Chorong jolts into action, pulling out IV lines from the PASIV* and rewiring hers and Naeun's to connect.

        "Unni!" Bomi shouts. "Unni, what's going on? What happened to Naeun?" she asks pleadingly, but Chorong can't hear her, not over the rush of blood pounding through her head, not when there's so much to do and nowhere near enough time to do anything. Bomi grabs her hands, trying to stop her, and Chorong pushes her down roughly in response, a wildly desperate glint to her eyes.

         "You don't understand," Chorong rasps, staring Bomi down. The younger girl has to steel herself to not scoot back but she can't help but tremble in fear. Naeun is gone, their usually composed leader is breaking down, and she doesn't know what to do. Chorong's jaw tightens. "I lost Naeun," Chorong fiercely whispers, voice cracking. She heads back to her seat. She adjusts the Somnacin* levels on the device and sets the atomized timer. "I need to get her back." She presses the Infusion Trigger*. "I need to save-"

*

         "-her." She's wearing different clothes now- a grey leather jacket with a black hood over a simple white v-neck and some black jeans. Chorong looks up to see rain coming down in torrential sheets. She doesn't bother putting her hood up. Her clothes quickly get soaked, sticking to her skin, weighing down her shoulders. The cold metal of her gun feels even colder pressed into the skin of her lower back, stinging and burning. She brings a hand up to shield her sight against the piercing rain and wavering eyes quickly scan the area. Where would Naeun locate her Port*? Chorong pinpoints on a building detailed with everything Naeun hates- silver, metal spires and a menacing facade- something Naeun would absolutely abhor, and the exact place she wouldn't expect anyone to look for her. She flags a taxi and gets in.

         "Where to?" The taxi driver asks jovially over the soft crooning of some old jazz music. Naeun was always a romantic. Chorong pulls the burning cold gun from its resting place against the waistband of her jeans and points it at the driver. The old man freezes, staring at her in fear through the rear-view mirror. She motions for him to get out of the cab and slides up into his seat once he does.

*

         The car weaves through the traffic of Naeun's mind at breakneck speed, barely dodging the honking cars in its way. The dark building stays firmly planted in Chorong's sight until a car rams itself into the passenger side of Chorong's cab. Chorong looks up in shock and anger but swiftly ducks as bullets whiz over her head and shatter the glass of the cab window behind her. Chorong curses herself. In her haste to get to Naeun, she had forgotten that the girl is trained, meaning her mind is militarized against anyone or anything that doesn't belong there, including her.

         She opens the cab door and rolls out of the car. Using the door as a shield, Chorong manages to pull out her gun and catch the woman shooting at her in the middle of her forehead. Chorong scrambles to her feet and runs forward, hunched behind the cars in case the projections turn on her sooner than she anticipates. In the back of her mind, Chorong realizes she recognizes the woman she had just shot as the old lonely woman who always sits with her cold tea in the corner of Chorong's eye whenever she and Naeun would go on little coffee dates in their rainy Parisian home. The girl steels herself and runs faster.

         Chorong stumbles to the ground as she hears loud gunshots behind her. She looks back to see menacing boys in their early 20's- probably Naeun's old classmates, Chorong's mind determines, the ones who'd sit behind her and whisper too loudly about and cars. Chorong slides to a halt on her knees as she makes a sharp turn and shoots all five of them, all at vital organs. She runs even faster and doesn't look back. (It's hard, she realizes, when it's the people you recognize coming after you.) Chorong abruptly freezes at the sight in front of her, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. It was the cab she stole. The car that hit it was still embedded into the taxi's side, the engine wheezing smoke. The projection she shot is gone but the bullets are still there, the windows still demolished. Chorong takes faltering steps towards the site. She slams her fist angrily against the side of a nearby car, making a slight, bloody imprint in the metal.

         Dammit. Apparently, she had also forgotten that Naeun is an architect* (one that she herself had trained) and that her specialty is impossibly infinite mazes. Chorong wonders what's happening to her. How could she have forgotten something so blatantly important? (What is wrong with her?) She jerks rigidly as a sharp sense of pain punctures her back. (Why didn't she hear the gunshot?) She slowly turns around and through blurry vision, Chorong sees a mess of short brown hair. She falls.

*

         Chorong bolts awake in her seat in the plane. Bomi rushes to her side.

