Six hours since the bombing and I’m still sat in a police interrogation room.

  At least I think it’s been six hours. They took my mobile phone when they arrested me, and the room doesn’t have a clock. Walls the colour of dry pus, three brown plastic chairs, and a table bolted to the bare concrete floor. One way out, a steel door with recessed hinges. Light fixture in the ceiling behind a wire mesh, too bright for comfort. No windows, just a single vent the size of my palm, pushing air none too fresh. One corner plays host to a set of dubious brown stains. A bucket waits in the opposite corner, which was added to the room after I complained of a need to use the facilities. My stare, my condition, my use of ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’, and the unforced tremor in my voice, all convinced the officers to relent on that singular point of dehumanization; so, I have been let out a few times, led down spartan corridors to the ladies’ lavatory, so a female police officer can listen to me urinate.

  They took my coat too, my good coat, with the fleece lining and my purse in one of the pockets. My jumper, shirt, long skirt, and thick tights are not enough to keep out the cold. I hold myself very still and very straight-backed, and try not to shiver. At least they didn’t take my gloves, though the right one is a little pointless at the moment, folded away in a skirt pocket.

  A video camera on a tripod stands to one side of the table. They’ve left it running, in case I do anything interesting.

  The police have done nothing but ask me the same few questions over and over and over again, and I cannot give them any answers. I don’t know the identity of the young woman in the white dress, I’ve never seen her before. No, I don’t know why she attacked a magical girl, of course not, why would anybody do that? I’d never seen her before today, she is a complete stranger to me. I do not know anything, officers. I am a nobody, I was so careful to stay beneath notice, and I should not be in this room.

  My only way out is to keep telling the truth. To be a nice young woman, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hide inside that shell, as tight as I can.

  So far it’s all been regular police, Thames Valley and Greater Oxford Metropolitan, accompanied by a few men in dark suits who say nothing while the uniforms talk. But I know worse is coming, because I know what they suspect.

  I’m trying very hard not to shake. Harder still not to cry. They will not take my dignity.

  The steel door opens with a click. I pull my spine straight, settle my left hand in my lap, and do what I can to soften my eyes. I am a proper young woman, and these conditions have me quite terrified, officer. What more do you need to know? Call my grandmother, she will be worried about me; have you raided my home, seen that I am nothing? Am I free to go yet? Don’t ask that out loud, it will make things worse. Be everything they expect, but nothing more.

  A man steps into the interrogation room, angular and lean, leading with his eyes.

  He’s new, not from the rotating cast of officers I’ve seen so far. Mid-forties, shaven head, raw grey stubble on cheeks and chin. His face is a study in expressionless self-control, eyes alert, intelligent, too wide. He wears a trench coat over a grey turtleneck jumper and a pair of jeans, heavy boots on his feet, but there isn’t much to him beneath the clothes, like a scarecrow without enough straw.

  He crosses the room in silence, such a light tread in those boots. He takes off the trench coat and drapes it over the back of the chair. There’s a holster under his left shoulder, filled with a handgun.

  He places a grey folder on the table, thick with papers, then sits down, and looks at me.

  Dream Control.

  He tries not to linger on my right eye — the droopy lid, the slack muscles, the narrow slit of half my vision. But he can’t help himself; nobody can, at least not on first meeting. Even Willow couldn’t resist, though she softened her stare with gentle questions, and eventually so much more. When I was a child the stares hurt, made me want to wear a mask, or grow my hair long and drape it in front of my face, or spend money I didn’t have on plastic surgery. But I am not a child anymore. I have built a fortress around my face, and I dare all and sundry to dash themselves against the spiked walls of my perfect redoubt.

  His gaze traces the thickened scar tissue that runs from my right eyebrow, down the side of my right cheek, to end in the jagged snarl of flesh where a piece of broken rebar tore me open ten years ago. His eyes sustain neutrality. I’m almost impressed. Here’s the sort of man who has trained to keep his true self to himself. The perfect Dream Control agent, walking the walk instead of just talking the talk.

  A little like me. How disgustingly ironic.

  But he’s not perfect. His gaze lingers on my scar a second too long. He’s never seen severed nerves before. A flicker of sympathy passes behind his face.

  Satisfaction in victory, but I keep it to myself. I am still trying to look polite, non-threatening, and safely, softly, submissively feminine. But what’s the point anymore? With the police, I could believe they might let me go, that this was all a misunderstanding, that I would be out of here in another hour or two. But the presence of a Dream Control agent means I was correct; I am a suspect in the worst possible way.

  The dregs of my life, smeared out for the last decade, are about to be swept up and taken away.

  A bitter taste in the back of my throat blooms as heat in my face and a cold sinking inside my chest. It takes me by surprise, I was expecting fear, terror, despair, worse, because I’ve known all those before. But this is different, not new, but hotter than ever before.

  Anger.

