I heft my hammer and hit the glass. It splinters, tiny spider cracks running along it with the sound of lit kindling. I hit it again and there’s a hole. Third hit and I’m standing in the wind, what’s left of my hair flying back, my lungs filling with dream air, black and shocking. I could fly out across the city. I love dream-flying.

Then I remember Mel. On second thought: no dream-flying for me tonight. Just in case he’s manipulating me and I’m standing on his balcony in real life. The truth is, I can’t trust anything I see; I have to assume I’m sleepwalking.

I close my eyes in the dream. I drop to my hands and knees, and I crawl. Now that there’s no visual stimulation, I’m mostly aware of my own heartbeat and breathing. The fear. My link to Sweet Dreams tells me that I was only asleep for a few minutes when this dream started. My best hope is to get out of the flat to somewhere that there are people before he has time to enter the dream and mess with me too much.

I feel a draught of warm air and crawl towards it. My left hand reaches out for purchase on the floor and finds air; I grope and find solid stone some ten centimetres down. It’s a step. I feel my way forward. Much harder to track with the tactile sense than the eye. I’m at the top of a staircase made of stone or maybe concrete. I start going down, dream-eyes clenched shut. I hear echoes of distant voices, footsteps, and then Martin Elstree’s voice says very clearly and calmly into my dream:

‘There’s nothing you can do. I need only say a few words, give a code, and you’ll be taken care of. Open your eyes and you’ll see what I mean.’

My breath is coming in gasps. I count fourteen steps, then come to a landing. I can feel myself right on the edge of wakefulness; I could push through and surface if I really tried.

‘You can’t wake up. We can force you back into REM anytime. Insertions are also possible.’

The sense of something following me is closer now, running up my spine and into my consciousness. I’m not alone and something is coming down those stairs after me, not someone but some thing. Before I can gather my thoughts, I find myself up on my feet, eyes closed, running down the steps, falling, rolling, getting up battered and running again. Down, down, down, with the conviction of an amorphous devouring Thing coming after me.

I hit a door and open my eyes.