         "Unni!" Bomi calls out, grasping onto Chorong's face. She holds it still so she can look into the older girl's eyes. "Calm down. Tell me exactly what's happened."

         Chorong's blood boils and she knocks the younger girl down. "You want to know what happened?!" she yells, looming over a sprawled-out Bomi. "Naeun's trapped in limbo and I ended up having to abandoned her because you-" Chorong emphasizes with a kick to Bomi's side, "- decided that in that moment to pull the Kick." She's cut off as Bomi lurches forward and yanks her downwards. She slams Chorong against the floor.

         Bomi tightly grips Chorong's collar with a firm arm. "This is not my fault!" Bomi replies vehemently. "You think I wanted to lose Naeun?!" she yells. Bomi slowly backs off of Chorong and sits down on the floor, defeated. "I was just doing my job, unni. What were you doing?" Chorong stands up and brushes herself off.

         "My job," Chorong replies hoarsely. She heads back to her seat and reconnects the IV she had accidently ripped out when she had woken up. Her arm is bleeding but Chorong inserts the needle in despite that. Before she can press the trigger, a hand grasps hers.

         Bomi kneels down in front of her, looking upwards to the older girl. "Unni," she pleads, "let's think this through. You can't just break into Naeun's mind guns ablaze; she's too well trained. It won't work. You just experienced it not working." She notices Chorong's look. "What, like you're the only one who cares about Naeun? I know you hate me for pulling you out of there, but if both of you get stuck in limbo, then that means it'd be twice the work for me to drag your love-struck asses out of there," Bomi jokes, but Chorong can hear the tremor in her voice, can see the paleness in her cheeks and the red ringed around her eyes, and curses herself for lashing out at her. After all, how can she think that Bomi- who has fended for and taken care of Naeun since before she knew either of them, who is Naeun's sister- couldn't possibly love Naeun as much as she does?

         "I'm sorry," Chorong apologizes. To Bomi, to Naeun, to herself. It seems like she can't do anything right today. "So what do you propose I do?" Chorong asks softly. She's starting to get impatient. Every second she wastes in real time is ten years- maybe more (probably more)- in Naeun's unconoscious.

         "Let's head into the Network* and find Lay, okay? If anyone can help us, it's him." Bomi says, reconnecting her IV into her arm and recaliberating the settings on the PASIV. She presses the trigger.

*

It's sunny. Chorong pushes Bomi across the street. Her shoulders are still tense and adrenaline is still pulsing in her veins from her last experience in a dream. (She has a hard time reminding herself that these people are real- dreamers, like her- and not projections out of someone's mind.)

  Lay's office is a plain building on the outside; its windows are water-spotted, the dingy white paint starting to peel. The bell stationed above the door rings as the two enter. Inside, it's completely different. Crookedly aligning the murky wooden walls are elixirs and potions and trinkets that catch the light as they twirl, things that aren't real- not necessarily- but can be bartered for something that's more real than money: favors. The colorfully dull bottles clutter on the shelves, leaning into and clashing against eachother, almost as if fighting for space. The air is stale and stifling, yet the room is somehow the perfect temperature (it's always the perfect temperature). Lay is seated behind his desk towards the back of the room, asleep. His head lays gently on his arms and a soft halo surrounds him, hair set alit by the golden rays of sunlight streaming in through shuttered windows. Chorong and Bomi settle down in the seats placed in front of his desk, the cool, worn leather groaning under the weight. Chorong slaps him.

  Lay's head lurches up and he looks around the room in confusion before his sight settles on the two girls in front of him. "Chorong? Bomi?" he asks, voice still thick with sleep. "What are you doing here?" His thick eyebrows furrow in confusion. Chorong sighs.

  "Naeun's stuck in limbo," Chorong starts out darkly. "And I need to break into her mind, but it's. . . hard. She's too well trained, too well protected- mazes and wars and guns and they're all aimed at me." Chorong's soft voice breaks. It's like Naeun is punishing Chorong for abandoning her, for breaking her promise. She knows it's not true though, knows that it's only the defense mechanisms put up by the unconscious, but she can't help but feel hurt. She can't help but feel that every time one of Naeun's projections shot at her, it was Naeun shooting at her, telling her 'I hate you, how could you leave me?' and how could she have done that? Why didn't she just pull the trigger, ignore the music? Why couldn't she save the only person who fits so well in her arms, like they were meant to be, like they were supposed to grow old together? "So, I need heuristics* to break into her mind and you're the only one who can help me. Please, Lay, please help me."