  Bright and hard as heated steel, threatening to blaze up, cut me open, and climb out from inside. It’s not fair! I’ve kept my head down, walked the straight and narrow, and yet I’ve ended up right here anyway, locked in a room with an agent of Dream Control. What was the point of all that outwardly good behaviour? What was the point in trying so hard to appear normal? Why have I been sensible, all this time? What’s the purpose of being polite now? Why not leap across the table and smash this man’s head in with my prosthetic arm? What’s the point in holding it all inside?

  Steady, Octavia. Steady.

  Don’t throw it all away. Maybe I’m wrong. I must control myself; self-control is my only weapon. I must be calm and collected and rational and smooth, because Dream Control do not like uncontrolled displays of strong emotion. Passion suggests psychological imbalance, vulnerability to dreams, and must be regulated. I must swallow my anger.

  Which is not easy, because this man is here to be my executioner.

  His eyes drop to my right arm, which is currently lying on the table, detached from the rest of me.

  “You can put that back on,” he says, gesturing at the prosthetic. His accent is unplaceable, vaguely Home Counties, but too bland to be genuine. His voice is conciliatory, understanding, gentle.

  Too bad for him, fatherly doesn’t work on me.

  “That,” I say, with a click of my tongue, “would require me to remove my jumper and my shirt. Which I would rather not do in front of you, sir, nor in front of any other police officers. Thank you.”

  The police made me remove my prosthetic arm when they brought me into the station — ‘Too much metal in there, love. You gotta take that off if you don’t want us to take it apart.’ Which was nonsense, because they let me keep my right leg attached. They wanted to humiliate and control, but they didn’t want to have to carry me. The motors and processors and myoelectric pickups in my prosthetic arm are not impenetrable technology, no matter how many adjustments and improvements I’ve made. But I removed it anyway, because they would have made a butchery of it. I carried it myself, cradled it like a baby, afraid to drop it and leave myself even more of a cripple.

  Phantom pain is permanent without my arm attached. The limb was amputated ten years ago, but I can feel the fingers curled in my lap, curled too tight, curled so hard for so long that cramp has turned solid, deep in the muscles of fingers and palm, radiating back up a wrist that was disposed of as medical waste so long ago that the atoms likely now belong to some other creature. The phantom pain never goes away unless I am complete. I sleep with my prosthetics on as often as I can, damn the long-term consequences.

  “Fair enough,” the man says. He points at the three empty water bottles next to my arm. “Need another drink?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Have they fed you?”

  Two protein bars and a packet of crisps. I’m very hungry. “A little.”

  “I can get you a proper meal,” he says. “Fast food, anything close enough to the station that I can send somebody for it. What’s your favourite?”

  I decide to push my luck, because there’s something I need more than food.

  “Where is Willow?”

  The man raises an eyebrow. “Willow?”

  “Willow Finch. My—” I pause, wet my lips. My lungs and chest are shaking, despite my best efforts. I keep asking this question and nobody will answer, and that is worse than not asking at all. “The girl I was with when the bomb went off, she’s my best friend. She was being loaded into an ambulance when— when I was arrested. She was—” Another pause. “I don’t care about food. I just want to know if she’s … ” Tears gather behind my eyes, but I don’t let them out. Don’t show it, don’t show anything; this man is from Dream Control, he will use the tiniest piece of leverage as an excuse to start taking you apart. But I must know, I need to know about Willow, and I am willing to burn myself for her sake. “I need to know if she’s … ”

  The man watches my face. Waits until I’m spent.

  “Miss Willow Finch is in Oxford Holton Hospital,” he says. “I spoke to her an hour ago. She’s stable and conscious, on a morphine drip. Burns down her back and legs, a few bruises, two broken fingers. The burns are bad, she’ll have scarring, but she’s expected to make a full recovery, given time.”

  Breath leaves me, too big for my body. Tears come quick, then vanish just as fast. The chair doesn’t feel like enough to hold me upright, so I grip the table with my left hand, staring at the stained plastic surface. My vision blooms as blood rushes to my head. My pulse pounds in my ears.

  Willow gave of herself yet again, for me, who deserves it so little.

  “Thank you,” I whisper.

  “You got off light because your friend knocked you to the ground. Others in that crowd weren’t so lucky. No dead, but we’ve got over two dozen serious injuries. One man is going to lose his left eye.”

  I straighten my spine again, blink away the echo of tears. “Did she ask after me? Willow, did she say anything about me?”

  The man considers, face unreadable, eyes too wide. He tries very hard not to look at the scar on my face. “Are you not curious about what happened to Scarlet Edge?”

  A sigh sticks in my throat and I manage to keep it down. A shrug is safer. “She’s a magical girl, I assume she walked it off.”

  “Mmhmm. Conventional explosive, no magic. Knocked her out of the sky for a minute. Ruined her dress. Made quite a show.”

  “Then I am glad she is not seriously hurt,” I lie.

  The man taps his fingernails on the table. “What do you suppose was the point of doing that? Hitting a magical girl with a bomb, in front of that crowd?”

