The wind whipped across my body. I kept staring straight ahead. The relentless heat had given way to a cool change, and I let it roll across me. I hit the accelerator and my hover bike surged forward, the sand and dust whipping up violently behind me.

  I could see the others in my periphery. Nobody wanted to talk, we just needed to get out of that place. We had to find a portal. Was it going to be possible to get Everett back? I didn’t want to think about it. I surged forward again, trying to outrun the demons tormenting my mind.

  I was angry. I was scared. My mind was racing at a million miles a minute. What did this all mean? I was, I was… really, really scared. I pushed my speed harder.

  I looked across to see Winsford pointing ahead, and as I looked I saw that the horizon was opening up. A line appeared between the pale gold of the sand and the Caribbean blue of the sky, a ribbon of a deeper blue. The ocean!

  We raced toward it, six ribbons of speed tearing across the sand. The desert landscape began tilting downward in front of us, and the ocean grew wider in our field of vision. Tufts of desert grass began to appear, and the formless desert tides began to cluster into mounds and pathways of sand and valleys without water.

  The ocean disappeared as the mounds rose higher around us, and we raced through the pathways between. It wasn’t long before we shot out again onto an open beach. The sand was white, and it stretched endlessly into the distance in either direction. We pulled up and peeled our goggles off.

  Sitting back on my speeder, I closed my eyes and tried to relax for a moment. I could smell salt on the air, and the sound of the waves was soothing. Chen hopped off her bike and walked down to the water’s edge, her boots disappearing so she could walk barefoot.

  “Where to next, O Great Leader?” Ross asked.

  “The mission hasn’t changed. Find a portal, and get the hell out of here” said Winsford. “This place is pretty remote, and I don’t see any portals, so we keep moving until we find something else.”

  “Are we gonna talk about Everett?” said Chen, walking back in from the ocean’s edge.

  “I suggest we take a breather, collect our thoughts, and keep cruising along the beach. Something will come up” Winsford said, ignoring her comment.

  “A breather?” Ross said, “Everett just got dragged down unto a preconscious nightmare by in invincible lynch mob and you want to take a breather?”

  Winsford didn’t look at him. He was scanning the beach, eyes tracking the distant curve of the shoreline.

  “We don’t know what happened to Everett,” he said. “Speculating won’t help us find a way out. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we can figure out what happened to him, and I see no reason to believe we won’t be able to get him back.”

  Chen folded her arms. “What if it happens to someone else? What if it happens to all of us?”

  Simon swung one leg off his bike and stood, brushing sand from his sleeves. “It wasn’t random,” he said. “Whatever it was that happened to Everett will happen again.”

  “Simon says… we’re all gonna get eaten by our own brain!” Ross exclaimed. “We had a zombie inside us all along, who knew?”

  Simon’s mouth twitched upward.

  Chen looked at each of them in turn. “So what—this place is just going to pick us off one by one?”

  Winsford finally turned. His expression as calm and controlled as ever. “We keep moving, we find a way out. That’s the plan. The sooner we do that, the less chance there is of anything like Everett happening again.”

  “Besides,” he continued, “the guy was a retired Navy Seal. I don’t think any of us have trauma like that in our background. We’ll probably be fine.”

  Simon let out a quiet, humourless laugh. “Very comforting, Winsford. Very comforting. I’m sure it’ll be great. Until it’s not.”

  Winsford’s eyes narrowed.

  I cleared my throat. “So… left or right?”

  We looked up and down the endless beach. No landmarks. No variation. Just white sand and blue water.

  “Pick a direction,” Ross said. “Not like it’s gonna make a difference.”

  “We go left”, Winsford said, “Ross is right for once. It doesn’t make a difference. Let’s go. Stick together.”

  Chen hesitated. “And if someone starts… slipping?”

  Winsford’s answer came a beat too fast. “Then we manage it. Let’s get moving,” he said.

  As I moved to pull my goggles on, I glanced over at the dunes behind us. My heart caught in my throat as I saw a figure standing, no crouching, in the distance. Everett? For a second it looked like him. No. It looked like a… wolf, or a wolf-man. Then it was gone. There was something familiar about it.

  “Cailin?” Chen asked, rolling up beside me as the others pulled away, “What is it?”

  “I… nothing. I thought I saw something, but it’s nothing. Let’s go.” My engine hummed to life, and we pulled away to catch up to the others.

