-33-

"Dream a Little Dream"

Fucking hell. I wondered if I was ever going to get peace from these guys - their relentless, aggressive campaigns of selfishness were exhausting.

He thought he could appeal to my kind, womanly heart by emotionally flagellating himself in front of me? Did he think, by telling me how 'bad' he was, that I'd go into overdrive to prove him wrong - that I'd offer myself up to comfort him? All so that he could just laugh about how stupidly naive I was afterward, and say 'But I told you so, you silly girl'?

Well haha, joke was on him - now he would have to go drown his sorrows with booze and whores, as he should have done in the first place instead of trying to get one over on ME.

I sunk myself into a window-seat, trying to calm down. Did he not understand what I was going through right now? Could he not be bothered to make a guess?

That's unfair, I thought - how could some dumb guy be expected to understand my feelings, when I hadn't even sorted them out for myself yet?

Besides, he had his own problems - I'd seen the tangled mess of his mind, and I didn't envy him.

I looked at the stars outside the window. So many little worlds, too big and too far away to comprehend in full. Tiny, insignificant… yeah, I knew what Destruction meant. But for me, the problem was reversed - while someone like him was always told he was supposed to be powerful and important, I was used to feeling tiny and insignificant; used to being told by everyone and everything around me that this was the natural, default position for someone like me… and that it would have been weird for me to desire being anything else. These days, I felt like I'd been lit on fire and tossed into that sea of stars, told to burn as brightly as they did even though I was still just a speck of dust compared.

I was a helpless, mushy little baby-woman, still clumsily trying to figure out the mechanics of walking and talking and dealing with the big, wide world; I was still mostly reliant on others to look after me.

How the hell was I supposed to have a baby of my own? It was a sick joke.

My thoughts raced by, and so did the hours. Within no time, the sky was lightening and changing color to signal the coming dawn.

It looked like John was coming back up the hill from the village. He wasn't wearing his trenchcoat - I wondered a bit how he could have managed to lose it, considering it was so precious to him. This was a brief and fleeting thought, though, because I honestly didn't care one iota about it - or him.

I heard Barnabas barking at him. Good dog, I thought - but then Barnabas lunged at him and bit him on the ankle. The man raised a hand at the dog, and blasted it backward with a reddish light. Barnabas went sprawling, with a pitiful whine that I could hear even through the walls and windows of the house. Then he was still, knocked senseless.

Oh no. It wasn't John.

I ran outside, as The Corinthian advanced on Delirium.

"Hullo little girl. Is Rose home?" I heard The Corinthian ask her.

"sHE wANts tO bE LeFt alOne rIGHt nOW. WhY'd yoU hURt mY dOGGy?"

"Is that so? Well, I'll have to go cheer her up then."

"I dUnnO wHO yOU aRE mIstER, bUT yOU sEEm crEEpY. I cAN't sEE tHE iNsIde oF yOUr hEAd." It sounded like Delirium didn't remember seeing him at the party - figures. But she did recognize something else, when her mis-matched eyes dropped down to the Ruby in his hand. "Th-ThAT's mY bRothER's!"

The Corinthian unlaced the Pouch from his belt, and poured out a handful of sand into his palm. "How about a nap, little Endless…"

Before he could douse her with the sand, I stole the granules - they floated on a gust of sourceless wind, depositing right into my own grasp.

"Why hullo again, Rose…" he cooed.

I responded by sending the sand blasting back at him, swirling around his feet and causing the very earth to rise and encase his feet in stone.

"Impressive," he said. "You've gotten stronger." He easily blasted himself out of the footholds, grabbed another handful of sand and threw it at Delirium, who fell over asleep immediately.

I took this moment to order the sand into a spearhead, which shot the jewel right out of The Corinthian's hand.

It fell into the grass.

Sending up an earth-shield to temporarily block him bought me a moment to make a mad dash for the jewel. Like a baseball player sliding into homebase, I lunged for it, and seized it-

Pain zapped my fingers and went up my arm. White light clouded my vision; I might as well have grasped a live wire. I recoiled and gasped, as The Corinthian moved easily around my earth-shield and bent to pick up the jewel.