  “I haven’t the slightest notion. I have told the other officers again and again that I have no idea—”

  “I gave you news of your friend,” he interrupts. “You need to work with me, give me something in return.”

  Deep breath, count to three, picture Willow’s face. I can’t be angry when I think of Willow, so I use her to shore up my walls of polite fiction. The slug of anger slides back down my throat, rough and hot, like bad alcohol burning in my gut, making me sick. I’ve been swallowing these feelings my whole life, I can endure a little more bile.

  “How should I address you, sir?” I ask. “You haven’t given me your name.”

  “John.” A pause. “Smith. No need to call me sir.”

  John Smith is a liar and a coward. He is an agent of Dream Control and he thinks I’m the genuine article. That’s why he won’t give me a real name, because a Dreamer could use that against him.

  But the name is too obviously fake. Is he trying to make me lose my temper? Riling me up by insulting my intelligence?

  A shred of hope stirs in my heart. Perhaps Dream Control don’t have enough justification to take me in. They need me to break first, to scream and shout, to rant and rave on camera, so they can prove me a madwoman, and take me away for ‘emotional evaluation’.

  I was correct. I must do as always. I must be ice.

  “Mister Smith, sir,” I say, keeping my voice plain. I think of Willow, my angel, on the battlements of my heart, and I try not to picture her burned and bleeding. “I cannot give you anything in return except the truth, and the truth is that I do not know who that girl was, or why she did what she did. I wish I could help you. I truly do.”

  John Smith sighs. “Then find something to give me.”

  “Are you suggesting that I’m lying to you, sir?” I make a show of raising my eyebrows and blinking several times, a proper young woman scandalised by any suggestion of improper behaviour. But anger boils in my chest, rushes up my throat, threatens to pour out of my mouth in a crimson tide, too real to hold back; maybe it’s the relief over Willow, maybe it’s the pressure of flawless self-control, or maybe it’s the way this man is asking nothing with the same question, merely trying to make me snap. And I do so very much want to snap. I want to shout in his face and slap him across the cheek. But I swallow, hard and hot and raw. Control. Control. Control. “Because I assure you,” I say, “I have not lied, not once. I have no reason to lie to the police, and certainly not to you, even though you have not properly identified yourself yet. I have no earthly clue why that young woman did what she did. I find it as horrifying as you do, I’m sure. But I have been in here for six hours, and the police have done nothing but ask me questions that I can’t possibly answer. I can’t ‘give’ you anything, because I don’t have anything to give. Are you suggesting that I should make something up, sir? Are you implying that I should create a fabrication? And that when I do, this will somehow go easier for me? Is that what you want from me, sir? Because I will not cooperate with making false statements, or perjury, or whatever other legal classification such a lie might fall under.”

  I look pointedly at the video camera, then back to ‘John’.

  He doesn’t even blink. He waits for me to finish, then fills his lungs, as if reanimating from the dead. “I agree. The police aren’t doing a very good job with you. Don’t blame them, they’re not trained to understand this.”

  “And you are, sir?”

  “Stop calling me sir.” He takes another deep breath. “You need to tell me about that girl.”

  “How many times must I repeat this? I do not know anything. Sir.” I look away, at the blank wall, and try to cross my arms over my chest, before I remember that I currently possess only my left. The stump of my right arm twitches inside the empty sleeve; the phantom pain lying in my lap clenches harder, brings tears to the corners of my eyes.

  John Smith reaches into a pocket of his trench coat and produces the same printouts the police have been waving under my nose — grainy CCTV stills taken from the edge of Oxford New Park. He smooths them out on the table with both hands, though they are not the least bit creased, as if even the image of that girl resists being folded or marred by the waking world.

  The first image shows part of the crowd, with myself and Willow centred, zoomed in too close, made up from too few pixels. I am looking at Willow in profile, our secret moment captured by a low-resolution camera. The second picture shows the girl in the white dress, clearly looking at me, and I am clearly looking back at her. A third shot shows her extracting the weapon from beneath her dress, drawing an impossible length of steel from nowhere. The final shot shows her in the moment just before she threw the explosive-tipped javelin, as she turned and grinned at me, exactly like the kind of maniac who would throw a bomb at a magical girl.

  She’s still grinning. Her grin tears at the paper, her eyes meet mine. I half expect her to wave and wink.

  Is this safe? I have no idea. It is not for civilians to know how Dreamers work.

  John points at her. “You need to tell me about that girl. Whatever you told the police, you can repeat for me. I’m trying to help you.”

  An easy lie. The truth doesn’t matter now, not to a Dream Control agent. He’s enjoying this.

