---

---

Sydney woke with a jolt early this morning after having the same terrible nightmare that she has been having for about a week now. A woman, dressed in a long, white gown is seen in an abandon building with a guy and girl. The woman is scared for herself and others just like her but she wants to ensure their safety and she turns to the guy and makes him promise her that they will be safe. Sydney doesn't know who they are till this day. She thought that her dream might be a sign for an unfortunate events to come. The strangest part of the dream is when the woman kills herself with a bullet going through her head. While closing her eyes, replaying the dream in her head, she fluttered her eyes open and saw the woman standing before her. Of course, her first instinct was to scream but the woman was smiling at Sydney.

"What do you want from me?" Sydney spoke towards the woman's spirit before her. The spirit did nothing but look at Sydney, smiling then slowly faded away. She ran her fingers through her hair while getting out of the bed and getting ready to start her day. After doing her usual morning routines, she was finally dressed and headed outside, where she waved to her neighbor, Miss Connors. She then got inside of her car and drove to work place, which was a Law Firm downtown.

As soon as she walked through the doors, she immediately spoke to everyone then went into her office. Everything in her office was so perfectly organized and labeled. She sat down then opened up a drawer and pulled out a tape measure. Everything on her desk had to be at least three inches apart for her to full function for the day. After that was done, she was ready to start her day.

Her boss walked into her office as she looked up at him with a smile. She saw her reflection inside of his pupils but then saw someone else's as well. She stood up and avoided further eye contact with him as she walked out of her own office. People were calling her name, trying to figure out what was wrong with her exactly. Sydney walked outside, breathing a little bit heavily, basically freaking out. She sat down on the top stair in front of the Law Firm and felt that someone was their.

Sydney turned her head to the side and gasped at the figurine of a human before her. "Wh-Who are you?" She asked them while raising a brow at them as well. She didn't know what was going on but ever since a week ago, she began feeling other presences that weren't even there. But now, she feeling a presence and there is a person right before her. Of course, they didn't look American but of a different nationality. She didn't want to question anything else until she knows who is this person is.

"You know, in other places - especially America - this's a day to have fun!"

The man was exercised. Or needed exercise, at any rate. He was a grown man, fully bearded, with a very obviously home-made vest over his shirt. Despite this, he bounced up and down in his chair, and his eyes suggested he would like nothing better than to play a game of tag.

"I'm familiar with the custom." The woman who sat opposite him was wearing a suit and a smile. The latter was a sort of lie, but there were generally more opportunities to remove an expression than clothes, in public.

The coffee table between the two was adorned with two decaffeinated drinks. The one beside the man was nearly empty, and its opposite nearly full.

"Everyone out playing pranks, having drinks - it's like they're kids again! But here we are crammed into this little room!" He bounced from his chair and downed more tea. "Ugh; I hate this stuff. So bitter. Where's the sugar? The milk?"

"You said you liked it earlier, Adam. You know, it's hurtful when you dismiss something that's been made for you." Another half-lie. It was odd how she still found herself disgusted with the amount of dishonesty her career required.

Adam hunched and curled up a bit, and rotated to face away. A black and white photo caught his eye, and he wandered over to it. A man's body, from behind; down to his abdomen. His torso was covered in mud, but he raised a bucket of water above his head, and the stream was washing the grime off.

"It's like 'work, work, work,' and 'sloooowwww down,' and 'stop being alive.' Gotta have a day to wash it all off; get all the...." He wrung his hands. "...words off you!"

The psychiatrist had raised her teacup to sip while he talked, but ultimately stopped halfway and put it down. A familiar process with the bipolar man's sessions. "Do you feel like slowing down equates to not being alive?"

Adam considered - not long - and then said "Well, if you slow down too much, it's basically the same as being dead."

"Is that how you feel when you're not manic?"

Adam stopped moving, having wandered further down the wall. He didn't answer; simply stared at another photo.

"Adam, this is why it's important for you to take your medication. It may slow your more excited moments down, but it also helps uplift your depressive moments." There was a bit of silence, where Adam hugged himself. His posture was slowly crumbling. "Adam, please promise me you'll take your medication. For me, and for your family."

Adam turned his head to peak one eye over his shoulder and look at his doctor. He returned his gaze elsewhere, and nodded slightly.

The psychiatrist felt something that she imagined would've been he urge to sigh, in a more expressive person. Looking at a clock, and that she was ten minutes past the end of Adam's session, she supposed that was the best she would get.



Some minutes later, Dalia was sitting alone on a rooftop, with a meal that had been cooked, refrigerated, and microwaved. She understood the comfort and familiarity of leftovers, but did not herself feel it. And she'd already sampled the taste and texture; it was no longer novel. So this was simply a meal of convenience for her, she had decided.

While she ate with one hand, Dalia used the other to employ her phone's web browser. A metaphorical cart for checkout at a shopping site included a new noise-canceller for the door, a supply of paper cups for an severely obsessive-compulsive patient, a new pot for a tropical plant that had been knocked over and put into a placeholder, and some loose-leaf tea for Dalia. Even as she checked over the not-long list and costs, Dalia noticed the flavor of her meal change for the worse. Suddenly, she could taste a smell of distant bodily fluids, covered up by cleaning agents. A hospital, distinctly.

Dalia set the meal down. This was not the first hallucination of one sense or another she'd experienced in the last week or so. It concerned her, of course, but she was unable to think of a cause for it. If it had just been one sense, a diagnosis wouldn't have been so difficult. The same went for the complexity of the hallucinations. A smell isn't anything complex; just the perception of chemicals in the air. But hearing a piano when there wasn't one playing, or seeing the white-clothed, suicidal woman from a dream some days previously, could not be understood so simply.

Now, Dalia was also hearing the hospital, down to the clacking of computer keys. She turned, and stood on seeing that suddenly on the rooftop, a young Asian woman had appeared, along with what was easily recognizable as a hospital reception desk.

Dalia hummed a thought when they made eye contact. "It doesn't exactly have the plausible deniability typical of schizophrenia," she expressed, looking over the detail of the woman and desk. Not that she'd put much diagnostic stock into that idea; her thinking felt clear and purposeful as ever. Aside from that, she found the incongruity of the sight interesting.

Dalia began walking towards the vision, to see if she could also feel the desk.

---

"Do you always read that book?"