"Did I not tell you?" he mocked, standing over me as I cradled my hand against my chest. "The Ruby is mine now. It's become a part of me... sort of like how a shoe conforms to your foot. I'm afraid you can't use it anymore."

The Corinthian smashed me hard in the face with the hand that gripped the Ruby, ruining all chances of recovering my senses; he kicked me, pushed me down by the shoulders, and held me to the ground.

My nose was pouring salty blood down my lips and down the back of my throat, co-mingling with the blood filling my mouth, choking me. There was something hard on my tongue, and I realized with sickening alarm that was probably one of my teeth, knocked loose from being hit by the Ruby.

There was probably something awesome and magical I could have been doing at this moment, using the dreamsand, but I couldn't think. Couldn't imagine. Couldn't see through the tears. Could barely breathe, sucking air through gurgling sobs. Whole body wracked with intense pain and fear.

Red light. Warmth coiling around my wrists and ankles, gritty dreamsand congealing to it like metal filings to a magnet, and becoming something twisted and fibrous. Ropes? They anchored into the ground.

No no no, I can't let this happen, I thought wildly. I struggled in vain, as my limbs were pulled tight against the hillside.

"Tut tut, such a fuss for nothing," murmured The Corinthian, drawing back from me into a kneeling position. "I'm actually not here for you."

What? I thought. What was he talking about? Dream? Was he just going to use me as bait? A perverse, morbid, pathetically desperate hope sprang up within me that this was all he was planning to do. I stared at him in speechless, terrified confusion, waiting for an answer.

"You have no idea the plans I had for you," he said, his sunglass-shaded eyes running down the length of my rope-bound body. He played with the fabric and buttons of my dress as he spoke - I braced myself for clothing removal or groping, but he seemed sufficiently amused with Destruction's design choices for the moment; perhaps he was savoring my fear. "The wedding, the guests, I had everything planned out... down to the color of the napkins and the new carpet for the castle floor." He sighed. "But no, you had to get frisky with DREAM, of all people. How REPULSIVE."

"What…" I croaked, dizzily. "How…?"

My eyes had cleared enough that I could see his face harden, tighten. "I could SMELL IT ON YOU," he growled.

Those dark shaded lenses didn't move. He didn't move. I held my breath. It seemed like he was about to strike me, or hurt me in some way to punish me for this perceived transgression against him. But then the tension keeping his body rigid relaxed, and he grinned wide. "That's right. I finally have you all to myself… yet now, I don't even want you. Ironic, isn't it?"

My anger at his mockery helped me regain my voice. "If you don't want me, let me go!" I yelled.

He leaned over me. "I may not want YOU anymore… but now you have something even better." He placed his hand on my lower stomach. "Something that won't be so uncooperative."

He… knew I was pregnant?

"If you hadn't sullied yourself with that tyrant, and done what I'd asked in order to be my queen, this wouldn't have happened - this gift that is beyond the price of rubies. So, I'm actually becoming rather thankful for your defiance, truth be told. But you see, I'm not a very patient man," he said, holding the Ruby over me, "so I'm going to have to speed the process along, by a considerable measure."

The Ruby glowed, and so did his hand.

Something strange happened deep within me - my lower abdomen underneath his hand ached, and stirred, and shifted.

"Such an interesting little tricket," he said, placing the Dreamstone into his satchel-bag. "I had no idea how many wonderful things it could do...for example, I don't have to wait to see the product of your dalliance with an Endless."

Suddenly, he plunged his hand right through both the dress-fabric and my flesh, right into me.

I screamed, as he fished through my insides with his probing fingers, pushing aside and searing through whatever was in his way, the guts or whatever my anatomy teachers had tried to teach me was in that area splitting apart as if preemptively surrendering to his dissection, this living autopsy he was performing upon me without anaesthesia. It hurt like hell.

