I stood at the door with my eye to the gap, watching Dr. William Hale turn a page of his newspaper.
Noah had said: stay in the room. When I come back, I'll let you actually leave.
But Noah had also told me that walking through the exit would bring me back to reality. That was a lie. So what I was supposed to do with anything else he said, I didn't know.
I put my back against the door and turned it over again.
If the test was real — if staying in this room and waiting for him was the actual way out — then going through that door now meant giving up the one option that might work. Losing it completely. Staying trapped indefinitely.
But the other possibility also existed. This wasn't a test at all. Noah simply didn't want me reaching William, so he'd used that sentence to keep me here. And William was right outside, sitting in the living room, knowing nothing about what his son had done, knowing nothing about the fact that I was here.
And then one more possibility, the one that was harder to dismiss.
Even if this was real — even if William was real — what if he was part of it. What if walking out only walked me into another version of the same thing.
Too many variables.
I pressed the back of my head against the door and closed my eyes. Breathed in.
Time was moving. Noah had said a short while, but a short while was undefined — five minutes, ten, maybe less. Whatever the amount, it was getting smaller, and I was still here, and nothing had been decided.
I opened my eyes and put my eye back to the gap.
William was still there. Page still turning. The television still producing its quiet background. The weather segment, someone saying there might be some cloud tomorrow. A completely ordinary afternoon. A completely ordinary man sitting in his living room, not knowing that this room existed, not knowing that his son had been using the machine for this, not knowing that I was on the other side of a wall with my eye to the gap.
That quality — the not knowing — didn't look performed.
The dream's things were always tailored. Always positioned toward what I needed. Always slightly too right. What William was doing was the opposite of that — reading a newspaper with the mildly distracted attention of someone working through a habit, angling the page away when the text got small, turning back when something caught him. Nothing in it aimed at me. Nothing arranged for my benefit.
My hand went to the door handle.
And stayed there. For a long time.
My palm was damp. I held the handle and felt everything still running in my mind, all the possibilities still circling, nothing settled. Time moving through the moments while I stood here.
If I go out — I might lose everything.
If I don't go out — Noah comes back, and what comes next is another dream. And after that, another. With no end and no exit, just this, continuing.
And then I thought of Dad.
My hand pushed the door open.
The corridor was real under my feet — the floor returning sound clearly, the light a slightly warmer version of the room's white, the imperfect kind that came from ordinary bulbs. I walked toward the living room, my steps quiet, but the floor still registered them.
William shifted slightly in his seat. He looked up.
His expression, in that moment — it wasn't any of the things I'd been prepared for. Not calm. Not performed surprise. He genuinely froze — the complete, unanticipated freeze of someone who has encountered something entirely unaccounted for. His glasses nearly slid from his nose. The newspaper fell against the low table. He stood, and his mouth opened but nothing came out.
He looked at me. Then toward the room I'd come from. Then back at me.
What followed is not something I can piece together clearly.
People came. There were questions, many of them, and checks, and phone calls. At some point I was in a white room — I couldn't have said with certainty whether it was a hospital or somewhere else — and I may have slept, and what happened while I slept I don't know.
And then, at some point, Dad was there.
He was standing in the doorway. When he saw me, he didn't say anything. He crossed the room and put his arms around me, holding tightly, and I felt his hands on my back and his shoulder and the particular rhythm of his breathing — which was not steady, which had that quality of someone holding something in, keeping it pressed back.
Neither of us spoke.
Somewhere in the time after that, things began to find their way back to something resembling a shape. Not all at once. Slowly, day by day, one thing and then another, until mornings existed again, and breakfasts, and school, and coming home.
On one of those mornings, I sat at the table the way I used to. Toast. Eggs. A cup of warm milk, the temperature exactly right.
The television was on in the living room — Dad's habit, the volume not too low, the news presenter's voice moving steadily from one story to the next.
"...following up on a case that received significant public attention. The disappearance of a teenage girl has now been resolved. The girl was found to have been trapped inside an experimental perception device for a period of several weeks, with her consciousness fully disconnected from reality during this time. Noah Hale, who had access to the device, has been taken into custody. His father, Dr. William Hale — the device's inventor — upon learning that his son had been using it in this way, reported him to authorities and has been fully cooperating with the investigation. The girl has been confirmed safe and in stable condition. In response, the relevant government departments have announced an immediate prohibition on the development and testing of any perception-altering devices, with legislation to follow..."
I sat there with the cup in both hands and didn't drink from it.
Dad came through from the kitchen, sat down across from me, picked up his cup, took a sip. Then looked at me for a moment. "Weather's supposed to be good today. Want to head out?"
"Yes," I said. "Give me a few more minutes."
He nodded and looked back at the television. The news had moved on to the next story.
The light outside came through the window and fell across the table — ordinary morning light, soft and slightly warm, finding the toast and the eggs and the cup of milk.
I looked at the cup.
The temperature exactly right.
I set it down and raised my eyes to the light outside, and kept them there for a long time.
The story ended just like that. Perfectly.
...Or perhaps this, too, was only another dream.