The black oil bubbles and rises, molding into a new figure.

It’s Tila.

She’s wearing her favorite dress, green like the otherworldly lightning outside, or snake scales. She looks at me and holds out her arm.

“T,” she calls. I can feel the steady thump of my mechanical heart beneath my metal breastbone.

“This isn’t mine.” Mia’s voice is harsh. “You’re affecting my dream world now. With your own memories and fears.”

“How? I don’t feel like I’m doing anything.” Shared people aren’t meant to be able to change the dreamscape much at all if someone has plugged in first. If it’s someone else’s dream, Zealscapes are meant to be like reading a script, or watching a film on a wallscreen, except with more sensory detail. I didn’t concentrate, like I did to have Mia pull the scalpel away. I’ve never experienced anything like this.

“Fuck if I know. I never share my dreams. I’m always here on my own.” She’s shifty, though, her shoulders hunched. She’s keeping something back. Mia holds out the scalpel. “Take this. Maybe you have to exorcise her.”

I can feel her fear spiraling from her, belying her blasé words. She doesn’t like that I’ve changed her dream, much as she didn’t like it when I caused her to pull the scalpel out of the Mana-ma apparition.

My fingers close around the blade, but I don’t harm Tila. How could I? How could Mia think that I would, even hopped up full of Zeal?

“Tell me why Tila sent me to you,” I say.

Mia rocks back on her heels, shaking her head. “Get rid of her first. You’re ruining it. This isn’t my dream!” Her last word rises to a shriek, the whole room tingeing red with her anger.

The anger infects me. It pulses through me, as insistent and inevitable as my mechanical heartbeat. Mia’s not giving me what I want. I need answers.

Tila’s apparition gazes at me impassively. I ignore it. The irrational anger bursts and I rush Mia instead, knocking her down. She feels almost insubstantial beneath my hands, as if I see her healthy self but feel the wasted version of her that’s plugged into the Chair. I hold the cold scalpel to her throat. Mia swallows, and the blade nicks her neck, a small trickle of blood running down the column of her throat to pool at the hollow of her clavicle.

“Tell me, or I’ll make both your dreams and your reality a living nightmare. I’m working with people who can make life very difficult for you.” It’s a half-bluff, but it’s the only card I have.