When he brought out his hand, it looked like he'd removed some sort of jellyfish-like organ - but then he tore the outer coating away, revealing a translucent, shrimp-looking organism. It grew in the palm of his hand, like a timelapse video of a beansprout, squirming slightly with its developing limbs.

"Close your mouth, love - it's just your son," said The Corinthian.

I pulled my gaze away from this surreal freakshow display, looking down at my stomach and expecting to see a bloody, gory, horrifying mess - but while there was now a ragged hole punched through my dress, the exposed skin underneath looked smooth, unblemished, perfectly normal; there wasn't any sign of a wound, no bruising or internal weirdness, other than a lingering ache from having my insides pulled apart.

The little fetus rapidly grew and morphed into a full-blown infant, requiring the use of both The Corinthian's hands to hold; soon he was forced to adjust the position of his arms to compensate for the increasing weight of the growing child. "What do you think his name should be? Perhaps we should keep with the tradition of Dream's family all having 'D' names, shall we?" He thought it over. "Something like… Daniel."

The baby was now well on his way to becoming a toddler, his soft downy baby-hair lengthening and turning into little golden curls. The Corinthian set the naked little cherub down on the ground - the child wavered on his feet a little, but grasped the concept of standing upright as fast as his unnatural growth.

Daniel looked straight at me, with green eyes very similar to those that had always peered back at me when I looked into a mirror. His eerily pale, cherubic little face held an alien expression of uncomprehending awe and wonder.

"Say goodbye to your mum, Daniel," said The Corinthian. Daniel frowned slightly, puzzled, but lifted his tiny hand and waved it at me before The Corinthian grabbed it in his.

The Corinthian summoned a dimensional door, and led little Daniel toward it. The child hesitated and looked back at me, uncertain, but then walked with The Corinthian into the light. The Corinthian closed the door behind him; and then they, and the door, were gone.

I don't know how long I was staring at nothing and choking on blood, unable to move - the discomfort probably made it seem like forever. But at some point I heard the sound of slurred singing, getting louder as the singer approached. And then I saw Constantine, swaggering drunkenly up the hill, and taking a pause every few lead-footed wobbly steps to make out with a bottle of ouzo.

I wanted to call out to him, but my throat was too full of blood, and I was trying hard not to swallow my tooth, which I was keeping balanced between my tongue and the roof of my mouth. I was getting tired of this, and wondered if I should risk trying to maneuver it to the forefront of my mouth to spit it out.

Eventually, he spotted me and came to a full stop. "Wot the… Rose?" Then he broke out into a stumbling run toward me, tripping once on the uneven ground before he reached my side.

He saw my bloody, busted-up face, and my fucked-up arm that had gotten zapped by the Ruby, and the coarse ropes that abraded my skin. "Oh no…" he groaned. He broke the bottle of ouzo on the ground, and used a dagger-sized shard to slice through the ropes. He helped me sit up, and I was finally able to spit out the tooth.

"Strewth, love! Wot 'appened while I was out? Who did this?"

"The Corinthian," I said, and the words came out like gravel. I rested my head, exhausted, on his shoulder.

"Christ," he explained. "Beatin' up a girl wot's pregnant…"

"Not anymore," I whispered.

"Eh?"

"He stole my son."

John pulled me back a little bit, looking me over and blinking with confusion when he saw the stomach-hole in my dress. "Th'fuck did he do?!"

I started to cry again. "I don't know," I said. "He used the Ruby…" I couldn't explain any more than that - a lump was forming in my throat, and the walls were constricting, closing in around it and preventing me from talking.

He locked his arm around my head and squeezed it like a vice, crushing me against him, and making it just a little bit harder to breathe than it already was.

"I'm so sorry," he rasped into my hair, rocking and cradling me. "Forgive me for bein' such a stupid blighter… I never should've left you alone."

"It's my fault," I squeaked. "I told you to go."

"Yeh, but I didn't have teh LISTEN - I usually don't." He exhaled, and I felt his hot boozy breath ripple through my hair and across my scalp. "S'okay, luv… s'okay… I'll fix everything up, right? I'll get it all sorted out…"

"How?" I asked.

