I collapsed into the shade. Gasping. Spent. The cool stone wall filled me with relief. How was it so cold when everything else was so hot? I didn’t care. I just closed my eyes and drank it in.

  We’d seen the cluster of low buildings from a distance, but it still took plenty of time to get here. I thought at one point it might have been a mirage, or some trick of the subconscious. I cast myself some water. It was a lot easier to cast it cool now we were in the shade. I drank it down, groggily wondering to myself if my thirst was really real. Can’t be bothered thinking about it. Just drink.

  “Ok. We take a minute to recover, and then we take a look around. There could be exit portal nearby” Winsford said.

  I opened my eyes again, taking in the situation. Like me, most of the others had collapsed in the shade. Ross was lying sprawled on the ground, Chen resting with her eyes closed against the wall. Everett had his face in his hands, elbows resting on his knees. Sophie, as ever, stood by Winsford ready to go. Simon was already strolling the area, looking around.

  It looked like we were on the edge of some kind of desert outpost or town. My combat-game experience told me we were in the middle-east somewhere. The buildings were primitive pale stonework, squat and rectangular, bleeding into the sand all around us. Apart from that, it was desert everywhere. There were narrow entryways between the buildings.

  “We’ve got some relief in the shade,” Winsford continued, “but this environ is unpredictable. We have no idea whether or not the cool will last. We still need to get out of here as quickly as we can.”

  Within a few minutes we stumbled to our feet again. It was different than it might be in the real world. I could feel myself bouncing back quicker from the heat than I would in the real world, but somehow there was a deeper sense of… tiredness in it. Would our bodies still be able to sleep while we were trapped down here? Didn’t need to think about that yet.

  We made our way to one of the narrow walkways and moved in to see what we’d find here. The pathway was empty. Packed earth worn smooth by wind and moving sand. It was quiet too. The silent doorways of darkness in each building felt somehow ominous. Where were the people? I was guessing that they were homes, but it was too gloomy inside the doorways to make out much of what might actually be inside.

  “What is this place?” Chen asked. “Sophie?”

  Sophie paused for a fraction of a second, her head tilting slightly as if she were listening to something none of us could hear.

  “While we can’t be certain,” she said calmly. “In subconscious thought-casting, the system automatically generates a coherent physical space using the memories, impressions, and subconscious of the caster. In this case, it is most likely that this has been more or less randomly generated from our collective memory.”

  She glanced down an empty side street, as we walked.

  “Another possibility is associative reconstruction. The environ may be drawing on memory fragments, but focusing on representing something that carries emotional or moral weight. This could be tied to conflict or stress, which is statistically more likely. It could be a manifestation, actual or imagined, more specifically associated with one member of our party in particular.”

  She paused again.

  “A third theory is that the system may be casting a random setting designed to imply choice or consequence. In all cases, the environ isn’t actually truly random. Thought-casting in the subconscious VR realm reflects what has shaped your minds in the past, but not what it consciously intends.”

  “In other words, if we don’t want the skeletons in our closet to come out, the sooner we get out of here, the better” Ross said.

  “Yes, assuming your goal is to avoid confronting unresolved memories or emotional experiences painful or personal, escaping the subconscious environ quickly would be the most prudent course of action.”

  As I turned my head, a movement in one of the buildings caught my eye.

  “Hey – did anyone one else see that?” I said, moving towards the doorway. I looked inside.

  It was gloomy, the shapes of simple furniture emerged as my eyes adjusted. Low seated couches, well worn. A Persian Rug hanging on the wall. I noticed a movement, a hanging curtain on the far side shifting faintly.

  “What is it? What’d you see Peterson?” Ross asked, as he came in behind me.

  “I… I’m… not sure” I said, giving the room another look over. “I could have sworn I saw someone, a dark shape moving in here. I think they went through the curtain.”

  Winsford and Sophie appeared in the doorway. “Be careful,” she said, “In subconscious environments, a curtain like this could be a portal that leads out, but sometimes they can lead somewhere else entirely. A redirection deeper into the subconscious, another portal into the pre-conscious, it might not even lead two people to the same place. You’d never find each other again.”

  “So it could be our way out…” Ross started, “… or it could be a one-way trip to a deeper entrapment in the prison of our own minds?”

  “That is correct,” Sophie replied. “It could also be any number of a range of other possibilities. An emotional junction, a memory loop. The risk profile would appear to be high here.”