  The speed was good. Didn’t need to think about anything. Just endless sand, blue ocean, and the speed. I sourced some headphones and played some Enya as my cruising mix. She’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but when she gets it right, she gets it right.

  I listened to the sounds. I watched the waves pass by and fade behind me. My hair whipped in the wind. I was still alive. And then I saw it in the distance. It was like the sea that appeared, a split in the horizon – but something different this time. Something grey and long. It spanned the entire horizon! It was huge, and getting bigger.

  We kept racing forward, I realised it was some kind of stone structure, or a wall. Or something. It spanned straight into the ocean. It must have been hundreds of metres high, and it ploughed straight into the ocean and kept going right into the horizon. I spanned in the other direction with my gaze. Same story, except on land. It was like a man made mountain range on the border of our desert.

  As we approached, I could see a massive doorway straight ahead. It was wide, impossibly tall. Worn edges, and great Babylonian stairs leading up out of the sands of the beach.

  As we pulled up at the stairs themselves, we slowed to a stop and got off our hover bikes. The cavernous opening towered above us.

  “Who the frick builds this stuff?” Ross muttered.

  “Sophie” Winsford said. “What is this?”

  “The entire VR realm in the subconscious casts and draws from the minds of its users. Our last location drew from Everett, this may be amalgamation, a random combined generation, or possibly – like last time – a specific manifestation drawing on one particular member of the party.”

  “Ok”, Winsford said, “before we go in: Is this familiar to anybody?”

  We all looked at each other. No one said anything.

  “Good. Then maybe this will be a bit more normal than last time, and hopefully we’ll find a portal inside. Let’s go.”

  As he started up the steps, we followed on behind.

  At the top of the ancient, Solomonic stairs, we didn’t find what we expected. It was not sandstone but tiles made out of some kind of vinyl. Cheap, chess-board coloured, vinyl tiles that looked like they came straight out of a public high school corridor.

  At the far end was a pink door. Bright, hot pink.

  “Well this is weird” said Ross.

  Winsford began marching purposefully across the epic high school vinyl tiled courtyard, his footsteps clipping and echoing off the vaulted sandstone cavern around us. We followed him, making straight for the door.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  We paused for a moment in front of the door, it’s only feature was a light blue door handle, as bright in blue as the door itself was in pink.

  “Sophie” Winsford say. “Any chance this is a portal? Or something risky?”

  “Unlikely” she said. “Portals in and out of the subconscious usually have a ‘tell’ indicating something unusual. Most likely, this is a regular feature in the environ.”

  Click.

  He opened the door, and we stepped through into a corridor. The chess-board flooring continued, but the surrounds were much less exotic. It looked like a normal hallway, wider than usual, with a normal wooden door at the far end. There was a window on the right hand side, and another wooden door on the left hand side midway down.

  We walked in cautiously, peering out the window into a grassed garden courtyard.

  Click – Crrreaakk. We all turned to see the door at the far end opening, as a figure walked through and pulled it shut behind him. He was the most odd-looking and comical person I had ever seen.

  He wore a battered top hat that seemed a size too large for his head, festooned with cards, pins, and a bright red ribbon. Wild grey hair burst out from beneath it in every direction, framing a grin on his unshaven face. His eyes were a glassy shade of unfocused blue. His tailcoat bright purple, his trousers matching the black and white chess patterns of the flooring, and his bow-tie was a shocking shade of green.

  “Well hello there!!” he said, gesturing expansively. “Welcome to Simon’s mind palace!!” We all turned to look at Simon, who remained expressionless.

  “Excellent!” the strange man exclaimed. “You’ve already remembered! That will save us time” he said.

  “Simon… what is this?” Ross asked.

  Simon sighed. “Apparently we’ve managed to find our way into one of the far corners of my mind palace. Though it’s never been occupied by the Mad Hatter before.”

  “Wait”, said Chen. “If our last location was a place from Everett’s past, and now we’ve landed in something from Simon’s mind specifically. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. We should turn back.”

  We turned on instinct to look back at the pink door, only to find that it was gone! There was nothing but a blank wall!

  With a sharp clap of his hands, the Mad Hatter drew our attention back.

  “Come come!” he said, “Forward is the only direction that ryhmes!!”

  “Did you know?” Chen asked.

  We paused for a moment, all eyes turning on Simon.

