"We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict."

- Jim Morrison

13 days earlier,

08:15 a.m

On a good day, things go according to plan. On a good day, you get to use a packet of body powder as cocaine. On a good day, the 911 operator will pick up your call when you needed it. But good days never lasts. From the corner of Clay Barber's eyes, he could see the tattooed henchman reach for something round his back. Clay tightened his grip on the fake stick grenade, all the while staring down Adam the drug dealer. He knew he would need to react faster than they were to shoot.

“How 'bout this, drugs or we die,” Clay said.

“The bartender called, you stupid kid. The 'coke'? Just powder,” Adam replied, a smirk across his face. “You can't scare us with the same crap.”

“Wanna bet?” Clay replied defiantly.

Adam laughed. “Kill him.”

Clay pulled the cord, igniting the home-made sparkler ignition, burning the potassium nitrate and sugar mixture stored in the head. The false cap on the tip of the grenade popped opened, releasing a burst of pink sparks, producing large streams of smoke as it did. He saw the shock on Adam's face, clearly visible for the first time since he knew the man, lit up by the sparks. The man reached for his gun, and Clay expected the other two would do the same. He threw the smoke grenade at the drug dealer who jumped to the side. The smoke filled up the room as Clay pulled his shirt over his nose and charged straight at Adam, tackling the man over the desk. Two gunshots rang out behind him.

He felt the silk of Adam's suit and yanked at it. The man stumbled back into him and Clay jumped onto his back, swiping away the dealer's gun and wrapped his arms around his neck as tight as his underdeveloped muscles allowed. The smokescreen had completely enveloped the room and he could hear everyone coughing for clean air as they choked on the nauseous sulphur. Another gunshot echoed in his ear, followed by the clatter of shattering glass while Adam fell to his knees, clawing away at Clay's arms. A hand grabbed hold of the back of Clay's shirt and with a strong pull, separated him and the drug dealer, flinging the teenager halfway across the room.

Clay stone-skipped across the floor, slamming back first into the opposing wall. He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain in his spine and oriented himself to the murky source of light which was where the windows were. With his hand out front, groping like a sex offender, he searched to the right of him and sure enough, felt the form of the cardboard box that the tattooed henchman took the drugs from. He reached in, grabbed two handful of bottles of pills and stuffed them into his oversized pockets.

“Find that bastard!” he heard Adam snarl through bouts of coughs.

Time's up. He thought. Clay turned towards the direction of the door, letting out an unwitting cough despite his makeshift mask. Wading through the smoke, he smashed into the familiar soft body of a human. He hoped it was Scarface. He was a brute, probably slow in speed and thinking and would likely not react as fast.

Then he felt the cold steel of the gun slapping across his neck. For a moment, he thought his heart stopped beating, his legs about to collapse from the shock.

BANG!

The pistol discharged right next to his left ear. The recoil smashed the gun into his temple, the bullet sent splinters from the wall cutting across his face.

His ears ringing, head spinning and face bleeding, his legs buckled and he started to fall. He reached out with his hands, felt the floor, felt himself spinning, turning and tumbling across it. Miraculously, he got back onto his feet, stumbled forward with hands outstretched, felt the handle of a door and yanked, swearing that if it was the bathroom, he would stick his foot up the devil's ass.

He bumbled forward and stepped across the threshold...

...into complete darkness.

He almost vomited from the sudden change in environment and his physical condition, swallowing hard so as to not puke, the bile bulging against his throat. His ear no longer ringing, his head no longer spinning, his face no longer bleeding, Clay wished he was back in the room with the three homicidal gangster.

Surrounded by shadows, he stood in complete darkness. He raised his hands out in front of him and could barely see past his elbows, the entire area surrounded by a veil of shadows. Turning on the spot, the ground beneath him felt as soft as dirt. The darkness was disorienting and he felt like throwing up again.

Clang.

The sound of the aluminium bat hitting the non existent baseball. The invisible crowd started cheering. He stood in the darkness, listening, waiting. He wasn't going to run. Not any more.

The cheering got louder and louder, slowly rising. Horns and trumpets started blasting and the noise reached a deafening level. The ground vibrated from the noise, but Clay stood his ground, not even raising his hands up to cover his ears as he did so many times before. His was ready to go down swinging.

Something tugged inside him, a pressure squeezed lightly on his heart and lungs.

“You're out,” the rough, cracking whisper came from behind him.

Clay spun in place, saw the silver outline of the bat coming right at his face, and he fell, face flat onto the carpeted and brightly lit hotel corridor floor, his head jerked violently back, sending a sharp pain into his neck from the strain that snapped his concentration back to him.