He stopped moving. Silence. I pulled back then, so I could look him in the face. "How are you planning to make it okay, John?"

He stared back at me blankly. "How the hell should I know? I'll think of something, though - I always do."

I sighed. "...Yeah. That's what I thought." I extracted myself from his arms, and painfully got to my feet.

I wasn't trying to be mean, or reject his sympathy - but at that moment I wasn't in the mood to humor his manly pride, and I just couldn't tolerate any more patronizing or false bravado; he was just as lost and scared and clueless as I was, and like it or not he was going to have to face up to that terrible fact.

I made my way to Delirium, and tried to rouse her. After some vigorous shaking didn't do any good, Barnabas came to, and immediately bounded over to lick her face. That worked: her eyes blinked open, and for a second they were both blue. "Rose? What's… going on?" she asked. "Are you all right?" There was no modulation in her voice - she seemed completely sensible. But then she saw my wounds and twitched - one of her eyes turned green, and the school of silver flecks returned to swim within the other. "oH mY goD RoSe yoU're aLL bEaT uP wHaT iS goiNg oN wHo waS tHe crEEpy maN wHo wASn't a maN reaLLy wHo maDe mE gO To sLeeP liKe tHaT…?"

"The Corinthian," I answered, knowing full well that would mean nothing to her; but I didn't have the time or the inclination to explain. "Delirium, I'm going to The Dreaming. Stay here."

"BuT… iSn't tHE CORi-soMeTHiNg gOIng tO tHE DrEAmINg tOO...?

"Exactly. I think your brother's in terrible danger - I need to get back into The Dreaming to stop The Corinthian, or at least warn Dream that he's coming. And if that was my son he took, I've got to get him back."

"YoUr soN…?"

"Lady, I don't know much about you or what's going on, but I don't think you should be going anywhere," said Barnabas.

"No offense, but it doesn't matter what you think," I told him. "I wasn't asking for anyone's approval or permission - I'm going."

I closed my eyes and concentrated - surely, I was strong enough now in the ways of the dream-Force that I could do it on my own. I knew the pathways…

Nothing happened. It was like the connection to the subconscious had been severed; and the back of my mind, which had led to an endlessly deep dark pool full of dream-stars and galaxies just hours before, was suddenly blank and shallow. I tried harder - and searing pain shot up my arm.

I winced and sucked in air - I looked at my throbbing arm, and at the veins of dark blue lightning-shaped marks running along the flesh.

"YoUr enERgY iS gOne...tHE COrIwHAtEvER mUSt've tAkEn iT aLL," Delirium observed.

"See? What did I tell you?" huffed Barnabas, vindicated.

"I can't stay here!" I cried. "Don't you understand?! Dream is too weak right now - The Corinthian is going to KILL him, and then he's going to wreck The Dreaming - and I don't even want to THINK about what that's going to do to all the Dreamers."

Barnabas was unfazed. "I don't see what you can do about it - I think you're pretty well muzzled and kenneled for the moment."

I was disheartened, but I couldn't figure out how to argue with him.

I should have been relieved that the nightmare was over - that I was no longer the dream Vortex.

But instead, I just felt like I'd lost everything: the power, Morpheus… even little Daniel. It's true, I wasn't sure if I wanted to be a mother - but it would have been nice if the choice of whether or not to be one had been left up to me.

This had gone way beyond me. Maybe it was time to just get on with my super-extended life, and let the pieces fall where they may.

Wait… what life was that?

I had no home. No profession or hobby to speak of. No love interest. No family members that I cared to see, except maybe my baby brother Jed, and he was better off without me - and my actual baby was gone, stolen away from me. I never even had the chance to make 'motherhood' into an identity for myself… to make taking care of another human being and raising them into something to live for.

Who did I have left? Wanda and the spider-women? I supposed it would be good to see Wanda again...

But I hoped not to run into Paul, who would now probably never get his eyes back.

And from what I knew about The Corinthian - and the ominous doom that Destruction alluded to, which may or may not have been connected - the world around me was only going to get worse.

