Carabas

I'm listening to a man die while I remain in hiding. I'm thinking that maybe I should have moved sooner and saved him, even though I'd have risked being seen - but I don't have any particular emotion about this, except maybe a little irritation at myself. I've been sent into this old stone ruin of a fortress, and I'd intended for only five particular men to be spared. Now I'm down to four. It's not ideal, but I'll have to live with it.

I couldn't hear her very clearly from my hiding place under their bed, but the woman who stabbed him said something to the effect that he should have recognized her. Some personal revenge thing - none of my business. Now I'm seeing the sort of smoke haze of colors passing before my eyes that I associate with life leaving a body. I watch it dissipate in the air, and I'm irritated at the waste. Waiting around is pointless now - and the woman should be directly above me. I stab up through the mattress.

When she dies, my perspective shifts. I'm floating in the void, with this massive black slab of a door in front of me, as wide as it is tall, some kind of geometric symbol across it. It's standing on this sort of grid far below, like a chess board where all the squares are black, with the door as a line across the center of the board. There's a few gravestones occupying some of the squares of the grid - that's new. I realize immediately they represent the previous targets the door sent me after - one of them must represent that woman whose death brought me back here. The door's saying something in my head about bringing it wisdom for the dead.

England in the 1940s or so, I'm disembodied and watching a man and a woman singing a duet in a garden. Both of them are thinking about a man named Dyson. They were friends when they were younger, but he left the country years ago and they haven't heard from him since; in their memories, he's a sort of ideal. I'm thinking how disappointed they would be if they were to see him now.

When their song's over, they talk with the people who'd been listening. The woman who'd been singing is speaking to a particular man, very wealthy, and hinting that she's expecting him to invite her along to a particular event. But although they clearly have some kind of history, he finds this suggestion laughable - he hardly even thinks of her as a woman. I'm surprised, since I'd just been thinking about how beautiful she is - the dream image had zoomed in on her profile as she was talking to him, and I'd been admiring the curve of her nose, the softness of her hair. Very beautiful. But the man walks off with most of the others - they're heading back toward the house. The man she'd been singing with comes up to her and says he saw her talking to that wealthy guy, and how they seem to get along well. She says, "Sure do."

My POV turns around, not following them - I'm focusing on the opposite direction. On a hill overlooking the garden, there's a man who'd been hiding among the trees and bushes, watching them. This is Dyson.