"Only the dead have seen the end of war."

- George Santayana

12:02 a.m

7 days earlier

Hanging onto the thread of consciousness, Tim breathed in deeply, hoping the influx of oxygen would give his brain the kick it needed to restart. Instead, all it gave him was a sharp headache that caused him to wince in pain. In pitch darkness, he was literally blinded. Attempting to feel his way around only forced the rope that tied his arms behind him to burn his wrist from the friction. He stopped moving once the discomfort set in. With his hands and back, he felt for the shape of what held him down. A metal angle iron at the hands and T-section joints along his spine shaped the outline of a metal shelf, with his arms tied at the legs of the structure.

Breathing a sigh of relief at the stupidity of whoever chained him, Tim tucked his legs to his body, keeping both feet flat against the ground. Digging his left shoulder into the metal bracket of the lowest shelf, he winced as the sharp edge sunk into his skin. With a heave, he began rising to his feet, using his body as a lever to lift the shelf off its legs.

“Argh...” he groaned through gritted teeth as the metal bit into his shoulder. “Come on. Come on!”

The shelf was heavier than he had initially thought. Even though he only needed to lift it an inch off the ground to slip his tied hands underneath and out, the weight of the furniture made the task backbreaking work. He felt the shelf starting to angle. Quickly, he shimmied his arms down the stand, pulling against it in an attempt to find the edge. He found it. With a steadied body and a growl that was between the sound of being constipated and a chain smoker's cough, he yanked hard, and his hands flicked free of the leg. The weight of the shelf crammed down on his shoulder and he was forced back onto his ass, the shelf thumping to the ground with a loud clank.

Bindings loosened, he quickly slipped out of the rope, immediately reaching over to message his left shoulder once freed. He could feel the indent in his skin from where the metal bracket held its place.

From outside the storage room, he could hear a man say, “What was that?”

“Shit,” Tim cursed out.

He quickly got to his feet and felt around for something he could use as a weapon. The long, cold body of a metal pipe found its way into his hand. At first touch, it had a length of about half a meter, enough to use as a bat. With a quick sweep of the weapon over the shelves, he sent everything on them crashing to the floor.

“Hey boss, I heard some crashing in the store. I'm gonna go check it out,” he heard from the man outside, followed by the jingling of keys.

“Right,” Pearlman's distorted voice replied over the radio. “Let me know what you find.”

Hastily, he scrambled to find the shelf leg he was tied to and sat back down with his hands behind his back, as if he was bound. The metal pipe hidden in the corner gap of the angle iron legs.

The door unlocked with a click and swung open, brightening the room with the dim light outside. Tim bent his head over so no one could see his eyes and pretended to be asleep. With a click, the lights turned on. Looking up to his peripherals, Tim saw Clay's unconscious body tied to a chair in the middle of the room.

A short burst of static emerged from the radio as it connected. “Hey boss. Just a bunch of boxes that fell over.”

Pearlman radioed back, “Copy that. Clean it up and get back to the truck. We'll leave in half an hour.”

Without replying, the henchman crossed the aisle of shelves past Tim. The teen turned his head slightly to see the mess he had made. Boxes of packages of Somnidin laid scattered on the floor. The tattooed man knelt down at the pile, putting them back into their boxes.

Slowly, with as much stealth as he could muster, Tim freed himself from his false binding, careful to grab his weapon without any noise as he did so.

“Shit!” Tattoo cursed, shocking Tim to freeze mid rise. “Package's damage,” the man muttered to himself, before pocketing the faulted medication. A self given bonus.

Tim silently got to his feet, just as the man stood up with a box of the medication. He turned, Tim raised the pipe to the shock of Tattoo. With a swing, Tim brought the weapon across the man's face, the thug dropping the box as he stumbled back from the strike.

Continuing his assault, Tim jumped over the box while the man pulled out a pistol from the back of his belt. He swung the pipe back, knocking the gun out of the man's hand before the latter had the chance to even get his finger on the trigger, the firearm clattering into a corner. Maniac with energy, the teen dropped another hit square on the man's forehead. However, his adversary did not fall, despite the blood that flowed profusely down his face. Another swing. Tattoo avoided with a step back. Rearing up, the man charged at Tim with his broad shoulder spearing the meeker teen in the gut.

Tim held his ground, striking the spine of the man again with his weapon, but stumbled back after the thug pushed against him. Tripping over the box that dropped behind him, Tim fell backwards onto the floor. The henchman mounted the youngster, reeling his hand back and, with pistons for muscles, punched Tim square on the nose.

He tasted the blood that seeped into his mouth, his nose creaking as it broke. But Tim knew that to worry about one injury now would only cost him his life. He pulled his weapon arm across his face, blocking another painful strike with his forearm. He countered with a backhand pipe across the man's temple. Howling in pain, the henchman was flung to the side by the force of the attack, rolling onto his back.

Tables turned, Tim mounted the man. With a burst of adrenaline and maddened survival instincts, he bashed the pipe repeatedly into the man's skull. Blood that were not his own splattered across Tim's face. The man kicked and struggled, but his entire body, arms included, were pinned under the boy. His strength sapped by his injuries.

Then, the kicking stop. But Tim's assault continued. His breathing heavy and erratic, but in tune with each strike. He continued to pummel the dead man's head.

