In the hours after combat, any number of physiological and psychological symptoms can manifest, and they are as different and varied between individuals as the sand on the sea shore. One soldier might experience perfect tranquility, finding in themself an inner peace that has never before manifested. Another soldier may find the opposite, that they are taken of some kind of manic energy that demands they keep moving despite how much they might wish to stop. Some may experience nightmares, while others sleep dreamlessly. Some may weep or scream, some may retreat inside themselves, and some may simple continue on as they had been before, seemingly unaffected.

But no matter the appearance, combat does have an effect on those who experience it. And it will take its toll, one way or another.

The Albright children, adopted and blood relations both… dreamed.

===============

Olivia Albright smelled again the smoke of the battle. She heard the screams, and tasted the blood on the air. In her dream she reached for the scrolls she knew her family needed to survive, but they slipped out of her grasp like they had been greased. Desperately she reached for them, but they skittered away from her clutching fingers.

No. I remember what we did. I know how this ends!

She opened her mouth to yell the orders that had saved them today, but instead of sound only a hoarse kind of wheeze came from her lips. She felt her eyes widen and fear clench around her heart. She tried again. And again. She felt something in her throat break with how hard she was trying to scream, but the nightmare would let no sound emerge.

She heard the screams

She watched as her family died around her.

She felt the blades as they came for her.

She woke up screaming, eyes wide and wild and stinging with tears. The sleeping bag around her twisted and constricted against her limbs, trapping her in place. She thrashed and writhed, trying to get out, trying to get away, trying–

"Easy Mija, easy. It's alright."

Strong hands found the zipper and tugged it down, freeing her sweat-soaked body to the open air. She clenched her eyes and sat up fast, bonking her head against Dad's chin as her arms wrapped around him almost desperately. His arms went around her, and she buried her face into his shoulder and wept like she had never wept in her life.

He held her until the shakes stopped.

It was a long time before they stopped.

==============

Lucas dreamed of power, of strength, of victory. The Mantises came for them again, and this time he stood in front of his family, next to his dad, and he forced them back. Dad's magic sword glowed golden, and Lucas wielded Mom's machine gun, blasting chunks out of the dozens, no, hundreds of bugs that were coming for them.

But none could reach them.

They were unstoppable. Nothing could touch them. With his dad, he stood against a horde of ravening monsters and kept them away from their family. It was glorious, it was epic. It was everything he could have ever wanted.

The dream shifted and jumped. He and his dad stood oer a mountain of mantis corpses. THey'd won, they'd survived! Working together, their family was safe from all harm!

And here came his sisters, wrapping their arms around them, their words garbled by the dream but their faces smiling and sunny with his triumph. And Dad clapped him on the shoulder. And Dinah was there, and she looked really good in that leather thing.

He turned his head, and there was Mom. And her face was the face of a Mosquito.

And his family held him in place as she lunged her beak right at his heart.

He woke up panting, cold sweat pouring off his body. He'd kicked his sleeping bag off and his cheek was pressed into the strange soft material of the nest bed. He struggled against a body that didn't want to move, that was still in shock from his dream-death. He managed to get one hand on the rim of the nest-bed, used it to pull himself up towards the edge.

Mom's hands closed over his and lifted him the rest of the way up. She sat on the edge of the nest and pulled her to him, and he clutched at her. He didn't cry. He wasn't going to give the dreams the satisfaction. But it must have been raining or something, because Mom's shirt was kinda wet by the time he felt strong enough to pull away.

========

Dinah Costigan dreamed of her house back in Mississippi. She sat on the old-fashioned porch swing her dad had put in when he still lived with them and swang back and forth, and watched the mosquito-monsters buzz and thrum around her front yard. Her pa swung beside her, his big rifle across his lap. Every now and then, he'd raise it up and fire off a shot, and a mosquito would explode into a cloud of sparks and flower petals.

"I figger'd I'd be more skeered," she said in her real voice. "Figger'd I oughta be, anyway."

"Aw," pa said, smiling through his big ol' beard. "Yer plenty skeered, punkin'. Yer just Mountain Tough, too. An' Mountain Tough trumps Skeered every time. Take a shot?"

Dinah felt herself grin and lifted her rifle up to her shoulder. It wasn't the one she'd fought the skeeters with, it was her rifle. The one Pa had bought for her on her tenth birthday. The one she'd learned to shoot with. The one Ma–Mom had taken away from her when they'd moved to California.

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She pulled the trigger, and a mosquito blew up into candy corn. Her favorite candy.

She was gonna miss candy corn.

"I miss you," she whispered, and the dream faded from pleasant and warm to just… there. Kinda like she'd been just there for those years after Mom took her away from Pa. Until she'd met Olivia. And things got… Better. Sorta. "And I don't know what to do now."

"Yes ya do, punkin'," Pa said, setting his big hand on her little head just like he'd done all those years.

"I ain't gonna fit in here Pa," she whispered, and the dream turned dark and shot through with reds and dark swirls. "I ain't never fit in nowhere except back home with you. I cain't hide no more. Not after that fight. Not after they saw how I shoot and how I'm… Different. An' now they're gonna see me, and I'm gonna get hurt again. Just like with Gramma and M–Mom. Only now there ain't no place for me to run no more. I'm stuck here, an' they're gonna hate me 'cause I'm so d-different from them."

