What Goes Around [recap]

"Hush, darling. This may pinch."

She jerked awake with heavy pants, medical gown thick with sweat, and strained against the rubber braces on her wrists. The lights above her dimmed, strobing in tune with her quickened breathing, before blooming back into its usual blinding whiteness. It was a sterile white cell with a cot, a toilet, a table, and a wash-basin, far removed from the relative luxury of the guest room in the manor.

Lain craned her head. The walls and ceilings were seamless, with no doors or windows of any kind, as if the prison had been built around her. But there had to be an escape, even if they were just poke-holes for her to breathe, because she still received visitors. Day, night, hours, minutes, and seconds lost all meaning here, but the visits always followed the same pattern. On her own time, she could move; as much as you could in a room the size of two parking spaces; or she could read, draw, write. Think. Dream. She hated the dreams. When they knocked her out, she didn't dream. There were no in-betweens; one moment she would be killing the time, drowning in her own boredom, and the next she would be here. Lain suspected they had to be pumping in some kind of invisible gas, but no matter how far up and down she grazed over the walls, she could never find the gaps, just smooth metal.

"Elaine," the man started. Just hearing another voice that wasn't her own made her flinch like he'd set off a fire cracker. She turned her head toward the man across from her, tall and straight-backed with salt and peppered hair, always in a crisp black suit. "How are you feeling today?"

"May I see Ryan?" The words trickled out from her lips, barely louder than a whisper. "Please let me talk to Ryan."

Mr. Patterson met her eyes evenly, his expression unchanging. "Unfortunately, my son will be out on protracted assignment..." With her head spinning, nauseous and disorientated, none of those three-syllable words sounded like English to her. "I know this is unpleasant. This isolation chamber is only temporary. For your health."

Her sister taught her the trick to holding back tears, and she didn't let it show on her face, but she could feel her heart sink, her hands shake, her guts turn. "Why is this happening?"

"You will understand. I give my word. Soon, you'll know why. And I promise you will see my son again." That she understood. She was bursting with a million responses, but before she could speak, the long needle appeared in Mr. Patterson's fingers, and she went pale and quiet. This was their standard ritual. She clenched her eyes shut, chewing on the inside of her cheek, and was hit by the bite of the syringe in her beck, the cold rush of fatigue once again. Then a flash of fire in her veins, and colors blooming from her vision.

Then the dreams. She plunged into darkness, straight through her cot and through her restraints and through the floor, into the yawning belly of the earth, until she was wreathed in flames, then swaddled in sunlight, floating among the clouds. Far below her, a green spot of land peeked out from a sea of black water. Her legs churned in the air, vapor swilling around her arms and legs, and it took a few moments before she realized she was sinking. Inch by inch, she drifted lower and lower, sailing without a chute toward the endless ocean.

Inch by inch. Then foot by foot. She swept her arms uselessly through the air, screams erupting from her throat as she plummeted faster and faster, the green island sucking her in like a gravity well, and the moment before she hit the ground, she was at home in her apartment, across the table from her sister. Not her sister as she remembered her, but even younger, two black eyes and a bad shake, ratty baseball cap pulled low. Then the walls fell away, crumbling into dust and blowing away into the wind, as the world blurred and melded together into a torrent of memories.

She knew they were real. Instinctively, she recognized these were more than dreams, they were snapshots of life, scattered before her as if she'd went through it herself.

Sound ceased as the airport blew away around her, like a barn in a tornado, but she walked through the carnage unscathed, gaze turning as the wreckage transformed. A wolf loped past through a high school hallway. A tunnel of light opened up in the western prairie, blooming out from thin darkness, and spilling black shapes out into the world. In a small room, a man sunk a knife into a woman's gut.

"I do care about you. Only you."

Lain could only watch as the knife pulled out, as the apartment melted away back into the school halls, and plunge back into a back, and then a heart; two dead men. She felt the bite of each stab in her own flesh, but she was helpless as the scene faded. Ryan's face came into view through the dark, light blooming from his hands, and the world ignited with screams.

A girl with long raven hair, even younger than her, sat alone on a bed. On the floor, a man twitched and convulsed, frothing at the mouth. Names, places, moments flashed through her head. Beata Academy. Headmaster Rivers. Phoebe. The scene transformed, the girl with raven hair being laid out on a surgical table, blood flowing through tubes. She watched the same scene a hundred times, like flipping through sticky notes, the child in the chair replaced every single time, until flames filled the dark lab. The boy that stormed in had all of Mr. Patterson's features, but none of his stony demeanor. The grin that flicked across his face was more reminiscent of Ryan.

Flames once again filled her vision, but when the smoke cleared, the stage had been rearranged. The Headmaster laid like a broken doll on the ground; a boy with dusty gray hair stood over him, sweeping his cap off his head. Other students crowded in through the wreckage, toward where Lain walked the halls as they rebuilt, the mansion regained its shape, and now the students she'd seen in the lab were the teachers, but she didn't pay them any attention.

The girl with raven hair was older now. Lain followed her down the hall, and then out into the road, through grimy streets and thick jungle, into whirling rings of light that opened into dark, twisted vistas. As she followed, others joined her, flanking at her sides, dressed all in black. And at long last, she made her return trip back, toward the mansion in the country hills, back toward the basement that had been her prison and her nightmare, and as Lain looked deeper into the heart of the school, she saw the pulsing radiance of light again. Through the Portal, to the Island, through the jungle green, toward the still black water of the oasis where all gifts were born, so dark it seemed to drink in the light.

When the woman with raven hair stepped into the water, Lain screamed, and she was suctioned up into the sky, through the clouds and crashing back into her cell, alone now, with no sign of Mr. Patterson. And when her head hit the pillow again, she was thrust straight back into the dream.