The voice registered with the blink from the man situated in the corner of the room. His feet, propped up on the standardized ottoman, clicked and reflex snapped his spine into attention. The nurse parked at the room's doorway arched a brow and dropped his eyes to the book to the other man's side. A gentle 'oh' parted his lips and the man sank back into the plasticized armchair. After a solid moment, he brought the book to his lap and gave a nod—his eyes drifted to the only other occupant within the room, almost willing him to wake. He wouldn't and that brought a frown to both their lips, though for what reason the nurse never gave.

The Color Purple

His heels clicked against the tiled floors, the book long abandoned to the cushions of his chair in favor the overcast windows. The room itself remained barren, aside from the standard equipment and furniture for one patient and their inevitable guest. One lone window faced south toward the coast, catching the English Channel in the drear of England's cold, wet spring. The man stiff and burrowed beneath checkered covers faced the ceiling, for the most part; however, his face turned toward the light the window spared him. The man standing could almost smell the green of Scotland's rolling hills mixed with the salt of the sea catching the jagged rocks below.

That familiarity begged his eyes to shut and a deep inhale to lift his chest. Memories of the ocean, of the coast, and the sweet smells of their apartment filled his lungs: the bakery just below and the stench of fish and salt on his father's coats. Edinburgh and the sea held the quiet life of a calm boy and the darkness that came with the storms. The perfume stung his nose and forced his eyes open, fingers already pinching the bridge of his nose. He never quite remembered his mother's fragrance to edge so sharply. Her's reminded him of silk and the little garden of lavenders on their terrace.

"Father..." his voice trailed off, noticing the doctor already standing above the man in the bed.

"Mr. MacIver—"

"That's his name," he said, firmness in his eyes.

The doctor held a hand up, amicable smile curling his lips. "I apologize," he replied, "Fox, was it?"

"Foxtrot, like the dance."

"Right," he clicked his tongue and tapped the IV connected to the sleeping MacIver, "you are his next of kin. I'm assuming he has a multitude of insurance to cover... ah, post medical issues."

"When he dies," Fox stated, his eyes falling from the quiet nod of the doctor to the barren corner of the room, "Yes, he has life insurance. It'll deal with everything it needs to." That smell hit him again, lighter this time, though still apparent in the air about him. He peered over toward the doctor, disconcerted by the fact that he'd came upon him so quietly. The man himself merely offered a sympathetic smile to which Fox turned away from. His eyes caught the reflection of the window, narrowing at the woman staring abashedly at the doctor. That would explain the smell.

A deep breath ran through him, heaved his chest in a sigh. Foxtrot turned with attentiveness, barely inching forward with a hand attempting to reach for the covers of the bed. He refused to stare the doctor in the eye, not when white flashed before his eyes and a spray of crimson. That all too familiar feeling of being watched—something the military effectively crafted—crawling along the surface of his skin. The perfume stung his eyes with the tears explained away with a shake and gesture toward his dying father.

"Please, if anything occurs, don't hesitate to call my personal number," Fox said, all very rehearsed, before slipping out with his nerves.

Thoughts preoccupied his mind with the two thirty rush of a coastal hospital and the brush of other people in the corridors never took the glaze from his eyes. Not until he moved through the nearest stairwell, in favor of the open echoes of a series of floors to the claustrophobia of a hospital elevator. This option reduced that need to bathe in pure rubbing alcohol. Unlike the hospital's perpetual mix of disease and disinfectant, the stairwell erupted in a mess of different smells and sounds. Paper and a hint of car exhaust that seemed to linger in every bustling city. Official. It all smelled entirely too official.

That crawling feeling spiked across Fox's neck again and, in his composure, he resisted the urge to completely whip about face. Slow and deliberate, Fox craned his neck down and let his eyes look up as he turned in a silent hope that if he did this as calmly as possible, it wouldn't devolve into one of his prior visions. Another lady with a gun shoved in her mouth wouldn't do well on his own psyche.

They locked eyes the moment the door clicked shut behind him and he almost lost the words that tumbled from her mouth. Fox took that moment to think, thoughts that were simultaneously his and not, with his eyes trying to peel away the stucco of the building he currently fell into. The officer could only offer her a frown and a complete lack of reassurance.

"I have a feeling you already know," Fox mumbled, his nails scratching his clean shaven jaw, "I have a vague thought, myself."

---

A cutting wind blew across the planes of northern Denmark, rustling the marram grass that covered most of the land. Jørn looked out over the sea, watching the waves as they rolled over one another. His hands were tucked away deep inside the pockets of his coat. It was a chilly, bleak day in the beginning of April, which was not unusual for this time of the year. Although the temperature here didn’t differ much from what he was used to, the rough sea climate made it all feel much colder.

Jørn had come to Skagen to map out the migrating birds, which were traveling from the most northern tip of Denmark to Sweden. He and the rest of the crew had arrived the day before; It was at least five hours driving from Copenhagen and they all wanted to make sure everything was prepared well. At sunrise this morning, everyone was already up, not wanting to miss a glimpse of any of the traveling species. The early rise had paid off: Jørn had managed to get some excellent shots of several breeds of geese and some great predatory birds.

A cold breeze blew through the man’s ruffled, dark hair and made its way down, slipping down his scarf. The sensation of the cold air touching his bare skin caused shivers down his entire body, awakening him from his trance of staring into the great grey-blue before him. Jørn tried to shake off the cold, making small jumps on his spot, stamping around, trying to get his blood flowing.
Having enough material, the crew had finished photographing for today but Jørn had wanted to enjoy the scene for a bit longer. However, standing still like this didn’t make viewing exactly enjoyable. He wondered whether he should move further out, walking along the shore, or whether he should call it a day and head back to the cabin they had rented.

Before he could make a decision he then noticed a figure from the corner of his eye. Turning around, a person stood before him he could not remember to have seen before, yet seemed strangely familiar to him. Moreover, they were anything but dressed for this weather.
In a sort of reflex, Jørn took a step forward, but stopped himself from taking another. Maybe this was just some hallucination, like he had been having for the past few weeks. Now hallucinations were not new to Jørn -- he sometimes had longer periods of time when he had trouble falling asleep, and right before he would fall asleep he would often see vague images of floating objects or lights -- but these recent ones were different. Not only were they more vivid and did they occur when Jørn was wide awake, but they also didn’t restrict to visions, instead expanding to his other senses.