God, everything sucked so much.

We decided that the next step was to get back 'home' to London.

John 'blagged' (his word, not mine) our way onto a chartered flight off the island.

I'm not religiously minded, but I was praying my ass off that we didn't crash, with John left as the sole miracle survivor (and if that did happen, I was planning to stick around as a ghost and haunt him mercilessly).

He used the same little Jedi mind-trick to pacify Delirium - her eyes both turned blue, and she silently cried during the whole flight.

Then he used it to help me shoplift an outfit from an airport store that wouldn't draw so much attention; to cause every flight attendant to turn a blind's eye to the presence of Barnabas; and finally, to get us on a flight back to London.

All the while I avoided people's gaze, hoping they didn't see my beat-up face and assume I was some sort of battered girlfriend of John's.

Delirium was very unhappy at being mind-tranqed twice, telling us that it 'hurted her very muchly'.

Exhausted, we went to John's flat, hoping to crash.

Except that, when we got past the front door, the interior was a bloody mess.

Literally.

I looked away, nauseous - but I was not as freaked out as I would have been before. I think I'd seen too much shit leading up to that and it had desensitized me, robbed me of all human feeling. "Friends of yours, John?" I asked, shakily.

"Must be," he answered. "They're dead."

"No jokes, John."

"They're me next-door neighbor and landlady." He closed the door. "We've got teh get out of here. Got to find us a phone."

"Yeah. The cops need to know about this."

John stared at me with wide eyes. "Are you bollocking mad? This looks like an occult-murder - an' guess 'who's the best-known occultist in these parts? No - we're calling up me old mate Chas. He owes me a favor."

The second John's old mate Chas got out of his minicab, and John came toward him with open arms to greet him, old mate Chas made it very clear that, in his opinion, the favor he owed John was a knuckle-sandwich to the face.

Which he repaid John, in full.

John, not expecting it, hit the pavement, as Chas, a meaty small-eyed man with big ears, hurled abusive language at John for dodging his phone calls and leaving him high and dry without a word for so long, and for treating a good mate like him so poorly. "I geddit - Chas is simple, inhe?" he said, all pugged up, "Chas's too STUPID ta understand wot's wot in his mates' complex magical life, 'ave I got that right? Can't explain nuffin' teh old Chas, now can we? Oh no, 'es only a DRIVER, wot does HE know 'bout anyfing, yeh? Only good fer bummin' off free lifts ferever, that one!

John got up, holding his bleeding nose. "Good to see yeh too, mate."

Chas' fleshy lip was pulled all the way up to his round and bulbous nose, and practically formed a St. Louis Arch of unhappiness on the jowly lower-half of his face. His squinty eyes started to leak tears. "You fuckin' 'eartless GIT," he sobbed. And then Chas threw his bear-like arms around John, and they hugged. "I wos so fucking worried 'bout you, mate! Don't you EVER go vanishin' like that on me again!" Chas bawled into John's shoulder.

John pulled back a little. "Ey, you think you can drop us by the lock-up?"

"Hrmm?" Chas said, sniffling. "Oh yeah, fer sure mate."

"And how's about that ole' van? Is it still 'round somewhere, or did yeh sell it fer scrap?"

"I've still got it yeh - wotcha be needin' it for, then?"

"Got a bit of mess goin' on at me flat - me, the ladybird, the kid and the mutt will be needin' soh'in to crash in fer the time bein'."

"Ladybird?" He turned and saw me. He wiped his eyes and nose simultaneously on his jacket sleeve. "Oh, 'ello there. Beg yer pardon fer the language, miss - and for talkin' rough 'round the little 'un. She yours?"

"aM i heR wHat?"

"Delirium? Oh, hah, no. Thank goodness."

"WhY iS thaT gOod, RoSe? i doN't geT wHat you'Re taLking aBout oR wHaT's goOd aBouT iT..."

Chas smiled and extended his hand. "I'm Chas. Chas Chandler. I'm 'is driver - an' 'is chum, when 'e remembers it."

