Katalepsis

“Evee? What … ” My voice cracked. “What do you mean? Of course you know me. It’s … it’s me. It’s Heather.”

This hollow shell of Evelyn Saye stared back at me across the little table, over the lonely complexity of her solitary board game. The truth guttered like a smothered candle in the glassy depths of her exhausted eyes; it lurked in the wary recoil of her shoulders against her wheelchair seat, in the hand quivering against her chest, in the wounded paw tightening and twitching down in her lap.

Evee had no idea who I was.

She jerked her head back and forth, then rasped: “No. No, I don’t know any Heathers. I told you, go away. I’m busy, leave me—”

I reached out in blind panic, leaning across the table to grab her by the shoulder and shake her to her senses. But Evelyn flinched away, eyes going wide with naked fear, pressing herself back into the creaking fabric of her wheelchair.

My heart lurched with shame and horror. My hand stalled in mid-air. I hiccuped.

Not only did Evee fail to recognise my face — she was terrified by my attention.

Was this even the real Evelyn?

Did I behold an Eye-wrought parody, a mockery of the woman I knew, placed in my path to torment me with a vision of her isolated and afraid, in pain without support, to sap my morale and insult everything I had built? Or was this indeed the real Evelyn, trapped and confused just like myself, but not immune to the narrative of this false Cygnet? Was this Evee, with her memories and thoughts occluded?

I made a split-second decision: it made no difference.

If this was a fake and I treated her as real, then no harm would be done. But if this was the real Evelyn and I treated her as a fake, then I would be abandoning her to a delusional purgatory. And I would sooner eat glass than betray anyone to such a fate, so similar to my own for ten long years.

Some of the other girls in the dayroom were sneaking covert looks at myself and Evelyn. The trio by the window were openly staring at us. I ignored them all, lowering my voice and leaning forward.

“Evee!” I hissed. “It’s Heather! You do know me. Of course you know me. And the last thing I would ever do is hurt you. Just … just think. Dig deep.” I moved to scoot my chair around the little table so I could sit closer to her, perhaps take this slower. “Look, we can—”

Evelyn’s eyes blazed with a sudden spark of her natural fury.

She hissed through clenched teeth: “I’ll scream for a nurse! I will! Do not test me, you nut-job! Do not! I am not your kind of insane!”

I heaved with relief, half-laughing, half-sobbing. “Oh. Oh, thank God. Oh, thank you, Evee, it is you. It is you. Nobody could fake that. Oh, Evee!”

Evelyn squint-frowned at me like I was mad. She started to hiss another barbed assault, but I quickly tapped the tabletop to interrupt.

“Evee. Evelyn, please, just listen to me. I know what I must seem like to you right now, like I’m just some weird girl invading your privacy and interrupting your solo strategy game. But I’m not crazy. None of this is real. All of it, the place, the hospital, the nurses — it’s all absurd! Look at this dayroom, it’s gigantic. Look out the windows!” I gestured to the massive window which looked out over the grounds, giving the dayroom a prime view of the ostentatious gardens, the wall topped with blood-stained razor-wire, and the sky of wrinkled black skin — the underside or inside of the Eye, with no sun in sight, no source for the blazing daylight, not a crack of blue or cloud in all the firmament.

The trio of smartly-dressed girls were casting sidelong looks at me and whispering to each other.

Evelyn sputtered: “W-what are you suggesting? You—”

“There’s no sky,” I said. “Don’t you see that? The nurses all have ridiculous names. The residential rooms are jumbled up nonsense. None of this is real. Evee, we’re inside the Eye. I don’t know what it’s done to us, but it’s built this whole place, this imitation of Cygnet Hospital. It used my memories somehow, or … or maybe I did this, without meaning to. I can still recall the real world, but you … ” I looked her up and down again, at her missing leg and its withered twin, at her maimed hand with the weeping scabs and angry scar-tissue, at her rheumy, exhausted eyes, at the malnutrition of her starved frame, coiled into that wheelchair. Tears prickled in my eyes. “You don’t deserve this,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry. I’m going to get you out. I’m going to get us all out, I promise. There must be a way out.”

Evelyn stared at me, uncertain and unsettled. The brief flame of her anger was fading fast; her frame returned sagging exhaustion as a gloss of fear crept back into her bloodshot eyes. She kept her body very still, like a small rodent before the gaze of a serpent.

That hurt more than I’d expected.

I hissed her name again. “Evee—”

A bright and lively voice suddenly bubbled out from beside us: “Well well well, what do we have here? What a surprise and delight this is!”

A nurse appeared beside Evelyn, all smart white uniform wrapped around healthy plush flesh, beaming a friendly smile, young and blonde and full of energy. It was the same nurse who had brought the cup of pills to my cold little cell: A.HORROR.

Evelyn flinched much harder than she had from me — a small emotional victory cheered inside my chest — but then she looked up at the nurse with relief. She gestured at me and opened her mouth, but Horror rambled right over her before Evelyn could speak.

“Gosh, you two!” Horror bubbled. “Where did this come from? Not that I’m making a complaint! It’s so rare to see you talking with other girls, Evelyn, let alone playing with anybody. Good on you.” She nudged Evee in the shoulder without asking. Evelyn winced and jerked, trying to flex her uneven shoulders. Horror didn’t seem to notice. “And you too, Heather. Lovely to see you reaching out. So, are you two friends, now? I do hope so! Oh, but don’t let me make assumptions, of course. I wouldn’t want to make either of you self-conscious, of course! Silly me!”