The Danish man closed his eyes and took a deep breath, almost hoping that if he would open his eyes again, the other person would have vanished into thin air. But they didn’t; when he opened his eyes once more they were still there. Jørn didn’t know whether to conclude it meant the person was really there, or that he was going insane. Either way he could only ask the most sensible question that came to mind.

“Hey,” he said hesitating, and paused for a moment. “Aren’t you cold?”

Steve sat at the writing desk in his apartment, staring at the computer screen in front of him and fighting the urge to yawn. He was exhausted - he hadn't slept properly in a couple of days, but the last thing he wanted to do right know was go to bed and relive that same twisted dream he'd been having for the past week. The screen in front of him went dark from lack of input and he reached for the mouse, then thought better of it and stood up, stretching his arms wide as he walked towards the small kitchenette, steering around the low coffee table piled with books and loose papers.

The dream was always the same - the abandoned warehouse, the guy, the two women; one dressed in white, the other radiating malevolence and ill intent. The woman in white and the guy converse, something about taking care of "them" - whoever "they are" - then the gun, the whispered goodbye, and he wakes up with a bang. He's thought about writing it down, committing it to paper; it certainly seems like the start of a killer story, but he doesn't want to risk burning it any deeper into his subconscious than it already is. He's already been having flashes - unfamiliar people out of the corner of his eye that aren't there a moment later, strange sensations that don't mesh with what he's doing.

The kitchen is slightly less cluttered than the rest of his apartment, with half a sink full of dishes he should really get around to doing at some point. He looked in the fridge, hoping for something quick to eat, but no luck, he can add grocery shopping to his to-do list tomorrow. Steven thought for a moment, then shrugged, heading for the door. It was late, but there were still a couple of places open where he could grab a bite to eat at this hour. He grabbed his wallet, phone and keys on the way out and locked the door behind him. There was a small 24hr kebab shop a 10 minute walk away, and the walk would do him good.

It was only April but it had rained earlier in the day and a chill wind blew through the streets as Steve made his way back from the kebab, munching absently on his late night feast, regretting his decision not to grab a jumper on the way out. It wasn't cold by the standards of some places he'd visited, but it was chilly enough to make him wish he'd worn something else besides a thin t-shirt and jeans. The streetlights cast long shadows and shined off the puddles of water pooling on the street as he walked along.

Suddenly he wasn't in Sydney. He squinted his eyes against the bright light, shielding them with his arm as he tried to look around. He was on a plain somewhere, next to the sea. It was also mid-afternoon, which explained the different light levels.

"Hey, aren't you cold?"

Steven twisted around looking for the source of the noise. A brown hair man in a thick winter coat stood a little distance away, staring at him like he'd seen a ghost. "Never mind that!, where the heck am I?" he said, staring over the wide plain.

---

---

She looked at the male beside with another gasp then finally realized that she was perhaps going insane. Sydney ears twitched at the male's response and she shook her head. "I have that same exact feeling but I do not know who you are." She replied to the male as she eyed his clothing. "I assume you were at work. Are you a doctor?" Sydney asked the male while looking back into his eyes. She thought that she was completely crazy and she stood up with clenched fists. "Okay. I am not crazy. You are not here." Her boss saw her through the glass pane door and walked outside to where she was.

"Are you okay? Who are you even talking to?" Her boss looked at the area she was talking to then eyed her. Sydney chuckled nervously then bit her bottom lip while keeping her eyes on the male presence that was there. "I think you should just take the day off and go on home." Her boss requested then turned heel and walked back into the building. She nodded her head then sat back down on the stairs, running her hands through her ginger hair. "What is happening to me?" Sydney muttered while getting up and looking down at the male. "Please, don't follow me home." She said while walking towards her car and getting inside.

During the drive home, her mind was scattered everywhere and she sighed while pulling back into her driveway. While opening the door, she really hoped that she that the male from earlier wouldn't appear, again because she didn't think that she could handle seeing someone who really isn't there. Sydney threw her keys on the nearby table and kicked her heels off then plopped down on the couch. She shut her eyes for a brief moment but only saw that woman in a white gown with a yellowy glow behind her.

With a gasp and another jolt, she opened her eyes and sat up but this time seen someone sitting before her. "Wha-? How?" She shut her eyes again and the male was gone. "Behind you." The male's voice said as Sydney screamed and jumped off the couch, running to the other side of the living area. "Who are you? What do you want? Take anything. Just don't hurt me." Her voice stammered as the male made it known that he wasn't going to hurt her. "Wait. You're the one from my nightmares. Am I in a nightmare now?" She looked around then back at the male, who shook his head no.

'Could this day get any weirder.' Sydney thought to herself then the male before her chuckled with a reply. "Not only this day but your life might." The male spoke then went on ahead and introduced himself. "I am Johan. I am like you and many others. I am the one assigned to protect you and the others." Johan mentioned as Sydney raised a brow at him. "Others? What others?" She asked as Johan slowly began to fade away but spoke before fully fading away. "In due time, you shall see." Sydney looked at the area in which Johan was standing then sighed while lowering her head in a somber motion.

This stranger was new to Chris. She had seen others before, but never this up close or real. Previously it was the beautiful woman in the mirror with green eyes, and a very powerful looking suit. If it was not the woman then it would be a man, he’d seen two but only in glimpses. Both men were bearded, fit, and quite tall. All of the strangers thus far have been very foreign to her. Chris’s best guess were European or American.

The attractive woman in front of her was white, but not American. Chris has seen her fair share of foreign patients in her time in the hospital. This woman had hair which reminded Chris of a desert she had seen only in travel books, and her eyes were like two full moons glowing in the dark sky. She was very beautiful Chris thought, too beautiful for her in fact.

Chris was entranced by the woman’s face that she didn’t realize that whoever she was she had gotten closer to her. The more Chris stared at her the more she realized a sensation she hadn’t felt in a long time, heat. Chris was unsure if it was heat indicative of attraction or physical heat, but she knew it was odd. It was nine in the evening and the airconditioning was in full power.

The woman’s voice was ethereal. It was unreal how clear it was and how much Chris understood her. Whoever she was she was definitively foreign, which made this even weirder. No amount of practice or training should have allowed her to speak Chris’s language unless she was born in the Philippines, but somehow Chris understood her. Cautiously Chris looked at her coworkers and back at the woman. Putting on her earbuds Chris finally replied.