  “I don’t know her.” I look at John, trying to crack his exterior, to see beneath. He’s all hard angles, nothing on which to rest, except those eyes, and they’re too large, too wide-set, lamps in his face. “I’d never seen her before today, before that crowd. She made eye contact with me by chance, because I happened to glance at Willow. I have no idea who she is. If I was conspiring with a Dreamer, do you really think I would be sitting here, sir? Do you think I would be in this room, getting interrogated? I do not believe that is how it works. If I was her … friend or companion or something, wouldn’t she be breaking me out? If I was with her, you would all be dead, this police station would be a smoking crater. Isn’t that right, sir? Isn’t that how it works? I am not an accomplice to a Dreamer. If I was, I would … ”

  Smash this cell apart and walk right over you.

  John Smith shakes his head. “I don’t think you’re an accomplice to a Dreamer.”

  I smile, thin and painful. “That is good to know, sir. I don’t even know who she is, and I already hate her, for ruining my life.”

  “I’m not going to ruin your life.”

  Yes you are!

  I want to scream at him, leap up from the table and throw the papers in his face, knock him out of his chair and stamp on his head. It would be easier if he was gloating, leering, salivating at the prospect of my end.

  Everybody knows what happens to people who’ve slipped too far into dreams, people who chase the unattainable angles of their imaginations, people who spend too long lost in fancy. Dabble at the edge of the Dreamlands, make like you might step over, and Dream Control will sniff you out. Plenty of people come back from Dream Control’s Isolation and Observation cells, but many others don’t. What they suspect me of now is enough to dissect me, perhaps literally. My mind will be picked apart, every last desire unspooled, so they can avert the next Dreamer, the next embryonic reality-warping wanderer who comes to their attention. John Smith is going to send me to a little white cube where they will dismantle me, for something I didn’t do.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  I’ve been so careful, and now they’ve come for me, and I didn’t even do anything, let alone the things I dreamed of.

  John Smith opens the folder on the table and splays out the entrails of my life.

  “Octavia Carter,” he reads my name off a crisp grey printout. “Twenty years old. Date of birth, 19th of December 2004. Height, five seven. Hair, black. Eyes, grey. Distinguishing marks … ” His eyes go to the scar on my face, then the prosthetic arm on the table, then back down to the papers. “Parents, Coreen and Rafe Carter, both deceased, both on the same date, 6th of February 2015. You live with your grandmother on your mother’s side, Phyliss Lambert. Address, 47 Crowden Close, flat number 13. Both your parents and said grandmother were internal refugees from the London Exclusion Zone, dates not recorded, which is to be expected. All three then lived in Oxford since the nineties. No other places of residence. Your maternal grandfather and both paternal grandparents are also deceased.” He looks up at me again. “Do I have you correct so far?”

  I shrug. My chest tightens around my heart. This minor violation is nothing, he’s just getting warmed up.

  John waits, then sighs. “Octavia, please answer the question. If anything in this file is wrong, I need to know. I need to know you.”

  Dream Control will know everything about me by the time they’re done. They’ve probably already raided my home, taken my grandmother into custody, and ransacked my bedroom. They will have my two diaries, the one I keep out in the open and the one full of observations about Willow. They will have everything else too, all my technical diagrams and notes, all the files and video games and homework on my laptop, every post I’ve ever made online, and they’ll comb through all that as well.

  But the physical looting is just the start.

  They will know all the things I’ve whispered to Willow in the dark, and the handful of things she whispered back to me, and the things I’ve wondered about whispering but could never quite say. They will record and analyse and dissect every time I have thought about her in my own bed at night. They will catalogue the number of times I have sat on the toilet, naked and screaming at my own missing limbs. They will have me recount staring in the mirror and trying to hide my scar with makeup, and the weeping that followed. They will write down every time I have remembered my departed parents. For the things they cannot get out of me with words, they will use their machines, the dream-reading machines and mind-ripping machines that the government swears do not exist. Everyone whispers that Dream Control have tame Dreamers somewhere behind all the normal faces and the quasi-legal occultists, breaking the law because they’re above the law, and I’m sure they will use those on me as well, because I will give up nothing without a fight.

  They will take me apart, then lay me out clean and sterilised, ready for disposal.

  They will tease out my dreams of Willow. They will see her as I see her. They will see her naked.

  That thought makes me so angry that I start to shake. Willow belongs to nobody, not even me, and they will get their grubby paws all over her, stain her, taint her, file her away. All via me. They will make me betray her. They will learn all her secrets too.

  Maybe I should lose my temper. Maybe then ‘John Smith’ will be forced to shoot me. Maybe then Willow will be safe.

  “That’s correct,” I squeeze out. “Sir.”

  “Thank you.” John’s eyes return to the papers. He picks up a new sheet. “You graduated from Millay Girl’s School in ‘22. You’ve been attending the attached Sixth Form College for the last two years.” He quirks an eyebrow. “Fancy school. High fees.”

  “Life insurance.”

  “It says here that this year you’ve applied to eight universities. Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield, Warwick, Edinburgh, St Andrews, New Imperial, and Durham. All for … ‘BCE’? What’s that?”

  “Bio-mechanics, cybernetics, and engineering.”

