His nightmare was playing out in front him once again.

Bang!

“Soojung!”

Bang! Bang Bang!

He teleported instantly—but he wasn’t fast enough. All he could do was catch her lifeless body as it fell in his arms.

Dead.

The blood leaking from her multiple bullet wounds was still warm, but her body was not. It was cold.

Cold, cold, cold, just like death.

He was familiar with death—he’d killed more people than he could count. But he didn’t think he could get used to the feeling of her unmoving body in his arms, eyes wide and face frozen in a permanent expression of shock.

Kai looked around wildly. Where did the gunman go?

No, it didn’t matter.

Soojung.

This was a repeat of the time in her dorm room. Except Lay wasn’t there—Lay!

“Lay, where are you?! Lay!”

His screaming was futile. No one would come to his aid.

“No…. Soojung… Krystal… Wake up!”

The world around him seemed to disappear. It was like he was surrounded by never ending darkness, never ending despair, cradling the corpse of the girl he believed he could have loved. His hands caressed her face.

His tears dripped onto her pale face; but there was no miracle. She remained lifeless in his arms—cold, forever unconscious.

Wake up… Wake up... Wake up…

And he slowly faded into oblivion.

-

Chen descended the last steps of the stairs in a rush.

“Guys, we need to go, the Facility—”

The words died on his tongue as he took a good look at his surroundings. He was no longer in the Arena.

He seemed to be in some sort of empty plain, as vast as the eye could see and the colour a toxic purple and red. He tried to take a step forward, only to realise that he was perched rather precariously on the tip of a mountain.

Wait, mountain?

Hesitantly, Chen looked down at his feet. He in a breath.

He was on a mountain of corpses. Black, electrocuted, corpses.

No…

The guilt and regret he had long stuffed into the corners of his mind began to resurface. He knew those faces. No matter how scarred or charred they were. He remembered every single one of them.

The faces of the people he’d killed.

He averted his eyes in a hurry. His emotions seemed to be amplified, and he could barely breath at the suffocating guilt that was flooding his system.

Chen’s breath came out in raspy gasps. He fell onto his knees and hands.

Wait a second…

The body felt strangely hard and flat. It felt like he was touching a block of smooth wood, instead.

Wait… I was supposed to be with Kai and Krystal…

Realisation seemed to part the clouds of confusion in his mind, and he could finally think clearly. He was in a trap.

Chen looked at the dark sky with narrowed eyes. He knew he was supposed to be indoors, he reminded himself. The atmosphere was haunting and he could feel the guilt building up in him again, but he pushed it back down.

He had to get out of here, before he got lost in the illusion.

Illusion, that’s it! This is an illusion. Illusion, illusion, illusion.

Chanting the word illusion in his mind, he looked around once more. There had to be a way out. A weak spot in the vision.

He squinted into the purple sky once more, hoping to see a flicker of something—

There!

He knew he would've missed it if he wasn’t looking for it. A slight refraction of light proving that he wasn't in the world of reality.

Electricity built in his palm, and he directed the single lightning bolt to the tiny flicker in the sky.

The vision cracked immediately. It seemed to fall apart like broken glass.

He was back in Chanyeol’s holding cell. Harsh panting attracted his attention, and he turned his attention a corner of the room, where there was an unfamiliar girl crumpled on the ground, clutching her head.

She looked up and shot him a glare. The cell was only dimly lit by the moonlight, but he could make out her long ponytail and small figure. She seemed to regain her bearings a little, as she tried to stand.

“Oh no you don’t!”

Chen sent another bolt of lightning—this time a much weaker one—to paralyze her. Her lips parted in a silent scream as the electricity hit her, but then collapsed to the ground once more, spasming. Electricity seemed to wrap around her like ropes, dancing on her skin. Satisfied that she could not move any longer, he turned to the other occupants in the room.

Krystal and Kai were sitting on the floor in front of the still unconscious Chanyeol, clutching each other with disbelief in their eyes and tears running down their faces.

“Soojung, you’re alive…?”

“You’re not burning…”

“It was an illusion!” Chen shouted, hoping to get them to s