"Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries."

- James Albert Michener

Galaxies littered the night sky. Like an entire bathtub of milk that had been flushed down hundreds of small drains. Larger than stars and brighter than the moon, the sight was one of the most breathtaking display of the dream world that Tim had seen yet. It was the entire universe, shrunk down to the size of the canvas that stretched out before him. An endless domain of wonder. He sat up, the dew of the damp grass sticking to his clothes. To his sides and back, about two meters apart, five stories tall walls blocked his way, with the only clear path being forward. But even that ends with a fork a short way down road.

Careful to watch his right stump, Tim got to his feet, scanning the area for anything out of the ordinary. At least, as out of the ordinary as the situation could get. The only thing he noticed was that the grass was artificial. Plastic. But the dirt beneath it was real.

“Alright. Fake grass,” he reached his hand out and touched the wall. “Real concrete.”

The walls were smooth, almost as if scrapped flat by a passing sandstorm. With no visible footholds or even a blemish, they were impossible to scale. With no other option left to him, Tim started towards the fork in the road, the fake grass crunching under his feet.

At the junction, which split diagonally, the right let to another fork, while the left curved slowly, with the road disappearing after a distance.

“This is a maze,” Tim thought aloud.

Clang

Like The Father's saw, the sound of the metal bat only echoed within his mind, but Tim had no doubts who or where it came from. He turned to look down the curved left path, and sure enough, The Brother walked out from behind the walls. Without a second thought, Tim bolted down the right road, turning left at the next junction. On and on the path goes. With more forks, winds and turns as he went on. A right turn. A left. Up a stairs and under an archway. Another left. And a third. The teen did not slow down, did not dare to. Trapped in the endless corridor, he had no other choice but to run and make up some distance between him and his hunter. A sudden sharp right and a flash of white.

Like a scene right out of a high school romance drama, Tim collided with the girl in the white dress. He swore he could hear romantic music playing within his mind for a second. But unlike a show, Sister wasn't knocked off her feet, and the pair did not find themselves romantically coiled up with each other on the floor. Despite her tiny stature, she withstood the full brunt of Tim's weight and momentum, not even staggering an inch, while Tim awkwardly found himself in a half embrace.

“Tim!” Sister exclaimed excitedly, ignoring the whole fact that she had just phased through the law of physics. “Finally found you. So...how's it going?” she asked playfully. She wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning her body seductively into his, her face drawing exceedingly closer to him.

He felt her aura wash over him as he fought the sudden lustful desires and thoughts that crossed his mind. “Cut that out. I'm being chased by The Brother!”

“Oh...that is worrisome,” she replied, though not with any of the sense of urgency as her words would have implied. However, the seductive atmosphere disappeared and Tim could concentrate again. Sister moved her arms down to his waist. “And disappointing. I missed you.”

Admittedly, he wasn't uncomfortable with her intimacy. Even without her aura, he was quite attracted to the beautiful, spectral girl. “What are you doing?” he asked.

She only replied with a devilish smile. “Hold on tight.”

Taking a step back from him, he had just a second to wonder what she meant before the white cloth tied around his waist pulled him up and off his feet. “Woah!” he was dragged up and against the wall by the makeshift rope. At three stories up, he looked down to see Sister waving and laughing at his shock.

Slowly, he was lifted to the top of the wall. He turned and positioned himself to climb onto the platform. Once the edge crossed his view however, he found himself facing a dumbfounded Clay, panting heavily and sweating as if he had just walked out of a pool.

Surprised, Clay let out, “Kid?” before offering his best friend a hand. Tim took it without hesitation and was pulled onto the landing. “What are you doing here?”

Panting himself, Tim replied, “Aren't you guys tired of asking that?” he looked back and down into the maze, but Sister and her magic cloth had vanished. He glanced around their level and saw that the maze extended seemingly endlessly into the galaxy filled horizon. “It's a pretty repetitive question, isn't it?”

