The past few weeks had been interesting, amoung befriending Eli and being just about the only living being in the facility had been interesting. But Eli had given him a Wii to fuck around with to gove him something to do that wasnt bother him. At least until the other zoners arrived.

Which was today, it seemed, based upon the other people entering the cafeteria. They seemed to be reacting to waking up in such a strange place much better than he did.

[hr]

[i]Two weeks prior...[/i]

One thing that he had always been happy about was his ability to dream. Not the kind of dream that most would tell you to think about when going to college or what you want to do when you grew up, but the unconcious kind that your mind created for itself. That little playground you got to call home and make up as you went along. He had alwasy dreamt fairly vividly about one thing or another. Be it his snake, his sisters, what he would be doing at school the next day, stuff like that. It wasn't until he was in seventh grade did he read an article online about how to teach yourself to lucid dream. It was then that he could truly be in control of his thoughts and adventures in his mind. The bullies he faced in the day quickly melded awaya dn girls he crushed on were suddenly attracted to him. He could fly at the speed of a bullet and lead a building in a single bound. It was his retreat, and it kept him from breaking down when the sun rose in the morning.

But over the past few months things had changed. He didn't have the control he once did. The land was that of a forest and a long destroyed and overgrown city. He was a creature, one of the many the roamed the woods. He remembered looking into a pool of a water like substance and seeing a reflection what would give children nightmares. It was terrifying, but also exhilerating when he was on the hunt, or when he was defending himself from the other creatures that prowled in the night.

His body had become accustomed to waking up at seven thirty every day, with the aid of an alarm clock of course. His internal cycle caused the unrest that pulled him from his own augmented reality and forced him back into the real world where he wasn't a superhero or apex predator. He felt his world fade as his eyes slowly opened to a dimly lit room. His mind, still foggy from sleep, failed to register initially that he was in a strange and new place. He blinked a few times and pushed himself up on his elbows to look around.

This wasn't his home. This wasn't the surroundings he was used to waking up to on a Monday morning. There were strange mechanical object everywhere. Some of which he recognized, many of which he didn't. He'd be like a kid in a candy store with all of this tech if it wasn't so damn scary that he had been abducted in his sleep. He wished he could just camouflage and escape, or power through the walls or... or...

There were footsteps outside. He could hear them. The tapping of dress shoes and the faint mumbling of converse. He couldn't make out what they were saying. He looked around the room frantically, looking for somethingt o defend himself with, or a place to his. Finding none, he did the only thing he knew how.

[sub]"Just make sure all their vitals are fine. Don't enter the rooms, don't talk to them. You'll scare the shit out of someone."[/sub]

[sub]"Yes, sir."[/sub] The second voice was more mechanical. There was a fiddling on the door, and a strange man walked into the room.

"AAAAAAAAAH!" Henry yelled, throwing his size large shirt at Eli's face, rolling out of bed and running as quickly as he could towards the door in a desperate attempt to escape. The shirt would only distract him for a few seconds if that, but he needed to compensate for his build with a distraction of some kind if he had any chance. He had to make it out of the door. He had to-

"FUCKING. HOLD IT."

An arm shot out and grabbed Henry's shoulder, pulling him back towards the bed. The man who'd entered the room - some tall, spectacled, coat-wearing fuckboy - looked down at him and shook his head. "What, the fucking robots don't do it for you? It's my ugly mug that sends you over the edge?"

Henry was crying at this point, viciously and desperately hitting the man's arm attempting to get free. It was obvious he was terrified, if the huge wet stain trainign down one of his trouser legs wasn't a telltale sign enough. The man shoved Henry away at the smell of the trail. "You-" He started to say aloud, tossing his hands up. He exhaled some before continuing, "Jesus Christ..." A pause, and then, "Calm down. Sit on the bed, and just... listen."

Henry stumbled back and fell on his rear, he stared at the man, eyes wide and snot running down his lip. His chest heaved, his skin glistening lightly with sweat. He could feel his heart beating. Everything was hyper senesitive. He kicked himself back until he reached the wall, but remained on the floor, his eyes firmly trained on this strange man.

