Dream #3:

The third dream was a memory: the smells of clean sheets, heated iron, grief, and damp earth—before her eyes had opened, these smells were the first thing she was aware of. She felt the metallic surface of the shackles at her wrists and ankles, the cotton sheets over the thin mattress she lay on, a cool compress on her forehead, a pair of hands smoothing her hair. Slowly, she opened her eyes, and the face of the person sitting next to her came into focus. It took her a moment to connect the face to a memory, and the memory to a name. "Bertolt? What happened? Where am I?"

His expression was dark. "You don't remember what happened, Annie?"

Annie…who's Annie? Oh, right, it's me…Annie Leonhart is my name…I have to remember that…

"I don't remember anything." It was the truth. "Where are we? Why are we here?"

"Look around you, Annie. Do you remember what this place is?"

She shot a quick glance around the room. Her wrists and ankles were cuffed in heavy iron shackles, which, in turn, were bolted by chains to the ground. She was lying on a thin mattress braced on a wooden bed frame. Bertolt was sitting on the edge of the bed. Past Bertolt, she could see the stony walls, close on all sides, confining her to the cell. The door was made of iron bars. A narrow shaft of light perspired through the bars from the torchlit corridor outside.

"The Cave," she said at last, "We're in the Cave."

The Cave was the secret prison for experiments gone wrong. She'd been down here once before—it was where her father had given her the injection. She hated it there—the walls reeked of death, as though all of the souls that had perished here had seeped into the very foundation of the prison, leaving behind a scent that burned her eyes.

Bertolt nodded, brushing her hair out of her face. "I told them you wouldn't be dangerous anymore after you woke up…but it wasn't up to me that you got locked in here." He sighed. "Then again, this time…nobody could know."

Annie didn't even need to ask what had happened. She had tried, again, to control her Titan form, and failed. "How bad was it, this time?"

Bertolt examined a crack on the wall, silently, for a moment. Then, still not meeting her eyes, he said: "There's a reason that this time, they had to lock you up down here, and couldn't just let you stay in the woods…"

"Why? What happened? Did someone get hurt this time?"

Bertolt was still avoiding eye contact. "Well, they tried to stop you from going back towards the village, but…it was no use, they couldn't control you…by the time Marcel and Reiner got there to restrain you, it was too late."

A growing sense of dread gnawed at her stomach. "How many people…"

"A total of five dead. A couple more injured."

"Well, it could've been worse, right?" Annie sighed, hating herself for how calm she sounded. "I mean, Reiner and Marcel must have been really fast, to stop me there—"

"Annie, do you even want to know who got killed?"

"You know—"

"These are the people who were eaten before Reiner took you down…I have to tell you because you'd hear it somewhere else if I didn't…" Bertolt paused, taking a deep breath. "I know you didn't want to. It wasn't your fault. But people will blame you. I don't. But people will." He fiddled with the edge of the sheet. "Darrel Bernstook. Matthias Schrieber. Lisbeth Davier." His voice grew shaky. "Brenda Leonhart. William Leonhart. Brenda—your mother—tried to get between you and your brother, she was screaming, trying to get you to wake up and recognize her…it was no good. She died first, then William." Bertolt reached out shakily to pat Annie on the shoulder. "I'm sorry, Annie."

The last two names took a moment to sink in. "What?" Her voice was flat, emotionless. "Mom's dead? And William?"

"Annie—"

Annie screamed, yanking against the chains that bound her to the spot. When they didn't give, she pulled herself up just enough to smash her head against the wall, and again and again, screaming at the top of her lungs. The rest was a blur—running feet—a needle—a voice, her father's, cold and distant: "Another failure…she must control her emotions…if she gets too emotional, we're better off trying a different test subject…"

Another voice: "What about her?"

"If she fails again…we terminate."

Those were the last words she heard before the sedatives she'd been injected with took effect, and she was swept into darkness.

But it was all another dream, another memory. So there was no blissful numb at the end; only another dream, this one almost equally painful to the one that preceded it.