Running around like a headless chicken. That was all Baekho had done so far, he found. Oh, and making things worse. That had also been happening a few times today.

Flying in Twi would probably have gotten him back to the chamber faster, but he didn’t want to miss what was transpiring over his headset, even though Minhyun was free to link again. Junior hadn’t bothered to turn it off and was talking to someone.

“Help me up,” the leader said, probably to Ren. “I’ll try to find out more. Aron, clear the way.”

There was a bit of silence as somebody else spoke whom Baekho couldn’t hear.

“Of course that’s what I’ll do,” Junior continued. “I can’t exactly flatline again. My powers should still work, though. I feel like the overdrive from flatlining hasn’t fully decayed. Let’s try.”

Baekho came knocking at the door outside the chamber and the general opened. The man looked less confused now, holding a steaming coffee cup and having changed into a less formal and more practical uniform. At last Baekho got a look at the name tag – Lin, if he remembered the pronunciation of that character correctly.

General Lin looked old, which of course he was, but his face was that of a man who worried too much, gaining him an extra ten years of apparent age.

Behind him Junior knelt next to the mangled corpse in a huge puddle of still drying blood. The ghoul’s first victim had been covered with a spare sheet, but Nuest’s leader touched the exposed hand.

Doctor Feng and Aron were observing security camera footage at the medic’s desk. Jason had taken it upon himself to distribute hot beverages and biscuits from the tiny, adjacent breakroom.

Junior in air sharply, unblinking. “Yes, I see everything I need to. Minhyun, can you use this?”

“I don’t…what?” The dream-walker furrowed his brow. “I don’t understand what you saw.”

Standing up on shaking legs, the leader made sure everybody could hear him. “There’s more than one way to fight the ghouls. Eliminating every instance of the infection would have been preferable but we’re not out of options.”

General Lin raised his hand. “I received a message. Everybody from the staff made it to the safe points with no casualties. But the helicopters are already over the city.”

“Then here’s what we do,” Junior said. “I didn’t get the full picture but I got a glimpse at the origin of…of a lot of stuff. For starters, Baekho’s Twi and Minhyun’s dream scape are two sides of one coin.”

That made everybody listen up. It wasn’t apparent how that helped them against the possessions but it could conceivably lead somewhere.

“Twi is the physical world without minds – without the quintessence of life and soul, of vitality. Perfectly sterile. But the scape is exactly that essence stripped of all physical components. They’re both incomplete images of reality that only exist as long as their creators can focus on them. If we combine those planes we might be able to enter a mirror reality where the ghouls are truly located. What we’ve seen so far are only the parts of them which extend into our world.”

The plan was difficult to develop and would probably be even harder to enact. If the properties of Twi and the scape could be woven together, the ghouls – being non-physical entities – could be engaged there without risk of spread.

But Junior wasn’t finished. “The big advantage we would have is – this is hard to explain – the entities are not separate things. They only spread because they need physical anchors, but they’re not actually multiplying. Every instance of a ghouls is a copy, or offspring, from the same source. In the Twi-scape-based realm I’m talking about, this source should be destructible, because we can affect them there like physical beings. We’d be… on their level.”

Aron cleared his throat. “There’s going to be a big disadvantage, too, isn’t there?”

“I’m afraid so. For one thing, we have no experience with this. It’s their home turf. The ghouls move naturally within the semi-reality we would enter. I suppose since we’d create the gateway to that realm, we could find a way to spin it to our advantage, but we have to hurry. Also…I have no clue what the source is or how to fight it.”

“Fantastic,” Aron said with an eye-roll. “Let’s get going then. To our doom.”

***

They didn’t go anywhere.

Junior gave detailed instructions to everyone separately, beginning with Minhyun.

Baekho used the opportunity to text his family who knew he was in China but thought he was there as part of his job, surveying prospective property for the Korean phantom company he ostensibly worked for. It was always a bit odd. He couldn’t – and didn’t want to – tell his mother that he had barely escaped the claws of death a few times today. He didn’t want to lie either. The best way around this dilemma he had found was to ask how relatives and friends were doing and let her summarize all the latest petty squabbling and relationship developments.

After a while the leader made his way to Baekho, who put his phone away.

“Here’s what I need you to do,” Junior said. “You remember how in the first attack of the agents of the void you got trapped in reality and couldn’t go into Twi?”

“How could I forget? What does that have to do with this here?”

“That night you weren’t locked out completely. You managed to pull some of the substrate of Twi into reality and use it as a weapon.”

Purely out of habit, Baekho reflexively summoned an orb.

Junior’s expression was tense. “I need you to do the exact opposite.”

“Huh?”

“When Minhyun has tuned us all into the frequency of the ghouls, you have to push yourself and us into Twi. We’ll sit close together to make it easier.”

Was the boy serious? Was it even possible to-

“Yes it does work,” Junior said.

How would he know-

“I’ve seen it during overdrive,” Junior interrupted Baekho’s thoughts.

But what were the cha-

“Twenty percent chance it’ll work on first try. Rising after that. You’ll get there.”

How did Junior know what to say? Was he-

“Reading the future,” the leader said. “Yep, I have to shorten this conversation because Minhyun will be ready in three, two, one.“

“I got it,” the dream-walker said for the whole room to hear from where he sat. “I can tune myself and Aron in so I should be able to add all of you now.”

***

The five boys of Nuest sat squished together on the broadest sofa. They couldn’t fit without struggle.

“Do we have to go in trance?” Ren asked. “Or are we going to that place physically? Because I don’t think I can stay like this. And Aron, your hand better not go any lower.”

“Sorry.”

Junior huffed, compressed in the middle of the group. “The answer to that is yes.”

Ren brushed his hair out of his face and into Aron’s. “This wasn’t a yes no question.”

“Anyway,” Junior said loudly. “Let’s begin. Minhyun, please.”

There was a knock on Baekho’s consciousness and he accepted the intrusion. It was unlike the links he knew. This one pulled. It was a cold sensation as if his brain had been laid bare and the air conditioning was blowing on it. He felt himself slowly falling into one particular direction but couldn’t say which one. Was it even in physical space?

“Now tiger boy,” Junior said, “Your turn.”

Baekho didn’t want to accidentally shift without his friends so he proceeded very slowly. He called to mind how he created Twi orbs, which was intuitive after the weeks of practice he had enjoyed. What would the exact opposite be?

He let the pulling in his mind guide him, hoping it would lead the right way.

The three non-superpowered individuals in the room flickered in and out of sight and the light changed irregularly. Every time Baekho managed to shift himself and the others closer to the pull it decreased like an elastic band being allowed back into its neutral position. It took active pushing to get them there.

After a good minute of flickering, the boys felt the impact of a shockwave as they broke through a barrier and were finally knocked into the realm of the ghouls.