[Some slightly gory violence after the paragraph starting with "Soundlessly".]

It was time. Baekho wasn’t ready, but it was time anyway.

Junior was already on the bed, getting a variety of sensors fixed to his fingers and torso. While Baekho couldn’t read the output of the heartrate monitor with certainty, it was clear the boy had to be nervous even if he didn’t show it.

The sofas had been moved closer and a few armed operatives were present for generic security reasons but stood at the far side of the room, guarding the only entrance with their backs turned to the scene.

Minhyun helped Aron, who had left his wheelchair behind but still used a crutch, to sit down. Ren wasn’t going to stop pacing no matter how many times he was asked to. Baekho had ants crawling under his skin himself. His fight-flight reflex worked overtime but there was nothing to punch and nowhere to run. Jason’s calming herbal tea did nothing to keep his nerves soothed.

The instant everything was set up, Junior gave the OK without directing a single word at the boys. It was rude, but Baekho understood that the leader couldn’t afford to start a conversation – or a round of goodbyes – as somebody would have ended up crying and begging him to stop. Perhaps everybody.

Baekho stood a couple of steps away from the bed, his hands in tight fists.

Doctor Feng administered the first injection. It was designed to make Junior sleep soundly – as close as he could get to a coma without turning off his consciousness. Since the boy always retained random information with perfect clarity once gathered there was no risk of him forgetting anything in his slumber.

The leader got covered with an aluminium blanked, as if he was already a corpse. An oxygen mask attached to a small tank supplied the anesthetized boy with air.

Then came the weird part. The doctor opened a huge box and called upon an operative to assist her. Freezing fog escaped the container and crept along the floor, chilling the air. Junior’s body was packed with ice bags until he was covered in them. His body temperature sank. His heartrate, too.

There was no beeping sound – all devices were on silent mode. But as the cardiogram’s spikes became flatter, Baekho could almost hear it like a crescendo of the blood rushing through his ears.

He turned around to see what Minhyun was doing.

The dream-walker had to link a sleeping person with waking ones. First he had to find Junior in the scape, then came back – while linked – and connect the others. This required a state of trance, at least in the initial stage, or else Minhyun wouldn’t have access to the scape in time.

Baekho felt the link nudge his mind and accepted the intrusion. Ren was the first to send, assuring Junior that everybody was there and they wouldn’t leave his side. Baekho hadn’t been present for it, but Jason had told him there had been a lot of debate between Ren and the doctor, because the empath wasn’t allowed to hold the patient’s hand during the process. The body heat would interfere with the cooling.

“I’m here,” Junior sent, startling everyone. Apparently, Minhyun had even included the doctor, Jason and the main operative in the link network. The dream-walker’s powers had developed considerably since the early days.

“Am I dying yet?” the leader asked.

“Soon,” Doctor Feng sent. “Erm, I mean, no, of course not. But your temperature will reach critical levels within the minute.”

The plan was to reanimate the boy within thirty seconds of cardiac stand-still. Unless something went wrong.

“This feels weird,” Junior sent. “I know I’m dreaming but I’m not properly lucid. I guess I’ll just keep talking. I really don’t know how to describe this, though. It’s very…dark. And cold. I guess, that was to be expected.”

Baekho’s eyes dashed back and forth between the screens showing Junior’s heart rate and brain activity. The former was down to almost nothing, the latter was unhindered. The white tiger had of course read up on the subject over the course of the night and knew that people with pacemakers had their devices deactivated for battery switching and were technically without heartbeat for a minute or so, experiencing no consequences. Still, it was almost as if his own heart wanted to make up for the slowdown of Junior’s.

“There’s…there’s a light now, I think,” Junior sent. “It’s beautiful.”

Then the spikes were gone. The boy’s blood wasn’t being pumped anymore. Zero beats per minute.

Flatline.

Jason activated a timer for thirty seconds. If nothing else happened, this was how long the patient would be left technically dead.

On the brain activity monitor, something ensued that Baekho wasn’t qualified to judge but which was clearly different than before.

Then the dead boy sent as fast as his thoughts allowed. “The Shadow has four active locations left. I can see their coordinates. There are twenty seven agents of the void left. I can see their names. The recruitment process involves use of a barely tested eldritch device located in Siberia, which has unreliable mind control properties. This is the one he wants to use for his endgame. The Shadow’s current location is a hotel in Prague.”

Twenty seconds to go.

“Nine devices are left but only three of them are currently useable or have been fully figured out. I can see their location’s too. One is being worked on right now by seven researchers. Also, there were other Kaiju but they died in captivity.”

Ten seconds.

“Operatives Bai from sector two and Cheung from sector eight are double agents and feed information to the Shadow. There is an undetectable program on the computer in the accounting main office that sends our internal communication to him, too.”

Four, three…

“Wait! What’s that? Why are you-“

A shiver went through the link as something replaced Junior in the network.

Doctor Feng tore the cover under the ice bags away, casting all bags to the ground. Jason threw the heating blanket over Junior.

Baekho shifted halfway into Twi – involuntarily. He was in the gray world and yet he was able to dimly perceive the people in the room. Neither here nor there. Then he popped back and Ren shifted instead. How was it possible that the empath could go into Twi on his own?

A second later Baekho knew the precise degree of Aron’s panic without having to look at the boy. Every nuance of the American’s emotional experience was clear as day to the white tiger. Was this how Ren saw the world?

The next second – just as Ren popped back, visibly distressed – Baekho knew with unyielding certainty that Doctor Feng’s owned two bicycles. That had to be Junior’s ability. What was going on? Why were their powers mixing?

By now the doctor had injected the flatlining boy with adrenaline and Jason was done slapping the defibrillator’s pads on their designated spots.

Minhyun’s link net broke but was immediately reestablished.

“That’s not me!” the dream-walker yelled. “It’s her! She’s forced herself in.”

Her?

“Cease immediately,” Lady Luck sent through the new link. “This was a grave mistake. You have breached the barrier. End this before they can enter. I will see if they can be delayed. ”

Junior returned into his original place in the net and Baekho felt the center of the linkage move back to Minhyun.

A high beeping noise came from the defibrillator. Junior was getting an electroshock. His body convulsed, but the line spiked only once before falling flat again.

Fog entered the room from nowhere. It looked eerily familiar – almost exactly like the substance Twi’s light seemed made of. As Junior received the second shock, the fog began to condense. Baekho felt Minhyun drop him out of the link.

Within seconds the fog took shape. They were vaguely humanoid. Baekho felt reminded of Rogue Conmotes, but these new things were made of an ever more ethereal substrate, not even becoming fully opaque. There were three of them, near the center of the room.

The third shock brought Junior’s heartbeat back. Ren hurried over to take his hand.

Meanwhile the operatives tried to close in on the strange fog things.

Soundlessly, the cloudlike beings took to the air and descended upon the approaching people in a high arc. Two of them hit an agent each and entered their bodies. The third made it across the room to Jason and sunk into the assistant’s skin.

With a stone faced expression, Jason tore a screen off its mounting and threw it at the doctor who went down from the impact. The two possessed agents slashed their bare hands into the third’s throat, digging at his flesh until his neck artery burst. As the blood squirting man fell to the ground, the two pulled their guns and opened fire on the boys.

Aron was already touching the ground and whisked the projectiles out of the air as he transfigured the floor into a thick bulletproof glass barrier between the possessed men and the rest. Jason was attempting to stab Junior’s motionless body with a pen but a small Conmote of Ren’s making engaged him.

This had all gone so terribly wrong.