I shook it. "Chas Chandler? Like the bassist for The Animals?"

Chas looked back at John. "Oh this ladybird's a right keeper, she is."

"All right now, that's enough," said John, batting at our connected hands. "Best get a move on, yeh? I'm in enough trouble with your missus as it is. To the storage lock up, shall we?"

"No, other way 'round," he answered. "It'll be a much more efficient trip if we get the van first thing."

"Oh. Right then."

Chas dug in his jacket pocket, and handed John a surgeon's mask.

"Wot's this?"

"If any a youz start feelin' poorly, or see somebody else wot is, wear that," said Chas. "De' ozzy's been fillin' up with sick people - Nash'nal 'ealth Service is completely overrun, surgeries an' appointments canceled all over, can't see a doc fer nuthin'."

"Not surprisin', really - 'hole system's been goin' down the bog for years. So wot's 'appened then, eh? They bring back the Bubonic Plague?"

"Dunno, mate - theyz callin' it the 'Shanghai Flu.'"

John retrieved a small box from his storage locker, and brought it to where I sat, on the edge of the open back-end of the beat-up old van that was still emblazoned with a fading Mucous Membrane band logo.

"I want you teh have this," he said to me.

"What is it?"

"Nuthin'," he said, with so much defensive cageyness that it was an obvious lie. "Don't open it - jus' keep it close by yeh somewheres. Safe."

"John," I said, tiredly. "Just tell me what's in the fucking box."

After a moment's thought, he decided on an explanation. "...It's a failsafe," he said. "If I ever lose me friggin' marbles an' start actin' all crazy an' scary-like, open that box up, and it might do ta bring me 'round."

"Oh," I said, as he placed it in my hands. "So it's like… magical smelling salts? In case of magical hysteria?"

"Uh… if it helps fer you teh think of it that way, then yeh sure, alright. Smelling salts."

"Will whatever is inside ESCAPE if I open the box up? Or will it just lose its freshness?"

"Look, just... don't open it, alright luv? Ta."

I fixed him with a hard stare. "John, is this box dangerous?"

"Only teh me."

I handed it back. "I don't want it."

"It's noh'in ta be worried about luv, honest."

"Then why are you making such a big deal about it?"

John frowned. "It… it would make my life more difficult for me, if it got out."

"What do you mean 'got out'? Is this some sort of blackmail dirt? Or is it alive? Is it a genie?"

"NO!"

"WHAT IS IT?!"

"Fer Chrissakes, woman! Stop it with the soddin' questions an' just take it, will yeh? Yeh're drivin' me barmy!"

"If you don't tell me what it is, I'll open it."

"No please, Rose, don't - it'd be the right end of me if yeh did that."

"John, I don't want to be keeping track of some sort of personal doom box."

"It's not a doom box." He paused, hesitant. "I rather tend to think of it as me 'Disney-Box', like.'"

Delirium popped her head up beside me, staring at it. "OoH i liKe DisNey…"

"Keep yer mitts off of it!" he growled at her.

"You're embarrassed about your Disney collection?" I asked, preparing to slaughter him with mockery if he confirmed it.

"It's me childhood innocence, alright?" he relented. "I locked it all up in a box, all the stuff that made me soft as a young kid. I let some of it out, by the by, but some things got left in, see? I don't remember all that might still be in there, but I do know all the starry-eyed innocence I once 'ad is definitely one. An' now you know. You can see how that gettin' loose could be problematic for someone like me, ta say the least."

"No, I don't see - in fact I think we should open it, right now."

"Rose, I'm warnin' yeh now-"

"Why wouldn't you want to have your childhood innocence back?"

"Oh sure, why not? Wot possible motive might I 'ave, to not want teh be wanderin' around hellscapes, fightin' demon nasties while that albatross dangled from me neck?" John sighed, looking very sad and weay all of a sudden. "If I wanted it well and truly gone, luv, I would've bound it to a cat and killed it. Or dropped it in the middle of the ocean with weights attached - I would've done something to lose it, and made sure it stayed proper lost. But I didn't. I made sure it'd be the one thing of mine to survive the longest - to still exist, even if the rest of it gets stripped away from me by this ole' rotten world."