  He lets out a low whistle. I hold in a bristle, but he’s being serious, not mocking. “Aren’t you a bit old to be finishing your A-Levels just now?”

  “I was in rehab, when I was little.”

  He nods without meeting my eyes. “Of course you were. Missed a lot of schooling in 2015 and 2016.” He taps the paper in his hand, then puts it aside and extracts a thicker sheaf from within the folder, photocopies of handwritten pages. “As a minor you came to the attention of Dream Control five times, via the office of emotional health and hygiene, all between 2015 and 2022. The ‘22 contact was minimal, just a psychiatric checkup. I won’t read out the dreams, but the notes are pretty clear. You went to counselling, not an I&O ward, on account of being a minor. Counselling was deemed only semi-successful, three percent above the mandatory reporting threshold. DC has you under observation category five.” John places the DC record aside, then looks me full in the face, no papers in his hands. “You lost your arm and your leg in the same accident that killed your parents. Of course you were going to have bad dreams. I understand.”

  My blood goes cold. The words slip out. “It was not an accident.”

  John Smith holds up a hand, an apology on his face. I subside, because that wasn’t what I’d expected.

  “What term would you prefer?” he asks.

  I’ve walked into his trap.

  Magical girls killed my parents, left me crippled and disfigured. Not the current Trio of Albion — though they were probably tagging along by that age, already chosen by the gods in the Dreamlands, though not allowed to engage. No, not this lot. Their most recent predecessors, the previous three to fill that role in this part of England, they are to blame.

  They had not meant to kill anybody. I was just collateral damage.

  Ten years ago a Dreamer walked out of the London Exclusion Zone. Walked, literally, straight through the minefields and the ring of steel and the military cordon that was supposed to keep things in, straight through the London Wall. Her name was Beatrix Ayton. She’d left the waking world behind over three hundred years ago, and when she returned she brought the Dream with her. She melted through the boundary that keeps the Dreamland overlap pinned within the corpse of London, turned automatic guns and bunkers into flocks of melting doves, transmuted shells and bombs into clouds of blood, and pulled jets from the skies with a flick of her fingers. She turned men into beasts, bullets into raindrops, and made it halfway into the centre of Oxford before she was stopped.

  She killed four magical girls. In the process of stopping her they inflicted ‘extensive and regrettable collateral damage’ to the Oxford New Expanded Metropolitan Area.

  ‘Extensive and regrettable collateral damage’. That’s what the BBC called it. That’s me.

  Logically I should blame Beatrix Ayton. But Dreamers are like hurricanes or floods or landslides, they are going to happen regardless of what anybody does. The ones who’ve been in the Dreamlands since long before the walls came down are impossible to predict or comprehend; the new ones who drift off on their own dreams night after night cannot be blamed for merely being human. Some Dreamers — perhaps most — never come back. Some go so deep into the Dream that they forget Earth entirely, forget what they once were, and they’re happy out there, as far as anybody knows. The few who return, or the ones who never really leave, they are simply inevitable. They are no different to the Nightmares that float into Earth’s sphere, the things that were never human in the first place. I find it hard to blame them. They cannot help themselves.

  Perhaps I should blame Richard Harding. Many people do.

  Forty one years ago the occultist Richard Harding performed a ritual in a dingy suburban house in East London. It was his life’s work, pieced together from ancient tomes and stolen from half-remembered dream quests. The ritual took four weeks and the lives of fourteen assistants. Maybe a Dreamer whispered in Harding’s ear, maybe a Nightmare planted the idea in his head, or maybe a Dream-God from the other side was in on the joke all along. We’ll never know, because Richard Harding was the first casualty of his own success.

  His ritual tore down the walls between the waking world and the Dreamlands. The result was the London Exclusion Zone, the single largest Dreamland overlap on Earth. Three thousand and seven hundred square miles of English soil and concrete and glass and brick, where the rules of the waking world no longer apply, where ghouls and ghasts and horrors from beyond Earth’s sphere wander freely in and out, where Nightmares seep through from the further reaches of the Dream, where you cannot tread without the risk of coming undone.

  You can see the dead city from Oxford sometimes. It glows like oil on water, reflected in a glassy sky.

  It is unwise to look too long. Causes strange dreams.

  England is not the only place blighted by a Dreamland overlap. When Harding completed his ritual, old scars opened all over the globe — a certain plateau in Tibet, a stretch deep in the Antarctic, a swathe of jungle in Brazil, a patch of the North American ‘empty quarter’, scattered spots in the Australian interior, and dozens more too small to locate, not to mention the Moon, or the stuff that comes up out of the sea. None are so active or so extensive as the ruins of London.

  But I find it difficult to be angry with Harding. He’s dead.

  Should I blame the failed emergency response on that day ten years ago, on the 6th of February 2015? The sirens and shelters are meant for hiding from Nightmares, or else from pupating Dreamers who haven’t yet slipped through the cracked walls of the waking world, not for ancient things that nobody can stop. The government and the army responded with sluggish confusion that day, herding us underground, then back up, then telling us to bolt our doors and draw the curtains, then out again and back into the shelters. England had not dealt with an ancient Dreamer since the late nineties.

