The photograph was still in Arga’s hand when every screen went dark.
The date beneath the image looked like a fresh wound carved into paper. Tomorrow. Not some distant prophecy. Not a threat that could be put off until they found the courage. Tomorrow was the distance between tonight and Bima’s body lying behind the altar.
“Don’t go to sleep,” Bima said.
Arga lifted his face. “You know about this photograph?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not lying.” Bima looked at the photograph, then at Elara. “But I know what will happen if you fall asleep unprepared.”
Elara stood beside Arga. Her face was still pale from seeing the image, but her hands had stopped shaking.
“He’ll enter my dream,” she said.
Bima didn’t deny it.
Arga looked at him. “Why do you look like you’ve been waiting for this?”
“Because everyone who has ever touched the Dream Project eventually sees their own death.”
The room was lit once again by red emergency lights. The glow made Bima’s face look older. Beneath it, the cables running from screen to screen resembled black roots breaking through the floor.
Arga dropped the photograph onto the table.
“If you know everything, tell me now.”
Bima stared at him for a long moment, as though choosing which truth would do the least damage.
“I didn’t steal Rafael’s money,” he said. “I stole the core of the machine used to control dreams.”
“Then why does everyone say you stole his money?”
“Because Rafael needed a lie that was easier to believe than the real crime.”
Elara approached the table. “Where’s the machine?”
Bima lifted his chin toward the silver key.
“In the place you’ll go tonight.”
Arga stared at the key. Its metal was dull, but at the tip was a small engraving shaped like a closed eye.
“You said Rafael moved the archives tomorrow night.”
“That’s right.”
“Now you’re saying I have to go in tonight?”
“The archives can only be opened by someone connected to the machine. You.”
“And if I refuse?”
Bima sighed. “You’ll keep dreaming anyway. Only this time, you won’t be able to tell which is a door and which is a trap.”
Elara picked up the photograph from the table. Her gaze stopped on Bima’s dead body behind the altar.
“Why am I there?”
“Because he needs you as an anchor.”
“An anchor for what?”
Bima looked at Arga. “To keep you inside the dream.”
Something in Arga’s chest hardened.
“So he’s going to use Elara to trap me?”
“Not him.”
Bima pointed to the largest screen.
The screen lit up without a sound.
An old recording appeared. A white room, two small beds, and a young woman standing between them. Arga recognized her face from an old photograph belonging to his adoptive mother. His mother.
On the bed to the left, young Arga slept with cables attached to his head.
On the right, young Elara sat hugging her knees.
The woman bent between them, then pressed two fingers to each child’s temple.
“Look at me,” said the voice from the recording.
Young Arga opened his eyes.
So did young Elara.
They looked at each other.
Then the screen filled with static.
Elara took a step back.
“That’s my mother.”
“She wasn’t a patient,” Bima said. “She worked for Rafael.”
“No.”
“She was the one who connected your minds.”
Elara turned to Arga. “I don’t remember.”
“Because that memory was hidden.”
“Who hid it?”
Bima didn’t answer.
Arga looked at the photograph of his mother on the screen. For the first time, the face he had kept as the only gentle part of his childhood felt like a door locked from the inside.
“Rafael?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Bima looked at Elara.
“Elara.”
The girl froze.
“Me?”
“When you were ten, you asked your mother to erase that part of your memory.”
Elara gave a soft laugh. Her voice was barely audible.
“I was just a child.”
“Children can still tell when someone is trying to take something from their heads.”
Arga looked at Elara. “What did you take?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bima said you asked her to.”
“I don’t know!” Elara turned on him. “I don’t remember anything except that white room. I don’t remember seeing you. I don’t remember calling your name.”
“You’re always there in my dreams.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Elara gripped the Damar pendant. “Because every time you dream about that house, I hear it too.”
Silence descended between them.
Not an empty silence. It was filled with two childhoods ruined by adults, with feelings that might not belong to them at all, and with the question of whether love could grow inside minds once implanted with commands.
Bima took a small device from the drawer. It looked like an old cassette player with thin wires and two metal disks.
“Wear this when you sleep.”
Arga looked at the device. “Together?”
“If you want to enter the same place.”
Elara looked at him. “And if we don’t?”
“The machine will take you there anyway. This device only gives you a chance to choose the entrance.”
Arga almost laughed.
“A chance to choose a door inside a dream. Sounds like fake freedom.”
“All freedom starts as a small choice.”
Bima placed the two metal disks on the table. “Never follow a voice calling your name. Don’t open the white door. And if you see that altar—”
“Don’t go near it,” Elara cut in.
Bima nodded. “Don’t let Arga sit in the empty chair.”
Arga looked at the photograph.
“Why?”
“Because once he sits down, the dream will think you’ve already chosen.”
Bima prepared two beds in the corner of the room. A long cable between them connected the small device to the main screen.
Elara stood beside Arga.
“If I change inside the dream,” she said, “don’t believe anything I say.”
Arga looked at her. “The same goes for me.”
“No. You have to believe me.”
“Why?”
“Because if I ask you to leave me, it probably won’t be me.”
“And if you ask me to stay?”
Elara met his eyes.
“That’s exactly what you should doubt.”
Arga wanted to ask more, but Elara had already lain down. She pressed the metal disk to her temple and closed her eyes.
Arga took the bed beside hers.
Between them, Elara’s hand reached across the narrow gap.
Arga took it.
Bima stood by the switch.
“Once you’re in, find the mansion,” he said. “There will be three doors in the dining room. The black door will take you to the archives. The red door will take you back into the past. The white door—”
“Must not be opened,” Arga and Elara said together.
Bima looked at them with an unreadable expression.
“Don’t trust anyone who looks alive in there.”
The lights went out.
The device came alive with a low hum. The sound entered Arga’s head like water seeping through a crack.
Elara’s fingers tightened around his.
“Arga,” she whispered.
“Yes?”
“If we make it out…”
She stopped.
“If we make it out, what?”
“Don’t let me go just because you finally find the truth.”
Arga felt something move behind his eyelids.
“I never held on to you because of the truth.”
“Then why?”
He never got the chance to answer.
The world collapsed without a sound.
Arga stood inside the mansion from his dream.
A long table stretched before him. A white envelope sat on a porcelain plate. The chandelier glowed, even though there was no electricity. At the far end of the room, three doors waited: black, red, and white.
Elara stood beside him, wearing the same black dress as in the photograph.
But this time, her hand wasn’t holding Arga’s.
In front of the altar that had appeared beyond the dining room, Bima was kneeling.
Blood flowed from his chest.
Arga ran toward him.
“Don’t!” Elara screamed.
Too late.
Bima lifted his face.
He smiled.
“Go home, Arga.”
The blood on the floor moved against its natural direction, crawling back into his body. Bima’s face slowly changed, becoming the face of the faceless man—a blank surface with only two dark holes remaining.
Elara pulled Arga back.
But the white door was already open.
A woman’s voice came from inside.
Arga’s mother’s voice.
“My son, you’ve finally brought Elara home.”
Behind them, the empty chair shifted on its own.
Someone sat down in it.
Not Arga.
Not Elara.
His mother, with tears streaking her face and a small pair of scissors in her hand.
She looked at her son.
“Now,” she said, “choose which one of you I should kill so you can wake up.”