  “Let’s just stick together and keep moving” Winsford said, “and if we see something else that might be a portal, let’s choose one that looks a bit more obvious. No need to take unnecessary risks.”

  We emerged back out into the narrow walkway and continued on. The walls were close and the air was cool. The windows were shuttered. Still no sign of life anywhere. Ahead, the corridor opened suddenly, light spilling in as the stone gave way to space, revealing warped wooden shopfronts, faded signs in a foreign language, and sagging wires strung overhead. The street was wider, more of a thoroughfare, but still uneven and sand-choked.

  My eyes adjusted to the glare to find that… we weren’t alone. A lone figure stood about a stone’s throw away. A woman. She was wrapped head to toe in a full black burqa. She stood motionless in the middle of the street.

  “Hey – hello!” Ross called out, his voice echoing off the stonework.

  She didn’t react, just stood there, the silence stretching out further.

  “Hey!” Winsford called out, his voice sharp and commanding, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  The woman’s head motioned slightly, turning toward him, but she still didn’t reply. She just stared, and then turned suddenly, slipping quietly into the dark doorway of a nearby building.

  “Do we follow?” Ross asked.

  “Could be connected to Peterson’s curtain portal from earlier – but it might be something more useful this time” Simon said.

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  “Wait… it could be a trap” Everett said. As I turned to look at him, I was shocked to see how pale he was.

  “Everett?” Chen asked, “Are you ok?”

  “Let’s just take a quick look,” Winsford said, “Sophie – give us a risk analysis.”

  Sophie’s eyes narrowed, and fixed on the doorway the woman had vanished into. “She could be a projection warning us of danger ahead,” she said. “But then again, she could be marking a subtle lead to a portal. While her meaning is unpredictable, it should at least be safe to see what’s through the door.”

  We approached cautiously, half wanting to find out what this was, half wanting to head in the other direction.

  “If this was normal thought-casting, I would totally be pulling out my bazooka right now” Ross said.

  We entered the room, it was bit bigger than the one I’d already explored, but a similar setting. The floor was hard-packed earth over stone, noticeably cooler underfoot, and dusted with fine sand. A low ledge ran along the wall to one side, cluttered with an array of cracked clay bowls. There was a brass tray dulled by age, and leather sandals parked underneath. It smelled faintly of old smoke and spices.

  We moved in cautiously along the woven mat of the hallway. There were empty wooden pegs set into the wall, and a series of doorless openings.

  We walked past them, some of the rooms shallow dead ends with stacked jars or rolled bedding, others slipping away into wider but, lightless rooms. As we entered the last doorway, the space widened out. And there she was, right in the centre of the room. She just stood there, waiting.

  “Ok lady, you need to tell us who you are and what this is all about” Winsford said.

  Again, she just stared, motionless for a moment. And then she raised her hand, pointing at us. No, not at us, at one of us. Everett.

  “The hell with this” he said, as a familiar shape materialised in his hands. His rifle snapped up reflexively as he took aim, and before anyone could even think, chaos erupted.

  THACKA-THACKA-THACKA!!

  Stone and plasterwork exploded everywhere as we all ducked instinctively for cover. The woman dove sideways with unnatural speed, avoiding Everett’s fire. The air roared with fire and dust. Someone screamed my name. Someone cursed. The woman vanished in the haze.

  “Everyone out NOW!” Winsford’s voice bellowed, “Back to the street, move!”

  As we stumbled out of the dust storm of the house, we coughed and hacked to clear our lungs.

  “Everett, just what the hell was that?” Winsford said.

  “I don’t care what you say. That thing was hostile. I made a call” he said.

  Two pairs of hands suddenly seized my arms. I tried to pull away hard, but I couldn’t move! It was like being stuck in a steel vizor. Everyone was shouting , and in a flash I saw our attackers. It was more women in burqas. They’d surrounded us silently, and more of them were moving toward us from the buildings around.

  Everett went mental. He was screaming and firing his weapon. I tried to escape again, but it was no use. The others were struggling, but having about as much success as I was. It became quickly obvious, however, that the burqas weren’t doing anything to us, just… holding us. The real horror was what was unfolding right in front of us with Everett.

  He fired desperately as they closed in on him, but one of them snatched his rifle and he stumbled backwards. They kept coming. He cast a barricade of stone, but it crumbled, he was still weak from casting rain in the desert and even if he wasn’t, maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference. I watched, transfixed, as he ran in panic and fell. More and more of them were coming. He lurched and staggered sideways in an attempt to avoid one of them, but then they were on him. They grabbed his arms and legs, and lifted him right off the ground. Then they started marching down the street.