XXX

12:32 a.m

7 days earlier

Stella sat in the corridor of the hospital in a wheelchair, having already changed out of her hospital robes into a clean set of green pleated skirt and a brown sweater. Her left leg, from the knee down was wrapped in a cast. The painkillers having long since taken effect, the pain in her leg was now just a bearable ache. Her strawberry blonde hair stood out like a cheery beacon in the otherwise gloomy pathway, though her feelings were as far from the happy hair colour as they could possibly be. Her parents, Matilda and Gordon, stepped out of the room opposite her.

The white haired housewife knelt down beside her, “The doctor said we can bring you home.”

Intuitively, Stella replied, “They don't have enough staffs left to take care of me here. Right?”

Her father sighed, “You and your brother. Too smart for your own good sometimes.”

She smiled weakly back. “Have they found him?” referring to Clay.

Matilda held her daughter's hand reassuringly. “The detectives are looking for him right now.”

Knowing there was nothing she could do in her injured state, Stella woefully nodded, a rare frown on her face.

Gordon continued, “Your mother and I are going upstairs to fill out your discharge forms. We'll be right back for you, okay?”

Stella nodded with a forced smile, enough to alleviate some worries from her parents. The two adults walked off, with her father ruffling her hair affectionately before doing so. She hated it when he did that.

Just when the two turned a corner into the elevator lobby, Stella's phone rang. She took it out from one of the inbuilt pockets of the wheelchair. It was an unknown number. Not feeling in the mood to entertain any telemarketers, she hung up. Before she even got the chance to keep her mobile, the same caller rang again.

Slightly annoyed but now curious, she answered the call with a stern, “Hello?” On the other end came a series of heavy breathing. When no reply came to her, she asked, “Who's this?”

After a short pause, Tim replied, “It's me Stell. I found Clay.”

“Oh my...” she almost stood up in her excitement, but remembered her injury in time. “Where are you two? Is he okay? Are you okay?”

“The answers to your questions are, 'I don't know', 'I'm not sure', and 'yes, sort of',” another short pause as Tim scrambled around on the other end. “We're in a storage locker. Those small ones, like a room sized. It's an hour and a half away from Westlay Street. That's all I have for you. You have to make it work.”

She replied earnestly, “I'll make it work,” noting mentally there were only three storage lot throughout the city.

“Good. I need to go. Got to see if I can get your brother out.”

Before he had the chance to hang up, she nervously asked, “How is he?”

He replied with half a dozen seconds of silence. “He's alive.”

“For now?”

Another period of quiet. “You'll see him again. I promise,” and he cancelled the call, leaving Stella to sit dumbfounded and alone in the corridor.

She took a deep breath to calm down, gathering back her focus. She scrolled through her contact list in her phone and dialled. The dial tone rang once. Twice. A third.

Halfway through the forth ring, the other side greeted her with a, “Hello?”

“Detective Hardy,” Stella said. “This is Stella Barber. I know where my brother is.”

“Great!” the detective replied.

But before he could continue, she cut in, “But there's one favour I need to ask of you.”

XXX

“Why are you doing this?” Clay asked The Brother. “You and that Father character?”

Still at the top of the maze that was slowly being filled with sand, he found himself in a standoff with the creature from another world.

“Tim said you could talk, so talk!”

The Brother merely stood opposite him. Neither of them moving from their position. Deciding to take a chance though, Clay took a step back, and The Brother followed with a step forward.

“What? You copying me now?” Clay decided to take a step forward. But instead of backing off, The Brother took another step closer instead, as if purposefully toying with him. “Okay, guess not.”

From the corner of his eyes, he could see the sand of the corridors having filled to merely a meter off from the edge. Though where the source of the granite was was a mystery, perhaps only known by the hunters of the dream world.

“Why are you doing this?” Clay asked again. Frustrated by the lack of progress, he yelled, “ANSWER ME!”

They continued their standoff in silence, and Clay was starting to wonder if The Brother could even think, let alone talk. Suddenly, Power. The crackling voice echoed within Clay's mind.

“What?” the teen replied, shocked.

I. Need. Power.

“Why? Why do you need power?”

To. Be. Strong. To. Win.

Clay processed the message in his mind. After a second of thinking, he let out an unwilling chuckle. “Hah...” he started, but could not hold back as he burst out in a fit of laughter. “Hahahah! Heh hahahah!'

What. Is. So. Funny?

“It's a power trip! That's retarded! What are we? In a movie or something?” Clay said in energetic mania. “So you lost your little baseball game in the real world and died. So now you want power! You're just another classic, B-rate, movie monster. And you don't even have a good backstory.”

The Brother took a step forward, raising its bat at being antagonized.

Unfazed by the threat, Clay continued, “Don't you get it, kid? You're dead! There's nothing left to win,” he took a step forward towards his adversary. The Brother however, did not react. The sand had reached their level. “Time to stop dreaming, Brother! No. Harrison Smith.”

In a literal blink of his eyes, the entire dream world vanished before him and was replaced by the dimly lit storage locker he was held in. However, his bindings had been removed, liberating him from the chair. The body of the dead tattooed henchman laid on the floor to his right, face pummelled in beyond recognition.

“The fuck?”

Clang.

Clay swore his heart stopped. The sound that was not supposed to exist outside his nightmare rang out clear within his head.

Clang.

Panicking, he jumped to his feet. He turned around, eyes widening in shock at the creature before him. Backing up against the garage door, his entire body trembled as he pointed out, “You-you're not suppose to be here.”

He wasn't dreaming anymore.

But The Brother stood before him like a nightmare.