Waking Nightmares

Waking Nightmares
EMMA POV

The light hurts.

Everything hurts. My body is too big, too long, all wrong angles and unfamiliar weight. I'm four years old. I know I'm four years old. Mommy said we'd go to the park after the doctor visit. Said she'd push me on the swings. Said—

"Emma." The voice comes from a woman made of rubies. "Sweetheart, can you hear me?"

I try to speak. My throat feels like broken glass. "Mommy?"

The ruby woman touches my face with crystallized fingers. She's crying, but her tears sparkle like diamonds. "Yes, baby. It's me. You're safe now."

Safe. The word sounds wrong. Tastes wrong. I look down at my body—long legs, adult hands, breasts beneath the hospital gown. This isn't my body. This can't be my body.

"What happened to me?" My voice cracks. "I'm supposed to be four. We were going to the park. You promised—"

"That was eighteen years ago." Mommy's face is wrong. Older. Harder. Crystallized. "You've been asleep, Emma. I kept you safe. Kept you alive."

Eighteen years. The number doesn't make sense. I'm four. I have my pink stuffed rabbit. I have ballet class on Tuesdays. I have—

Pain explodes behind my eyes.

Suddenly I'm not alone in my head. Voices—thousands of them—speaking in languages I shouldn't understand but do. A woman in Jakarta clutching her chest. A child in Berlin crying for medication. An old man in Mumbai praying in Hindi. They're all there, all at once, all screaming inside my skull.

"Make it stop!" I press my palms against my temples. "Mommy, make it stop!"

"Emma, listen to me." Mommy's hands grip my shoulders. "You're connected to them. Every patient treated with your genetic material. Every person carrying your cells in their bloodstream. You can feel them because you're part of them now."

Not voices. Consciousnesses. Two hundred three thousand distinct minds touching mine, their pain and fear and desperate hope flooding through me like blood through veins. I'm drowning in other people's lives, their memories mixing with mine—a birthday party in São Paulo, a wedding in London, a funeral in Cape Town, all happening simultaneously in my head.

"What did you do to me?" I look at my hands. They're glowing faint red beneath the skin. Crystalline patterns branch across my palms like circuit boards. "What am I?"

"You were dying." Mommy pulls me into her arms, and her crystallized body feels sharp against my skin. "Tay-Sachs disease. You had months, maybe weeks. So I made you matter. I turned your cells into medicine. Your DNA into hope. You've saved thousands of lives, Emma. Thousands."

The voices surge louder. A girl in Argentina—twelve years old, leukemia, treatment failing. Her fear tastes like copper on my tongue. A boy in Sydney—eight years old, enzyme deficiency, watching his parents cry. His despair weighs on my chest like stones.

"They're dying." The words come out strangled. "I can feel them dying."

"Because the supply chains collapsed." Mommy's voice hardens. "Someone exposed our work. The medications derived from your cells—they can't reach patients anymore. People are dying because of the truth."

I pull away from her, stumbling against the medical equipment surrounding my bed. Eighteen years. Eighteen years of machines and tubes and harvesting. My body maintained like livestock while my mind slept in darkness.

"You said you'd take me to the park."

"Emma—"

"You promised." I'm crying now, and my tears burn. They leave crystalline trails down my cheeks, glowing faint red. "You said after the doctor, we'd go to the park. You lied."

"I saved you."

"You hollowed me out!" The words rip from my throat. "I can feel them, Mommy. All of them. Every person carrying my cells. Their pain is my pain. Their fear is my fear. You turned me into—into—"

"A living database." A new voice speaks. I turn to see a woman with auburn hair and sharp green eyes, glowing brighter than Mommy, brighter than anything. She stands behind glass, her entire body luminescent. "You're a biological server. A genetic hive-mind hub. Helen didn't just save you. She transformed you into something unprecedented."

"Maya Cross." Mommy's voice turns sharp. "Stay back. Emma's disoriented—"

"Emma's experiencing two hundred three thousand consciousnesses simultaneously." Maya's eyes meet mine through the glass, and I see understanding there. Recognition. "She's not disoriented. She's overwhelmed. There's a difference."

The voices surge again. The girl in Argentina—her name is Sofia, she likes to paint, her mother braids her hair every morning—her heart is failing. I feel it stuttering in my own chest. Feel her mother's hand gripping hers. Feel the moment her eyes close.

I scream.

Sofia's death rips through me like electricity. Her consciousness dissolves, leaving a hole in my awareness that aches like a missing tooth. Two hundred three thousand voices become two hundred two thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine.

"She's gone." I look at my hands, at the crystalline tears pooling in my palms. "Sofia. Buenos Aires. She just died."

Mommy's face goes pale. "The compound shortage. It's happening faster than projected."

"You're feeling their deaths in real-time." Maya presses closer to the glass. "Emma, you need to focus. Can you tell which patients are critical? Which ones need medication first?"

The voices cascade through me. I sort them without thinking—critical, stable, deteriorating. My brain processes data at speeds that shouldn't be possible. Thousands of medical charts update in my awareness simultaneously.