“I agree with your diagnosis doctor. I ruled out Schizophrenia fairly early on as well. A hallucination should not be this structured, real even.” Chris didn’t know how she knew the woman was a doctor, or at the least was a healthcare professional like her, but she did. Even stranger was that somehow she knew what a hallucination would be like. “I’m glad to see you are healthy and not in form of duress. We do not see many of those here in the ER.” True to her word if it was any other night a woman very much like her would be lying on a gurney right about now. “I apologize since I’m wearing headphones, but I’d rather not look like I was talking to myself. My coworkers are nearby” Chris added.

The foreign woman had since moved to place her hand on the 'C' desk, hiding the chill up her spine that resulted from the feeling.

"Quite understandable," she answered, while looking to where one of Chris' co-workers was. In Haifa, Israel, the location corresponded to several stories up in the air, off the edge of a building. The psychiatrist shook her head, before turning to the EMT. "You'll forgive me if I assume this is still some elaborate hallucination, without evidence to counter the idea. Though, as you say, the detail is unnerving."

“You are very much forgiven.” Chris felt that she had to. “Although I myself apologize because I do not wish to treat this as some sort of hallucination.” She had always been a fairly superstitious person, never religious, but she’s open to the idea that there are forces out there that science will never be able to explain. In her line of work miracles though unexplainable were a blessing and a curse.

Suddenly finding herself in a rooftop in the middle of a city Chris stared at the woman once more, now sitting off the edge of the building. “This is quite high.” She said backing off from the edge. ”Where is this if I may ask? It’s quite beautiful”. Chris was taking in the sights of a beautiful city bathed by orange sunlight. It then dawned on Chris that whatever was happening to them worked both ways. This woman, hallucinating or not was looking into her world and so was Chris. It was the first time she had ever done this, they always came to her after all.

"Haifa," the blonde replied, making her way beside her newfound counterpart. "Israel. The Mediterranean is the opposite way." She indicated the side of the roof she meant with a tilt of her head, and then considered the situation.

"You're somewhere else, I gather? You speak Hebrew like a natural."

“Israel?” Chris was at a lost for words. She’s had the chance to visit other countries before, but none quite like this. “I’ve never been there…” Chris paused. Her visions alter between the ER in a hospital in Manila, and rooftop in Haifa. “or here I suppose?”

“I’m speaking Hebrew?” Chris asked. “Is that how you understand me? I guess that means you are not speaking Tagalog, well Taglish really, but still.” She’s learning so much about these new experiences that a part of her is quite thrilled to know what else do these supernatural connections mean.

"'Tagalog,'" the Israeli quoted. "Sounds like a pidgin. Maybe we're speaking that, instead. Or both." She scanned Chris up and down, before walking away, to the crude picnic table she'd been sitting at. A plastic container of some sort of noodles, cheese, and vegetables awaited her. "If you don't mind me eating."

“Pidgin?” Chris was unfamiliar with the word. She made a quick to note to look that up, Haifa and Israel too. “My guess is as good as yours, but both probably,and please go ahead and eat Dalia” Chris watched as the woman began slurping the noodles. Without really realizing it she somehow knew that the woman’s name was Dalia. “I’m Chris by the way. Although I feel like you already know that.”

Dalia took a moment to chew a bite of her leftovers, and examined Chris' eyes, and then around her, to the hospital she could now see at will. "I wonder..." she finally answered. "I might have known before. It's difficult to tell. Looking into overseas phone calls would be a good investment, I feel."

“So Ms. Dalia have you ever talke-” Chris was about to ask if the beautiful blonde woman has ever had any sort of interaction with another person, but work had to be done. The slow part of the night was over as their phones began ringing. In this place when multiple phones began ringing it meant that they should ready their battle stations.

The connection Chris had with Dalia was cut short. Immediately she felt cold and empty again. She moved through the motions of that day yearning for that connection once more. The sensation of being connected with someone like that was phenomenal. It was new and exciting. She couldn’t wait for more.

On the opposite side of the world, Dalia stared a long while at a point on her practice's rooftop, where another woman may have just stood.

---

A weird feeling crept over Jørn as he heard the foreigner’s voice echoing over the dunes. They showed similar traits: dark, seemingly uncontrolled hair, an unshaven jaw and chin, a tall built. Looking down he noticed the soft shadow which the man cast over the sand. This could not be a lucid dream anymore, Jørn concluded, those were never this realistic and detailed; the person in front of him had to be there, standing only a few meters away from him.

“Skagen, the most northern tip of Denmark,” Jørn answered almost mechanically as he slowly started to approach. “You’re from… Australia, right?” he stated more than asking it, noting the other man’s accent.

As he drew closer, a warmer draft greeted him together with the scent of food. It took him a moment to adjust his eyes as the sky grew dark and daylight replaced itself by streetlights. He looked around the damp street, remaining surprisingly calm although the scene before his eyes had just changed dramatically in the blink of an eye.

Steven looked around his once again familiar surroundings; he was back in the same rainy Sydney street he’d left a minute ago. The other man was still there, looking remarkably calm for someone who’d just found themselves halfway around the world from where they should be. “Right, and this is Sydney,” he said, indicating the street with a wave of his hand.

Steve had been having the flashes for the past week, ever since the dreams started, but this was something else - much longer and intense. “So, million dollar question; The hell is going on - am I going nuts?”

"Sydney..." Jørn gasped. "I've been wanting to visit that place for a while now. Australia in general, really. I've heard the nature here is breathtaking," he spoke softly, eyes wide open, mesmerized and disbelieving.

He got snapped back to reality – for as far as this was indeed real – by the other man's comment. He snorted slightly, "I asked myself that same question just now. So I suppose that means you're not, and neither am I. Unless we're both going insane, but that seems very unlikely," he said, a small smile curling around his lips. "Or unless I am in fact going crazy, and you and all of this is not real, but..." he raised his eyebrows and stared absentmindedly. "That can't be," he looked up into the male's brown eyes. "You are here right? And I am here. I can feel that I am present, and I could feel the change of atmosphere just now," he rambled while making quick gestures with his hands. "So..." he paused, his face wry with confusion. He shook his head, "Yeah no, I have no idea of what is going on."

