Flames licked at the street behind them.
Orange light reflected off the rain puddles, making the narrow alley look like a corridor leading into a burning world. Elara stood beside Arga, breathing hard. At the end of the alley, Bima waited with a silver car key between his fingers.
The faceless man stood a few steps behind him.
Arga didn't know what frightened him more: the father he'd just found, or the figure that had only dared come to him while he slept.
"Go home," Bima repeated.
The voice was the same as in his dream.
Arga stared at the old man's face. There were lines of exhaustion around his eyes, but there was also something that made Arga's chest feel strange—a slight resemblance in the way the man tilted his head, in the crease between his brows, in the look that seemed always to wait for the world to betray him first.
"If you're my father," Arga said, "why did you let me live like a stranger?"
Bima tightened his grip on the key.
"Because I wanted you to stay alive."
Elara let out a short laugh. "The first lie always sounds like protection."
Bima turned to her. "You're still just like your mother."
Elara's face hardened.
"Don't mention her."
"She was the one who hid Arga. Not me."
"She died because of you."
The fire crackled behind them. Sirens sounded in the distance, but they weren't close enough yet to bring help. Arga smelled gasoline hanging in the air.
"Who set this street on fire?"
"Rafael's people," Bima replied. "They want to make sure there are no witnesses."
"Including you?"
"Especially me."
Bima pressed the key into his own palm, then pointed to the black car parked behind him. The vehicle was intact, unlike Rafael's car, which had been abandoned at the end of the street.
"Get in. We only have a few minutes."
Arga didn't move.
Beside him, Elara's hand touched his wrist. Not to hold him back. Just to make sure he was still there.
Bima noticed the small gesture.
"Don't trust her," he said.
Arga looked at Elara.
"She already said the same thing about you."
A faint smile appeared on Bima's face, but there was no warmth in it.
"Good. That means she hasn't completely destroyed your instincts."
A gunshot rang out from the direction of the main road.
Elara flinched. Arga pulled her behind the wall. Stone fragments flew from the corner of the alley.
"Get in the car," Bima said. This time, his voice left no room for refusal.
He turned and raised his pistol toward the flames. Two shadows moved quickly through the smoke. Bima fired once. Someone fell beside Rafael's car.
Arga stared at him.
The man he'd found wasn't the lost father from the fairy tales of his childhood. He was someone who knew how to kill—and did it without hesitation.
Yet when Bima turned around, his eyes searched for Arga first.
"Don't stand there like a child waiting for permission," he said. "If you want to hate me, do it after we survive."
The words sounded too much like something Arga himself would say.
He hated the resemblance.
And still pulled Elara toward the car.
They climbed into the back seat. Bima sat in front, started the engine, and drove through the rain. The flames disappeared behind the rear window, but their reflection still clung to Arga's eyes.
Elara sat beside him. Her shoulder brushed Arga's every time the car turned. Neither of them spoke.
Up front, Bima drove with one hand.
"Ask," he said.
Arga stared at the back of his head. "What?"
"Everything you want to ask. Don't keep your questions in your head. That voice will fill it with false answers."
"The faceless man's voice?"
"Not a man."
The car ran a red light. The streets were empty.
"What do you mean?"
"The thing that comes to you in your dreams isn't human. That's the form it chose so it could speak to you."
Elara looked at Bima through the windshield. "How long have you been hearing it?"
"Twenty-three years."
Arga frowned. "Since I was born?"
"Since the night I stole Wiratama's money."
Bima turned onto an underground road with no signs. The metal door opened before the car approached, as if someone had been waiting for them.
"I never stole that money for myself," Bima continued. "I took it because Rafael was using the company to fund something no one was supposed to know about."
"What project?"
Bima didn't answer right away.
Elara lowered her head. Her fingers tightened around Damar's pendant.
"The Dream Project," she said.
A chill ran up the back of Arga's neck.
Bima looked at him in the rearview mirror.
"Rafael found a way to implant commands into someone's sleep. Not just dreams. Memories, fear, even desire could be directed."
"Why me?"
"Because since childhood, you've carried part of the results of that research inside your head."