Evelyn croaked: “She was—”

“Which is why I hate to break up this game,” Horror added, with a sad tut and an ironic little smile. “I’m so sorry, both of you, but you can always come back to it later. We can put a blanket over it or something, so nobody messes with the pieces. Evelyn’s got to go for a bit. She has a visitor!”

Evee’s face collapsed into blank horror. She went white. “No.”

“Yes!” Horror beamed at her. “Your mother’s here! Surprise! She’s waiting over in the visitor’s lounge right now. A flying visit, apparently, just until this evening, so you and her will have to make the best of the time you have. I expect she’ll want to take you on a nice little walk around the grounds. I’ll wheel you over there, save you the trouble of pushing. Come along, Miss Saye!”

Horror stepped behind Evelyn’s wheelchair and took hold of the push handles. Evee tried to grip the wheel rims to immobilise herself, but she was too weak. Her good hand slipped. Her maimed hand could not even close properly. Horror pulled her away from the table, wheeling her backward.

Evelyn’s eyes met mine, filled with wordless terror, and found something she did not expect: recognition and solidarity.

‘Please,’ she mouthed.

I shot out of my chair and stood tall, with my yellow blanket hanging from my shoulders like a cape. But I made a pathetic superhero — I couldn’t even stand directly in Horror’s path. Active resistance might arouse suspicion. I may not get punished, but if a nurse thought I was trying to force an issue, it would only strengthen her resolve. My only option was to play along and turn her against her own aims without her realising I was doing so.

I’d done this with nurses and doctors so many times before. One merely had to pretend to be what they expected to see.

“But you can’t stop the game now,” I said.

I kept my voice level and soft, but slightly bewildered and slow, as if this was self-evident, as if this was a universal rule of reality, as if Horror really could not, categorically, halt the game. I wriggled one arm free from the yellow blanket and gestured at the board, as if she hadn’t noticed the nature of what she was interrupting.

Horror paused and gave me a blank smile. My heart went into a nosedive. I knew that expression all too well — a nurse indulging a patient, but without listening. She’d already made up her mind.

Horror said: “Why-ever not, Heather?”

“It’s time sensitive,” I improvised. “And it’s a very complex board situation. That’s how strategy games work. Didn’t you know that? Evelyn has to keep a whole lot of different positions and values in her head, and if she’s away from the game for a while then she’ll forget which ones are important and which ones don’t matter. It would give me an unfair advantage. And then I might win, but unfairly. And that’s not fair to Evee, because she’s very good at strategy and it would be unkind to make her feel otherwise.”

Evelyn jerked her head up and down in agreement. “Y-yes. Very complex board situation. T-that’s right … H-Heather?”

Evee reached out to me with her good hand. I stepped forward to take it; once our fingers were laced together, the staff would have a hell of a time parting us without casual violence, and I was willing to endure a lot of casual violence to keep Evelyn safe — but Horror was quick on the uptake. She jerked Evelyn’s wheelchair back, hard enough to make Evelyn wince, and then started quickly wheeling her out of the dayroom.

“I’m serious!” I snapped, trotting to catch up. “You can’t take her away from the game!”

“Oh, now, don’t be silly!” Horror tutted. She kept weaving the wheelchair through the furniture to keep me away from Evee’s side. “Evelyn’s mother is here, we can’t leave her waiting. I already said it was a flying visit. And you can always come back to the game later, can’t you? It’s only a game, after all.”

Evelyn was panting. Cold sweat beaded on her face. She kept trying to grab the rim of one wheel with her good hand, but she didn’t have the upper-body-strength to hold it in place. Momentum tugged her arm back and twisted her fingers. Horror wheeled her out of the dayroom and back into the lino-floored entrance hall.

“It’s more than just a game,” I rattled off. “It’s our first game. You said it yourself, Evee doesn’t talk to others much. It’s irresponsible to part us from each other right now. We’re bonding. We’re making friends. Let me— Evee- Evee, hand! Evee!”

But Evelyn was inconsolable now, panting hard, almost crying. She seemed to have forgotten I was there. My heart felt like it might burst. I hurried to keep up with Horror as she pushed Evelyn across the entrance hall at a brisk walk.

Horror tutted and gave me a gently unimpressed look. “Heather, you shouldn’t exaggerate. And it’s not nice to tell porkies.”

Evelyn whimpered; her eyes were fixed dead ahead.

Doors and hallways stood all along the far side of the big entrance hall. Some looked like they led to physical therapy rooms or doctors’ offices or waiting rooms. Most of the doors were unlabelled, blank expanses of plain institutional white with grey handles.

But one was a steel security door. No handle. No little window.

It was labelled in big black letters: V.I.P. VISITORS ROOM

“Oh, that’s absurd,” I hissed under my breath. “Not Cygnet at all.”

Horror almost paused. “What was that? Sorry, Heather.”

Evelyn whined. “Please. Please, no.”

I had to do something, anything, any gambit.

“She doesn’t want to see her mother!” I blurted out. “Evee doesn’t want to go! Not without me!”

I lunged forward to grab the handle of Evelyn’s wheelchair. Evelyn reached back and tried to grab me. scrabbling at the seat. But Horror was faster than both of us, turning the chair deftly to one side to keep Evelyn and me apart. She gestured with one hand and nodded at somebody. Suddenly another nurse was in front of me, blocking my way with the threat of an arm.