Too many questions and thoughts darted around Jørn's head: what was happening and how? Teleportation? Madness? What about the other hallucinations: where they not figments of imagination, but actually real as well then? And why did he have the feeling like he knew this person he had just met, living in city which was pretty much the antipode of where he lived, for much longer than a mere two minutes?

“Well how do I know I’m not the one going insane and you’re the hallucination?” Steve asked rhetorically, though the thought seemed ridiculous to him even as he said it. “No, you’re right. I have no idea what in the hell is going on either." He absently took a bite of his kebab and continued to think.

None of this made any sense. They were apparently on other sides of the world, yet could appear before each other in the blink of an eye and hold a normal conversation. Steve looked up and down the darkened road, but couldn't see anyone, which ruled checking if anyone else could see the other man. Speaking of that... “What's your name by the way?” he asked.

A disquieting thought occurred to him – the other man looked fairly similar to himself, in a rough sort of way; similar hair, height and build, but he had definitely been seeing other faces during the past week, ever since the dreams had started. How many more people were involved in this - or, just how crazy was he going?

“Jørn,” he replied maybe a bit too loudly, the name ringing through the nightly alley, as he jolted up from his mishmash of thinking. Out of habit he reached out a hand for the other to shake. A thought then shook him; this was the oppurtunity to know for sure whether they were indeed in contact. With his expression as placid as ever, he awaited the man’s response.

Steve shifted his kebab to his other hand and reached out to shake the other man’s hand, grasping it firmly. “The name’s Steve,” he said. It certainly was the highlight of an already weird night.

When the two shook hands, the deal was settled; Jørn could feel the warm skin from Steve’s hand, slightly sticky from the snack, touching the palm of his own. He could not help but smirk as a strange sensation went through him; the realization that this was in fact happening although he had no explanation as to how and why. He looked down from their handshake up to Steve who looked like he had become aware of the same.

“Jørn!” a distant voice called him. “The hell are you doing out there?!”

A cold wind pulled him backwards, sucking him back to the bleach shore of Skagen. Bewildered he looked around, but there was no trace left of the Australian man.

“Jørn!” The voice sounded closer now. The mentioned one turned around and saw a colleague of his drawing near: a young woman with ashblonde hair, tied up in a ponytail to prevent the wind from whipping her in the face with it. Jørn didn’t know her too well as she had joined the crew only a few weeks ago; he couldn’t even recall her name. “Did the cold get a grip of you or something?” she questioned, shaking her head at her co-worker who still looked a little dumbfounded.

“I… I was just going for a walk…” the man managed to utter. Glancing around once more, he followed the woman back to the cabin, leaving the spot where just a moment ago he had the inexplicable encounter.

Steve looked around the deserted street once more, wondering what had happened. “Jørn, you there?” he called out, his voice echoing in the night, “What in the...” There was nothing, no sign that he had ever been in Denmark, no sign of the other man except a lingering warmth on his palm. He started towards home at a brisk walk, eager to get back inside. “I need a bloody drink.”

Christina

When the phone rings in the middle of the night in a hospital, it only ever means trouble. If multiple phones ring, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. It meant battle stations for the nursing staff, the doctors, and everyone who works in the hospital. Everyone knew what they had to do, the only question was “What is it this time?”

This time it was a shooting gone badly. They weren’t rare when you live in the big city. Crime, violence, and all sorts of back alley dealings occurred. It was cops versus a local drug ring with innocent bystanders in the middle. Five were sent to them two cops, two criminals, and a John Doe. It was a tragedy waiting to happen.

By the time the clock struck midnight Christ had already lost a patient, one of the cops died as well. Lt. Adam Ambrosio died at 23:43. He suffocated in a room full of air as a broken rib slowly punctured his right lung. The broken rib was caused by a blunt force trauma to the chest. The other cop was still in critical condition, one of the drug ring memberswas already patched up and recuperating in the ICU. The other bystanders didn’t make it, dead on arrival.

John Doe was young man in his late twenties, athletic, good-looking, and a foreigner. He was covered in blood splattersacross his face and all over his suit. He three bullet wounds in his chest, two went right through him, and one was lodged inside his heart.

It was half past one when they finally got a solid break. It was the waiting game. The doctors were in the process of finding solutions and the nursing staff were on monitor duty. Chris was tasked to monitor the John Doe who had a penchant for watching her.

His dark eyes followed Chris’s every move. It was just her and him in the room. A cop was stationed just outside with a gun and everything, but it didn’t comfort Chris for one second. Even the handcuffs didn’t make her feel any better.

They didn’t know which side he was on or if he was just an innocent bystander. He was deemed incompetent when they did a Psych Evaluation on him apparently he was talking to someone in a foreign language. His belongings shed no light to his identity. They found three passports with different names, marked from places like New York, Copenhagen, and Sydney. They also found wads of cash, and handgun with a silencer. He was a dangerous man who watched

“Will you stop staring at me?” Chris said as they made eye contact when she began replacing his IV drip. He was going through them fast. She didn’t expect him respond given that he hasn’t been talking, but he did. “Why should I?” He responded. “I mean I came here just for you. Chris.” Chris didn’t speak, she watched the John Doe look at her. Even though he was handcuffed to the bed she felt like he could jump out at her at any moment.

Slowly Chris backed out of the room making sure to keep his eyes on him. Once she was out of the room she headed straight for the bathroom. She needed out, needed to see herself, wanted to feel a sense of normalcy, but instead she saw someone else. It was a woman, a brown-haired woman with neatly styled hair and darting green eyes. She was wearing some sort of suit. Chris had seen her before.

Turning on the sink to the hottest setting, she doused her face with water. Annoying, as it was Chris was somehow comforted by seeing the other woman’s face. It was like with Dalia. By all accounts, she should be fearful, but instead these strangers’ faces comforted her.

"Yes, mother. I'll be there at 7:00."

Even as she hung up, it occurred to Dalia she didn't quite remember when she'd started only using the formal term of address for her mother. She'd intentionally begun a gradual transition in her late teens, but the smoothness had cost her the satisfaction of knowing when she'd finished. Although, Dalia wondered if she'd have felt satisfied at that point.

She shook her head, barely. There were more important concerns than her mother trying to create dates for her, of late. She was either going rather insane, or starting to share her mind with strangers across the world. The former seemed more plausible, and the latter preferable. Probably. Definitely. She decided on definitely. She had nothing to hide.