  Lay sighs and leans forward over the beaten wooden desk, an enigmatic look in his eyes. "I can't. It's just as you said. She's too well trained. Heuristics won't work. Only algorithms will work and the only way to get these algorithms is to actually travel through these levels. I'm sorry, but it's impossible."

  Chorong surges forward and grabs his collar. "Then make it possible!" she yells, soft voice straining, breaking with desperation.

  "I can't! I may be good at what I do, but I'm not a god!" Lay chokes back and Bomi lays a gentle hand on Chorong's shoulder, pulling her back. Chorong lets go of him and sinks back into her seat. She rubs at her face. "But I can stretch out the time. Make time go quicker here, slower there," Lay continues and Chorong looks up. "Just-just treat it like any other job. You've done trained minds before; what difference is this?"

  "The difference is that it's Naeun's mind and her mind knows me way too well," Chorong replies, but there's a hopeful glint to her voice that she tries to restrain.

  "But that also means you know her mind just as well," Bomi pipes in. She checks her watch and runs a hand through her hair. "I'll try to assemble a team through the Network as quickly as possible. Lay, work on the extension and Chorong," Bomi says, looking straight at her, "prepare yourself. You need a calm mind to be able to do this and we both need this to be successful." She leaves the room and Chorong sinks deeper in her seat.

*

          "To propel Chorong into limbo to save Naeun, we need to be at least four levels deep," Bomi says to the team assembled in Lay's office. Chorong is leaning against the desk, observing them. Lee Hyeri, Jang Dongwoo, Jung Ilhoon- all experienced point men*, the best of the best and exactly what they need for the mission. "The hard part is that Naeun's defense mechanisms were trained by me, meaning that not only will it be militarized, each level will have a Sentinel protecting its Port. I don't care what you guys do- distract, maim, kill- I need them gone. Ilhoon, you're handling the first level," Bomi directs. Ilhoon nods in understanding. "Hyeri, you're the second level; Dongwoo, third. I'll handle the fourth level." They all settle into the chairs Lay had set up and insert their IVs. "Lay will be injecting in a compoud that will quicken time in our levels and lengthen it in limbo. He'll also be monitoring our time and administering the kick," Bomi says as Lay calibrates the PASIV. He presses the trigger.

*

         It's raining. Chorong is not alone.

A/N: 

PASIV- it stands for Portable Automated Somnacin Intravenous Device; it's the device that allows people to share dreams (or invade dreams). The atomized timer sets the amount of time the dreamers will stay in the dream in real life time (because time goes by faster in dreams, remember). The Infusion Trigger is the button you push to inject the drug that allows you to dream, into your system through an IV line.

Somnacin- the drug that allows people to share dream; administered by the PASIV through IV lines

Port- it's basically the gateway onto the next level of the dream; it could be anywhere- an old apartment, a warehouse, a van; it's not specifically mentioned in the movie, but it is implied

projections: sometimes they're the people in your life, the ones that are there, but you don't really truly notice them

Architect- the person who builds the dreams; like when you're dreaming that you're in a city, the architect is the person who built that city; when you're an architect, you have to create new settings, you can't recreate from memory because memory is faulty and you won't remember all the details and if it's not your dream, then the dreamer will notice that something is wrong more quickly

- Naeun's specialty is infinite mazes, which means that you take a uniform-looking place- a hospital, a hotel- and loop it so that the dreamer or whoever goes around in circles and they don't even know it; it saves you from keeping on having to create new stuff

Network- something I created; it connects all the people that are currently dreaming into one giant network of dreams; sort of like an interconnected city

heuristics- basically shortcuts through dreams; like when you're playing a game and to get somewhere or something faster, you look online for cheatcodes or whatever while algorithms is when you do everything the old-fashioned way, fair and square

Point Man- the person who attracts the projections' attention onto themselves; while the team is asleep, on the next level of the dream, they're basically unprotected against the projections that could hurt them; the point man is the person who stays awake and distracts the projections from finding out about the rest of the team

Sentinel- something else I created; for extremely well-trained minds like Naeun's, there are Sentinels, guards, protecting the port on each level; they're like the big boss that you fight at the end of the game