▽ ᴍᴏʀᴘʜᴇᴜs ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇx [SIDE STORY + IMPACT]

[Velveteen]

Velveteen’s victory was short lived as the dreamscape warped and shifted. The stairs and stars lasting barely a second before a corridor stretched out before them as far as the minds eye could see. Speech bubbles formed and burst faster than she could read them yet every word said was heard and known in her subconscious. She just knew what was happening without having to ask. She looked down the corridor and decided if Matrix and Labyrinth collided it would look like this. It was kinda cool though. Again the scene shifted but it was much more subtle this time. Doors turned into walls. Personally she was hoping that whatever Nix was doing it would visibly shorten the length of the seemingly endless corridor but there no such luck.

She watched words fall from their mouths and bounce along the floor before bursting. She couldn’t help but wonder if this was dream thing from her own twisted mind or something to do with the mindspeak ability. She looked at the others to see if they too were seeing these things but nothing on their faces gave her a clue one way or the other. Yes...mindspeak! That was right. She was meant to be planting subliminal messages in the reporters mind to hopefully inject something obvious into her dream, but what exactly should she go for? While she was trying to decide this words appeared over Nix’s head. Pancakes! This lead her to thinking of sausage and then Bratwurst. Bratwurst! That was the word that she had decided on to press into the sleeping mind of their target. There was absolutely no reasonable logic except that here in this place it seemed perfectly sane.

One watch the door, the others investigate. She got that much. They would have this done in no time flat. Thousands of doors, possibly more, and three of them searching. This was gonna be a cakewalk...not. Velveteen pouted at Nix who looked so serious. She had no clue how hard it might be to hold such a thing together, especially with having so many guests. She knew how her own dreams jumped about from one unrelated thing to another so to keep a consistent realm must require a lot of attention. This thought filled her with a sense of urgency as cracks began to run along the finely woven walls. Velveteen didn’t know if this a manifestation of her own mind or evidence that Nix was struggling but either way they needed to get started.

“Remington, Aksel, you guys do the looking, I will keep an eye on the doors. Nix….you keep doing whatever you are doing.” She nodded or at least thought she did and then turned to look at the guys again. “Look for sausages.” It was one of those moments in a dream that one would wonder what the **** that was about but in the moment was completely acceptable. “Got it?”
She asked though knew it was completely unnecessary. It was dream...no one questioned anything that went on dreams…usually.

[Remington Rothfelder]

The task at hand seemed simple enough. Really, it was just a numbers game. They had to constantly roll the dice until they got snake eyes, so to speak. With Velveteen guarding the doors, that left both he and Aksel open to check through them in search of…sausages. He briefly glanced to his sire after she mentioned that, and lifted his brow as if to say ‘Really?’, but otherwise left it at that. At least she had picked something that should have been fairly easy to pick out off a scene. He decided to start on one side of the hallway to let Aksel get the other. They would cover more ‘ground’ that way. In much his usual fashion, he immediately threw himself into the work with very little preamble, his hand settling on a knob so that he could jerk the thing open.

He was greeted by a painting. That was all it was, just a white wall with a painting on it. The frame of it was either gilded or solid gold, and the brush strokes looked like they were moving. Rippling into each other. The main focus of the piece was a woman standing on a bridge. She had hair that was caressed by the wind, flapping to one side. Not what they were looking for, or so he assumed. He moved right onto the next after shutting the door to the first.

The next scene that was revealed was, by far, more in depth. Which was to say that it looked like an actual event taking place just in front of him. The entrance was like a barrier though. Like the whole thing was an aquarium, taking place behind the glass walls of a tank. He could not have entered had he wanted to. What he saw would have made lesser men blush. There was a woman screaming her way to crescendo with a man beneath her. There was the gradual slap slap slap of skin on sweaty skin. They were in an indistinct bedroom that could have been a void, nothing more than background noise. The bedding was red and black, velvet and silk probably. Remington simply scanned the scene for sausages, and other than the obvious one – there was nothing to be found.

Another door shut.

Remington. Softly whispered into his ear. Honey sweet words and the feel of warm breath right there against the nape of his neck.

His lips twisted into an unattractive snarl.

Remi, baby.

He growled. The sound was audible and came from somewhere in his chest, like there was a beast there caged behind his ribs. He took another step towards the next door.

Remi, please. Hushed, frantic.

He slammed his fist into the wall between frames and it cracked open or him. When his fingers drew back, there was a second where it was visible, then the image wavered and returned to normal. Right. Not getting things done that way. He decided to tune out the voice and ripped open the next set of doors in quick succession. He had wasted enough time, and they needed to find the woman before she woke up. It was true that there was always the next night, but he didn’t believe in leaving things to chance. Experience told him that if there was a god, he was not a benevolent figure. Fate or no, he wasn’t about to set his team up for failure.

