Chapter Four: Dreamscape confrontations. (The words we can't say out loud.)
White walls. Everywhere Max looked there were white walls. Cold, sterile and impassive. She looked down at herself and found that she was wearing a green hospital gown just like the ones that they'd worn before the escape. She was back at Manticore, back in the white hell, locked in one of those horrible white rooms.
There was light everywhere, coming from the walls, the floor, the roof. It was so bright and so harsh that it hurt her eyes. Even when she closed them, the light seemed to seep through. The walls seemed to have no door. Even though it was just an optical trick, it was very unnerving. Max looked around the room franticly, looking for a way out, an escape from the light, yet she found nothing.
She let out a desperate, almost animalistic scream. A scream from the bowels of her stomach. And once she started screaming. she couldn't seem to stop. The scream went on and on until she finally ran out of breath. However, as soon as her lungs had sucked in more air it started again. Max struck out blindly at the wall before her as she sank to the ground in a fetal position...
...And the walls began to crumble. The room shook and contorted around her... And slowly everything started to come down. Max curled herself in as tight a ball as she could as the room began to fall around her. Her screaming was cut off by the shock of the sudden change. And as she sat there, curled up defensively, darkness began to seep through the cold light. Not exactly blackness, but a gentle dimness that was greatly welcomed after the harsh light. And then a gentle voice quietly spoke her name.
"Max?"
Not completely willing to believe her ears Max lifted her head slightly but remained where she was. She looked for the source of the voice but wherever she was it was so dimly lit that it was hard to see. Nothing seemed to have shape or form around her.
"Max?" The voice asked again, slightly louder this time.
Finally Max's eyes adjusted and she took in a figure in a wheelchair no more than six feet away from her. "Logan?" She asked unsteadily.
He moved towards her and the area around them seemed to get a little brighter. He looked very little like the Logan that Max had once known, instead he was much more akin to the Logan lying in the hospital bed. That was when Max realized that she was dreaming.
"Why?" He asked quietly. He was close enough to touch her now but he didn't. He just sat there with sad eyes begging for answers.
Max pulled her gaze away from his, retreating further into herself. She didn't need to ask what he was really asking. She knew what the questions were. Why did you leave me? Why didn't you even say goodbye? Why did you bother coming back? "Because I had to." She answered as she stared blankly at her knees.
"You had to," Logan whispered in a tone of quiet disbelief. He shook his head. "You had to? What kind of answer is that?"
"An honest one. I had to draw Lydecker away from Seattle, away from you. He was so close Logan... He's the one that killed Matt Sung." Max pulled her knees even closer to her body.
"So you just disappear with no word, no explanation, nothing?" Logan challenged angrily, his voice still painfully quiet.
Max whipped her head up to face him. "I was trying to protect you! God! You are so self involved that you don't even get that do you? Do you think I wanted to leave? Do you think that it was easy for me? Do you think I spent five months making myself a target because I was bored?!"
"I don't know what to think Max. One day everything's fine and the next I've got Original Cindy yelling down the phone line at me, demanding to know where the hell you are, and I don't have an answer."
Max looked at him carefully, studying him. She thought of what Bling had said. "Don't you think that if I believed for one instant that you would have come with me I would have asked?" She said quietly. "Fuck Logan, I did ask once." Not even waiting for Logan to respond, she buried her head in her knees and tried to fight back tears. "You gave up on me long before I ever gave up on you Logan."
Hesitantly Logan reached out to touch her. "Max..."
Max instinctively flinched away from his touch. "I... I have to get out of here... I have to wake up. Lydecker may or may not have acted with Manticore but you can sure bet they'll be keeping an eye out for me."
Logan didn't pull his hand away. "Max," He tried again, hoping that she would at least look at him.
Max gave a short, bitter laugh. "If I don't wake up soon, you're gonna bleed me dry."
Before Logan could reply Max was willing herself awake. All he could do was watch sadly as she faded out of the dreamscape. Leaving him alone again.
Max groggily lifted her head off of Logan's chest and blinked at the harsh light of the hospital room. She blinked a couple of times but her eyes just didn't want to focus. Squinting, Max carefully removed the needle from her arm. It took her several attempts to get it back into Logan's IV bag but she finally managed to do it. Vaguely she wondered what the doctors and nurses would make of the fact that the bag was still nearly full, but she just couldn't rouse the energy to worry about it.
She glanced towards the door, wondering if she could make it out that way unseen, but then she remembered that Bling was out there. She sluggishly made her way out of the hospital window to join the other shadows of the night.
TBC...