The Children of Hypnos

-|-|-Sandman-|-|-

In retrospect, the Sandman could have done several things better.

He could have taken his time and checked to make sure Emery Ashworth was still asleep before he snuck into the clinic.

He could have kept his distance from her once he was inside. It would have been easy to see she was no longer sick, even from a distance.

Once she grabbed onto him, he could have thought a little faster. He could have shaken off the shock of sudden contact and thrown her off with a few good dreamforms.

And he definitely could have run from Marcia instead of engaging her in the hopes of the chance to talk. He knows better than to try to fight Marcia hand-to-hand or even hand-to-dreamform. She's too strong for that.

He trips over his feet as the full-time dreamhunters drag him up the steps to the Fenhallow Administration building. His head throbs. His vision splits and reforms. Poor coordination, headache, double vision; all side effects of DreamLess, what they undoubtedly injected him with once Marcia pinned him. Also side effects of cranial trauma, but he hopes it's the DreamLess. He can't see where they're going, but if they shot him up with something to stop him from dreamforming or making a gateway, there's only one place it can be. The Fenhallow Underground.

They stuff him in the administration building elevator. One pulls out a key. Inserts it into a slot above the controls. The elevator goes down.

The Sandman groans. He hasn't considered the side effects of DreamLess when combined with his waking water. Experiments often come at him when he's least prepared for them. Like the time Daniel Temper put bleach in his dinner. Or when he first formed his weapon and accidentally poisoned Marcia.

Oh, Marcia.

The elevator doors open. They walk him down a long and lonely hallway, the walls and floor made of concrete, bare lights hanging along the ceiling. His feet clang-clang-clang down every step of a winding metal staircase at the end of the hallway. Down down down they go, deep below the campus.

The Sandman heard of this place while he was a student at Fenhallow, though he can't remember where from. His mind is whirling again, the tornado picking up speed with the pounding of his head and the blood dripping down his temple. This is where they keep the things they don't want the Sleeping City to see. At the bottom of the staircase is another door. Another hallway, another door. Another hallway. Another door. They could have been walking for hours and he would never know, because this was a horrible fever dream of its own. Always another hallway. Always another door. Lights swaying above. The sense of the Dream grasping at his mind but his own claws blunted and useless.

This is not good at all, he thinks blankly.

They pass through another door. The room here is sectioned in half by a thick Plexiglas wall. They open a reinforced door in the wall and toss him onto the other side, then lock him up. The door shuts and the light disappears completely. The restraints vanish from around his wrists.

He sits up and holds his head. He got into some rough scrapes while wandering around the Dream, but without being able to dreamform, patching up a head wound would be...difficult. He fights the urge to vomit. Not that there'd be much to vomit up. He can't remember the last time he ate real food. He reaches out and touches the Plexiglas wall. Solid, cool. Everything down here is cool. Without his armor, he starts to shiver. He feels for his goggles and pulls them down around his neck. They won't help him much without his sand.

"A Sandman without sand isn't much of a Sandman at all," he says to the empty, dark room. He laughs. Finally, free time to philosophize! It had been so long. He feels at his face, for the blood making a trail down his cheek.

The door opens. Light spills in. The Sandman flinches away from it until his eyes adjust.

The black silhouette of a man fills the doorway. Light glints off the edges of a pair of round spectacles, and steam wafts up from a teacup in one cocked hand. The man releases the cloak he keeps on the aura of the Dream radiating from himself; he lets the aura choke the room, stuffing up the Sandman's ears, mouth, and nose like heavy cotton. Only a dreamkiller could give off an aura so powerful. Only a dreamkiller could keep it hidden so well.

"Hello, Mr. Warwick," says the silhouette.

The Sandman swallows until it feels like he can speak again, and he says, "Hello, Dean Ashworth."