Next came a nightmare with a woman drowning. She was sinking into water. Deeper. Deeper. Her mouth opened to scream and bubbles came out.

The door was shut and he moved on.

After that, he looked at a couple of dozen more before he finally opened one and light shone through. He recoiled from it on instinct as the sunlight washed over him. But it did not burn him. It was…blinding though. It felt that way. He lifted a hand to shade his eyes and could see only a vague figure standing off in the distance.

And then a large bratwurst dancing across the scene. It even had grill marks.

“I think I found it.” He called out a second later, after digesting the sight of the enormous food product bouncing around in front of him.

He turned to look for Phoenix. “Nix, you’re going to have to go in and see if you can get her to reveal where she is. Or come to us maybe.” He reasoned a second later, as he ambled back towards the group. And then a thought occurred to him. They were in a dream weren’t they? That was why the sunlight hadn’t hurt him. “Also I would kill for a steak.”

[Phoenix]

"Sausages." Phoenix echoed with a firm nod. The redhead was hard pressed to find a problem with this. In the dream-like state, it sounded perfectly reasonable, but how would this sound when they told the rest of their friends and faction members?

'I held this weird corridor together that looked like old school mansion meets the Matrix while Vel thought sausages at the reporter. Then Remi and Aksel went off to look for people with sausages. No, this is not a euphemism.'

She'd given the precautionary advice for the team not to get stuck inside someone else's dream, but it seemed unnecessary. Without her acting as a gateway, the dreams were closed to her companions - interesting. Door after door was opened, revealing scenes surreal and disturbing to the comforts of a safe, childhood home. It seemed to take forever for them to search; maybe it was the strain of holding them all together and creating the portals that drained her, rather than time wasting away. While she watched, one or two of the doors crumbled, caving in on themselves as the portal collapsed and Phoenix hoped neither of them belonged to the reporter. Hopefully, she would stay asleep just a little longer. Time was of the essence, but she had no way to tell its passing. Or at least she didn't until a giant, wrought iron decorative wall clock appeared next to the first door.

Tick, tick, tick. The second hand was far louder than it had any right to be, each tick reverberating off the walls of that narrow, unending hall. The clock originally displayed at 6:43, but while the second hand tick, tick, ticked along, the minute and hour hands bounced around without a care in the world. This was a dream, after all; Phoenix hadn't really expected a clock to tell her the exact time, had she?

Door after door was opened and rejected. Once a portal had been searched, Nix took it upon herself to cross it off with a large red X. When Remi lashed out at the wall, she didn't ask what he'd seen. It wasn't her business and he seemed to recover quickly enough and move on. In another world, the reaction may have seemed strange, but anger didn't even register on her weird radar - not here. Further and further down they went, crossing off door after door.

Remington's voice was the sweetest thing she'd heard in... Her eyes flicked to the clock: 5:21 - apparently they'd gone back in time. Rushing to the door and the sunlight that spilled out of it, Nix couldn't help but grin. The initial brilliance of the sunlight faded to the point where they could pick out what was going on beyond the dancing sausage.

Palm trees swayed in a light breeze and the ocean lapped at the sand. Somewhere overhead, a seagull whirled, calling out to unseen friends. A few lounge chairs were set up under an umbrella next to a sizzling barbecue. One of them was occupied. The scene was peaceful and serene, except for the large, dancing bratwurst shimmying its away across the beach. As soon as she breached the portal, the one massive bratwurst burst into a hundred smaller sausages that reformed into the likeliness of a man. Bratman beckoned them inside with a quirk of his finger and a thrust of his hips, confirming that he was indeed Bratman. Nix shuddered. There was something seriously disturbing about all that.

Ignoring the humanoid sausage, Phoenix crossed the beach, letting the sun baked sand warm her suddenly shoeless feet. With the sausages out of sight, the dream felt so real, the sun so warm against her pallid skin. That light breeze tugged at her hair, sending it out behind her like a flaming banner, and one of the seagulls gave a cry. She could even smell the steak sizzling on the grill as she joined the person under the umbrella and on the very edge of a lounge chair.

The woman sprawled beside her could be none other than their target; she recognized the woman's features. The distinctive golden spider dangling around her neck helped as well.

"Jacqueline?" Nix asked.

The voice seemed to startle Jackie. How often was your real, full name used in a dream? She could count on one hand the number of times someone had screamed 'Alicia' at her while she slept. Instead of waiting for a response, Phoenix continued.

"This is a dream," she waved a hand towards the beach. Now, the sun was setting. "But I'm very real. You stumbled onto something huge when you got those documents from the mausoleum. Something bigger than just the outbreak and the zombies. Something the government doesn't want the public to know about. We have information that could bolster your story and prove what you're saying without any need for the government science report. We can show you."