“No. Cause I haven't had my answer yet.”

“Do we really have the time for that now?”

Sarcastically, he replied, “Well, my body has been beaten unconscious by a psychopathic drug dealer and I'm being chased by a homicidal dream monster. So yeah, we got time.”

A memory jogged from the recess of Tim's mind. “Wait, there's something I have to tell you. It's about Brother,” he remembered the envelope given to him by the librarian, Howard Galloway.

“The baseball kid?”

“Yes. The thing you asked from Howard, he got it. The Brother's a kid from our world. You were right. They exists in our world as well, somehow,” Tim could see Clay wanting to speak so he raised a finger to hush the later. “Let me finish. He used to be from some baseball club out west. Committed suicide twelve years ago, after his team lost in some national finals. The dude's name was Harrison Smith.”

Ecstatic, Clay exclaimed, “Fantastic!” followed by a period of silence while wearing a smile on his face. The grin broke when he said, “So what now?”

“What?”

“So what do I do with the information?” Clay asked with a blank face.

“I don't know! You're the one who went looking for it. I thought you had a plan?”

“Not really. I was just sort of going with it. There isn't really any other leads to follow you know.”

A faint 'clang' echoed into their minds.

Shivers ran down their spines when they heard the sound. Thinking fast, Tim recited the rules of the dream world to his friend, “Okay, if we kill ourselves, we'll be able to wake up.”

“Are you crazy?” Clay said in a panicked tone, “How sure are you?”

“Did it twice. Kinda confident about it,” he looked over his shoulder and down the five stories wall. However, what used to be hard ground and fake grass was replaced by sand, which cut the drop to a mere five meters, nothing more than a cushioned fall. “Okay, that's not going to happen.”

“The sand wasn't there before.”

“Must be The Brother.”

“What if I strangled you?” Clay asked nonchalantly.

Surprised, Tim replied, “What? Why would you do that?”

“You said the last time if we don't get killed by the thing hunting us, we'd survive. And we did. So if I killed you, you would wake up?”

“Yeah,” Tim confirmed, but a thought of worry crossed him. “But if you do that, you'll get killed by The Brother.”

Clang. The sound got closer. As if they had headphones on, the audio was both something they could hear and sense in their minds at the same time.

Clay explained, “My body's tied up in the real world. There's nothing I can do even if I wake up.”

“No. No! NO! I should be killing you!” Tim raised his voice in protest, unwilling to let his friend make the sacrifice. “I have more chance of surviving here! I know more about this place than you do. I can fight!”

Matching his tone, Clay rebutted, “What about Adam? I'm tied up in a chair kid. I'm as dead out there as I am here.”

“I'm not gonna let you do this,” Tim rejected the plan, turning away from his friend. A small whirlwind of dust caught his attention, signalling the arrival of The Brother.

“You don't have choice,” he heard Clay mumbled from behind.

He didn't even have time to react as his friend's bony arms wrapped around his neck in a sleeper hold.

“Clay!” Tim gasped, struggling as his airway was wrenched tighter. He kicked wildly, body instinctively expending energy in a desperate attempt to break free. He tried to pull apart Clay's grip, but the smaller hand was buried beneath his chin, disabling him from getting a grip.

Despite the scratches drawing blood and a few strong kicks to the shin, Clay held his stance, not once letting lose his hold. “I'm sorry,” he whispered, “I'm so sorry,” Tim's frantic struggle slowed to a few jerks and weak attempts to wrench free, before finally, his body slumped unconscious. Like the after image left on a screen, his body slowly faded, until even the physical weight of it disappeared, leaving Clay hugging the air.

A whirl of sand formed on the platform opposite Clay, and the body of The Brother materialized from within.

“Just you and me,” Clay said, a calm having settled over him after saving his friend. He drooped his arms to his sides, a fiery look in his eyes as he felt a final confrontation approaching. “Let's do this.”