  My memories of that day are mercifully incomplete. My parent’s faces. The shelter walls caving in. Dust in my mouth. Pain so total it became meaningless.

  I wasn’t trapped underground for long, but time didn’t matter. Two limbs were gone, my parents with them.

  The government has never explained why Beatrix Ayton was trying to reach the centre of Oxford. Foolish people call that a conspiracy, whispering online that she was trying to save a friend, or punish a foe, or locate a long-lost lover. Optimistic voices suggest that we should have gotten out of her way, let her do whatever it was she needed to do, and then nobody would have died.

  Nonsense. Beatrix Ayton was hundreds of years old. When she’d left the waking world, Oxford was not the capital. Or maybe she wasn’t trying to get into Oxford at all, maybe she was just walking in a straight line. Maybe she didn’t even see us, maybe we were as dreamlike to her as the dreams in which she was lost. The motivations of Dreamers are impenetrable to those of us who sleep soundly.

  Can I blame the Dream-Gods of Earth?

  The Dream-Gods took pity on us — at least, that is the official explanation — and granted a select few human beings the power to hold back the ceaseless flow of Nightmares. From their lofty aerie on the far slopes of Unknown Kadath, a mountain peak so deep in the Dream that even Dreamers cannot venture close, the Dream-Gods of Earth saw our new plight and rendered what help they could. The goddess Bast was the first to reach out, to ‘bless’ a group of young women, and make the first ‘magical girls’.

  Why only girls? Why do all the myriad Dream-Gods only select young women? Only they know, and they don’t talk much.

  Blaming the Gods is a little like blaming ourselves, because in the end that’s what the Dream-Gods are, according to the occultists — a dream, a reflection of the gestalt memories and minds of thousands of years of human history, congealed into a set of somethings that seem a little bit like gods if you come at them from the wrong direction. Powerful, yes, but just us. And Earth’s Dream-Gods aren’t the only ones out there; the Dream is so much deeper, and Earth is not the only sphere. What do they have to do with us? Nothing.

  I blame the magical girls, because they’re human too, but they get to soar above it all.

  Stab them, shoot them, blow them up, and five minutes later they’re back to the fight, dresses a little askew but bodies always intact. Worshipped by all, looked up to by too many, the heroines of the new waking world. They can do no wrong, and they do so little, personalities sealed up behind the media, behind whatever magic keeps their identities impossible to know.

  If I was a magical girl, I would break out of this cell and slaughter my way to the exit, back to Willow’s side. If I was a magical girl, I would rescue myself.

  John Smith waits for my answer.

  “Extensive and regrettable collateral damage,” I say. “Dreamers are not accidents.”

  “Mm,” John grunts. Have I avoided his trap, or did he read the critique of the Trio of Albion on my face? He gestures at me, at my prosthetic arm on the table, at my scarred cheek. “This sort of disability is very difficult for a young woman. Very visible, very hard to hide. And you don’t try to hide the scar on your face, do you?”

  “No.” Why bother to explain my reasons? He’ll know everything soon enough.

  Mister Smith puts the pieces of paper back into the folder, tidying away my life. He closes the folder and puts a hand flat on the surface. “Do you know why there’s a physical record on you?”

  I’ve made a decision; it’s time to spend myself, with the only action left available to me.

  There is a slender sliver of a chance that John Smith the Dream Control agent is not simply playing with me, that he really does need more justification to take me away.

  For Willow that sliver of a chance is not enough. If they take me, they will learn things about her. They will learn her secrets, the ones we shared, and then they will dismantle her in turn.

  I shift my position in the chair, placing my left leg for leverage. Leaping the table will be difficult, but the pain won’t matter, it’ll be over quick. I doubt I’ll actually be able to take the gun from ‘John Smith’, but I must try. I must give him reason to fear that his suspicions are all true, that I am a Dreamer, or on the cusp of becoming one.

  He’ll have to shoot, put me down, in self defence.

  It’s the only way to protect Willow. I’ll take her secrets with me.

  Acid anger bubbles up from my throat, molten hot, burning bright to blot out fear. I’m shaking in my seat, breath coming harder, ready to do it. I lift my left hand and grip the edge of the table. Do it now. Now. Octavia, now!

  John Smith stands up.

  He steps over to the video camera on the tripod and turns it off. Then he opens the side of the camera, pops out the memory card, and slips it into his pocket.

  In the second it takes for him to sit back down, all my anger has turned to ash.

  “Don’t … ” I say. Don’t what? Beat me? Hurt me? Where’s all my determination gone? I’m shaking so hard, shaking all over, coated in cold sweat, stomach stabbing at me. A second ago my body was abstract, but now I’m back, and my body is filled with terror.

  I sob as I realise. Suddenly I very much want to live.