Jackie's original surprise had given way to wariness, but as Phoenix continued, she could tell her interest was growing. Greed was an easy thing to see in someone's eyes; even more so in a dream.

"Show me."

"I suspect you're being sheltered by someone?"

Jackie nodded. Out across the ocean, the sun was flirting with the horizon. Phoenix didn't have much time. She wracked her brains for a meeting place - something seemingly safe, but also sheltered. Public, but with the chance for anonymity - Jackie surely knew she was being tracked. Where?

"Meet us tonight. 7:30 PM at Nightmode. Look for me."

The dream shattered, flinging the team apart and hopefully jolting Jacqueline Northrop awake. As she was swallowed by the darkness of her own dreams, Nix prayed the reporter would remember.

- - - - - - - - - -

When Phoenix snapped awake hours later, she glanced to the clock. 6:13 PM. They had time. Rolling out of bed, she dressed in whatever lay on the floor while sending a telepathic message to her team.

"Hope you guys are alright. In case you missed it, I told her to meet us alone at Nightmode tonight at 7:30 PM. She'll recognize me. You guys good for backup in case she shows with company?"

Even if they weren't, she'd still show up and wait. It was worth a chance.

[Velveteen]

She could see and smell….everything, despite the fact that everything felt like clouds. It was all there. All looked solid but passed through her fingers like air when she would reach for it, only reform and take on that same solid appearance it had before she tried to touch it. She could have stood there trying to catch a dream all day or night but she had a task to do as did the others there with her. The scene shifted yet somehow remained the same, or perhaps it was her that moved, she couldn’t be sure. There was a burst of action as the others began moving down the corridor and she watched after them before moving herself. “Have to hurry. It’s getting late. Or is that early?” She appeared to mumble to herself as her feet carried her forward in a crab like manner.

Velveteen felt odd. Like her limbs weren’t cooperating at all and for all the movement she seemed to be going nowhere fast. First she held up one hand, then the other. Then came another and...another? She looked down to her feet and instead of the usual two there was four. Well no wonder she wasn’t moving. Spiders don’t walk on two legs. Having solved the puzzle she scuttled up the wall and moved as fast as her freaky eight limbs would carry her. Back and forth across the ceiling she would run, from one door to the other to catch a quick glimpse inside before the door was slammed shut. Every now and then the vampire would chuckle. She often thought the things that went on in her own dreams were trippy, but after this, at least she would know she wasn’t alone.

The things one would see when they peeked into the unconscious minds of others was a mental health professor’s pot of gold, though many would never remember them. That was probably for the best. A preview of each dream/memory/fantasy was granted before moving onto the next. “Sausages. Sausages. Sausages.” The word muttered over and over again unnecessarily as she held onto it like an anchor lest she lost herself in this house of cards that could crumble around them at any moment. The whole place shook as Remington punched a wall and Velveteen clung to the ceiling. Her eyes widened, unnaturally large and round. “Oooo….tick tock tick tock.” She began to chant along with the clock that had appeared on the wall.

“Tick Tock TICK TOCK!” Her many arms and legs moved hurriedly as she ran back and forth across the ceiling in a zigzag fashion and then came to a sudden, dead stop.

Remington had found it. Velveteen scuttled closer to peer inside the door and even though everything was upside down to her, a sausage was a sausage no matter which you looked at it. “Bratty Bratty Bratwurst!” She cried before looking at the others and then clearing her throat a little too loudly to take on a more serious expression.

The large sausage exploded into an endless line of smaller ones before reforming. A sausage finger came up and beckoned Phoenix closer. “Yeah….ok. Now who did that because it certainly wasn’t me.” She said accusingly, assuming it was one of her counterparts. “Cause no normal person does that ****!” Velveteen backed away a little so she no longer had to witness that leering Bratwurst and waited silently for the news.

“Steaks are for girls, Remington. Do you do ballet?”

It seemed that Velveteen had fallen into a much deeper sleep, her own nonsensical world of imagining had slowly become part of this one then suddenly she was falling. Where the woman slept, there on the couch, she would suddenly jerk as if trying to stop herself from falling before she settled into unconsciousness once more.

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Velveteen sat up and rubbed at her head. She felt like she had been hit with a brick or had a hangover from hell, though the first was more likely. She winced when Nix’s voice got all up in her headspace and then she groaned loudly.

No Nix. I’m not alright. What you did to that sausage is unforgivable. Nightmode tonight. I’ll be there!

But for now it was time to check on the patient and then work out what to do with his ***. Hauling herself to her feet was a task in itself and she had to stand on the spot for a second to get her bearings. A minute or two later and she was good to go but before she did anything she needed to ring Micah. She never stayed out all night and day. He was likely wondering where the **** she was.