This nurse was tall and willowy and sharp at the edges. Her name tag read ‘A.SADIST.’

Horror marched off, wheeling Evelyn toward the steel door. She called back to me, all bubbly and bright: “It’s very sweet of you to care so much about a new friend, Heather, but she’s just going to see her mother for a bit, really. She’ll be back before you know it!”

Sadist barred my way. I bit my lip so hard I drew blood, shaking with rage and humiliation, wracked with fear for Evee.

Could I have fought? Oh yes. I could have thrown myself at Sadist and clawed at her eyes, or darted around her and sprinted for Evelyn. But I knew what would happen — Sadist would bundle me to the ground, joined by half a dozen more nurses. They were watching from the sidelines, from the reception desk and the mess hall archway, ready for the signal to jump in. Back in the real Cygnet that would have meant a day or two in isolation, endless reviews with the doctors, interviews with my parents, the bland subject of behavioural review and assessment.

Here, in this dream-mockery, would they jab me with a sedative, wrap me in a straight-jacket, toss me in a padded cell? Probably. One of the nearby nurses held something sharp and glinting — a needle concealed by her palm.

In the real Cygnet, maybe I would have fought, just to exercise the only power I had, to scream my objection in a soundproofed cell for the next forty-eight hours.

But this wasn’t real. None of it was real. The rules were different here.

And I couldn’t help Evelyn from inside a cell.

The V.I.P. room security door swung wide to admit Evelyn inside. I caught a glimpse of bland blue armchairs, scratchy carpet, and a vapid still-life painting on the wall.

A writhing void-dark mass of static lurked in the murky depths of the waiting room, like a ball of spiders at the bottom of a boot.

Evee’s mother?

Horror pushed Evelyn over the threshold, then turned to close the door. The mass of black static drifted forward, coming to meet Evelyn. I saw Evee’s fingers go white on one wheelchair armrest.

I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted: “I love you, Evee! Never forget I love you!”

Horror smiled with indulgent sweetness. The steel security door closed with a click.

Sadist watched me with eyebrows raised, as if waiting to see if I was going to rush at the door or try to punch her. I shrugged at her beneath my yellow blanket, panting and red in the face. She tilted her head to one side in a silent challenge. Just try it, crazy girl. You want a day in the cool-down hole?

I turned and walked away, stalking back toward the mess hall and the dayroom.

Angry feet carried me through the archway, across the plush dayroom carpet, and over to Evelyn’s abandoned board game.

Some of the other girls stared, or whispered to each other. One girl pointed at me. Another giggled. Evelyn and I had made quite a scene, hadn’t we?

Back in the real Cygnet, ten years ago, I would have felt mortified. Pre-teen or teenage Heather would have been embarrassed beyond words, blushing and apologising and running away to some dark hole where she could pretend the world did not know she was crazy. She would certainly not have returned to the scene of the crime, shrugging off every darting gaze and hushed whisper. I longed to flare my tentacles and hiss at the other girls. But I couldn’t. It was just me, alone. The abyssal dysphoria of missing all my extra parts and other six selves was far worse than any embarrassment.

Cowards, all of them. They should have helped!

There were hundreds of girls in the mess hall, and how many nurses? A dozen within earshot? We could take them. We could take all of them if we had our tentacles. We could run over a riot-line of nurses like bowling pins and rip that steel door from its hinges and—

We could—

We could do nothing. We were prisoners of a metaphor and a dream. Alone, shorn, bereft of truth.

I forced myself to take several deep breaths, then concentrated on the board game, but the pieces didn’t make any sense. The board was very complicated, with little hexes for movement, all coloured to represent different kinds of terrain. Cardboard counters represented infantry, armoured vehicles, artillery, and even a few cavalry units. Evelyn had been playing both sides, but the ones in red seemed to be winning. She had a notebook next to the board, full of little notations about how the campaign was progressing, but it was all in code and numbers and unfamiliar jargon.

Would I have dreamed up this board game? I’d never seen anything like it before. Would I have imagined a scenario that required Evelyn’s torture by the memory of her mother? Absolutely not.

I picked up a counter from a pile of reserves and peered at the artwork — some kind of tank. It was immaculate.

“This isn’t real,” I whispered. “None of this is real.”

“You shouldn’t say that,” said a voice.

I flinched in surprise and whirled to face the speaker.

It was one of the smartly-dressed girls who had been standing by the window. She must have crept up on me, her footsteps absorbed by the plush dayroom carpet, while I was examining the board game.

She was dressed like a teenage girl ready for a day at a posh private school, in a storm-grey blazer over a high-collared, starched, scratchy-looking shirt, complete with a matching grey tie and a grey skirt around slim hips. She had freshly polished black shoes on her feet, legs wrapped in a pair of high-denier black tights, a pair of thin-rimmed metal glasses on her face, and a heavy, hardback book clutched to her chest.

Her two companions over by the window were dressed similarly, both eyeing me with venomous stares.

The girl before me had a face like that of a porcelain doll — soft-skinned, milky-white, angelic. Long dark hair looked artificially straightened, too smooth and neat and perfectly level. Amber eyes squinted through thick glasses, blessing me with misplaced pity.

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” she repeated, high and delicate, with precise, careful enunciation.

My eyes bulged in shock.

It was Twil.

She looked nothing like herself, barring only the shape of her face, the colour of her hair, and the wolfish tint in her eyes. She lacked even her naturally athletic physique, as if that grey uniform had sucked out all her vitality.