  “Nononononono! HELP MEEE!” he screamed.

  “Everett!” we shouted back, renewing our struggle to get free from our captors. I didn’t like the guy, but no one deserved this. Surprisingly, they let us go, and we ran after him. A line of the burqa women formed, blocking us from getting too close to the grim procession.

  “Winsford! Winsford! You’ve gotta save me!! Sophie!! Help me!!” Everett cried out. It was the terror in his voice that was the worst. I’d never seen so much as a nervous twitch from him before. The burqas kept marching steadily. We tried casting, but it had no effect. We couldn’t risk going arial, and it might not have done any good anyway.

  “We’ve got to do something!” screamed Chen.

  “Waitwaitwaitwait” Simon said. “This must be an element in the environ, not some kind of AI entity. That’s why we can’t cast anything that will effect them.”

  “Do you mean that our subconscious is casting the burqa ladies along with the rest of the environ?” Ross said.

  “Exactly” said Simon. “Down in the subconscious, that means we can’t effect them. But maybe we can influence them indirectly.”

  “How?” asked Chen.

  “It seems like the environ is being cast direct from Everett’s own subconscious, not ours. Sophie,” Simon asked, “could it be possible that we’re seeing a manifestation of some kind of unresolved trauma from Everett’s past?”

  “Yes. It seems likely” Sophie said.

  “Is there any way we can help him to, I don’t know... recontextualise his trauma?” Simon asked.

  “Recontextualisation could be possible,” she said, “but the trauma must be processed by the individual, and only at a pace their mind will permit.”

  “Then we need to get Everett’s attention, and try to help him slow this down, maybe interrupt whatever the environ is doing to him.”

  “Everett!!” Chen shouted, casting a megaphone mid-sentence. “Everett, listen to me! We can help you, but you have to listen!”

  “Everett”, said Simon, “Do you know this place? Does any of this mean anything to you?”

  The procession of women in burqas stopped suddenly, and everything went quiet.

  “Wha… what do you mean?”

  “We think your subconscious is controlling the cast of the environ. Does this place represent anything familiar to you? A place you’ve been? An experience? Anything?”

  “I.. I… yes” he said.

  “Sophie” Winsford said quietly, “play this like a psychologist. Walk him through it.”

  Sophie’s demeanour shifted, a look of concern washed over her serene features.

  “Ok, that’s good, Everett. I want you to stay with me. I want you to think about what you’re feeling right now, and then tell me the first memory that surfaces – even if it feels incomplete or doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What the hell is this?” Everett said. The burqa women shuffled and moved.

  “Just tell us what this is, we can’t help you if you don’t talk to us” Chen said.

  “I… ok. I’ve been here before. I was deployed here” Everett said.

  “Ok. Tell us what happened” she said.

  “I… it was the war. We had a mission” he said. Again, the burqa women seemed to be getting agitated.

  “Were you hurt here? Did something happen here?” she asked.

  “No. Yes. We…” he hesitated. “It was part of the mission. We… I…”

  “What? Just tell us what happened here, Everett.”

  “I… I… I did something.” His captors went stock still, as though they were waiting to see what he would say next.

  “It’s happening” Simon whispered.

  “We all did it” said Everett. “They expected us to.”

  “What, Everett? What happened? Did you do something wrong?” Chen asked.

  “I… I didn’t mean to – it wasn’t my fault!” he shouted. In an instant, his captors were marching forward again. “No! No! Please!! I didn’t have any choice!” he screamed. They lifted him up above their shoulders now, but we could only follow from a distance, the line of burqas was keeping us at bay. We approached an intersection at the centre of the township. “NONONO!! Help me!!” he cried.

  As we looked on, they were coming to some kind of water well. They threw him down to the ground in front of it. “No, wait, please! I can make this better! I can fix this!!” A circle of burqas had formed around him, all pointing at him, and there was nothing we could do. They moved forward as one, seizing him again in a hideous frenzy. He struggled desperately, managing to toss a few of them aside. But they kept coming, surging, grabbing him, and diving down – straight into the well! “Noo..” his muffled cry was cut off as he disappeared in the mass of bodies, all of them diving down into the well in a heedless suicide.

  And then, he was gone. Everett was simply gone.