is gone.

So is the light of life.

Nole is . . . dead. Dead.

“No!” This can’t be happening. “No!” I shove my brother’s body. “Stop it! Stop this! You wake up. Wake up!”

But like when Mom was caught in depression, and just like when she lay in her cancer coffin, my protests achieve nothing.

Nole has died. Taking his cure with him.

Fact #3:

If you die in the Nightmare . . .

you die in real life.

In three minutes my mind will take me hostage.

It’s been fifteen days since Nole died, and I buried his body. I caught the virus the very next day. Ten days ago I tried mixing his cure and applying it to myself to no avail. Nole’s follower count dropped dramatically as the Nightmare claimed life after life.

Hope was lost. So were his fans, his followers, his brother.

The antique, shatter-your-eardrums alarm clock ticks the menacing countdown. I trip over a discarded couch cushion on my way to the stove at the front of The Fire Swamp. I turn the burner off and move the boiling potatoes from the heat. When I wake again in fifteen hours, I’ll be famished, and they’d be cooked.

My secondary alarm beeps a warning. Two minutes.

My hands tremble, and I trip back to the couch where Nole’s laptop sits open with a critical battery level. Nole’s notes and theories litter the screen as photos, scans, and typed details. Math. Even though I’ve tried his cure and it didn’t work, I’m sure there’s something I’m missing. Maybe I added things up wrong. Maybe I read a note wrong. The only reason his cure wouldn’t work is because of me. I’m the weak point, and I will not let him die in vain.

My heart roundhouse kicks my ribs at the very prospect of being able to free myself—and everyone else—from this death countdown.

A third alarm clock goes off, but I don’t bother to snooze it. I’ll have to finish my attempts when I’m awake again. I shove aside the textbooks on dementia and dreamscape side effects I nabbed from the university lab, save the computer files, and shut down the laptop to preserve its battery. It’ll be charged once I wake—the curse of my infection is that I’m always sleeping during the daytime. I’m awake at night. My last sunset was two days ago. I miss the light of the sun, but at least it will charge The Fire Swamp while I sleep.

“I can fight this.” Like the other fourteen times I said this, my words hold no power. My determination, my health, my smarts . . . change nothing. The virus came for me despite Nole’s theory of my not having enough serum in my blood to mutate. It came for me the day after his death—not even giving me time to grieve.

Thirty seconds.

I spit out my gum so I don’t choke in my sleep, then double bolt the door, drop the shutters on the windows, and avoid the reflection. I hate watching myself break like a whimpering child. Nole always sat on the couch and sank into the Nightmare with resignation. It either affects me differently or I’m just weak. It makes my knees buckle, my body tremble, my mind panic.

Maybe I am like Mom.

“I . . . can fight . . . this.” My words dissipate into mental mist as I sink unwillingly to the hard floor. “I . . . can . . .” Every word is like spitting out bricks. I turn my focus elsewhere—to keeping my eyes open. “I will . . . not sleep.” It comes out as a croak.

I don’t want to go.

Fifteen seconds.

I launch to my feet. “I will not sleep!” Every blink brings the weight of a dumbbell to my eyelids. Don’t blink.

I stand alone in The Fire Swamp, eyes wide open, fists clenched against my temples. Sweat rolls down my temples. Fog rolls in.

It’s not real.

The fog swirls around me, clouding my vision and taking over my mind. This is the fifteenth time the virus has claimed me, and it shreds my courage as swiftly as the first time. I stumble away from it, careening into a corner.

I blink and barely manage to squint my eyes open again. Anger rushes in at the injustice of this infection. It grows like black veins, clawing its way into my irises, taking over my sight.