I was so shocked. Evelyn had made a cruel kind of sense, but what did this mean? I just stammered: “T-things like what?”

Twil frowned at me, lips pinched in dainty disapproval. “Like telling delusional people that the world isn’t real. That’s very cruel of you. That poor girl.” She shook her head, pulling a face of high-minded sorrow.

“But it’s not.” I recovered and reached out for her. “Twil, it’s me! It’s Heather! We’re inside the Eye, we—”

“Stop, please,” Twil said, soft and mewling, batting her eyelashes like I had raised a hand to a fainting damsel. She retreated from my touch, holding out her book as a shield. “I’m not your sort of unwell, I’m sorry. And we don’t know each other.”

One of her friends called softly: “Twillamina, we’re going to be late. Come along.”

I almost burst out laughing. “Twillamina?! That’s not even your name, Twil! Come on, fight this! You’re better than this. You’ve gotta help me get Evee out of there! We have to break this somehow, but I can’t do it alone. Twil!”

Twil retreated a few hesitant paces. She seemed confused, blinking amber eyes behind her thick glasses. “I-I’m sorry, I can’t help you with your friend. I’m sorry … ”

“She’s your friend, too! More than that, you and her were involved. Maybe you still are, I don’t know.”

“I-I wouldn’t know anything about that. And I’m sorry, but I must go. I’m late for chapel.”

“Chapel?”

Twil nodded, head tilted down, eyes turned up, deferring and submissive even to this crazy girl who she did not know.

I laughed openly this time, shaking my head. “Twil. Twil, look at yourself. You look absurd. You look like an extra from a sapphic boarding school novel. Twil, just, just listen—”

Twil scurried away, hiding her face from my sight, retreating toward her friends. One of them gently took Twil’s hand, fingers laced together. The other wrapped an arm around Twil’s waist, sheltering her from me, guiding her away, heading for the archway. One of Twil’s friends twisted a nasty little squint in my direction.

“The chapel of nature, for your information,” she said, like I was a moron and a snake. “In which we should all worship. Don’t follow us, thank you very much. And don’t bother Twillamina again. Pagan.”

The three of them marched out of the dayroom, arm in arm, Twil in the middle. Twil’s shoulders were shaking gently, as if swallowing tears.

I stood frozen for over a minute.

“Oh no,” I whispered eventually. “Oh, great. Is everybody like this? Trapped in some personal nightmare?”

Many of the other girls in the dayroom were staring at me again. I was putting on quite the show — the second strange scene in twenty minutes. But other resident patients were beginning to drift in from the mess hall, their breakfasts finished, their bellies full, ready to sit down and watch TV or play board games or space out doing nothing. Attention was leaving me, turning towards friends and fellow inmates.

I was just another crazy girl, wrapped in an old yellow blanket, saying weird and upsetting things to people who did not want me.

The Heather of ten years ago, back in the real Cygnet, would have been mortified to the point of absolute self-negation; I had always worked so hard to dress myself every day, to appear as normal as I could, to avoid at all costs those behaviours defined as ‘crazy’ or ‘insane’, to show the doctors and my parents and even my peers that I was normal, that I was okay, that I could be let out. And here I was, talked down to by the closest thing this place had to a trio of ‘normal’, ‘well-adjusted’, ‘sane’ girls.

The Heather I had become did not care.

I did not, as Raine would say, give a single shit.

Pardon my language.

I tugged my yellow blanket tighter around my shoulder; I probably could do with some proper clothes, if I was going to step outdoors and follow Twil, but that was strictly a plan B. Evelyn was trapped behind a steel security door with her ‘mother’, but I would not be able to get in there and rescue her alone, not without serious help. Twil was trapped in a different kind of bind, of religion and decorum and her pair of weird catty friends — I could see myself marching out there and bothering them, but I would need to peel Twil away from her escort first, and I would need a way to ensure I could snap her out of this nightmare.

I needed help! I needed to find somebody who wasn’t lost in the dream. I had to find my friends and—

And do what?

What was I going to do, even if I found Raine? Murder a nurse? Steal the keys? Stage a breakout?

Yes, I realised. I would murder every nurse in this hospital if I had to.

And Zheng? Zheng could easily break down a steel door and kill her way through much worse than a gaggle of nurses. I couldn’t imagine her submitting to this. And what about Praem? The pair of them together would not be held by any of this for long. And don’t forget Lozzie, no oh, not my Lozzie, my darling little dreamer. She might be immune to this, just like me.

But Raine was my priority. She would know what to do. She would know how to free Evee. And once we were all back together, nothing could stop us from finding Maisie.

Above all others, when in trouble, my heart reached out to Raine.

“I need to be smart,” I whispered to myself. “I need to be focused. And I need to find help.”

Quickly and methodically, I glanced around the dayroom, scanning every face and frame, searching for any hint of my friends — especially Raine. There were so many girls in there, and so many more in the mess hall, it would take ages for me to check every single person, but I had to. There was no other way, not unless Raine was searching for me in return.

“And if she’s not,” I whispered to myself, “that probably means she’s lost her memories too. Or she’s confined. Or not here. No, no, don’t say that. She has to be here. She has to be. She … she … what?”

The rear of the dayroom was dominated by a long, low counter top, on which sat two terrariums and two animal cages. Apparently this imitation Cygnet had group pets.

I walked over to the cages and terrariums, jaw hanging open, unable to believe my eyes.

