Calina didn't understand why Dr. Ricks was asking so many questions. She tried to think and looked around the room. It was a double room, but the curtains hid its other occupant. She got up, curious. Needing something to do while she figured out what to say, she drew back the curtain. The other patient was a man, very thin, almost wasted away. His face was screwed up and he was sweating, dreaming fretfully. Calina looked closer, there was something about his face...

"Excuse me!" Dr. Ricks rushed to the curtains and closed them in front of Calina's face. She winced; she had never seen him do something so brash like that. "I asked you a question, Calina. What happened to the big man? Who was he? What did he look like? Why did he..."

But Dr. Ricks' incessant voice seemed to dissipate as that unusual feeling of heat pierced through Calina's skin and into her very organs. It stole her breath, her control over her body. She stumbled this way and that, limbs convulsing, tearing down the curtains and knocking over a lampshade. Her thoughts were wordless; only mere sensations. The white room around her seemed to melt into two giant flames. But the core of one of the flames did not shine that dazzling white Calina loved to see. It was a darkness, a wavering darkness that flooded outward and through her body, towards that other flame, towards...

Nickolai.

Nickolai screamed. That voice. It pulsated his ears, hardened his fists, illuminated his hair, blackened his eyes. Nickolai tried to raise his arms and legs but couldn't: metal clamps hidden beneath his blankets caged him in. Bewildered, his eyes darted the room and landed on an entranced Dr. Ricks.

"You!" Nickolai howled. "Asriel, you did this to me!"

Dr. Asriel Ricks turned to him, and smiled.

Maximillian.

Max gently awakened. That voice. He breathed easily. From darkness into light, he thought, but soon, into darkness once more. Max slowly sat himself upright and gazed at Asriel. In a trance-like voice, he muttered one word: "Prophet."

Asriel's smile widened as he averted his attention to Nickolai's brother. "Flesh of my flesh, you have fully awakened." "Yes, Prophet, but it seems..." Max made a quick side-glance. "... my brother is still in transition."

Incredulous at the conversation before him, Nickolai craned his head toward the one who called him "brother." Could Nickolai still call him that? "Max," he heaved, "you can't be my Max. It couldn't have gotten to you. He couldn't have gotten to you! You're stronger than that, you're--"

"Under my command." Asriel interrupted. "Thanks to she who has raised you two from the sea, He is able to fully awaken Himself within you."

"No," Nickolai replied harshly. "You couldn't have found the... the Dragon."

"Comrade, like you, the Dragon has been under my watch since the day she first breathed." The Prophet smiled once more. "I have you to thank, actually, for guiding her back when you two were ready. Well... at least almost ready, in your case."

Her? No, it can't be... Nickolai's eyes fell instantly on the quivering girl sprawled across the ground between his brother's bed and his own. His irises swirled into an even darker black. Calina. He glared back at Asriel and gritted his teeth. "You bastard."

Asriel cackled. "Your father was the bastard, Nickolai. I am simply returning the favor."

The metal clamps clanked violently as Nickolai struggled to break free. "And this is your idea of revenge?" he bellowed. "You want the world's end?"

"Don't you, brother?" Max calmly replied. "Don't you want to help our doctor, our Prophet, cleanse this world of its disease? Purge the weak in the name of--"

"Max, snap out of it!"

"It is no use, Nickolai." Dr. Ricks responded in an almost reassuring way. "Besides, I would have asked your father the same question you asked me when he decided to keep you two alive."

And John wrote, "The great day of vengeance has come. Who can withstand it?"

Calina jerked awake, but she couldn't believe she was no longer dreaming. Her body ached in places she didn't know existed. The voices continued to throb in her mind. The flames still surrounded her, though now the one to her right shined an ash-like red, the one to her left the purest blackness. From darkness into darkness. The line between nightmare and reality had melted into darkness.

Phantasmagoria.

Calina...