"Where-" he said, hiccuping, and whiping the running snot from his nose. "Where am I? Who are you?"

"My name is Elias Winzer, alright?" The man responded, "You're in... look, it's a little complicated, alright? Just calm down, I'm gonna ask you a few questions. Take a minute if you need to."

"Can I have my shirt back, and a change of pants?"

"There's, uh..." Eli motioned to the back corner of the room, "Bathroom, right there. Shower, toilet, uniform - everything you need. I'll give you a bit."

"Th-thank you."

"I know it's kind of scary right now, but I will explain [i]everything[/i] in a minute. Alright?"

Henry said nothing, but he slowly picked himself up, his eyes trained on Eli the whole time, refusing to look away, and he slowly inched his way to the bathroom. He didn't look away until he had shut the door.

[center]---[/center]

Henry took a quick shower and had used that change of clothes. He had found that his uniform was rather comfortable. A two piece, white jumpsuit. He had found that on the right shoulder a black '2' had been sewn into the shoulder of the suit. White slip on shoes had been provided as well for his feet. He combed his hair and quickly washed his face in the sink when he had changed. When he hesitantly unlocked the door and stepped outside back into the strange room. Eli was still there. "O-okay." He stuttered, slowly walking over to his bed and sitting on it awkwardly. "You... you wanted to explain. Please do, because I'm freaking out here."

Eli took a seat on the stool sitting at the desk adjacent to the bed. He exhaled again before he began. "Where to start..." He said, "Tell me... what you've been hearing on the news lately."

Henry shook his head. "I dont watch much news. I'll read about it sometimes on the internet. I usually only see world news, like that Syrian-Russian incident with the Crimea river than happened twenty or so years ago. I dont read much about anything else." 

"Nothing about..." Eli responded, "Disturbances? Anomalies? Weird stuff happening in populated areas?"

"I mean I've heard a little about that, sure."

"There was a bit of an event like that in Maine a few days ago. And the day before that, something went down in Singapore. Both involved, uh... things... not of this world. Anything about those?"

"I know what you're talking about. Mainly just kids with camcorders looking through the woods and trying to explain it on youtube. It doesnt actually have to do with aliens does it? Because something tells me there's only one reason why you would be asking me this."

"Ali- no, no, Christ, no, it's not... aliens." There was another pause before the next question came up. "Okay, tell me about your dreams. What they've involved lately. Be [i]very[/i] specific."

"I used to be able to lucid dream a lot, by my own will. It was fun... But recently over the past three or four months they changed... I'm in a forest, that looks like part of it was once a city before it was overgrown and I'm this... thing. I dont know how to describe it. This hulking goliath of a creature that's a cross between a primate and a crocodile... I've always felt hungry when I dream. I often... if I'm recalling correctly, I often hunt and kill nearly anything I come across. It's terrifying but it's also exciting. It's fun to feel so powerful. Anything that comes after me I usually end up playing with like I'm a giant cat of some kind playing with it's food." he said. "This... this isn't a mental ward is it? There's nothing wrong with me right?"

"No, no, nothing's wrong. In fact..." Eli stood up from his seat and pointed at Henry. "That kind of thing is [i]exactly[/i] what we're looking for."

"Huge and hangry?"

"Mhmm." He put his hands in his pockets.

"You never told me why I'm here, or where we are."

"The strange things happening outside? And your dreams? They're... connected. You said you're a lucid dreamer, so that made you a candidate for... well, this." Eli stepped forward and held out the badge on his lapel. "Somniatis APR, that's who I work for. We're... examining, this whole ordeal. And certain circumstances have led to the factor of... people like you. Folks who have become... linked. To the same worlds where these "aliens" are coming from."

"Somniatis...? It sounds like you work for a disease of some kind."

"It's Latin for "dream". The, uh... founder, he was into that kind of stuff."

"That's... actually pretty cool. So I'm here for you to study right? You're not going to stab me with hundreds of needles or disect me like they do in the horror movies are you?"