Arga laughed soundlessly. "So this miserable life of mine was an experiment too?"
"No."
Bima's answer came too quickly.
"Your life became miserable because I tried to hide you. I erased your trail, severed every connection, and let you believe you had no one."
Arga stared at the back of the front seat.
"That's how you became a father?"
"That's how I kept them from finding you."
"And now they've found you."
"No." Bima met his eyes in the mirror. "Now they've found both of you."
The car stopped inside an underground garage. The metal door closed behind them. White lights flickered on one by one, revealing a vast room filled with screens, cables, and filing cabinets.
On one of the screens was footage of Arga sleeping in his cramped room.
Arga froze.
The video showed him from various angles. Sleeping, waking up, sitting on the edge of the bed, even talking in his sleep. The timestamps on the recordings were different, but all of them came from the past three weeks.
Elara approached another screen.
It showed footage of her in the greenhouse.
"How long have they been watching us?" she asked.
Bima shut off all the screens.
"Too late to count."
Arga turned to him. "You were watching us too?"
"Yes."
That honesty made Arga almost angrier than a lie would have.
"Why?"
"Because I needed to know whether the dream had changed you."
"And?"
Bima looked at Arga's hand, still clasped with Elara's.
"The result is that you're doing exactly what it wants."
Elara let go of Arga's hand.
That small distance felt like a wound freshly opened.
Bima walked to a table in the corner of the room. He took a brown folder and set it in front of Arga.
"Open it."
Arga didn't touch it.
"I've opened enough envelopes for people who wanted to control me."
"Then open this one because you want to know the truth."
"How do I know it's the truth?"
"You don't." Bima sat down. "That's the worst part of being human."
Elara stood behind Arga. Her voice was low when she said, "Open it, Arga."
He turned. "You trust him?"
"No."
"Then why?"
"Because I'm more afraid of what's inside your head than what's inside that folder."
Arga opened the folder.
The first page contained a photograph of a baby.
He recognized the cloth bracelet around the baby's wrist. It was the same bracelet he'd once found in his adoptive mother's box of old belongings.
Written beneath the photo were the words:
Subject A-17. Response to dream suggestion: successful.
The next page contained brain scans, medical notes, and Rafael Wiratama's signature.
On the last page was another photograph.
Elara, around ten years old, stood beside a hospital bed. On the bed, young Arga slept with wires attached to his head.
Arga's world shrank to a single photograph.
He looked at Elara.
The girl didn't deny it.
"Back then," she said quietly, "I didn't know who you were."
"Back then?"
"I only knew there was a boy who was always sleeping in the next room."
"And you never asked?"
"I did ask."
"And?"
"They told me you were sick."
Arga slammed the folder shut.
"You saw me."
"I was a child too."
"You saw me."
Elara took his anger without backing away. Her eyes were wet, but her voice remained calm.
"Yes. I saw you. And every time I came, you called my name in your sleep."
Arga was speechless.
Elara stepped closer.
"Not because you knew me. Because they taught you to look for me."
The room suddenly felt too small.
Bima stood and opened a desk drawer. He took out a silver car key and placed it on top of the folder.
"Tomorrow night, Rafael will move the entire Dream Project archive."
Arga looked at the key.
"Why tell me?"
"Because you're the only one who can open the place where it's stored."
"How?"
Bima looked at him with an utterly exhausted expression.
"By dreaming."
The room lights went out.
In the darkness, the faceless man's voice appeared right beside Arga's ear.
"Don't trust your father."
This time, Arga didn't answer the voice.
He took Elara's hand again.
In the distance, the screens that had been shut off lit up at the same time.
The same image appeared on all of them: the luxurious house from Arga's dream, a long table, a white envelope, and an empty chair.
Then the chair filled.
Not with Arga.
With Elara.
On the screen, Elara turned toward the camera and whispered:
"If you enter my dream this time, don't wake me."
Arga stared at the girl beside him.
Elara looked just as shocked.
Then something shifted inside the folder.
A new photograph slid out without anyone touching it.
It showed Arga and Elara standing before an altar, dressed in black.
Behind them, Bima lay dead.
And beneath the photograph was tomorrow's date.