Author's Note: Due to the outpouring of support, I have decided to post a new chapter in gratitude. Seriously, thank you. Also, sorry it's short.
Disclaimer: I don't own it. But I am accepting donations in order to buy it.
Chapter Three
Dreaming permits each and every once of us to be quietly
and safely insane every night of out lives.
--William Dement
Olivia isn't quite sure how she got from Kansas back to the lab. She's sure there was a plane involved and possible a car, but now that she's at the lab she can't remember specifics. She just remembers Peter's gentle hands pulling off her shoes and stroking her hair.
Now there are shades of Bach floating thought her dreams as she sits in the passenger seat of a car. After awhile, it occurs to her to turn and see who's driving; she's unsurprised to find John sitting there.
"John," she whispers. "Why can't you just let me be?"
He reaches over and tucks an errant strand of hair behind her ear. "Do you really want me to?"
"Yes," she says, though it's without conviction. Would she be happy if he left? She has few pictures given the covert nature of their relationship, so the moments when he appears to her are precious. But the mysterious emails, the thoughts that aren't hers, the actions that aren't hers—those are unwelcome and very nearly perverse. "I did it to save your life, John. Torturing me by staying in my head is a poor way to repay that."
"This isn't torture, Livvie," he says, and his voice sounds terribly dark.
Suddenly she's on a table strapped down, and she writhes and yells and John's standing over her with a needle filled with bright yellow liquid and she screams louder. She looks left and inexplicably, Sian is there, screaming something without sound. There are toads hopping all around her and John is lowering a parasite to take over her heart and she can suddenly hear Sian's voice.
"Olivia!" Sian screams. "Wake up!"
She wakes up.