"No, not- we're not fucking evil geniuses, man. You're here because... we need your help."

"You... what... I cant even..." Henry said, standing up for a second. "Okay I get that you need me to study or something but I'm probably not going to be much help unless you want IT support, which you probably already have. I dont even want to guess how you're going to study my... dream form or whatever, but I'm probably not going to be much help even then because unless there's a lot to distract me I'll probably attempt to eat you."

Eli simply nodded his head, smirking a bit. "Y'know you talk a little too much." A short pause before he continued, "Anyway no, no studying. At all. Giant lizard man, that's easy to wrap your head around. The thing is, we... are... building a defense. The things bleeding out into reality, they exist in another world. Three of them, actually, one of which you belong to. You dream about yourself in a wilderness, right? See some buildings here and there? Valleys, mountains, fog?"

"There's also a sea of clouds, but yeah. It's pretty interesting to throw a rock off of it to see it fall from the sky again."

"Yeah, we know about the whole non-Euclidean thing going on in all three. Anyway, uh... what's happening right now is, we've located as many of you folks as we could, through this... grid. It's a field of phantom energy that's overlapped the entire earth. Each one of you is a little glowing dot on that grid. We've got some of you here now, still waiting on most arrivals. Records say there's somewhere around... three-hundred of you, probably less."

"You lost me at grid. But from what I'm gathering you're asking me to be a... superhero for all intesive purposes... in my sleep, right?"

"Yes." Eli responded, clapping his hands together,

"Can I call you General Fury now?"

"No." He said, separating his hands.

"I'm calling you General Fury anyways. You brought me here, you deal with the concequences."

"If it helps you cope with all this, fine, be a fucking nerd."

"Does my mom know where I am? Because I dont want to leave my sisters and her just like that. When my dad passed away I became the only person to look after my sisters when my mom was away-"

"JUST..." Eli cut into Henry mid-sentence.

"Trust you?"

"Your family is being handled carefully. As is everyone else's. We're making sure word of this doesn't get out. I can't give you specifics, but [i]everything is fine[/i]."

Henry didn't say anything for a few seconds. There was a pregnant silence in the room and Henry leaned back against the bed. "Okay then." he said. "I... I dont know if this is fake or real or not, but you... you seem pretty sincere if you're actually a child rapist so I'm... I'm gonna believe you." he said, breathing out. His body relaxed some. "Do you have a cafeteria in here? Because I'm hungry."

Eli leaned his head back and chuckled a bit. [sub]"Unbelievable..."[/sub] He looked back at Henry and said, "Go ahead and walk out the door, follow the green line. Service bots there will help you out." He stood up from the chair and cracked his knuckles a bit. "If that's all you need from me now, I gotta go repeat this whole thing with a few other folks. If you need anything else... service bots, or... me, if I'm around."

"Are there any others you've already talked to? Just because I want to know who I should meet. Anyone who's been here for a while?"

"You're the first batch, actually. Seven in total. Tell you what, I'll tell folks to head down to one of the rec rooms to play meet and greet. You just wait around there for 'em. Yellow line on the wall will lead you there."

"If that's the case, tell someone else what the number stands for, so when I ask we have something to talk about." Henry said smiling. "And uh... thanks for putting up with my shit earlier."

Eli stepped towards the door and pulled a phamplet from a wall-mounted shelf. He tossed it to Henry, who caught it awkwardly. "Here." He said, "I printed out a crap load of those yesterday. It'll explain the Zones and how you fit into all this. Give it a good once-over."

Henry looked down at the pamphet, then back up to Eli, and nodded. "I... I guess I'll see you soon Eli." he said. He looked out the door and left the room, following the yellow line to the nearest recreation room as instructed.

[hr]

That was... An experience. He guessed that, based upon how many were coming in at one time, that Eli had employed service bots like he said he would. Awesome. He tried to find it in himself to do something, or say something. But didn't. Not yet at least. He'd wait until the others came in before he would approach them. He was bad at introductions so... He'd only have to mess it up once if he did it that way.