Yeah, well. Welcome to mine. I brushed my clothes off, feeling like I should burn them. I really didn’t like it when people I didn’t know touched me, but I decided against it since these were my favorite clothes.

"Marcus?" A new voice rang out, pulling my attention to a group of people coming down the stairs.

The group ranged from people who looked around the same age as the man I’d just kicked into the kitchen, to kids who couldn’t be older than eight. The one who spoke was at the front, staring between me and the other man, who had somehow gotten himself back on his feet after I’d sent him flying. His gaze had completely shifted, the anger from earlier now replaced with something unreadable.

"Despite how alike they look, he’s already claimed that he isn’t Marcus," the man said, his voice clearly suggesting I should leave soon.

Usually, I’d be more than happy to leave, but I had a bigger problem. Auth still hadn’t contacted me, which meant something was blocking me from reaching her—or vice versa. I needed to figure out what the hell was going on with the tech in this world.

So, no, I wasn’t leaving just yet.

"Don’t worry, I’ll go," I said, speaking directly to the man who had first approached me. "But do you have any old technology I can use? I need to contact a friend to get out of here, and something seems to be stopping me from doing so."

Before he could respond with the usual hatred I’d seen flash in his eyes earlier, the man who had called me Marcus spoke up.

"Of course, I’ll send it up to your room," he said, his voice a bit softer than before.

"My room?" I asked, taken aback.

He waved the others back up the stairs, sending them off with a gesture, and gestured for me to follow him without answering my question. The man I’d kicked into the kitchen scoffed loudly, still visibly irritated. He stormed up the stairs ahead of us, clearly not pleased with the situation.

I hesitated at the bottom, wondering why I was even considering following him. But I reminded myself that I needed to get my hands on some tech, and I really didn’t want to encounter another one of those creatures.

They mentioned a curfew, meaning I’d need to be careful about the time, though in a world with no sun, it was hard to figure out when nightfall even happened. I’d have to watch myself until I figured out how to get back in touch with Auth.

The man who’d been talking to me led me up the stairs to the last door on the right but stopped just before opening it.

"This room is vacant at the moment," he said, his eyes narrowing as he glanced at me. "It used to belong to an old friend of ours, so please try not to touch too many things."

"Of course," I agreed, then added, "As long as you bring what I asked for."

Amusement sparked across his face, making him an open book compared to the other man. Where the first had been all rigid tension and barely restrained hostility, this one radiated a different kind of energy—fidgety, restless, like he was already thinking three steps ahead in a conversation we hadn't even started yet.

He stood just as tall as the other man—easily over 6'4"—but where the first was built like a hardened soldier, this one was all wiry muscle and sharp edges. He still had the strength of someone who worked with his hands, but there was a quickness to him, a sort of coiled energy that made it seem like he could either sprint across the room or take something apart in record time, and it was a coin toss which one he’d choose at any given moment.

His hair was a complete mess of white, sticking out in every direction like he’d either just rolled out of bed or had been too deep in a project to care. It looked like it had once been tied back, but any attempt at order had long since been abandoned. Smudges of grease streaked his face, trailing down to his neck and disappearing beneath the collar of his patched-together clothes. His hands were just as stained, evidence of long hours spent buried in machines or whatever scraps of tech this world had to offer.

His sharp blue eyes stood out against the grime, flickering with intelligence and something bordering on manic curiosity. They darted around constantly, never landing on one thing for too long, as if he was simultaneously cataloging everything in the room while also calculating how fast he could take it apart and put it back together.

His clothes were a disaster, a mix of different fabrics haphazardly sewn together, reinforced in places where the seams had probably given out long ago. The sleeves of his jacket were uneven, one rolled up to the elbow while the other hung loose, both stained with oil, soot, and other substances I didn’t want to think too hard about. His boots were scuffed and worn down from years of use, and his gloves—if they even started as a matching pair—were barely holding together at the fingertips, the material torn and frayed from overuse.

Despite his rough appearance, there was something electric about him—like he was always a split second away from either a breakthrough or a complete disaster.

Basically, he was a taller version of me when I got too deep into one of my inventions. The difference was, I still made an effort to keep some level of hygiene. My creations were important, sure, but they weren’t everything to me the way they clearly were to him.

I gave him a brief nod before slipping into the room and closing the door behind me. I didn’t even bother to sit down before I started scanning the space, already cataloging anything that might be useful. 