  “I… yes. As soon as I saw the pink door, I knew” he said.

  “Dude!! Why didn’t you tell us?” Ross exclaimed.

  “Isn’t it obvious? Our subconscious is shaping the environ down here, and there’s nothing we can do about. You can’t change it here any more than you can in the real world. I’m clearly next, end of story. Why waste time trying to run from it? Even if we didn’t come through the door, the Mad Hatter would have found me one way or another” said Simon.

  The Mad Hatter leaned in conspiratorially, lowering his voice to a whisper that somehow echoed anyway. “He’s right, you know. Poor emotional planning will ruin us all!” he said.

  “Wasn’t your call, Simon. You pull something like that again, and you’re done.”

  For the first time since I’d met him, Simon actually laughed. “Done? We’re all done, Winsford. You just don’t see it yet. None of you do.”

  “Still,” the Mad Hatter chimed in brightly, producing a chipped teacup from absolutely nowhere, “if we’re going to spiral into existential doom, would anyone care for a cup of anxiety? It’s decaf, but the dread is positively bottomless.”

  Winsford held him with a glare for a moment, before striding for the door.

  “Suit yourself. Let’s get this over with.”

  “Wait… aren’t we even going to try the door to the left?” Ross asked.

  “No point. There’s nothing there” said Simon.

  “Quite right! Quite right! Onward and upward!! Follow the plastic leader! But it must be said, at least he’s being honest. BAHA!” The Hatter danced a jig as we followed on after Winsford.

  As we entered the next room we found a dim, very ordinary looking archive. Its walls lined floor to ceiling with filing cabinets etched with dates, names, and numbers too small to read. Long tables ran through the centre, covered in meticulous stacks of notes and diagrams mapped so precisely they felt more like autopsies than recollections. Somewhere overhead, a single clock ticked steadily.

  “Gah!!” Ross jumped. Placed neatly on the shelving in the midst of the otherwise normal filing cabinets was a tall dressing table with a massive glass jar on top. A deformed face with tentacles was swimming inside! It’s pallid face was slack, with milky white eyes.

  “Mind palace. Needs to be memorable. Don’t ask” said Simon, as he strolled past Ross.

  “It’s fine. Just… threw me when it made eye contact” he said, followed with muttering: “Gonna have nightmares for weeks. Sheesh.”

  “May as well follow me. There’s no way you’ll never get out of this place by yourselves. C’mon” said Simon, as he made his way through the door at the far end of the archive.

  What followed was the most bizarre experience of my entire life. One room bled into the next, then into ten more, each one a mnemonic hook for the unfathomable workings of Simon’s mind. We walked through a butcher’s shop where memories hung skinned and labeled by prime number; there was a cathedral at one point built of filing cards instead of stone, its saints replaced by obscene wax figures. We walked though a children’s playground where every swing traced a different decade of Simon’s life, the rusted chains screeching with dates he recited without looking.

  We walked, then climbed, then descended without noticing when our legs should have failed, and all the time the clock’s ticking followed us. At intervals the Mad Hatter reappeared, leaning out of walls or unfolding himself from furniture, offering what commentary he pleased (“Ah yes, this corridor! Excellent for remembering dead languages and dead ideals!”) before vanishing again in a flutter of cards and laughter.

  Simon moved through it all with practiced boredom, stepping over grotesqueries without a second glance. Whether it was hours or days, I don’t know, but at last we arrived at a what looked like a vaulted safe, like the sort of ones you see in movies. A massive round, steel door, with pulleys and a turning wheel.

  Simon looked at it for a moment, the perplexity on his face marking the first expression he’d shown for hours.

  “Hello. This is new” he said.

  “What is it?” Winsford asked.

  “This is normally my entrance point. Not that you ever really enter a mind palace. It’s normally the front door of my childhood home. I’ve never used a bank vault entrance like this. Something’s going on” said Simon.

  “Sophie, what’s your read on this?” Winsford asked.

  Sophie regarded the vault door, her expression composed but intent.“This doesn’t appear to be a portal,” she said. “It would seem we’ve reached another tipping point rather than an exit point.” She glanced briefly at Simon.

  “Should we risk it? Or look for something else?” Ross asked.

  The Mad Hatter clapped his hands softly, grinning. “Oh, do go in!” he chimed, eyes glittering. “Do let’s! Tipping points are always where the tea spills from!”