The ringing in his ear was back. And so was the bleeding and the headache. His heart beat faster than he ever felt it before, trying its hardest to force its way out of his chest. He did not know how long he was out for, and it was not the time to find out. Thick grey smoke poured out the room like an avalanche along with shouts of obscenity from Adam. He got to his feet, legs shaking, and vomited. His spew splashed across the floor, the taste of bile and backwash lingering in his mouth. His stomach constricted in a grappling match with his intestine. He was glad Stella wasn't there to see him.

“Get that fucker!” Adam yelled from the room.

“Oh he's pissed,” Clay groaned to himself, more of a reminder than an observation. Stepping over his pile of intestinal rejects, he made his way in as fast of a jog as possible to the elevator. One hand over the spot where the gun smacked him and another over his gripping belly. The elevator doors opened immediately upon calling, for which he thanked a god. Which god though, he wasn't sure. Robbie William's Rock DJ played over the elevator radio.

The door slid opened and Clay stepped into the lobby. He barely saw it coming. The bartender's punch came from around the corner. Clay only managed a feeble attempt at a block as the older man's strike broke through his guard, connecting with his jaw and sending him spinning to the ground once more.

Sprawled on his back, disoriented, stomach clenched, head spinning, face bleeding, ear ringing, Clay mustered up enough gumption to spit a ball of phlegm, bile and blood and all at his attacker's crisp white shirt.

The bartender reacted with a crooked smile with a glint of sadism in his eyes. From his back, he pulled out a gun and pointed at Clay, only to be blindsided by a two-by-four across his face as he did Clay with his sucker punch, crumpling to the floor like Jenga blocks.

“What?” Clay huffed out a genuine cry of surprise for the first time that morning. He tilted his head to see Stella, in denim shorts and yellow shirt, holding the plank of wood in her hands, staring at the now unconscious tender.

She turned to her brother. “He's kind of hot,” gesturing to the bartender.

“Stell? What the hell are you doing here?” he tried to push himself up but a sharp pain shot up his neck and stopped him. He lied back down, groaning in pain.

Stella knelt down beside him and gently lifted his head until he sat up straight. “Saving you apparently. What were you thinking?”

“You shouldn't have come. It's dangerous here.”

“Yet here you are,” he slung his arm over her shoulder. With a huff, she slowly got him to his feet. “And your breath smells bad.”

They stepped over the bartender and headed for the door as fast as he could manage but stopped as the wooden door swung open.

Tim raised his air rifle at them. “Out of the way,” he growled.

With what strength he could, Clay pushed his sister away and ducked to the side. Tim squeezed off a round, his rifle letting off a loud clack, the metal pellet producing an audible smack as it hits the receptionist square in the eye. The man let out a yelp of pain.

Tim stepped towards the man, whose eye was now bleeding, and smashed the butt of his rifle across the head. The man flopped to the ground, his groaning stopped.

Tim turned to his friends. “Let's get out of here.”

XXX

13 days earlier,

08:42 a.m

For how long they ran, they did not know. But they had not stopped running even after losing sight of the sign that marked the start of Smith Street. By the time their legs gave way, the trio had ended up laying sprawled across the tarmac in an empty outdoor parking lot by the docks. A passing ships' horn blasted the morning, a flock of crows took flight from the one tree at the street corner.

Panting heavily, his legs aching, Tim forced himself to stand, his body heating up with impatience, needing to move. He walked on the spot in circles, hands at his hips as he took deep breaths of air. His air rifle in its bag left on the pavement.

Clay got to his feet, albeit much slower. Most of his blood were washed away by the sweat from their long escape and had stained his shirt with patches of brown along the collar. The bandages from the day before had peeled off, leaving marks of dark dried blood. He limped over to Tim, Stella finally sitting up.

Tim stopped walking and turned to his friend. "That was too close asshole."

Once they were near, Clay drew his arm back and punched him across the jaw. "What the hell were you thinking? Bringing my sister here?"

Stella jumped to her feet and bear hugged her brother from behind, her thin arms holding him back. "What are you doing?" she cried out, but Clay ignored her.

Tim stumbled back but managed to keep his footing. He threw Clay a fierce glare as he pushed his jaw till it gave a thin crack to stretch away the pain. "Good to know you're not a complete idiot yet."

"Don't make me punch you again, kid."

Stella stepped in between them, facing her brother. "Look, I chose to come, okay? Even if Tim tried to stop me, I would have nutted him."

