The Dream Cages #9

Dark. Not like a dark room. In a dark room you can sense the potential for light. This space had none. Light didn't dare tread here, it couldn't survive it.

Kind of like your head, I guess.

Ronan couldn't see anything, not even his own hands when held in front of his nose. The best he could do was be aware of his body, feel it when he moved.

No sound, either.

Nothing.

This is what being dead must be like.

Oh, God, is Adam dead?

How long have I been here?

Though his arms moved freely, his feet felt rooted. For all he knew, this place was filled with people like him who were unable to see or move.

"Adam?"

The word hissed back at him from all directions.

Which means there are walls, something for sound to bounce off of.

Close walls, too, given the speed and trajectory of the echo.

Take that, Adam, I did learn something at school.

Wait, am I in a box?

Ronan reached his hands out slowly, experimentally, half afraid something might take a bite out of one of his arms. His right hand brushed smooth, solid wall. His left only hung in the air. He took a tiny step sideways, then another. There, the other wall. He reached up but couldn't find the ceiling and didn't want to jump to try. He reached forward and found only air, turned around and touched the wall behind him.

His pulse jumped as claustrophobia set in. More than Ronan hated yellow, he hated feeling confined. He tried to take deep breaths, but the space felt airless. His panic threatened to launch into hyperdrive.

You're never going to find him. He's gone for good this time. You promised you wouldn't let him disappear, and now...

Ronan turned back around to face the way he'd originally been standing. At least, he thought he was facing that way. He hoped so. He reached forward again. Nothing. A small step. More nothing. Step after minuscule step, like a toddler learning to walk. Every now and then he tried the side walls. Still there.

It's a hallway?

He worried that he might run into someone else. After a while, he hoped that he would.

An interminable time later, he stopped. This was literally getting him nowhere. "Fuck you," he told the blank black around him. Fuck you, it whispered back.

Was this really where Adam came when he scried? But Adam supposedly saw stuff, didn't he? Whatever abilities Adam had, Ronan clearly didn't share them.

He needed a different perspective, but he didn't know how to get one. Wake up and try again?

Dreams and scrying occupied the same space; he was sure of this. They used the same energy source at the very least. They were the non-space of the mind. Except Cabeswater had become a physical place, and this...

Did this place want to become real, too?

"You can't be real," Ronan said. "There's nothing here. Nothing means nothing. You can't exist if you're just an absence."

Black holes exist.

Had he thought that or had the space around him spoken?

"I'm leaving," he said. He folded his legs under him so that he was crosslegged on the floor and scooched to lean back against one of the walls. He hated to imagine the expressions on Gansey's and Blue's faces when he woke up. This whole pointless excursion had wasted precious time.

You wanted to come here. You wanted to see for yourself.

"There's nothing to see."

You can't see.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Silence.

"Fuck you," Ronan said again, but this time the words didn't slide back to him. Ronan stood up and walked toward what should have been the opposite wall, but he never found it. He tried several inches to the left, the right, but his fingers only found empty air.

If Cabeswater is a construct of my mind... This is Adam's?

He comes here, the space answered. He comes here to see.

"We're talking in circles," said Ronan. If 'talking' was even the right word for it. "Is he here now?"

... No.

"You couldn't have told me that sooner?"

You didn't ask.

Ronan balled his fists but in the interest of time let the argument go. "Then where is he?"

Six two oh.

"Six two... Is that supposed to mean something to me? Are they coordinates or what?"

Six two oh. Goodbye.

"What does that—?"

But then a hole opened beneath Ronan's feet and he fell.