The cages contained nothing out of the ordinary — one had a hamster, the other a tortoise, both of them acting completely normal. The hamster was drinking from a water bottle attached to the side of the cage, while the tortoise was sitting beneath a reptile heat lamp. One of the two glass cases contained a lizard of some kind, all coral-pink with massive round eyes — also normal, though I knew almost nothing about lizards.

The second terrarium contained the six Caterpillars who had accompanied us to Wonderland.

The Caterpillars were reduced to a tiny fraction of their real size, as if shot with a cartoon shrink-ray, each one no larger than a bulky snail. They were going around and around in a ring on the earthy floor of their glass prison. They’d worn a circle into the dirt, going around and around and around and around and around. They didn’t stop crawling even when I bent down to press my face against the glass, around and around. They just kept going around and around.

Their tank contained a little log and a fake plastic castle, lots of crushed leaves, and little else.

“Oh,” I breathed, feeling their pain. “Oh, I’m so sorry. You’re meant to be explorers, wanderers, out there building things and discovering forgotten places. And you’re stuck in a glass tank. No, no, what is this?”

The Caterpillars did not stop, or look up, or react in any way I could see. They just went around and around, like a tiger pacing a cage too small for instinct.

A nearby girl was looking at me with cringing pity, so I shot her a frown, a so-what-if-I-talk-to-animals sort of look.

The old Heather could never have done that. The girl scurried off, pretending she had not even seen me in the first place.

I examined the lid of the Caterpillars’ terrarium and then glanced around the dayroom again, but I decided against a tiny prison break; I could probably get the lid off and scoop all six Caterpillars into a fold of my yellow blanket, but I’d be spotted the moment I made the attempt. And what would I do with them, anyway? Stash them in my room, as trapped as they were right here? And what if they were just as mentally imprisoned as Evelyn and Twil? Would they bite or sting me? Would they even know who I was?

I leaned down and pressed my face close to the glass. “I’ll be back for you. I promise. And the Knights too, if I can find them. I’m sorry. I’ll be back.”

No time for hesitation; if I was the only one free and lucid, then I had to act.

Before I left the dayroom I scooped up a black marker pen from one of the tables and hid it inside the folds of my yellow blanket. The Fractal was still fresh on my left forearm, and perhaps that was keeping me lucid, so I needed a way to refresh the symbol if this ‘dream’ went on for more than a day or two of subjective time. To that secret stash I added several random tokens from Evelyn’s board game, and a book from the shelves — I didn’t pause to check what it was, because the actual title didn’t matter. I just grabbed things that might seem useful later on.

Next I obeyed the demands of my body, real or not — I trudged out of the dayroom and into the mess hall, to force some breakfast down my gullet. I’d rather lost my appetite, but I would need fuel for whatever fight I chose.

The mess hall was impersonal and bland, with terrible echoey acoustics, all off-white plastic and cold benches and sticky tiles. One wall was lined with large airy windows looking out over the asylum gardens.

Many girls still sat in little groups, eating breakfast and filling the room with chatter both too loud and too quiet at the same time, as if the space itself was swallowing their voices. The crowd at the counter had thinned to a trickle; I joined them and took a stainless steel tray from a metal rack. The real Cygnet had always used proper bowls and plates, though made of plastic instead of porcelain. The metal tray was more like something from a military barracks.

A trio of nurses waited behind the food counter, with hygienic face-masks and white aprons. Name tags read ‘A.POISON,’ ‘A.SICKNESS,’ and ‘A.DRUG.’ They beamed at me and asked what I wanted, just as they did for every other girl ahead of me in line. I filled up on bacon and eggs and roasted tomato, with several thick slices of French toast on one side, and a helping of baked beans on the other.

The food must have been safe. All the other girls were eating.

But there was nothing with lemon. And no strawberries.

Tubs of plastic cutlery stood at the end of the counter. I took a spoon and a fork, then three knives at once, hiding my extras below the tray until I could slip them inside my yellow blanket. Plastic knives were not much of a weapon, but they were better than bare hands. My heart raced inside my chest, fearing discovery, but I slipped away before anybody noticed my additional acquisitions.

I claimed a lonely window seat right on the end of one the benches, a little way from a small cluster of girls who looked about my age. I ate as quickly as I could, chewing properly, testing for needles or razor blades or bits of bone, listening to the nearby chatter.

One of the nearby girls was saying a name over and over: “Lidi. Lidi. Lidi?”

Another girl finally grunted. “Mm? What?”

“Do you wanna watch … some more of … Crystal Maze, later?”

A third voice joined in, snorting: “Isn’t that really shitty and old? Opal, you’re such an old lady.”

“She’s not,” said the grunting girl. “She’s clever. Don’t be nasty, Rebecca.”

“I’m not being nasty,” Rebecca pleaded. “Old ladies are nice. Opal is nice. You’re nice, Opal.”

“I just wanna watch the game parts,” Opal complained. “I’ll do it by myself if nobody wants to.”

“Mmmm,” ‘Lidi’ grunted again. “I would, but I’ve got therapy after breakfast. Wanna go shower first. You know?”

Opal made a shuddering noise. “We’ve all got therapy. Hate it.”

“Hate it,” another agreed.

“Hate. It. Ugh,” said Rebecca. “Nasty.”

The chatter continued onward, but changed subjects, revealing nothing of use, trailing off into a discussion about how to figure out which showers had been most recently cleaned, and then negotiations to share some nice shampoo that Opal’s family had sent her.

