The neon sign outside Phoenix Thorne’s converted warehouse flickered erratically, casting intermittent shadows across the rain-slicked pavement of the arts district. Inside, Phoenix sat cross-legged on a worn leather couch, eyes closed, fingertips pressed against their temples as they emerged from yet another client’s nightmare. The familiar disorientation of dream-walking always left them feeling like they’d surfaced from deep water, gasping for the solid reality of the waking world.”Another sleepwalking businessman?” Riley Chen asked from behind her wall of monitors, not looking up from the scrolling data feeds that tracked sleep patterns across the metropolitan area.”Worse,” Phoenix replied, rubbing their eyes. “A kindergarten teacher whose anxiety dreams are filled with giant scissors chasing children through a maze made of finger paintings. Took me three dives to untangle that mess.”Riley finally turned, her dark eyes reflecting the blue glow of her screens. “Well, that explains why you look like you’ve been hit by a psychic freight train. But we might have a bigger problem.”Phoenix’s photographic memory kicked in automatically, cataloging Riley’s expression—the slight downturn of her mouth, the way her shoulders tensed, the nervous habit of pushing her glasses up her nose. In their con artist days, reading micro-expressions had meant the difference between a successful score and a prison sentence. Now it helped them navigate the equally treacherous world of the subconscious.”Show me,” Phoenix said, moving to stand behind Riley’s chair.The monitors displayed a map of the city’s forgotten subway system, the abandoned 1940s stations that existed in that strange liminal space between dreams and reality. Normally, the network pulsed with a gentle, rhythmic pattern—the collective breathing of the city’s sleeping minds. Tonight, angry red clusters spread like infection across the grid.”It started three days ago in the old Central Terminal,” Riley explained, her fingers dancing across the keyboard. “Isolated nightmare reports, nothing unusual. But look at this progression.”The display shifted to show the spread over time. What had begun as a single point of disturbance now covered nearly a quarter of the underground network, with tendrils reaching toward the surface stations still in use.Phoenix felt that familiar thrill, the electric anticipation that used to precede their most ambitious cons. But this was different. Back then, the worst outcome was getting caught and doing time. Now, people’s minds hung in the balance.”You’re thinking this is connected to the shared dreaming network,” Phoenix said.”I’m thinking this is something we’ve never seen before. A dream virus, maybe. Something that propagates through the collective unconscious and gets stronger with each new host.”Phoenix’s mind raced, their perfect recall sorting through every dream they’d ever walked, every nightmare they’d unraveled. The patterns were there, waiting to be assembled like pieces of an elaborate puzzle.”The reports,” Phoenix said suddenly. “The nightmares aren’t random, are they? There’s a common thread.”Riley pulled up the incident files. “Feelings of being watched, shadowy figures at the edge of vision, and—””The sense of falling upward,” Phoenix finished. “I’ve been seeing fragments of it in my clients’ dreams, but I thought it was just psychological bleed-through from the collective network.””Phoenix, if this thing is spreading through the shared dreaming space, and it’s starting to affect surface dreams…” Riley didn’t need to finish the sentence. They both understood the implications. The forgotten subway stations weren’t just abandoned tunnels—they were the neural pathways of the city’s sleeping mind. If something corrupted that network completely, it could trap every dreamer in the metropolitan area.Phoenix stood, pacing to the tall windows that overlooked the arts district. Below, the city hummed with its nighttime energy, unaware that beneath their feet, in the realm of dreams, something was spreading like digital cancer through the collective unconscious.”I need to go down there,” Phoenix said. “Into the old Central Terminal.””That’s suicide,” Riley protested. “If this virus is as strong as I think it is, you could get trapped permanently. Your consciousness could be absorbed into whatever this thing is.”Phoenix turned back to face their partner, and Riley saw something in their expression that she recognized from the old days—the look Phoenix got when they were about to attempt the impossible.”Remember the Pemberton job?” Phoenix asked. “When I had to convince that billionaire’s wife that I was her long-lost nephew from Switzerland?””You studied for three months, learned Swiss German, and somehow got hold of family photos going back fifty years,” Riley said. “What does that have to do with—””The key to any good con is understanding your mark better than they understand themselves,” Phoenix interrupted. “You find their weakness, their desire, their fear, and you give them exactly what they think they want. This virus, whatever it is, it’s running a con on people’s minds. Which means it has rules, patterns, weaknesses.”Riley was already shaking her head. “This isn’t a mark you can read and manipulate, Phoenix. This is something that exists purely in the realm of consciousness. It’s not bound by the same psychological rules as human beings.””Maybe not,” Phoenix conceded, “but it’s operating in human dreams, which means it has to interface with human psychology somehow. And if I can get close enough to