Dalia made her way out of the locker room she'd taken the call in, and across the gym's padded flooring, carrying a bag of clothes under one arm, with her shoes sitting atop it. A little girl sat in a line of children watched the woman walk by, an expression of awe on her face. Dalia knew the martial ability she'd displayed that afternoon didn't merit any positive impression, but the child didn't have the years' experience to recognize it.

Dalia had been volunteering with a relative novice, teaching the civilian variant of their nation's martial art to children. She had been distracted by noises half-heard from around the world; the beeping of hospital instruments, birds calling on a coast, and various other side-effects of employment. Her distraction had caused her to be instinctively less cooperative than she should have been, which would merit an apologu the next time she saw the young man who'd been teaching the class.

For now though, the grown-up smiled at the adoring child, and the returned joy seemed to confirm this had been the right decision. This smile was an easier lie than most emotions she affected. There were sure to be any number of other avenues for disappointment that taught the child disappointment. If a smile was all it took to help show the opposite was also possible, it was worth the small dishonesty.

When she passed outside with her shoes finally on, the myriad, disorderly scents of urban life greeted her, and she reveled in the sense a moment. Various other smells not from her surroundings found her, and Dalia spent some time on those, as well. The novelty fascinated her. Still, she left well within time to catch her preferred bus.



The best compliment to her apartment building available to Dalia was that it wasn't filthy. Her keys were instinctively held in a grip which would be useful in an emergency, her bag of clothes ready to be thrown as a distraction if necessary. Keeping the possibilities in mind was a practice, to Dalia. Still, she was not prepared for someone to be in her apartment with her after she closed the door.

---

Back in the lodge, the crew members were gathered around a large table; some talking casually, while others discussed tomorrow’s plans. Keeping aloof from the conversation, Jørn sat in a corner, his hands clasped around a steaming cup. Gazing over the table he took a slow sip from his coffee. He had felt a great need for it after standing outside in the cold for most of the day. The caffeine was a nice bonus: slowly the effects of getting up before sunrise had started to kick in. It wasn’t last night only that made him feel tired. For the past few weeks he had gotten very little sleep, having trouble to drift off and waking up very shortly afterwards again. It was known to Jørn that he had a sleeping disorder; a side effect of the anxiety he had been diagnosed with. The nightmares were new, however.

Moreover, there was one particular nightmare that kept repeating itself, haunting his mind night and day: a woman, in the midst of a dusky room, which peers at him, looking him in the eye before smiling and shooting herself. Jørn had tried to wake himself from the dream several times, trying to prevent the woman from the action, but his attempts were in vain.
And then there were the others, specters of people he had never met before. Up until now they had never appeared for long. His encounter with Steve had been completely different, the experience more vivid, more intense. Although Jørn still didn't have an explanation for it, he barely dared to doubt it had not happened. But if something like this could happen, then maybe the others had actually been there as well. Or maybe he made a connection between two things of an entirely different nature...

As the young man pondered over all of this, his forehead wrinkled up.

"What's up?" he heard next to him. Turning his head, his eyes met those of the woman from before, Helene -- he had picked up her name when someone had greeted her on their way in. There was something comforting about her soft, grey-blue gaze, but he could impossibly tell her what was troubling him.

"Ah, it's nothing. Just sketching out tomorrow's route in my head," he made up, smiling as he tried to reassure her. "It's probably easier if I have a map in front of me though, so if you will excuse me..." he said while already standing up. He honestly just wanted to do something for a bit to get his thoughts off the subject. After a quick note to his colleagues, he left the room, heading to the bedroom that had been assigned to him.

"Maybe checking the route is actually not such a bad idea..." he wondered as he pushed down on the handle. He might as well open up his laptop, to see if there were any new emails for him, and maybe also read up on that forum which he had found the other day... Deep in thought, he mused over the possibilities as he entered the room and closed the door behind him.

It was only then that Jørn noticed the chamber was quite unlike what he remembered. Apart from the furniture which didn't match his memories and which appeared to be more at home in someone's living room, it was a lot more spacious and light. Carefully he made a few steps forward into the room. Through one of the windows he looked over rooftops, shimmering in the sun in the late afternoon. "What in the... Again?" he stammered, blinking in disbelief.

“Hold da -!” (“Holy -!”) he exclaimed as he quickly turned around when he heard the jingling of keys. The sound came from a woman standing at the door, her posture one of defense; quite understandable when a stranger is randomly standing in your apartment. Her light eyes sparkled frightfully behind the waterfall of blonde curls, waving across her shoulders.

The male held up his hands almost instantly. "Calm down, don't worry, I mean you no harm," he quickly stated, although the woman appeared more calm than him. "I don't even know how I got here, although that probably sounds crazy," he muttered these last words, "let alone how I can get outta here and get back from where I came from."
Jørn immediately cursed himself after he spoke these words: there was no way in hell she was going to believe him. Unless... she could somehow visit him as well, just like Steve had.

---

---

Sydney couldn't believe the recent events that have transpired within her life. She was going nuts and she knew it. She wanted to check herself in a nut house, maybe that would make things a bit better for herself. She sighed while going up to her bathroom, muttering under her breath that she was fine but of course, it was a lie she told herself from time to time. While in her bathroom, she looked in her mirror but saw someone else other than her own self. She turned away from the mirror, closing her eyes and inhaling then exhaling while slowly turning back around and sighing.

She needed to relax and take a chill pill. She had hoped that things get better for her momentarily as she ran her bath for the night then dressed her for bed. She was a bit scared to close her eyes because of the recent nightmares that she had been having. She immediately opened up her eyes and realized that she had forgot to take her medicine. She did that then laid back down in bed and eventually went to sleep. No nightmares or anything happened as she slept happily for the first time in weeks.

It has been a few days past as it was now closing in to her birthday. She was back at the office, going through her cases and even went out to a peaceful lunch with some of her colleagues. People were happy to see Sydney smiling again and her boss was happy to have the old Sydney back. She didn't have any weird nightmares, interactions or unknown reflections occurrences happen lately and hoped that it stayed that way.

She was enjoying her life again and was glad to be back to her old self. She felt like with her birthday approaching that maybe the people she saw decided to leave her alone and she was happy that they did. With a sigh, she had gotten off of work and immediately walked down the stairs from the firm and towards her vehicle, where a bunch of hoodlums lurked.