They all seemed so real, so alive, so complete, not like cardboard imitations wheeled onto the stage by the Eye, just to confuse me and fill out the background. Could I have dreamed up all these people? Or were they inside the Eye, trapped like Maisie?

What was I surrounded by?

I had to get one of them alone, somewhere private and safe, to test what they knew.

I spent a few minutes covertly staring at the faces of the nearest girls, to see if they would warp and melt when I wasn’t paying attention. But their mouths matched the sounds of their words and they chewed and swallowed their food like human beings. They breathed and puffed. They were imperfect and messy. One girl on the next table over had some of the frizziest hair I’d ever seen. Another was crying softly into a bowl of cereal — until a nurse wandered over and asked if she was okay. A third was shaking both legs with some kind of compulsion, bouncing her knees up and down.

All real.

I watched faces and postures, mannerisms and gestures, but I spotted none of my friends.

Through the wide windows at my elbow, the garden grounds of this imitation Cygnet rolled away toward the exterior wall, topped with coils of razor-wire, all beneath the wrinkled black sky of the Eye’s impossible hide. Girls wandered here and there, or sat on the benches, or stared at the flowerbeds. A grey-clothed trio were sitting quite far out, on the edge of some oak-tree shade, a red-and-white checkered blanket spread beneath them — Twil and her friends.

With my belly full and my mind set upon my task, I took my tray back to the counter, to drop it off with the other dirty utensils. I stood there for a moment at the rear of the mess hall, scanning the faces of every girl I could see, one by one.

No Raine, no Lozzie, no Praem. No sign of Sevens, except around my shoulders. No Knights — unless they had turned into young women, but that seemed unlikely. No Mister Squiddy either, though I had no idea what form he might take in this place. No Puppet either, faking Lozzie’s form. And certainly no Zheng. Her size should have made her easy enough to spot.

“Where is everybody?” I whispered to myself. “Come on, Raine. I need you, right now.”

I had three choices, and two of them were not choices at all: break into the V.I.P. visitors’ area and try to rescue Evelyn by myself, without brain-math or tentacles or backup, to pull her from the clutches of her ‘mother’; head out into the gardens to confront Twil, and probably get my eyes scratched out by her friends.

Choice number three was my only option.

With my yellow blanket around my shoulders, scratchy institutional slippers on my feet, and a belly full of bacon and eggs, I strode off to explore Cygnet Children’s Hospital.

The real Cygnet was a boring rectangle of brick and concrete, painted both inside and out in inoffensive white and cream, filled with a warren of simple clean corridors and sensible upright walls and doors that all looked the same. The real Cygnet had jolly little ‘You Are Here’ maps in every stairwell and waiting room; the layout was modern and well ventilated and brightly lit, designed to be easily navigated and understood, even by the small children who so often found themselves within its halls. Pastel animals were painted on the walls at child-height; doctors’ offices sported modern furniture and plush toys; every exterior wall was studded with windows to let in the natural sunlight — to alleviate the feeling of being entombed.

Modern, clean, bright. Sensible. Superior. Straight up and down.

This parody of Cygnet was a shadow-filled, rust-edged, ridiculous labyrinth.

Beyond the wide entrance hallway and the route back to my own cell, corridors seemed to branch and proliferate, multiplying as soon as I stepped off the path of memory. I passed by modern residential rooms warped by the inclusion of nineteenth century bed frames, ancient brick holding cells with rusted doors of iron bars, and rubberised rooms with padded walls and sagging steel portals hanging from their corroded hinges. Modern lino flooring gave way to creaking boards and stained concrete, then crept back again in patches and strips of fraying under layer, like three different buildings interposed onto the same space. Modern electric strip lights competed with naked bulbs swinging on the end of their power cables, overcome here and there by fixtures for gaslights and even a sconce or two for candles — though I found none of the latter, except a single stub of wax and sooty wick; I stuffed that into my yellow robes, just in case.

Each corridor split and split and split again, as if leading me deeper and deeper into the lightless depths of the asylum. There were no other girls in those echoing depths, no feet scuffing but my own. And no nurses.

But try as I might, I seemingly could not lose my way — as soon as I started to feel turned around or confused, I would stumble once more upon a main corridor, with patients in their rooms, or doctors in little offices, with nurses bustling up and down. Windows would open out before me, looking out across the garden grounds, as if to prove that this building was not an infinite depth beneath a fragile skin.

This process of fractal wandering and re-emergence appeared to be infinitely repeatable. I spent perhaps a full hour plunging into the depths of the hospital over and over, taking random corridors into the flickering darkness between the walls, trying and failing to build up some knowledge of the internal layout.

My sense of direction wasn’t that bad, but I could never find the same room twice.

Those oddly abandoned depths sometimes echoed with strange, distant cries, like sobbing or screaming carried down endless corridors. I heard the clank of chains behind stone walls, and the rustle of rotten fabric across floorboards. Would I meet one of those things I’d seen during the night, the monsters which had peered in through my cell window? I clutched one of my little plastic knives in a sweaty fist and kept my yellow blanket tight around my shoulders.

But I never stopped moving. I had to find my friends. None of this was real.

And it was offensive, too.

“This is almost an insult to the real Cygnet,” I hissed as I wandered down one particularly awful, dilapidated hospital corridor, with a sagging ceiling and water-damaged walls. “The real building was at least functional. Do better. Please.”

But no matter how far and wide I wandered, two things eluded me.