I contemplated the box for a moment, letting the sad gravity of what it represented sink in.

Then I lifted up the box and shook it at him. "Too much responsibility. Take it back."

"No. It's yours. Keep it."

John climbed past me into the van. He took off his trenchcoat and folded it, curled up into a fetal position with his head on the makeshift trenchcoat-pillow, and went to sleep.

I closed the van back-end doors. I set the box carefully aside, and decided that I would do the same as John, finding a spot on Barnabas' backside that Delirium was already using as a pillow. Barnabas blew air out of his snout indignantly, but didn't say anything.

I purposely slept this time - I figured it was the only chance I had, however slim the odds, of reconnecting with my little Dream-child.

Years of purposeful insomnia, however worked against me - and I'm sure the uncomfortable sleeping arrangement (with Delirium not really asleep, just lying down and quietly reacting to things that weren't there), and the jet-lag, and my soreness from the beating at the hands of The Corinthian, and the horrific mental replay of him disemboweling me and making my fetus grow outside the womb into a full-grown kid probably didn't help either.

But nevertheless, at some point I managed to fall asleep.

And it worked.

I saw the little cherub-looking boy. He stood there, in the void, still and silent.

"Hi," I said lamely, with an equally lame and awkward small wave. "I'm, um... your mom." The words sounded really strange, like I wasn't sure I believed them. He stared at me - no movement, no hint of a response. "I don't know if you can understand me, but I want to find you. I want to figure out a way-"

Daniel walked past me, and for a moment I took this as a snub - but then I saw that there was something behind me: a computer terminal.

Little Daniel lifted a chubby baby hand, slowly, and pointed a tiny finger at it?"

"A… computer? You want me to find a computer?"

The boy nodded.

I woke up.

It was morning. The grey light coming in through the windows was kind of a shock - wasn't it just nighttime? Damn was I out of practice with this whole actually-sleeping thing.

John got up, stretched, and yawned, his back to me.

"Hey John," I said. "I think I know how to contact Daniel."

"Hrrm? Wot...?" he croaked groggily, rubbing his eyes and scratching his chin.

"My son. I think I've got a lead on him. I think it's got something to do with computers..."

I noticed John wasn't listening: he was looking at his hand. I peered closer myself, and saw that there was indeed some kind of bumpy pattern on it.

"What's going on?" I asked.

John scrambled to the van mirror, and stared into it. Panic-stricken, he began to unbutton his dress shirt, stripping down to his undershirt - across the exposed flesh, I could see angry, swollen red bumps the size of quarters.

"Holy shit," I breathed.

Delirium and Barnabas were up and alert. "YoU'vE gOt bUbBles aLL oVer yOU," she pointed out, helpfully. And then she clapped her hands together excitedly. "OoH LiKe thOSe bUBbLy-sHeeTs yoU caN poKe aT wiTh yoUr fiNgeRs aNd maKe gO POp PoP pOp! CaN i pOp yOUr buBBLes toO, JOhn?"

"Not unless I pop yours first," he growled.

She extended her arms and even her head towards him. "Oo-kay, ready when you are!"

I gently pressed Delirium's arms down. "Don't touch him," I told him. "It might be contagious."

"Wonder if I've got goddamn Shanghai Flu," he said, putting on the facemask given to him by Chas.

With his luck, I doubted it.

"Doesn't look like flu to me," commented Barnabas. "How do you feel?"

"Christ, I feel terrible… like the blood's boiling in me veins…" Then a realization struck him, like a lightning bolt going straight into the top of his head and down through his spine.

"What is it?"

John looked at me, his blue eyes the only thing visible over his mask. "...Wot were yeh sayin' 'bout computers, luv?"

I interrupted my mother. "We have finally come to the part of the story where I may draw upon memories of my own," I told them. My mother Rose tensed, bracing herself, as I began...