"Damn, Mama. Look at you." One of them said towards Sydney as she looked up from searching for her car keys at them. "Pig." She muttered with a scoff as they all surrounded her and she gasped with tear filled eyes. 'Help me.' She thought but didn't really have the courage to speak it out loud. The hoodlums came in closer and closer towards her as she stood there, shaking with fear and terrified of what they could do to her.

Steve sat back his in chair and looked at the new whiteboard he'd bought the other day. He'd never wanted to be one of those writers, with a wall full of crazy, but it really was one of the better ways to layout and organize information so he could wrap his head around it. It was his effort to try and make sense of what had been happening to him over the last week and a half. The sneaking fear that he was going crazy was slowly fading away, replaced by a the niggling feeling of a mystery unsolved.

He'd gone out and bought the whiteboard a couple of days after his late night - for him anyway - run in with the Danish man. Although Jørn was the only one he'd had a solid conversation with yet, he'd seen numerous other faces, and a line of rough sketches and digital images was placed along the top of the board. Another rough sketch, this one of the dream, complete with the man and two women, sat in the bottom corner. A world map with little red markers over Sydney and Skagen was in the opposite corner of the board. Blue markers denoted other likely locations based on other incidents - a snatch of understood conversation that turned out to be Hebrew, a strong flash of deja-vu when watching a crime drama set in New York, and a couple of others.

Pride of place in the center, at least for the moment, sat a full color A4 picture of the same cold windy beach he'd stood on with Jørn, pulled off Google Images. A simple circle had been drawn around it and the words "Not Crazy" scribbled underneath. He'd never been there before that night, so there was no way he could have possibly known what it would look like. It didn't rule anything out conclusively of course, but the sheer sense of relief he'd felt when he found it was what had prompted him to start digging into the mystery rather than hoping it would simply pass with time. His own writing had fallen by the wayside the last couple of days, and he knew he was going to have to do a heavy burn over the weekend to catch up, but he didn't particularly mind - this was giving him inspiration for more than a dozen stories.

Suddenly there was some indefinable change in the apartment - not so much a change in air pressure or temperature, but an instinctual level knowledge that he was no longer along with his thoughts. He took a moment to compose himself, trying to feel out something about the presence - it felt friendly, or at least not actively hostile. "What do you think?" he asked, motioning at the board before turning around to face his visitor.

---

Blood pumped through Dalia’s veins hard, but she allowed herself to relax, as she could see traces of a small room with a bed. She forced her apartment into view. That was the room that was real; the one that was relevant to her.

“Ja, men-” Dalia stopped talking, realizing she’d heard herself speaking an unfamiliar language. “Interesting. Well, this is not my first… contact, today.” She locked her door, before walking away from it, and placing her bag on the coffee table the stranger had appeared near.

Jørn let out a deep sigh of relief when the woman calmed down, seemingly affected by his words. He slowly lowered his hands again, hoping she wouldn’t take it as a threat. He didn’t dare to move his legs however, remaining on the exact same spot; although the blonde was shorter than him by at least half a head, she gave the impression she was stronger than him, both by her physical characteristics as well as by her firm demeanor.

The way the blonde formulated her comment made him wonder what exactly she meant: had she been in a position similar to him, or did she mean something more ordinary? A raid perhaps.
He hesitated asking her whether she had been seeing strangers as well, but realizing this might give her an even more shady expression of him, he decided to rephrase his question, putting it more neutral. “So… You’ve had another visitor besides me?”

Dalia raised a slim eyebrow while walking to her small kitchen, on the other side of a counter. She wondered if the man - the hallucination - thought he had actually been transported to a stranger's apartment. "I have seen another possibly-hallucinative person, yes. The last one seemed to favor the idea this was a shared perception of some sort." She set a kettle on her stove-top, and drew a teacup from her cupboard. “You’ll forgive me for not offering tea, given you’re not actually here.”

Jørn tilted his head. "A shared perception, huh? That actually seems to make some sense... I mean, I still have no idea how it works, but at least it sounds more likely than a mere hallucination. Must've been a smart person who suggested that idea," he smiled lightly. It made him wonder whether this woman had encountered someone else than Steve, since the man appeared to get the situation just as little as he did. Just how many people were there like him?

Feeling somewhat more at ease, he sat down on the sofa. "You don't mind me sitting here, do you? Since I'm not actually here, you know," he remarked jokingly.

"Of course," she answered, while carefully scooping loose tea leaves into a net, which hung into a smaller sort of kettle.

From his new position Jørn looked over the apartment, slowly taking it in. It was rather different from his own; apart from the bag that had just been placed on top of the low table in front of him, it was very neat and organized, giving off a modern, professional vibe. He let his gaze wander over the kitchen, before letting his eyes rest on the woman, watching her prepare her drink.

"Ah, where are my manners, I haven't even introduced myself, nor asked for your name yet," he suddenly realized. "I'm Jørn," he nodded.

"Dalia," the host countered, carrying a small tray with the steeping kettle and a teacup over to her coffee table, and sitting beside Jørn. There was no furniture around for her to sit opposite him. She picked her workout bag off the table and dropped it beside, rather than sliding it.

"This is Israel, by the way. Where might you be?" She allowed herself to see some of what his body did, as she had when he first entered. "Some sort of... cabin?" The style of the room was alien to her, having lived either in the city or a barracks her whole life.

Jørn glanced up, noting they were in an environment he was familiar with. The two of them were now seated on his bed which was still uncovered, the sheets flung loosely over the mattress as a result of the rush this morning; there was no place for a sofa in the small bedroom.
Although it was an hour earlier in Denmark than in Israel, the clouded sky gave the impression it was actually quite a bit later here in Skagen than in the sunny city.

Remembering Dalia’s question, he faced her once more. “Yeah, we rented a lodge in the northern part of Denmark. We made some shots of migrating birds this morning. Made shots of them, not shoot them,” Jørn stressed, ensuring sure to make his intentions clear; he was very much against the use of firearms. He knew how to use a rifle, but he only learned it as an emergency measure in case they were photographing larger animals that were known to sometimes leash out.