I couldn’t find any of my friends. I checked inside every room, around every corner, into every dark hole. In the lighted and inhabited parts of the hospital I watched every face, hurried to catch up with every wandering girl and striding nurse. But no Raine, not anywhere.

Secondly, the nurses wouldn’t answer my questions.

I got that bright idea after I gave up on searching through the depths. If Raine was also a patient here, then surely I could just ask where she was? Horror, for all her cruelty, had told me that Maisie was around here somewhere, so why not Raine?

But every nurse I passed was always too busy. Some of them ignored me completely, some dismissed me with a glance, or a ‘sorry, love! Have to be somewhere else, ask another staff member!’ Some tried to direct me back to the dayroom, or ask if I was okay, or if I needed a lie down.

So I gave up on that too. Instead, I focused on the exterior of the building.

The imitation Cygnet seemed to have multiple ‘wings’ — they jutted out into the gardens, clearly visible whenever I happened across a window. Most of them were made of pale red brick, piled up into faux-gothic facades, like a country house reborn from the flesh of a Northern industrial city. Counting the number of wings turned out to be impossible; I tried to map the space several times, orienting myself by trees and garden landmarks whenever I returned to a window, but the dream-Cygnet seemed to have three wings, then six, then two, then only one.

Three of the disappearing and reappearing wings seemed distinct from the others, unique and special.

One was very modern, like a chunk of the real Cygnet ripped straight from my memories, but larger and more complex. The second unique wing was enough to make me sigh in disgust — a sort of rust-streaked prison visage, all tiny barred windows set into thick wall of bare concrete.

The third unique wing was outside of my experience entirely; it looked more like something from a video game or a movie that Raine might have watched once. Cold grey steel, windowless and windswept, with only one exterior door — sealed behind multiple layers of high-security fence, razor-wire, and guard stations. The roof was studded with sirens, searchlights, and a trio of guard towers, silent steel sentinels with big blocky guns mounted on top.

I pressed my face to the windows whenever I spotted that dark and forbidding wing. Little figures manned the towers and the guard stations, but I couldn’t make out any details.

“Okay,” I muttered to myself when I finally got a good look at that third wing. “Three guesses as to where Maisie is being held. I wish Evee was here, so I could make a wager. She probably wouldn’t accept the bet, though. I miss you, Evee. I miss everyone.”

Once I had seen those three unique wings and fixed them in my imagination, they turned out easy enough to find, inside the hospital.

The corridors seemed to lead me to their scattered innards whenever I set my mind upon the task, as if the outer wings were only a signifier of the chaos all jumbled up inside this place. The modern wing, the chunk of ‘real’ Cygnet, showed itself in brightly lit doctors’ offices and physical therapy equipment, in wide and empty waiting rooms, in inner courtyards and clean modern showers and a miniature library and even a swimming pool — drained of water and empty of girls right then, of course.

The rust-and-ruin prison-complex wing was just as simple to find, but impossible to access.

I’d actually encountered it prior to breakfast, when I’d noticed that little security station with a sleeping nurse, guarding a chain-link wall. Those walls separated the ‘normal’ areas of the hospital from the dark reaches of a prison. I ran into those chain-link, wire-mesh barriers over and over and again, as soon as I started looking. Sometimes the guard station had a napping nurse, but sometimes it was empty. But always the corridor beyond the chain-link was lined with steel doors, poorly lit, and echoing with strange cries and warbling voices.

When I found the fifth such blockage to my progress, I stopped, put my hands on my hips, and muttered: “This is obscene. I hope you know that. If you’re listening. Real hospitals do not work like this anymore. Monstrous nonsense. This isn’t a … a … spooky video game!”

The nurse at the nearby desk blinked herself awake and smacked her lips, squinting and smiling at me. She was heavyset and jolly-looking, with grey hair in a bun, and a box of doughnuts on the desk before her.

Her name tag read: ‘A.BRUTE.’

“You lost, love?” she asked in a sweet-old-lady voice. She nodded sideways at the wire-mesh wall. A little chain-link door stood in the middle, padlocked shut. “You can’t cut through here, you know? Nothing personal, Heather, just health and safety. Here, would you like a doughnut?”

She nudged the box toward me; real Cygnet nurses would never have offered us random confectionery.

I smiled back, made my eyes soft and loose, and shrugged my shoulders — uncommitted, not bothered, slow.

“Just taking a look,” I said, slurring my words ever so slightly. I let my eyes drift down to the doughnuts. “Ohhh. Um. I shouldn’t.” I smiled again, in a different way, and shook my head. “Sorry. Thanks. I mean. Sorry.”

Brute smiled back, convinced she knew exactly what I was.

“You hurry along, dear,” she said. She gestured at the wire-mesh wall and chain-link door. “If you’re trying to get around all this to reach the movie room, you’ll want to head two rights straight in the opposite direction. Then left, then up, then down and left and right again. You got that?”

“Mm-mm,” I hummed. “T-thanks. Thank you. Thanks.”

I wandered off, back into the corridors of this false Cygnet.

Acting drugged and slow came easier than I’d expected. My body remembered the plodding slouch with ease; my face recalled the slack, relaxed, passive mask of just-another-crazy-girl. Whenever nurses were near I gazed down the corridors and into the rooms with feigned disinterest, with lazy curiosity, wearing the look of somebody who had been here far too long, searching for a mote of entertainment in the sunlight on glass and the dust dancing in the air.