  “We don’t have a choice” said Simon. “My mind palace is like a burial vault. I always work downwards. You’ve just travelled across some of the outskirts of the top layer. There are no other exit points anywhere near here, and we can’t make any new ones. Even if we went to one of the other ones, I’d be willing to bet something like this will turn up anyway.”

  “Let’s get this over with. Might even find a way out of this mad house” Winsford said, turning the wheel with a great clanking noise. The door slowly began to slide its way open.

  “Onward!” the Hatter declared. “But be careful not to start forming sentences. Terrible habit to be stuck in, forming sentences” he said, taking off his hat and shaking his head mournfully.

  “No!” said Chen, “What’s to say that we won’t experience exactly the same kind of thing that happened to Everett? There has to be another option!”

  “Another option?” he sang. “Why, if there were one, it would have bolted the doors, swallowed the key, and called itself freedom already!”

  “He’s right. We don’t have a choice. Only way is through” said Simon.

  “Besides” the Hatter whispered conspiratorially, “Everybody knows we want to find out what happens to our plastic leader. It’s gonna be a doozy!”

  Winsford spun at that, casting a throwing knife and hurling it at the Mad Hatter in one fluid motion. As the weapon struck, the Hatter exploded in a burst of feathers. His laughter echoed as he disappeared.

  “That guy is getting on my nerves” Winsford said.

  As we walked in to the room, we gasped. The vaulted ceiling rose above us, resting on towering arches of carved stone. Every surface was dense with ancient symbols and geometric patterns. Gilded chests lay scattered along the walls, cracked open to reveal coins, chalices, and relics that caught the light with a muted, almost embarrassed gleam. Enormous pillars wrapped in spiralling script held up a ceiling lost in shadow. Heavy chains and tattered banners hung in the gloom.

  In the centre of the room we found the most absurdly out of place object imaginable. A plain steel elevator, all brushed metal and hard, sharp angels. It’s doors were open, and it’s fluorescent light buzzed, spilling out onto the medieval pathway.

  “Huzzah” said Ross, “the door didn’t close on us or disappear this time.”

  I looked back, he was right. I’d almost expected us to get trapped in here, but there it was: door still open ready for us to turn around and walk away. I guess Simon’s subconscious didn’t think we needed it.

  “There’s only one way this ends” said Simon. “I’ve got to step in to the elevator. After that, the system should let you continue. Maybe you’ll have a chance to find a portal before it recalibrates to one of you. Remember: my mind palace is essentially a vault. My levels work downward. Don’t go downward. Keep moving forward, stay on this level. On the other side there’s a forest – maybe even right on the other side of this cavern. If you can get through to it you’ll be out of my mind palace, and then it will be up to you again. That’s all I’ve got. Once I step into the elevator, the system will have what it wants: me. Maybe Winsford’s right, maybe you will find a portal.”

  “Gone??” Chen shouted, “You’re not going, Simon! We’re not leaving you behind!!”

  “She’s right, dude” I said. “We can’t just walk away.”

  “You have to. It’s the Hotel California. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Even if we tried something else, this was always going to happen. Why do you think there was heat in the desert? We’re being set up by our own subconscious mind to go exactly where none of us want to go. And there’s nothing we can do about it. Right now, it’s my turn.”

  “Chen” Winsford said. “He’s right. This place is custom designed to bring him in. If Simon doesn’t go, none of us are getting out of here anytime soon” he said. “Besides, this isn’t the end. We’ll find a way out, then we’ll find a way to bring back Everett and Simon.”

  “BAHA!!” the Mad Hatter excalimed from behind us, “Everett. Schmeverett. Peverett, weather it!”

  “Chen. Peterson” Simon swallowed. “Ross”, he said, looking over at Ross. “This has been a blast. I won’t forget you guys. I’ve never had many friends. Maybe see you soon, yeah?” He looked down at the floor as he spoke.

  “I… I have to go.” he said. “I hope you get out. I really do. But...well…” he pulled at the collar at his neck. “Nobody really escapes, do they? May as well be here.”

  He stepped forward, into the elevator.

  “I… I’m…”

  SCCHHHWWIIIIPPP.

  The doors closed, and Simon was gone.

  BING.

  They reopened, and we looked in, half expecting him to still be there.

  But he wasn’t.

  Chen broke down in tears.

  I pushed my hand through my hair and turned away.

  Ross swore.

  Four left.