The city lights danced on his car's windshield, but Ethan didn't see them.
His eyes were staring at the road, but his mind was somewhere else, trapped in a sterile white room, replaying those damned words over and over.
Asset 'Chloe'. Natural Conductor. Asset abandoned after familial interference (Brother, Ethan)... Passive monitoring.
"Passive monitoring..."
He whispered the two words into the silence of the car, a bitter taste in his mouth.
They weren't just words; they were a judgment, a condemnation of him and his ignorance.
They were there the whole time.
Watching. Recording.
While he was drowning in his grief and helplessness, they were analyzing his tragedy as data in a report.
When he finally reached his apartment, he slammed the door shut behind him and threw his keys onto the table with a sharp clatter.
The relative calm he had begun to get used to in this place had turned into a feeling of suffocation.
These walls were not a sanctuary; they were a cage.
He moved through the room like a wounded animal, rage boiling in his chest like acid.
He saw the cold cup of tea he had left earlier.
In a flash, he grabbed it and hurled it with all his might against the wall.
Shards of porcelain and brown liquid scattered everywhere, but the violent sound of the crash did nothing to quell the storm raging inside him.
He leaned against the opposite wall, slowly sliding down until he was sitting on the floor, and ran his hands over his face.
"Calm down... Calm down, Ethan," he told himself, his inner voice as sharp as a whip. "Anger will make you make mistakes. It will make you reckless. And they are waiting for you to make a mistake. Waiting for you to show up clearly on their radar. I will not give them that satisfaction."
He forced himself to breathe deeply. Inhale... Exhale.
Coldness was his weapon. Clarity was his shield.
He stood up, ignored the mess he had made, and went straight to his laptop.
He inserted the encrypted drive, feeling the small click that confirmed the connection.
"Alright, 'Somnus'," he whispered to the computer. "Let's see what else you're hiding."
He spent the next few hours devouring the data.
He was no longer reading it as a victim, but as a predator studying its prey.
Every technical report, every spreadsheet, every encrypted email—he analyzed it, searching for a pattern, for a weakness.
Then he reached the most important file. The list.
"List of Potential Conductors." Fifty names. Fifty lives.
And next to each name, cold, impersonal notes.
"You're not just an archived file, are you, Chloe?" he thought as he saw her name again. He ran his finger over the screen, as if touching a ghost. "You were a perfect candidate... but I was 'emotional interference.' I ruined their experiment."
A bitter, cold smile formed on his face.
"At least I did one thing right without even knowing it."
Then he looked at the other names.
Maya Alcott, an art student. David Chen, a programmer. Sarah Quinn, a musician.
Ordinary names, for ordinary people, who had no idea they were standing on the edge of a precipice, that a multi-billion-dollar corporation considered them nothing more than natural resources to be harvested.
"They were going to do to you what they did to her," he whispered, his voice filled with an icy chill. "They would turn your nightmares into data, and drain your minds until there was nothing left. No. Not while I'm here. I will not be helpless again."
And here, in the late-night silence of his apartment, the plan was born.
Not a plan of blind revenge, but a new creed, a new war on his own terms.
He leaned back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the list. He began to think aloud, his whispering voice breaking the silence.
"Okay... so these are the rules of the new game. They hunt. And I hunt. But we're not looking for the same thing. They're looking for 'Conductors' to use as tools. And I... I'm looking for them to save them?"
He paused for a moment, thinking about the word. "Save them." It sounded too noble, too naive.
"No, not saving," he corrected himself. "I can't just show up in their lives and say, 'Hi, your nightmares are real and an evil corporation is after you.' They'd put me in a mental asylum."
"So, what's the plan?" he asked himself. "I can't protect all of them in the real world. But I don't have to. I'll fight on my turf. In the dream world."
The plan began to take clearer shape in his mind.
"They send nightmares to test and weaken them. And I... I will send them a coach. I'll be their own personal 'boogeyman,' but I'll be on their side."
"I will find them before they do," he said louder, as if making a vow. "I will enter their dreams. I will find the nightmare that haunts each one of them. But instead of chasing it away, I will teach them how to face it themselves."
He began to feel a thrill seeping through the coldness of his anger. It was a bold, powerful idea.
"I will teach them how to build their mental walls. I'll show them that the dream is their world, and they make the rules. I'll give them the weapon I never had when I was in their place. I will turn their prey... into hunters. A small army of lucid dreamers, hiding in plain sight, each one a thorn in Somnus's side."
He turned back to the list. "First step: choose the first target. Not randomly."
He searched for someone showing signs of imminent danger. Someone who was suffering now. Someone Somnus had described as a "prime candidate for stimulation."
"Maya Alcott," he read her name aloud. "Art student, twenty years old. Recurring nightmares of paralysis and being chased. They're getting her ready. She's the next victim."
He had found his first mission in his new war.
He stood up and stepped away from the computer. He had the plan, he had the target. Now, it was time to prepare for the dive.
This time, he didn't feel like a thief or a surgeon. He felt something entirely new. A feeling of absolute purpose.
He stood in the middle of the room and closed his eyes, summoning the name and the faint image from the information he'd gathered on Maya. He wasn't thinking about revenge for himself, but about preventing history from repeating.
He opened his eyes and looked at his faint reflection in the dark window glass. He didn't see the indebted Ethan or the hired Morpheus.
He saw something else taking shape.
A shepherd, preparing to protect his flock from wolves.
"They left my sister broken," he whispered to his reflection. "I won't let them touch another girl."