The air was thick with dust, clinging to everything like a second skin. Each step I took sent tiny particles swirling into the stale air, drifting in slow, lazy spirals. It was obvious no one had been in here for years—the silence was heavy, suffocating, as if the room itself had been holding its breath, waiting to be disturbed.

The walls were covered in drawings, pinned haphazardly or curling at the edges where the adhesive had long since started to fail. The majority depicted creatures—twisted, nightmarish things with too many limbs, hollow eyes, and gaping mouths lined with jagged teeth. Among them were unsettling landscapes, places that looked warped and wrong, like reality had been stretched too thin. There were people, too—some drawn with painstaking detail, others barely more than shadowy figures, rushed and unfinished. The sheer number of them made the room feel crowded, as if I wasn’t alone but being silently watched by a hundred faceless eyes.

Near the bed, a pair of boots sat neatly on the floor, coated in a thick layer of dust. The leather was cracked, stiff from years of neglect, but they remained in their place, as if waiting for someone to slip them on again. The bed itself was still made, the sheets frozen in time, their fabric dulled to a lifeless gray under the dust that blanketed them. No one had slept here in a long time.

A desk stood against one wall, just as neglected as everything else. Its surface was littered with unfinished drawings, some half-erased, others abandoned mid-stroke. A pencil still rested there, as if its owner had once intended to return but never did. Smudges of graphite and ink stained the wood, and beneath the dust, I could make out the faint outline of a handprint, frozen in time. Whoever had lived here spent hours at this desk, lost in their work—until, one day, they simply stopped.

The entire room carried an eerie sense of abandonment, not just as a space left to decay, but as a life interrupted. Someone had lived here, breathed here, created here… and then vanished, leaving behind nothing but echoes of who they used to be.

I glanced back at the drawings. Most of them were grotesque, monstrous things, but given what I had already seen in this world, I was starting to wonder if these weren’t just products of a vivid imagination. Maybe, for the artist, they weren’t nightmares at all.

Maybe they were just reality.

******

As I watched the surveillance footage from one of my "curfew" nightmares, a smirk spread across my face. There was a certain satisfaction in seeing things fall into place, even if it was at the expense of someone else’s misery.

"It seems your brother is finally back, my little nightmare maker," I said, my voice low and almost tender in a mocking way, addressing the kneeling figure before me.

His head snapped up from the position of submission he’d always maintained, and for the first time in a while, I saw a flicker of something in his usually lifeless eyes. They widened in surprise as they locked onto the image on the screen.

"Though, judging by the state of him, our mutual friend must have wiped his memories and stripped him of his abilities. I wonder how she expects him to survive in this world like that." I let out a soft chuckle, the sound almost menacing. "No matter. This could work out quite nicely. I should probably move up the day of the trials to honor his return. What do you think, my little nightmare maker?"

He slowly turned his head to look at me, but the brief flash of emotion was gone, replaced by the familiar emptiness that had become his constant state. That same cold, deadness that I had molded into him over time.

It was a pity, really. I almost missed the fire he had when I first imprisoned him. Back then, his curses were a constant soundtrack to my days, and the way he’d glare at me with defiance—those were moments I’d secretly savor. But it was inevitable. I couldn’t leave someone so close to me unbroken. Especially not when I’d taken him as punishment for his brother’s disappearance.

The first nightmare maker, the one I had stolen away, had vanished from this world under circumstances I’d rather forget. Ironically, I’d planned to take this sweet little one first. But he ran home to his brother, and his brother—so loyal, so willing to do anything to keep him safe—had taken his place instead.

Normally, I wouldn’t have been so indulgent in letting my true target switch places. But his brother’s desperation was enough to sway me, at least for a time. I gave him what he wanted, playing along with his naive hope that the little one would be spared. Eventually, though, I would grow bored of the game and replaced him with his brother.

Yet, there was something particularly frustrating about the way she had taken him away. It still pissed me off to no end. And, the fact that he hadn’t returned after she took him? That only deepened my annoyance. She would never force him to stay against his will. He had made his choice, and that felt like a betrayal of everything I had worked for.

"I’m sure we’ll get everything back on track soon enough," I mused aloud, though the words were more for myself than for the one kneeling before me. "We’ll see how long he stays out of my grasp. And when the time comes, I’ll make sure to remind him of his place."

The figure in front of me didn’t react, his expression as empty as it had been before. But that didn’t matter. I already knew what I needed to do. The trials would start soon, and with them, the chaos that would bring everything back to me.