"Four thousand seven hundred nineteen critical. Medications needed within six hours." The information flows out of me like water. "Twenty-three thousand four hundred twelve stable but dependent on daily doses. Supplies will last forty-eight hours maximum." I meet Maya's glowing eyes. "By next week, half of them will be dead."

"Unless we restart production." Mommy moves beside me. "Unless we save Blackthorne. Save the research. Save everything."

"Save the empire built on my harvested cells." My voice sounds hollow. "Built on eighteen years of stealing my life while I slept." I look at her crystallized face. "You could have let me die, Mommy. Could have let me go to the park one last time. Could have held me while I went to sleep and never woke up."

"I couldn't lose you."

"So you lost me differently." I stand on shaking legs, my adult body foreign and wrong. "You made me a thing. A resource. A biological factory churning out treatments for strangers while I dreamed of swings and birthday cake and being four years old forever."

The voices press against my consciousness. A boy in Mumbai—Rajesh, six years old, loves cricket—his breathing labored. A woman in Berlin—Greta, thirty-four, two daughters—her liver failing. They're all there, all real, all depending on genetic material stolen from my sleeping body.

"You want my help." I turn to face Mommy fully. "Want me to coordinate treatment distribution. Use my connection to patients to triage care. Become God of the dying."

"Emma, please—"

"I'm four years old." My voice breaks. "In my head, I'm still four. I still believe in princesses and magic and mothers who keep promises." I look at my crystallized tears, at the genetic code spiraling in each drop. "But my body is twenty-two. My consciousness spans two hundred thousand lives. You made me into something impossible."

Maya speaks softly from behind her glass. "What do you want, Emma?"

The question cuts through everything. What do I want?

I want my pink rabbit. Want Tuesday ballet class. Want Mommy to push me on swings while I shriek with laughter. Want to be four years old in a four-year-old body, with a four-year-old's simple joys and simple fears.

But I'm not. I'll never be again.

"I want to be human." The words come out raw. "Not a database. Not a server. Not God of anything." I look at the two hundred two thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine consciousnesses flowing through mine. "But I can feel them dying. Feel their fear. Their children's fear. And I—"

Another death. Boy in São Paulo. Marco. Seven years old. Loved dinosaurs. His mother's grief crashes through me like a tidal wave, leaving me gasping.

Two hundred two thousand, nine hundred ninety-eight.

"I can't let them die." I meet Mommy's eyes. "But I won't be your experiment anymore. If I help, I do it as Emma Ward. A person. Not your biological property."

"Sweetheart—"

"Those are my terms." My voice strengthens. "I help coordinate treatment. Help restart production if—if that's possible. But afterward, you let me go. Let me have whatever life is left. Let me be human."

Mommy opens her mouth to respond, but I convulse.

Three deaths simultaneously. Argentina. Buenos Aires. Patients in the same hospital, same ward, dying within seconds of each other as their bodies fail without medication.

Clara. Esteban. Julia.

Their consciousnesses dissolve. Their lives compress into final moments—Clara thinking of her grandson, Esteban remembering his wedding day, Julia whispering a prayer—and then nothing. Holes in my awareness where people used to be.

Two hundred two thousand, nine hundred ninety-five.

I fall to my knees, crystalline tears streaming down my face. Each drop contains genetic code. Each drop glows with stolen life.

"Three more." My voice sounds distant. "Buenos Aires. They died together."

Maya's glowing intensifies. "Emma. How many critical patients in Buenos Aires right now?"

I sort through the voices. "Forty-seven. All children. All dying."

"Then we have minutes." Maya turns away from the glass. "Sarah! We need that counter-agent now. Emma can tell us exactly who needs it most."

A woman I don't recognize rushes into view. Pregnant. Exhausted. "Ten minutes until the first batch is ready. Maya's marrow is synthesizing faster than projected, but—"

Maya's vitals spike on the monitor. Her glow pulses erratically.

"But Maya's dying." I feel it through our shared crystallization. Feel her body breaking down, her consciousness starting to fragment. "The extraction is killing her."

Four more deaths. Mumbai. Two in Berlin. Jakarta.

Two hundred two thousand, nine hundred ninety-one.

I press my crystallized hands against the floor, feeling the weight of almost two hundred and three thousand lives connected to mine through stolen cells and forced biology.

"Mommy." I look up at her through tears. "Tell me how to save them. Tell me how to be God of the dying without losing the last piece of four-year-old Emma who just wanted to go to the park."

She kneels beside me, her crystallized face impossible to read.

"I don't know, sweetheart." Her voice breaks. "I've been God so long, I forgot how to be human."

Another death. London.

Two hundred two thousand, nine hundred ninety.

Maya's monitor flatlines.

Then starts again.

Then flatlines.

And I realize—we're all dying. Maya. Mommy. Me. The two hundred thousand still counting on genetic material harvested from my sleeping body.

All of us crystallizing into something beautiful and terrible and entirely too late.