Clay started to calm down, staring at his sister, his fury fading away. "Still, you shouldn't have come. It's...it's reckless for you to have come."

Tim stepped forward. "Oh, and it was totally safe and not reckless whatsoever for you?"

"You don't get it."

"What don't I get? Huh? You went out of your way to find trouble with drug dealers and gangsters. For what? Some shitty meds? Fine, you're sick. I get it. We can get you to a bloody hospital."

"Shut it kid!" Clay shouted, his voice echoing into the neighbourhood, the empty docks playing back the recording. "You don't fucking get it. To go through each day afraid to just – just to close your eyes. The meds ain't godsend or nothing. They just let your body sleep. Your mind's still awake. Mentally, I've not slept for over a week.”

Tim couldn't bring himself to reply. It was that moment he realized just how much he had been escaping the situation, how much he had downplayed the severity of his friend's condition and how little knowledge he had of the Vashmir Pandemic. The morning sun rose from the sea, shading half their faces in light. He could see now, the sharp and focused mania that glowed in Clay's eyes, the bruises and cuts highlighted and sunken into his skin.

“And when my mind gets too tired, when I can no longer stay awake,” Clay looked away from Tim and into the sunrise. “I sleep and go to these...places. And these people, these things, chase us around like pigs. Trying to kill us. And the doctors, they all say its in our heads, but I know its not. There's no way it is. We feel the pain. Like, actual pain that lingers even after we wake and the injury's gone. And the experts can't help. They still think it's some mass hysteria shit. And we have to fight to survive.”

“We?” Tim asked.

Clay looked to his sister. She held his hand in hers, gently rubbing at the creases. “Stella has it too.”

Tim felt sick. He spun in a circle, looking for something to lean against but no walls nor lamppost were within reach. “When? How?”

With her back turned, Stella replied, “Three days ago.”

“Is it-”

“No,” Stella cut in. “As far as we know, it's not contagious.”

“But the odds, the two of you, both having it! I mean, isn't it suppose to be a one in a million thing?”

“There's a support group online,” she said.

“Useless bunch they are,” Clay said, spite in his voice. “All they do is give advice of how to tell family members and write wills. A lot of them outright gave up. Many hiding cause they're 'fraid of being ostracised.”

“Morbid place,” she said. “But everyone thinks the government's covering up the numbers and deaths to prevent panic until they figured things out. The whole figure doesn't tally.”

Tim was pacing around his small circle now. He wanted to go home to his dingy little room and argue with his father till birds could fly to space and the sun turned green. “What's the number?” he asked.

Clay exchanged glance with his sister. “We think it's about one in ten thousand, maybe less. But the number's definitely increasing.”

Tim stopped in his tracks, staring out at the open parking lot, back to his friends and deep in thoughts. “These things that are trying to kill you, what do they look like?”

“According to everyone on the support site, it's always the same seven people-thing. Hunters, they call them. They're definitely not human,” Clay explained, looking slightly distressed as he did so. “Mine is a guy in a baseball uniform. Looks like a teenager. Name's Smith.”

“You know his name?” Tim replied, surprised.

“Yeah. It's on his uniform. No team name though,” Clay surprised Tim again with a sudden enthusiasm in his voice. “I thought maybe he exists. Like outside of the dream. Might help us stop this. But the most common surname, one of the most popular sport in America, over a hundred years of history, it's not easy. So far, I've got squat”

“That's why you needed the Somnidin,” his mind started joinging the dots. “You needed more time.”

Clay nodded in confirmation. “That, and Stell needs them too.”

“What about you Stell?” Tim turned to her when mentioned. “What's chasing you?”

“Huh? Well, a girl actually. It's kind of flattering,” her voice was nebulous when surprised, like what he'd imagined a voice would sound like if it was in space. Distant and dreamy. It was a rare sight from her. “She has the whitest of hair. Like snow, really.”

A memory came to the forefront of Tim's mind. “A white dress,” he said instinctively.

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“I don't really know,” waves of memories bombarded him at once, some of which he did not think he's actually remembering. Others he recalled as dreams from long ago. He waded through it all, desperately searching for the source of the girl in the white dress. He stood on the spot in a trance.

“Tim?” Stella called out. He could barely hear her. Her voice a distant echo.

“Dreams of fire,” he said in a monotonous voice.

“Hey kid?” Clay called. His friend stepped forward, face-to-face with him, but Tim couldn't see him.

“Salves of healing,” the verses came to mind.

Images of the sky filled his thoughts. A single flash of white, and a fleeting image of the girl with the hair of snow and the dress of whitest white. Smiling.