Pa didn't have an answer. And when she turned, he was gone. All that was left was the porch swing and the rifle, his rifle, that he'd let her fire whenever she asked him. She leaned over and tried to pick it up, but her hand passed right through. And when she turned back, her backyard was gone, and all that was in front of her was darkness and the deep buzzing noise of skeeters and mantises as they came for her.

She brought her own rifle up… But couldn't make herself pull the trigger.

They're gonna see me.

She let the Mantises get her. She didn't fire another shot.

She woke and stared up at an alien sky, laying in an alien bed. She hadn't cried once during the whole dream. She hadn't felt fear, not even when the mantises got her.

The fear came when her eyes opened up, and with it came the tears.

They're gonna see me now.

There was nowhere she could run to, either. So she just lay there, and waited for whatever was going to come next. At least she was pretty sure they wouldn't kick her out or anything… The Albrights weren't like that. But… Well. There were always the looks. Or the little whispers. Or…

She closed her eyes, and let the Zone engulf her again. If all else failed, she could live here.

For as long as necessary.

===============

Isabel Albright found herself in the hall of doors. Again.

It was different this time. And it wasn't just a dream, either. She could tell that. Oh, she was asleep. And technically that probably meant that this was a dream… But it was also real. Like one of those… What did Liv call them… Lucid dream things.

And it was different too because this time she felt her Class. At least, she assumed that's what it was. It was a quiet humming power just beneath the surface of her thoughts. When she'd been in full berserker mode it had been a river of molten lava running through her veins. But now it was… Banked. Quieter. Like the warmth of a campfire or a fire in the fireplace of their old house back in California. It wasn't the constant, sterile heat of a gas heater, it was a living flame, twitching and shifting just past her awareness.

And it was here with her now, in the hall of doors.

She started walking, knowing that the hallway was endless, but wanting to move nonetheless. She couldn't tell if it was the fire or just… Everything else.

It had felt so good to let loose like that. To stop pretending, to stop giving a shit what anyone else thought and to just… act. Even better that in doing so she'd been able to save Liv and Luc like that. And to help her family. And… Well hey, she'd been the first one to unlock a Class, hadn't she? That had to count for something. No one else in the family had a Class yet. Well, except for Dinah, but she'd gotten that AFTER Bel had gotten hers, so she was still in the lead.

Not a freak.

She growled the thought away and kept walking. The hall wasn't straight like it had looked–or maybe it was, and it was her own perceptions that were skewed–and she found herself taking turns and swaying down looping lengths that she was pretty sure would have turned back on themselves if this had been a real place.

And as she walked, she wondered.

Why. Why was she the only one without that… Consul thing. Everyone else had gotten one, even Luc. And they'd all gotten what they were good at.

Was Luc right? Was it because she didn't know what she wanted? Didn't know herself? That… That could be…

The fire inside her roiled and flared at the thought, burning away the lie. No. No it wasn't true. She knew what she wanted. She knew what she was good at. It was hard to put into words, but she knew. She was the one who spoke up. Who called Mom on her bullshit. Who faced down Dad when he was lying to them. Who stood up and glared the truth right in the eye until it got ashamed of itself and came out from behind the curtain of lies it had been hiding behind.

She remembered a history class on Ancient Rome she'd taken once. Well, tell a lie, she didn't remember most of it. But she remembered this bit; whenever a general returned from his campaign–and it was always 'him', so much for gender equality in antiquity–there was always a parade. And when the parade was thrown, everyone would come out and there would be like a week-long party, and the general would lead the parade, and just drink in all the adulation.

And behind the general, there would be a slave, whose only job was to whisper 'remember you are mortal' into the general's ear.

That was her. Speak truth to power, don't take no shit off of anybody, stand up against those who'd force you down… Okay so she sucked at it. So she spent most of her time trying to fit in, trying to not be noticed, trying to just… Belong. But…

But. She knew it was there. At the core. Down in the bedrock. Others would have to dig to find it in her, and might not believe it when they found it… But she knew it was there.

She looked up from her thoughts when her feet stopped moving, and she found herself right in front of that rock wall again. There were doors to either side of it, and even the woodworking of the wall went right up to the rock. It looked, for all the world, like there should be a door here.

But there wasn't.

The fire inside her stirred, rose, flared. In her almost-dream, she gritted her teeth and glared at the rock wall like it had insulted her heritage. Her fist balled, and this time instead of reaching out for a door knob she lashed out with her knuckles. This time the rage rose with her, and when her fist hit stone it did so with authority.

[Berserker Arts: BREAK]

She drew back her fist and glared at the single tiny crack that had appeared in the rock. And then down at the single small scrap of rock dust that had drifted to the ground.

She hit it again. Another tiny crack. Another puff of dust. She glared. If she kept hitting it, she MIGHT destroy the rock in twenty years. Her and Andy Dufresne. It was probably useless. And it would probably end in nothing but pain.

She pulled on the fire inside her, and hit it again.

Another tiny crack. Another puff of dust.

Fuck it. Let's Shawshank this bitch.

Time to see what was behind Door Number One.

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