[center][h3]Barney Rynsburger[/h3][/center]

"Ambulance?" Barney distracted himself from his search for a moment to take out his phone. In a frustrating turn it looked like he had no signal. He shot Nick an apologetic look, worried about the other guy's agitation but unable to do anything about it. He wasn't equipped to help other people out with their panick attacks; for now he had his own problems to worry about.

No matter how hard Barney looked, of course, there appeared to be no way out. As the seconds ticked by his heart rate slowed, since despite these extraordinary circumstances, no further revelations presented themselves. The others, disoriented both by their collective fall and their phantasmagorical surroundings, also labored to collect themselves, and though the ghastly prison loomed in front of him, neither personnel nor tower spotlights came his way. As his initial panic subsided, and Barney worked to steady his breathing, he watched the massive arcs of city parts lazily arcing over the orange-hued cityscape beneath a smoky sky and a distant, dusky horizon. He even began to feel a sense of calm--a tranquility borne of the realization and subsequent certainty that none of this could possibly be real.

[i]Well, duh,[/i] Barney sighed, rubbing at his eyes. In every dream there came a point where the suspension of disbelief shattered, and one gained awareness that one was, in fact, asleep. Finding out this soon put him ahead of the curve, in fact, although he still felt quite idiotic. Unfortunately the discovery didn’t grant him any semblance of control, but it did take the weight off his shoulders. At that point, though Barney stood just a few feet away from a roiling phantom sea of tar and in front of a massive, villainous-looking prison in a burning city, his train of thought turned to practical concerns. “This is just some...stress-fueled delusion,” he reasoned aloud. “Maybe the cafeteria food made me hallucinate. Hah.” A wry chuckle escaped him, though he wasn’t totally joking. “I guess its fine if I’m just conked out somewhere, but I really can’t miss work. Just gotta find some way to jolt myself awake.” His eyes shifted between the other students, and the elements of his surreal scenery. Other people he’d seen around the school being in his dream perturbed him not at all, although he did spend a moment wondering exactly when he’d gone under. Back in the student center, maybe? Details notwithstanding, he needed to wake up. “How’d they do it in Inception…?”

His gaze naturally fell back on the oily ocean-substitute, their fascinatingly transient and suggestive colors and shapes all too irresistible for a wandering attention. A lightbulb went off over Barney’s head, and he snapped his fingers. “Falling! That’s right, okay…” Ignoring the others, he jogged over to the edge of the dock and tensed his muscles to leap in.

Instead, he froze solid. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to go no further. Suddenly wary, he stared down again into the oil’s fluctuating surface. It was dazzling, enchanting even, and by his logic a leap into it would give him the escape he longed for, but at the same time he could not deny that there was something terrifying about it. Some raw, primal aspect to the stuff made him suddenly unsure of his plan, and after a moment he stepped back from the ledge.

Although annoyed by the failure of his plan, Barney couldn’t help but feel it was for the better, somehow. It wasn’t often that self-preservation instincts kicked in like that, and even in a dream, there were some things that just weren’t smart to mess with. Dreams were the product of one’s own mind, after all, and pain could be easily imagined.

Of course, that left him right back at his original question, the same one that troubled him before all this foolishness got started. [i]Where do I go from here?[/i] He had to wake up some way or another. Barney regarded the prison once more, noting its tall buildings and the precipitous walls. Even the guardhouse at the base of the dock fit the bill. [i]Might as well,[/i] he figured, [i]give it a shot[/i].

With a deep breath, he started off in the direction of the guardhouse, but he could not avoid glancing at the others as he stepped by them, and the sight of them gave him pause. Some, lacking his constitution, looked pretty hurt by the fall. It even seemed to shock the older guy into a different, much more intimidatingly gravelly voice. He knew this wasn’t real, it couldn’t be, but still. While the area defied belief, the other people looked so uncannily normal. Barney knew he couldn’t possibly have looked at any of these people, even Mila or Harriette, enough to accurately recreate them. And was he really creative enough to conjure up all these details? Barney shook the questions from his head. How could he possibly look at that prison, that sea, and second-guess what all this was?

After a moment he managed to focus, and return his attention to the task at hand. Yet the next second he got distracted again anyway, this time by the courthouse. For a little while it just sank into the backdrop, as fantastical as the rest of it, but now Barney’s eyes fell on the gigantic beacon beneath its dome. Its light was turning his way, toward the dock. And though he should have known better than to think twice about it, he couldn’t suppress a sudden surge of disquiet. On impulse he broke out into a jog, but his action came far too late. A second later the spotlight hit the dock and stopped in its tracks, the humans from Barclay Waterfront University awash in its golden light. Likewise Barney froze, a deer in the headlights, as in the center of the beacon a black bar, like a horizontal slitted pupil, expanded.

Then the alarms blared forth. A multitude of unseen klaxons started up a shrieking wail, hideously animal-like in nature. The prison filled with spinning lights, and multiple guard towers swiveled their own beacons to join that of the courthouse, fixated on the dock. A few moments passed before the guard house burst open, discharging a squad of frenzied prison guards. Barney could only watch, horrified, as they raced down the docks with batons in hand. [b]“Stop right where you are!”[/b] the biggest one hollered. [b]“Put your hands in the air!”[/b]

Barney obeyed immediately and without question. He moved by instinct; in his terror, all his self-assurances of this being a dream no longer mattered. That he did nothing wrong did not matter, either. He just needed to cooperate, not present a threat or problem of any kind, and it would be okay. That was what he’d been taught. As the guards fanned out around their targets, though, Barney couldn’t help but sneak a look at the main one, and what he saw puzzled him. At a quick glance it appeared to be an ordinary security guard, with black pants, a white collared shirt, a dark body armor vest, and a wide-brimmed hat, kind of like a drill sergeant’s. But there was something off. He spotted no trace of skin, only what must be a pitch-black bodysuit where it should be, and toward the extremities he was baffled to find angular patterns of color that shifted, kaleidoscopic, across the guards’ limbs. Most striking, however, were their faces. The black suits extended up there, suggesting a ski mask, but instead of an eyehole he could see only a pit that sank into the head, with only blackness within.

[b]“Hmm?”[/b] The captain stepped forward, fixing his pit on one person after another. [b]“You aren’t inmates! His Honor will want to see this.”[/b] As the other guards brandished their batons, those menacingly inhuman heads watching like hawks, the captain pointed toward the courthouse. [b]“Now, march! Run for it and we’ll drag you there with broken legs!”[/b]

Completely overwhelmed, Barney could do nothing but follow along. As a guard pushed him he began to walk, wondering just what kind of nightmare he’d brought upon himself.