Chapter 15 Shared Nightmares

Emma Stone - POV

Reality fractures around me like broken glass, each shard reflecting a different nightmare. I'm standing in the hallway of the Hendersons' house—my first foster placement—but the floral wallpaper bleeds actual roses that drip onto carpet made of children's screams.

"Emma." Marcus materializes beside me, but he looks twelve years old again, wearing the ratty Spider-Man shirt he had when Mrs. Patterson first introduced us. "Where are we?"

"Inside our bond," I whisper, reaching for his small hand. "We're trapped in our own fears."

The house shifts around us like a living thing, walls stretching and contracting with each breath. Through our psychic connection, I can sense the others scattered throughout this nightmare landscape, each fighting their own demons. Ryan's terror tastes like antiseptic and failure. Blake's fear smells like his mother's disappointed perfume. Cole's anguish feels like waking up covered in blood. Kai's panic sounds like colors screaming.

"I can hear them," Marcus says, his voice high and scared like I remember from our worst nights in foster care. "They're lost."

We move through the house, but every door leads to another trauma. The kitchen becomes the group home where older kids stole our food. The living room transforms into social services offices where caseworkers decided our fates without asking what we wanted.

Then I see him—Ryan, standing in what looks like a hospital corridor that stretches infinitely in both directions. But his face is wrong, aged beyond his years, and his hands shake as he stares at an empty gurney.

"Ryan." I call his name, but he doesn't respond. He's trapped inside his own nightmare, reliving every patient he couldn't save.

The corridor begins to dissolve, reforming into Blake's childhood mansion. But the elegant rooms are filled with people whose minds he's violated, their eyes reflecting the hurt of being manipulated by someone they trusted. Blake stands in the center of it all, his usual confidence cracked like a broken mirror.

"This isn't real," I shout, my voice echoing through the nightmare realm. "These are just fears. They're not who you really are."

One by one, they turn toward my voice. Ryan's medical detachment wavers as he recognizes our bond through the psychic chaos. Blake's calculating mask slips, showing the scared boy beneath. Cole emerges from shadows stained with blood he doesn't remember spilling. Kai stumbles forward, his synesthesia showing our connections as golden threads in the nightmare darkness.

We find ourselves drawn together in what looks like the original binding chamber beneath Blackwood, but twisted into something from a fever dream. The ritual circle burns with cold fire, and the stone walls weep tears that taste like betrayal.

"None of this is real," I tell them as they gather around me, their faces showing the strain of fighting their deepest fears. "But someone's been inside our heads, mapping every weakness, every trigger."

"Kane," Marcus breathes, his adult awareness returning as he recognizes the psychological manipulation. "She's been connected to us psychically, studying us like lab rats."

The nightmare realm flickers, and suddenly she's there—Dr. Kane standing in the center of the burning circle like she's been waiting for us all along. But here, with her mental defenses down, I can see her true nature. Psychic energy swirls around her like a crown of invisible fire, and her eyes hold the cold intelligence of a predator who's been playing with her food.

"Welcome to my laboratory," Kane says, her voice carrying harmonic undertones that make the nightmare realm pulse with power. "I've been studying your psychological profiles for months, mapping every fear, every vulnerability, every button I could push to control you."

"Let us out," Cole growls, but Kane's smile only widens.

"Gladly. The nightmare realm serves its purpose—you've all seen what you're truly afraid of, what drives you to make irrational decisions." She turns her attention to me, and I feel the weight of her manipulation like chains around my soul. "Emma, the choice is simple. Submit to the stabilization procedures willingly, and I'll release your friends from this place."

Through our bond, I can feel the others' immediate protest, but I also sense something else—the nightmare realm is draining them. Every second we spend trapped here pulls them closer to actual death.

"The procedures will destroy your abilities," Ryan's medical training lets him understand what Kane really means. "Emma, she's talking about surgical lobotomy of your psychic centers."

"But you'll all live," I whisper, the choice becoming clear.

I can see it in their eyes—they'd rather die than watch me sacrifice myself for them. But I've lost too many people already. I won't lose them too.

"I accept," I tell Kane. "I'll cooperate with whatever procedures you want. Just let them go."

Kane's triumph blazes across her features, but the moment I agree to her terms, something goes catastrophically wrong. Instead of dissolving, the nightmare realm begins collapsing inward like a dying star. The walls rush toward us with crushing force while reality tears apart at the seams.

"What's happening?" Marcus shouts over the sound of psychic space imploding.

Kane's expression shifts from victory to panic. "The realm should have dissolved when you agreed. Your willing compliance was supposed to end the construct, but—" She cuts off, her eyes widening with realization.

"The five-person bond," Blake says, understanding dawning in his voice despite the chaos around us. "It's rejecting any attempt to separate us. Even Emma's willing sacrifice."

The nightmare realm collapses faster, walls of fear and memory crushing inward. Kane's control over the psychic construct is failing completely, and I can feel the others' life forces being compressed along with the shrinking space.

"The bond won't let you take her," Ryan shouts over the collapsing reality. "It's treating your offer like an attack on all of us."

Kane's face twists with rage and desperation. "Then we're all going to die in here. The realm is destabilizing beyond my ability to control it."

The walls close in around us, made of every fear we've ever faced, threatening to crush us in a prison built from our own nightmares. Unless we find another way out—together—we're going to be trapped in this collapsing hell forever.