DON'T DREAM
When the senior class of Greystone High arrives at the infamous **Noctis Facility**—a government-confiscated building rumored to have been a secret human test lab—the trip feels like a bad joke wrapped in urban legend. The halls are gutted, windows sealed, and the air smells like chemicals and old nightmares. Their guide’s information is vague, the teachers are uneasy, and the security presence is unnervingly heavy for a building that’s “no longer active.”
Among the students is **AYLA**, a quiet, insomnia-ridden perfectionist who hasn’t slept properly in years; **KAI**, her adrenaline-seeking best friend; **MIRA**, a top student hiding crippling anxiety; and **JASON**, a skeptic who lives to debunk anything “paranormal.” Each of them carries a private fear they don’t talk about—but in Noctis, fear is the only language that matters.
During the tour, the class is ushered into a central research wing: a circular chamber lined with dormant machinery and strange reclined chairs, each fitted with a helmet-like device. A broken sign hints at the lab’s original purpose: **“Oneiric Response Modulation – DREAMLESS PROJECT.”** Before anyone can process the meaning, the security doors lock. Alarms moan to life. Sleep-inducing gas seeps from vents.
Their phones die at once. The teachers collapse. One by one, the students lose consciousness.
They wake up hours later, apparently unharmed, still inside the chamber. The gas is gone. The doors are open. But something has changed.
That night, back in their dorm-style accommodations near the facility, the first death happens.
A student who had laughed the loudest at the urban legends **falls asleep and never wakes up**, found in his bed twisted, broken, as if thrown from a ten-story building—though the room is perfectly intact. Security footage shows him lying still. No intruder. No struggle. No logical cause.
Then another student dies, this time appearing to have drowned—lungs filled with water, though she’s found in a perfectly dry room.
Rumors race through the survivors:
They died from **what happened in their dreams**.
A recorded message triggers on their confiscated phones and in loudspeakers back at the facility, a distorted voice from the Noctis system:
> “Welcome to the DREAMLESS PROTOCOL.
> Rule One: **Sleep is permitted.**
> Rule Two: **Dreaming is not.**
> If your brain enters REM sleep, your death in the dream will be mirrored in your reality.
> This is a controlled test.
> Survive—or be deleted.”
The impossible catch: **no human can decide not to dream**. The students’ biology is now their executioner. Every blink feels dangerous, every yawn a countdown.
Ayla, who has long feared sleep, becomes an unlikely focal point; her chronic insomnia might be their only starting advantage. She realizes the lab has wiped their devices, cut them off from the outside, and manipulated their sleep cycles. They are not on a school trip anymore—they are **subjects in a game-like human trial** where the enemy is inside their own heads.