[Remington Rothfelder]

Velveteen was walking, quite literally like a spider, across the ceiling. This was going to become an inside joke of some kind. Somehow. Later, of course.

"You'd be surprised about what I know." He left it at that, though he did lift a brow. He did not, of course know ballet. He could ballroom dance, but that was only because his parents had forced him to learn etiquette when he had been much younger. Though that was a piece of information he didn't really intend to share. Vel could take his statement as she wished, though he suspected it wouldn't go much further than that. Remi didn't tend to come across as one of the dainty dancer sorts.

. . .

He roused just after Phoenix and Velveteen, though he didn't know that until Nix spoke into his mind. It seemed that he had a few moments to burn, so he made a trip down to his car from the Eyrie. He assumed that the other members of his little group were preparing themselves. Maybe even calling in other members of the faction. He wasn't sure if that was necessary, didn't really know the plan at all, but he assumed it was going to be a detainment mission. So when he got to his trunk, which was essentially an armory on wheels, he made sure that he had his rifle and tranquilizer rounds ready to go. He shot off a quick text to Velveteen to that effect, before strapping both weapon and ammunition to his person.

The actual trip to Nightmode was a short one, and he remembered the location largely because he'd spent one particularly shitty Thursday there.

His 'go to' was to enter the shadows as soon as he got to a potentially hostile location, so that was precisely what he did as he made his way inside. He figured he'd just wait outside with his rifle and wait until the target was in range before putting her down. The area was not quite abandoned, but it wasn't what anyone would have called busy either. He was all set to lean against a wall and wait for either Nix or Vel, when he caught sight of a familiar face making its way right through the doors. Wait. ****. It was the reporter. He had not anticipated that she would arrive early, and honestly hadn't been paying close enough attention. He needed to improvise.

The rifle was basically useless to him, so he chucked it back into his car before hurriedly making his way inside. The place's lighting was sketchy at best, which only served his purposes. He scanned for her and when he spotted her making her way towards a bathroom, he followed after. Remington waited until she was just exiting before taking one of the tranquilizer rounds from a pouch and slamming it into her shoulder with enough force to make the contents eject into her bloodstream. She went out like a light, and he took her slumped form off towards the back where they could be inconspicuous. He found a seat and dropped her into it. She looked like she was sleeping.

It did not even occur to him afterwards that maybe Vel didn't want another accidental hostage. Or that maybe they were going to find less 'creative' means of questioning her than they had with the agent they'd gotten their hands on.

Oh well. Life was a learning curve.

[Phoenix]

Of course the redhead didn't think she'd done anything unforgivable with the sausage. Though she hadn't been paying attention once she'd gotten by... Maybe the sausage had done something quite unforgivable to Vel - or Micah - while she'd been busy chatting with Jacqueline. Chuckling to herself and with Doppel in tow, Phoenix left the Citadel through the portal to find her precious white Mustang waiting for her in the Cherrydale parking lot. The engine roared to life and she couldn't keep the sly little smile off her lips; it hadn't been long ago that she'd been scared to drive the damn thing for fear of wrecking her, but Blake'd helped. Now, she was perfectly content to pull out of the lot and make her way to Nightmode. With Sirius XM's Classic Rewind keeping her occupied, the drive across the city from Cherrydale to the hacker's paradise was blissfully uneventful.

Pulling up along the curb, Nix parked across from Nightmode, switched off the engine. Five minutes early. Without so much as a conveyed instruction, her doppelganger stepped out of the passenger seat and vanished into the night's shadows. If Jackie had already arrived, she wanted to know it before she went inside. It only took Doppel a few minutes to report back; not only was Jackie there, but she seemed to be slumped in a booth, virtually comatose, with none other than Remi. Phoenix could only laugh.

"Well... he subdued her at least," Phoenix muttered under her breath as she stepped out into the cold night air. Her boots crunched the thin layer of fresh snow carpeting the street as crossed the pavement and made her way inside. Her eyes adjusted to the dim interior in a second and she made her way directly to the back where Remi sat, casually sliding into the booth opposite the... pair.

"Girlfriend drink a little too much?" Nix asked with a wry grin, giving the unconscious woman a light kick under the table to ensure she was well and truly lost to the world. Satisfied the woman was about as big a threat as a cucumber, the shadow reached out to Vel, mind to mind. "Remi got her... possibly in a coma; I guess we'll figure out what the **** to do with her when you get here." Out loud, she said "I'm not sure what Vel wants to do with her, so we can wait till she gets here and find out. If anyone asks on the way out, she was hammered when she got here." Obviously. Remi wasn't stupid, but she'd always rambled when she was nervous or excited, and tonight was no exception.