Did the nurses ignore me shuffling about the halls because I looked like a lone wanderer, wrapped in my yellow blanket, harmless and happy — or because none of this was real, because they were meant to let me pass, because they were dream-figments of the Eye?

I was not eager to test either hypothesis. I stayed slow and slack and steady. I passed by beneath notice.

And then, when I finally tried to find it, I ran across an interior entrance to that high-tech wing of grey steel and armed security.

A huge circular portal appeared as I turned just another corner, filling the corridor from floor to ceiling. I stumbled to a halt, breath catching in my throat, like I’d run across a bear or a moose. Set on massive steel hinges, gleaming with polished metal, flanked by a bank of control panels like something out of a spaceship, the door was more akin to a bank vault or the hidden entrance of a secret underground military base.

Two men were standing guard — or what looked vaguely like men, from their builds beneath black, blank, bland body armour. Their faces were hidden behind featureless helmets with mirrored visors over the eyes. Their throats were armoured too, covered in a thin layer of black kevlar, or some similar substance. Their hands were wrapped in black leather gloves, so not a single inch of skin showed.

Both men carried firearms, secured across their fronts with shoulder-straps.

Their uniforms showed an odd insignia over the heart — a trio of crossed tentacles, pale and bloodless, impaled on a metal spike.

Both guards turned their heads to regard me as soon as I stumbled to a halt, their eyes hidden behind reflective visors, faces concealed by black armour and fabric.

“Um,” I blurted out.

One of them spoke: “Miss? Are you lost?”

His voice was muffled by fabric and armour, so thick that I couldn’t see his jaw or mouth move, English but impossible to place as a specific regional accent. The voice also wasn’t distinctly male, but somewhere between masculine and feminine.

“I-I was just—”

He didn’t give me time to finish. “Move along, please. This area is off limits to regular patients. If you’re in distress and need a nurse, I can call one for you.” He raised one hand toward the side of his head, as if preparing to speak to a microphone built into his helmet.

“T-that’s alright, sorry,” I said, blinking slowly and nodding in deference, laying it on as thick as I could. “I didn’t mean to come here, I-I don’t want to go in. Sorry. Just a mistake, j-just a mistake.”

The second guard raised a hand to his companion and spoke to me. “One sec. You’re Heather, right?”

He had exactly the same voice — indistinct, muffled, androgynous.

Something stirred in my chest and stopped me from fleeing. “Yes. Yes, hello, that’s my name.”

“Thought so,” he said. “One of the nurses told us you might come and try to visit your sister.” He spoke with an apologetic smile in his voice. “Sorry, young woman, but we can’t let you in. No visitors in The Box. You know that, if you’re family.”

My throat closed up. Was this a trap? Or an opportunity? And what was I talking to? The nurses and doctors I’d spotted were obviously meant to be human — but what were these guards?

Was Sevens pulling strings behind the stage?

I took a calculated risk: “I understand. Sorry. I really didn’t mean to come here, though. But now I’m here … can I at least ask how she is?”

The two guards shared a glance — the kind that adults share when children ask about terminal illness, or disability, or dead pets. My stomach scrunched up and turned over, heavy with too much breakfast, tight with horror.

One of the guards must have seen the fear on my face, because he quickly said: “She’s alive. Maisie Morell, right? She’s alive.”

The other one hissed: “I don’t think we’re supposed to say even that much.”

“We’re not? Why not?”

“Governor’s orders.”

“Oh. Uh. Shit.” The first guard looked back at me again. “Sorry. We can’t. Governor’s orders, apparently.”

“I’m not joking,” said the second guard. “She’ll have our hides.”

I took another risk, and said, “Who … who’s the governor?”

“The governor,” one guard said.

“Governor,” echoed the other.

“Governor.”

They fell silent, staring at me. An odd deja vu crept up my spine and over my shoulders, not entirely unpleasant.

I pushed my luck further, hoping I was right: “Why do you two have those guns? This place is just full of young women. You can’t possibly need firearms like that for a bunch of girls. Do you?”

The guards both looked down at their guns at the same time, in sync. My heart leapt with hope.

I prompted them: “Is it for the monsters who walk the hallways at night?”

Both guards looked up again. One of them said: “Oh. Maybe. That. Yeah.”

“Mm,” the other agreed. “Director’s orders.”

I frowned. “I thought you said governor’s orders?”

“Her too,” the first guard said.

“Are the director and the governor different people?” I asked.

The guards looked at each other. “Yes,” said one. “No,” said the other. Then they switched — “No,” “Yes.”

Then silence.

My suspicion became certainty. But I couldn’t say it out loud, for fear of provoking a rejection.

The ‘guards’ were not human beings, nor imitations of such, nor of anything else.

These were the Knights.

I wet my lips, and worked within the boundaries of the dream.

I said: “Can you tell me the location of other patients? Nobody in ‘The Box’, I mean. Just elsewhere. Are you allowed to do that?”

Both Knights looked back at me. One of them said: “We might have to radio for that request? I think?”

“No,” said the other one. “We can tell her.”

“We can?”

“Regulations are clear, yes. If patients require assistance and assistance can be rendered without leaving station, we can render assistance. Ask away, Heather. You want to find a particular room?”

I smiled at my protectors, my shining Knights, my fellowship of Lozzie’s Round Table — though they themselves did not know it right then, they could still help.

“I need to find several people,” I said. “If you can direct me to their residential rooms, that would be a big help.”