Helena woke up quietly in a room that looked like a dark hospital room. On her nearly naked body, several electrical pads were attached, and a sharp-toned alarm in the operating room announced her awakening. A nurse entered, silenced the alarm, and began removing the pads.
"Good morning, Helena."
"Uh… where am I?"
"Dream Guidance Center, Headquarters Hospital.
How was your experience in Collective Dreams?"
"Good."
"I'm glad to hear that. By the way, take it easy everyone in this branch is from planet Earth, just like you."
Jaspen entered the room.
"Welcome, new member."
The nurse said:
"Congratulations on the promotion."
"Thank you. I'd love to stay and chat, but I have to take Helena to collect her things."
From the bright, calm hospital atmosphere, they moved into the black Gothic corridors whose opulence grew the closer they got to the administration wing. They passed through a black gate with small blue runes. Jaspen knocked, waited for permission, and then they entered the same room where Helena had hidden before.
Inside, Sophia sat at the desk with one of her assistants filling out papers.
"Hhh, Helena, you're really stuck with us now."
She pulled Helena's heart out of thin air and began playing with it while Helena felt Sophia's hand and every toss and catch of her own heart inside her chest. She tried to endure it.
"So, what do you think, Helena? Will you continue, or do you want to sign out?"
After a long silence, Helena answered firmly:
"I've made this decision, and I will bear the responsibility. You talk as if signing out is even an option."
"Now you're speaking with firmness and no hesitation."
"I'm trying to run forward."
"Hhhh. Grikkov, raise her to the second degree."
"At once, honored lady."
"Helena, when speaking to those of higher rank than you—like me or Grikkov—use some respectful phrases and the like as a formal courtesy… understood?"
"Hmm… yes."
"These are your joining documents, and this is your membership ring. Jaspen will teach you how to hide it. Welcome."
"Th… thank you."
"Any questions?"
"Hmm… my mind is blank right now…"
"If you ever wonder about anything, you can ask Jaspen. You may leave now."
As they left, Helena asked:
"Aaah, I was so nervous."
"No need to be nervous. Sophia is humble and loves to joke."
"Did she steal your heart too?"
"Yes, it's a precautionary measure. You know if you ever decide to betray us or anything, she can end your life remotely… Don't worry. If you work hard and reach the Archon gate, you'll get it back."
"What's the ranking system?"
"Well, there are four levels or floors in our satanic church. At each level, you must climb 99 degrees to reach the next one. You're currently at level 1, called Hyle as a beginner with no honorary title. After that comes Kenoma, where you gain the title Archon. Then Pleroma, where you gain the title Aeon. And finally Monad, which I still don't know if it's reachable or not…
At the beginning, climbing is easy, but it gets much harder as you advance."
"Wait, when were you summoned?"
"I wasn't summoned. I reincarnated into this body."
"And?"
"And I joined them about a year ago after I heard this branch only accepts Earthlings."
"So what do you actually do…?
Do you hunt criminals?
Do you fight creatures that want to destroy the world?
Do you explore dangerous places?
Or is your brotherhood just a name?"
"Nohh, we're a pressure group…"
"That's boring."
"I wasn't finished. We're a pressure group, spies, defenders of the world, thieves—everything and anything."
"How can you be both a pressure group and thieves?
Are you saying you're a corrupt organization?"
"We don't steal money. This is an arms race. We're a faction trying to break the religious stagnation of Trigonianism in this strange world… We Earthlings are just a spectrum inside this lobby. Outside, you'll be treated like a patient suffering from a delusion called planet Earth."
"So am I going to drown in boring desk work?"
"You're a Hectotype, so you'll most likely be doing field missions. You're the latest human upgrade higher than normal humans in every statistic… I mean, I'm a Tritotype and I do field work. Desk work usually falls to Prototypes."
As they left the massive complex, Jaspen said:
"Ah, by the way, we moved you from the district you were living in to the clean suburbs after the strangers attacked you."
"Strangers?!"
Jaspen replied with a suspicious smile, gritting her teeth:
"Yes, strangers who wanted to kidnap you."
Helena understood:
"Ah, yes… strangers… and probably very racist."
Jaspen's cheerful face returned once she felt Helena had caught her meaning.
"Yes, very racist. They kill people in cold blood. You're lucky you survived, hhhh."
☆☆☆☆☆☆
The scene shifts to an old, dilapidated room. On a mattress spread on the floor lay a corpse.
The corpse of Sayorin, who had lost her life while sleeping.
Her little brother tried the same brother who had lost two fingers under the gears of the steam machine at his workplace—but there was no response.
"Mom, Sayorin doesn't want to wake up."
The mother entered angrily:
"Get up, you freak! It's time for work…"
Sayorin didn't respond. The mother placed her ear on her chest, searching for a heartbeat, but there was none.
…
After that, a quick, exceptional funeral deducted from their already insufficient salary, even with so many siblings working.
They placed her corpse in a cheap wooden coffin fixed onto a tree that looked like a small apple tree, then lowered it to its final resting place under the earth.
A slight tremor returned to Sayorin's heart, then the pulse came back gradually along with the warmth of the body.
In the darkness, Logico felt her body being pulled with tremendous force as if tied to a rubber rope fantastical speed. Suddenly she woke up in a tight, dark space the exact size of her body, with only twenty centimeters around her to move. She couldn't bend her limbs or roll over. She struck the wooden lid, and with every blow she felt dirt falling on her.
That was the first thought that crossed her mind. The oxygen was low almost gone. She moved in panic inside the cheap wood; every impact caused a large amount of dirt to pour down. She realized the danger of drowning in that dirt, but death awaited her whether she stayed or risked digging upward.
She tore off the wooden plank in front of her, which was held by cheap nails, loosened the long boards, bent one of them aside, and the dirt slid in from her right side. She pushed her hand in, trying to stop it. Without the removed plank, she also used her foot. The dirt poured in forcefully as she pushed it aside to make space with whatever limbs she had left until the dirt packed a little, leaving a gap she sensed with a strange instinct a gap wide enough to change position. Then she began digging behind her at an angle with the first piece of wood she had torn off, while the dirt poured like a waterfall and she searched for a place for it.
Her greatest fear was a landslide that would trap her to the point of suffocation…
She moved away from the still-loose dirt because she had just been buried and entered soil of a different texture, slightly harder but cohesive enough to dig through. All of this in total darkness, her eyes aching intensely for light. She dug and advanced almost two meters in a full hour, then struck the surface until it opened. She kept striking until the hole was wide enough to crawl out, rolling onto the ground, exhausted from digging but drowning in questions. She sat up and saw what answered every single one of them.