  John Smith’s face is unreadable.

  “I’m not a Dream Control agent,” he says. “And I’m not from the office of emotional health and hygiene. I am trying to keep you out of the hands of Dream Control. Do you understand? I need you to give me something, anything, and it doesn’t matter what. Tell me anything you like about the girl in the white dress. Make up whatever sounds right. Lie to me.”

  “ … excuse me?”

  “Lie. I need you to lie. You were right about that part. Tell me you’ve seen the girl before. Tell me you knew her when you were a child. Tell me she was a friend of a friend and you spoke to her once or twice. Tell me something I would want to hear. Pick something, tell it to me on camera, and then stick to your story.”

  I shake my head. “If … if you’re not a Dream Control agent, then what—”

  “Once you’ve lied,” Smith interrupts, “you need to be ready to leave. There are two DC agents out there in the corridor right now, with half a dozen Section Special to back them up. If I can’t crack you, they get the next turn. This isn’t a regular police station, do you understand?”

  My head is spinning, my body still flush with adrenaline. A few moments ago I was prepared to die, I was half a second from the act, and now I’m going to live? Reality feels unreal, too bright, too sharp. I was prepared to go, for Willow, but what do I do now?

  “What?” I say. “No, no, I don’t understand. I was brought here in the back of a police van, with no windows, what—”

  “Getting out of here will take us some time. The sooner we can start, the better. The sooner I get you out, the less chance that Dream Control can pull you into their jurisdiction.” John Smith takes a deep breath. “I need you to lie, quickly and cleanly. Can you do that, Octavia?”

  Yes, yes I can. I’ve been lying my whole life, about what I am, about what I dream, about everything.

  “What are you?”

  John Smith blinks slowly. For the first time since he entered the room, he is something other than a mask. “I work for the Trio. With the Trio. And many other magical girls.”

  I shake my head. Plenty of people work with the Trio of Albion, but their public presentation is squeaky clean. The same goes for any other magical girls, anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world. But ‘John Smith’ is too angular and hard for that. I cannot connect him with the Trio, I cannot imagine one of them being seen dead alongside him.

  He sees I don’t believe. “I’m your only chance to get out of here. And I do want to help you.”

  “Why? Why?”

  John sighs. “Because I need to know who that girl in white was, and I know she wasn’t a Dreamer. I’ve been chasing her for a while now.” He shrugs, a liquid roll of his shoulders. “All I know is that she grinned at you. Which might mean something. I just don’t know what, not yet.”

  “If she wasn’t a Dreamer, then what was she? I saw her pull that weapon out, from under her dress, breaking reality … ” The answer dawns on me. “Was she a magical girl—”

  “Don’t say that out loud. Especially don’t say it when I switch the camera back on. Don’t breathe it, don’t think it. You never said that, and I didn’t hear it.”

  I’m speechless. Still shaking, sweat all down my back, head pounding with my own pulse. Is any of this real?

  “Octavia,” he says, and blinks slowly, a second time. “I need you to lie, and then I need you ready to leave. Can you do that now? Or are you going to go with Dream Control?”

  An impossible choice. The certainty of an I&O cell, or the uncertainty of a strange government man without a real name.

  “If I asked you to shoot me, would you do it?” I say.

  John Smith shows real emotion for the first time; the idea horrifies him, or else he’s a very good actor. “No.”

  I don’t trust this man, but I’m desperate to avoid Dream Control; the determination to spend my own life now seems alien and vile, an impulse that got inside me and almost won. I want to live. I want to live so I can see Willow again, thank her, touch her, whisper all the things I never got to say. At least ‘John Smith’ is offering me an alternative. Perhaps that alternative is worse than being dismantled, but I doubt that very much. At least this way the dreams of Willow stay firmly within my own skull, and the skull itself stays intact.

  “I … if … if you want me ready to leave, I will need to reassemble myself.” I gesture at my prosthetic on the table. “And then … yes. Yes, I can lie for you. I’ll do my best. Is there any way you can bring my mobile phone? My coat? Before we leave.”

  John Smith stands up. He leaves the file and the photographs on the table. “How long will you need to put the arm back on?”

  Less than one hundred and eighty seconds. “Fifteen minutes.”

  He nods, turns around, and walks to the steel door. He raps his knuckles three times and it opens for him. He doesn’t look back as it closes.

  Without any eyes on me, either biological or mechanical, a breath leaves my lungs, crawls up my throat like a slug of cold tar, bitter and burning, the fermented dregs of all that anger. I swallow a whine, shameful and disgusting. I try not to curl up in my seat, curl up into myself, wrap myself in a ball of my own sick pity.

  This might be the last fifteen minutes of privacy I ever get.

  Spine straight, eyes dry, lower lip hard as iron. Show your spirit, Octavia. You still have your dignity.