“It’s for the nature magazine I work at,” he explained. “Here, let me show you some of the pictures we managed to make.” The tall man stood up and walked over to a desk in the corner of the room. He picked up the hefty camera and carefully removed the lens to make carrying the object an easier task. He placed the optic instrument in a black case in which he kept several lenses, before heading back to the bed. Sitting down again, he felt the mattress underneath him sink in under the weight. With a few clicks on some buttons a photo of a white-tailed eagle in flight came into view. Jørn held up the device to Dalia. “Amazing, right?” he said, his eyes widened with fascination. “This really was a lucky shot; I hadn’t expected to see one this early in the season,” he added.

Dalia nodded appreciatively. "Bird and photo both are quite beautiful. I frequent a small museum which has some especially good photography of fauna." Her eyes drifted to the edge of the phone, and down its strap, as a thought came to her. Dalia reached down to the camera's strap, lifting it into the air, feeling the texture beneath her fingertips.

"If I was to assume this shared perception was real, how are we both holding this camera? Am I using your hand to lift the strap?"

Jørn looked down at his hands, both were holding tight onto the apparatus. Meaningful he looked up from his hands into the young woman’s face: he could not be the one lifting the strap as his hands were preoccupied. “Can you feel the strap?” he asked her, not sure what else to ask.

"I can," Dalia confirmed, but she paused, rubbing her fingers over the strap's surface, expression thoughtful.

“I um, I also had a ‘visitor’ earlier today, a man from Australia. When we shook hands I could feel the warmth from his skin,” he commented. “I figured that, because of the amount of detail and because I could not only see and hear, but also feel him, it couldn’t be a hallucination, nor a dream. Later I wondered that maybe your brain fills in the sensation of touch: you expect to feel warmth when you touch someone. Something like that, you know? But… that doesn’t seem to explain everything. Neither does the idea of a shared perception seem to.” He shook his head slightly. “What might be even weirder is that, even though I have no clue of what is going on and what is happening to me, I feel oddly at ease. Maybe it’s because I got sort of used to it, with all these nightmares and visions of the past few weeks, I dunno,” he cast his eyes to the ground. “I’m also a lot more talkative right now than I normally am,” he suddenly realized. “Usually I would’ve kept all these thoughts to myself.” He paused for a moment. “Sorry for my rambling; my thoughts are kinda all over the place at the moment.”

Dalia shook her head dismissively. "It's no trouble. Listening is my career. I suspect..." she said, allowing the strap to fall gently, "that your brain was allowing for you to think you were holding the camera with both hands, but you actually held the strap with one."

She stood then, and took a look around the small room, before forcing her own apartment back into her perception. "That's assuming this is all real, of course. Now, I really should be preparing for my evening, if you don't mind."

“Alright,” Jørn nodded slowly as he found himself back on the sofa. With the short time that had passed in between, the apartment was now painted with the glow of the setting sun. “Enjoy your evening, Dalia,” he smiled weakly as he departed from the woman and the rented bedroom came back into view. Putting down the camera on the wooden nightstand next to his bed, he let himself fall backwards on the sheets, closing his eyes. Vaguely the scene replayed itself behind his eyelids, after which soon he drifted off in a light slumber.

Dalia did not sleep for some hours more, having an obligation to see whatever romantic candidate her mother was trying to introduce. It had taken some effort to politely decline the man's interest, but not doing so had never even occurred to Dalia. Ultimately, she'd returned, tended to her teeth, seen a stranger in the mirror instead of herself, and gone to sleep. It seemed strangely routine.



It was some days later when, during her sleep, Dalia dreamt of one of the people she'd been seeing. The woman - the American - was walking through a neighborhood she really had no business in, and being surrounded by several men.

"You know," Dalia observed, "they're obviously untrained."



As days went by, Jørn frequently encountered the foreigners, getting more and more familiar with their faces. There were five of them, six if he included himself. He had gotten more or less used to the situation by now and had given up thinking about the causes and details. Right now he had other things on his mind anyway, as his birthday was drawing near. Last year he had spent it in the office, finishing up an article, but this year around the same time there was not much to do, which made him decide that he wanted to celebrate it in a somewhat nicer way. He had planned to spend the day with the people dear to him: his family, friends, and girlfriend. He wanted to organize something small for each of them; go see his friends in one of the local cafes, invite his father over, and have a special dinner with Stine. The problem was how to schedule it all in one day, and in what order…

At the moment Jørn didn’t want to occupy himself with this however. He was sitting in one of the comfy chairs in his apartment, softly strumming the strings of his guitar. He listened carefully to the tones, adjusting the strings where necessary. It had been a long time since the last time he had played the instrument.

It’s been day since the John Doe incident. Things have been quiet and peaceful lately. Chris has been visiting Alby’s place more and more since her birthday is coming up. She needed the stress relief. Their relationship prior was a one night stand turned friends with benefits scenario, but the benefits quickly disappeared and has since turned into her just easting his food, or hanging out because Alby was just a plainly decent person.

The recent have events have since calmed down. The visions of other people and places are more common now, but she’s no longer scared. The dream like conversations was sparse, and the glimpses here and there were shorter, but they were a welcome change in her life. Every time her mind drifts and her body moves away from itself, there was never any sense of fear or anxiety.

Every now and then, she would an unusual physical sensation or an unwelcome sensation would well up and course through her body. They caused her pain, worry, suffering, but also pleasure, warmth, and joy. Weeks ago she would have believed herself to be going insane, but not so these days, the people she conversed with agreed. The research also helped.

It was some days even later when Chris connected with the other woman. With the exception of Dalia, who she hasn’t spoken to in a while, she knew of only one other woman. Whenever Chris saw her, the other woman would be wearing a brave face masking worry and anxiety. Chris was familiar with it. Her patients wore it to hide from the doctors, and the staff wore it to pretend that everything would be okay.
At this time she was still in her apartment. Work had finished hours ago. Her dreams were far from peaceful and her bed reminiscent of the father bear from the story of Goldilocks. She was far from sleeping when the other woman’s distress jolted her.

Chris didn’t figure the other woman for the type to go off and look for danger so it must have found her. Chris viewed it all like an audience watching a slow moving scene. Men surrounded the American with predator like eyes.

The men’s breath rank of alcohol, and their eyes were hazy and red. Chris’s best guess was that they were drinking and smoking pot, they decided to hit the streets to get some tail. She’d seen it hundreds of times. A couple would be harmless, but a whole group was troublesome. The men would be too slow and too weak if she actually did anything. The other woman just needed a distraction.