Dara, Page, and the Secrets of the Multiverse

▷ 16.3

Fear gripped Dara's nerves and never let go. Her readings must be insane right now, shooting up and down. It was a call for help, one to tell Page to get Dara out of here. Fast. Maybe she was overloading, and her brain couldn't handle the probe any longer. Shouldn't Page see that? This was a perfect time to pull her out of her own head and launch a debriefing.

If Dara could scoff, she would have. Because this was just great. Now, she was more knowledgeable than her lover about something that wasn't her field.

The lights came back, flushing the heavens all into Dara. A scream might have ripped out of her lips, but the dreamstate swallowed the pang that might accompany the blinding light. It only left her with a hollow feeling of expecting pain and not getting any. No wonder some people tend to live in their heads rather than the real world.

Slowly, Dara gathered her bearings. It was the best she could do, trapped in a strange place that was her mind. With the lights came the memories. They were the same people, the same scenes. It was like nothing happened.

Dara craned her attention to the ceiling and somewhere behind her. No terrestrial monsters that were the stuff of her nightmares. Page hypothesized some time ago that there were such phenomena that could happen in people's brains and dreamstates. Dara wished with all her might this was the rare time her lover was wrong.

Dara stalked forward, brushing past the scenes as if they were picture frames hung opposite the staircase—familiar but unknown at the same time. She was about to turn a bend when a scene caught her eye.

In the memory, they stood in the living room in the middle of an argument. Dara remembered the general scene and the feelings associated with it—guilt, shame, and an equal shred of anger—but she never recalled Page grabbing the porcelain dish in the middle of the low-lying table and throwing it across the room. The sound it made against the wall behind Dara couldn't have been more audible despite it being a memory. The shards settled on the rug, husks of what they once unified to represent. That never happened. It wasn't...

It wasn't what? True? Why was this vague memory here, then? Why could Dara see it after a strange glitch and a trip outside of the dreamstate?

And Dara had always wondered where that dish went long after it disappeared from the table. As a gift from her parents from the old country, it was Dara's duty to keep track of it, but for some reason, she just stopped. A brief recollection flashed to the surface of the walls, pushed forward by her recent thoughts. Ah. Page claimed the dish was stored in the storage room to keep its paint pristine and avoid breakage. Huh. The irony of that had never seemed so obvious.

Dara pushed further. Were there more of these memories hidden beneath all the good ones? What was really going on here? She whirled to the left to find another strange memory. The scene played out with an enraged Page dragging a screaming and squirming Dara across a dim corridor. All of the lights were off, but Dara recognized the apartment—the one they shared since they moved in. The Page with her in the memory had her face contorted in pure anger, all of it directed at Dara. It wasn't Page. At least, the one Dara knew.

So, she watched as Page shoved memory-Dara inside the broom closet and slammed the door. The lock clicked, burying Dara within the smell of disinfectant and thick dust. A sense of cobwebs tickling her arms and feet returned, nudging suspicion up Dara's gut. The other Dara—the one reflected in the screens—pounded and begged to be let out. Only Page's receding footsteps echoed past the door, the shadow of her feet ebbing away the small gap between the door and the floor.

Again, it was easy to think it didn't happen. Dara had no recollection of them. At all. But...who was Page? Wasn't she the one who revolutionized neurology by inventing all kinds of ways to view the human brain? Didn't she show the world that dream-diving and memory-probes were coming in the horizon of technology? Who was to say Page didn't learn to rewrite memories off-research, and influence dreams while she was at it?

The space constricted as the realization sank in. Air. Dara needed air, but she was still in the dreamstate. Get out of here. She needed to get out of here.

She started running.

The maze rumbled, bucking underfoot. Dara could have stumbled had she been in the real world. But, alone in her disturbing memories, she might as well be. All around her, Page's face was plastered over heinous acts, battering the memory-version of the same person dragging herself past them. Fists were thrown as hard as glass and ceramic plates. Words lashed out with unrestrained vigor, sinking deeper and cutting harsher into Dara's flesh and mind. All questions faded in her mind, leaving only the most important one: which of these two versions of her life was true?

Warmth blazed through Dara's mind. The connection! She rounded another corner, leashing her consciousness around the foreign comfort. Her mind went up, up, up, until it broke through a layer of golden lightscreen. A gasp flitted out of her lips as she bolted upright.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Page's voice ripped through the confusion as Dara's fingers fought to unlatch the device off her head. Why wouldn't this thing come off...? She needed to get out of here. Away from this research. Away from this apartment.

Away from Page.

"Dara, look at me." Strong hands gripped Dara's shoulders, forcing her to stop thrashing around and calm the fuck down. "You're okay. I'm here. Dara, look at me. I'm here."

Her gaze landed on Page's warm eyes. They betrayed purity and innocence. Worry. Care. The opposite of the things she witnessed in her mind. Dara's chest heaved as her breath struggled to catch up. The panic died down. Slowly. Slower than she wanted it to.

"You're okay," Page whispered again, her voice shaking and cracking.

Dara was poised to believe that, but a thought nipped at the back of her mind. Was she really okay? The more terrifying thing was that she didn't know.