  Removing my jumper takes a moment. Unbutton my shirt, peel it away from my right shoulder, revealing the scars, the ruts, the flesh once riven to ribbons. The stump of my right arm snags inside my sleeve, so I have to reach over and free it, as I often must.

  The stump is like me in miniature, truncated and ruined, half-saved by medical science, unable to do anything without external assistance. My little cripple. I cradle it for a moment, fingers of my left hand over the naked amputation site, massaging the tissues beneath.

  Then I put myself back together.

  My prosthetic arm is a WestEuro Bionics XMR Model 4, heavily modified by yours truly. By volume it is mostly carbon fibre and foam, which keeps it light; by weight it is mostly electronics, motors, battery, and myoelectric pickups. It is waterproof and corrosion resistant, extremely sturdy, and more precise than anybody expects. It cost a great deal of money and is insured for an equally eye-watering amount, the legacy of my parents’ life insurance policies. The outer shell is chalk white, sterile and clean. It was once covered by a sleeve of flesh-coloured silicone, but I tore that to shreds years ago in a fit of disgust.

  Getting the socket onto my stump is easy, I just pick it up and press the nub of my upper arm into the padding, nice and hard. Suction does half the job, and rolling up the silicone sleeve does the rest. But the stump is too short to secure the limb safely, so there are two straps. One goes over my shoulder, the other goes over my chest. I don’t always use both; the chest strap rarely matters.

  But this situation is rare, so I strap myself to myself, nice and tight.

  A recessed switch is hidden close to my armpit. When I press it, the power comes on and the arm goes limp, fingers uncurling. I flex the hand by twitching the scraps of muscle in my upper arm; the nerves inside the remains of the limb have been surgically spread out to make this possible. I move each finger in turn. I relax the palm. I make and unmake a loose fist.

  The cramp, the phantom pain, the part of me I couldn’t reach, it all fades. I’m whole again.

  It’s easier to get my clothes back on if I stand up. I scoot the chair back, scraping rubber feet on bare concrete floor. Standing up with my prosthetic leg is second nature, I’ve been doing it for a decade, and it requires less fine control than the arm. But I’m shaky with the aftermath of my death averted, and I have to steady myself against the table before I can straighten my spine.

  I seal myself back up inside what little protection I have left — prosthetic arm into the sleeve of my shirt, shirt buttons done up, collar straightened, jumper pulled down over my head, hair raked as neat as I can without a comb. Now that I have my right hand again, I can straighten the soft leather glove on my left. I reach into my skirt pocket for the other glove.

  “You do know he’s going to kill you, yes?”

  The voice comes from behind and to my right, outside my field of vision.

  I flinch, stagger, knock my chair aside, bang my hip against the table. Hands raised, heart pounding in my throat, I whirl.

  A ball of bristly black fur has appeared in the corner with the rusty red stains.

  It’s a zoog.

  Zoogs are an invasive pest species native to the Dreamlands. They are not quite the lowest of the low — that’s reserved for the things they prey upon — but they are far from the most dangerous creatures which have slipped through and established a permanent presence in the waking world. They are made of earthly matter, or at least a close enough analogue to infest several forgotten corners of England, gorging themselves on insects, small rodents, mushrooms, and rubbish. An average zoog is a little larger than a European badger, and bears more than a passing resemblance to the American opossum.

  Similar to the opossum, they can look almost goofy, cute, or gormless, but this is a dangerous illusion. They are larger and meaner than a real opossum, with sharper teeth behind zipper smiles, dexterous front paws loaded with hooked claws, and a nasty habit of pack hunting for fresh meat. A lone zoog will flee from a human. Three zoogs might injure a child. Thirty zoogs will kill and eat a full grown man.

  They are sapient and they can talk, though they are rarely clever enough to do more than engage in basic barter and threats.

  They cannot, however, walk through walls.

  Sudden and impossible appearance is not the most alarming thing about the zoog in the corner of the room. It is black, all black, all over — the long prehensile rat-like tail, the little grasping clawed hands that click against the concrete floor, the thickly matted fur, the softly twitching ears, the elongated snout, the teeth and tongue within, and the huge dark eyes that seem to look everywhere at once. The zoog glistens, dripping, saturated, as if dunked in oil, with a shimmer-sheen of half-glimpsed rainbow in every motion. The zoog is made of black slime, like a protrusion thrust upward from an invisible ocean of thick and tarry mud.

  Before I can think to reply or scream or run to the door and hammer on it with my fists, the zoog trots across the room and jumps onto the table, scrambling at the edge to haul itself up the final few inches. Black goop drips from it in sticky loops and fat ropes, all vanishing into nothing as they rejoin with the unseen substrate from which this not-a-zoog has been extruded.

  It gets up onto the table, sits on its haunches, and looks right at me.

  It speaks again, the same voice as before — a double voice, two speaking over each other. One is the raw skritter-scratch of a zoog; the other is human, womanly, rich, and darkly amused.

  “Octavia?” it repeats. “You do know that man is going to kill you, right?”

  here.)

  patreon.