Crystal's one escape from the pretentious life her parents want for her is the dreams that fill her mind as she sleeps. In those dreams awaits the same boy who comes to her night after night, filling her heart with hope that can only be a fantasy. T...
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The entire day crawls by at turtle speed, and I don't see a single trace of Crystal. Her disappearance has my stomach turning with painful knots. I know something's wrong, I'm just not sure what.
He's her dad...there's no way he'd do anything to hurt her...right?
I know McClay can be a cold bastard but she's his flesh and blood. Even to monsters like him, that has to mean something.
"So, what's the plan?" Miles asks as the six of us stand on the deck of the Halazia.
Well, the six of us plus Mia, who shoots me a worried look. "And how can I help? I'm not like you guys. All I can do is just...be here."
"But you've never drifted into any of McClay's dreams right?"
She gives a nod.
"Then maybe he won't know you can't do anything, and at the very least, you can be a distraction."
"Will I get hurt?" her gaze flicks to the eyepatch currently covering my right eye. "I mean...you got hurt over here and you had that on even in class today."
It's hard not to get frustrated, not at her, but at the situation. I need to be in top shape for whatever McClay throws at us and I'm down to one eye. Turns out, after reading the rest of his journal today, dreamers who suffer from self-inflicted injuries in the dream realm carry those wounds both here and in the real world. Even if it's just from losing your mind and throwing something that comes back and stabs you in the eye. I can't will it away here either. All I can do is wait for it to heal naturally. Talk about dream actions having real-life consequences. I guess we can't be completely safe after all.
"You'll be fine," I assure her. "You can't actually do anything which means you can't actually hurt yourself."
Thankfully, she doesn't ask for a deeper explanation, simply taking my word for it with a nod.
"So what do we know?" Seong asks next before answering his own question. "Thanks to the twins breaking into McCaly's place, we know she's not there, and thanks to Mia, we know she hasn't been back to her room since last night. So with nowhere left to check back at the academy, we're hoping she's here, right?"
I nod. "Exactly. If she's dreaming, there's a good chance she's at the cave. There'd be no reason to take her anywhere else if McClay has it under his control anyway."
"And she's been practicing but she's not strong enough to take him on alone if he's keeping her there," Noah adds.
"So again," Chan speaks up only for Woong to finish for him, "What's the plan?"
I've been asking myself that same question all day. If I'm right and she is in the cave, there's only one way in and one way out. If McClay hadn't taken over it, I'd be able to do something about that since we helped her build it, but chances are, he already has full control. Making adjustments to someone else's base, even one that's switched hands, is impossible. We can create things inside, but we can't make any changes to the actual structure. It's one of the reasons the Halazia is still in perfect condition even after everything McClay has tried to throw at it in the past.