study it, I can figure out how to beat it.”The next morning found Phoenix descending into the bowels of the city, past the functioning subway lines and into the forgotten depths where the 1940s stations lay like sleeping giants. Riley’s voice crackled through their earpiece, a lifeline to the waking world.”Vital signs are steady,” Riley reported. “Remember, if your readings spike into the red zone, I’m pulling you out whether you like it or not.”The old Central Terminal stretched before Phoenix like a cathedral of decay. Art deco tilework peeled from the walls, and ancient advertisements for long-dead products ghosted across billboards. But it was the sleeping figures that drew Phoenix’s attention—dozen of people who had found their way down here, drawn by some unconscious compulsion to sleep in this nexus of the dream network.Phoenix approached one of the sleepers, a middle-aged woman whose face was twisted in terror even as she remained unconscious. They knelt beside her and placed their hand on her forehead, feeling the familiar tingle that preceded dream-walking.The transition was rougher than usual, like diving into turbulent water. Phoenix found themselves in a reproduction of the terminal, but one that shifted and writhed with nightmare logic. The walls breathed, the ceiling dripped something that might have been blood or might have been shadow, and everywhere, everywhere, was the sensation of being watched by something vast and hungry.Phoenix’s photographic memory went into overdrive, cataloging every detail, every inconsistency, every clue about the nature of this viral nightmare. The dreamer—the woman from the terminal—stood frozen in the center of the space, her eyes wide with terror as shadows reached for her with grasping fingers.”It’s okay,” Phoenix said, stepping into the nightmare with the confidence of someone who had walked through a thousand bad dreams. “This isn’t real. We can leave whenever we want.”But even as they spoke the words, Phoenix realized they weren’t entirely true. This dream felt different, more solid, more resistant to the usual techniques for lucid dreaming. The virus had learned to make its nightmares inescapable.The shadows turned toward Phoenix, and for a moment, they felt the full weight of the entity’s attention. It was like standing in front of a searchlight powered by pure malevolence. But instead of fleeing, Phoenix stepped closer, their con artist instincts kicking in.”Impressive work,” they said, addressing the shadows directly. “Really top-tier nightmare construction. The breathing walls are a nice touch, and the sense of inescapable dread is perfectly calibrated. But I have to ask—what’s your endgame here?”The shadows recoiled slightly, as if surprised by Phoenix’s casual tone. In that moment of uncertainty, Phoenix caught a glimpse of something underneath the nightmare facade—a pattern, a structure, almost like…”You’re not a virus at all,” Phoenix said, understanding flooding through them. “You’re a dreamer. A human dreamer whose consciousness got trapped down here somehow, and you’ve been pulling other minds in to keep yourself company.”The nightmare wavered, the carefully constructed terror faltering for just an instant. And in that instant, Phoenix saw them—a young person, maybe nineteen or twenty, huddled in the corner of what looked like a subway maintenance room.”How long have you been down here?” Phoenix asked, their voice gentle now. “In the real world, I mean. How long since you fell asleep in the terminal?”The shadows began to dissipate, and the nightmare started to collapse around them. Phoenix reached out to the trapped dreamer, extending their consciousness like a lifeline.”My name is Phoenix Thorne,” they said. “I’m going to help you wake up.”The journey back to consciousness was like swimming up from the bottom of an ocean. Phoenix emerged in the terminal to find the sleeping figures beginning to stir, the viral nightmares dissipating as their source—the trapped dreamer—was finally freed.Riley’s voice buzzed in their earpiece. “Phoenix! The network’s clearing. Whatever you did down there, it worked.”Phoenix looked around the terminal and spotted them—the young dreamer, unconscious in a maintenance alcove, surrounded by the detritus of someone who had been living rough. They were barely breathing, dehydrated and malnourished, but alive.”Riley, call an ambulance,” Phoenix said. “And maybe social services too. I think our ‘virus’ just needed help, not an exorcism.”Later, back in the warehouse, Phoenix sat on their couch with a cup of coffee, processing the night’s events. The young dreamer—Marcus, they had learned—was recovering in the hospital, his story gradually emerging. A runaway who had found shelter in the abandoned station, he had fallen into such deep, exhausted sleep that his consciousness had become trapped in the dream network. His desperate loneliness had reached out to other dreamers, pulling them into his nightmare without him even realizing it.”So the great dream virus was actually a scared kid who just wanted someone to talk to,” Riley said, updating her files. “I have to admit, that’s not what I expected.”Phoenix smiled, feeling the satisfaction that came from solving a puzzle that had seemed impossible just hours before. “The best cons always have a human element,” they said. “Even when they’re happening in the realm of dreams.”Outside, the neon sign flickered steadily, casting its light over a city that slept peacefully once again, unaware of the drama that had played out in the spaces between waking and sleeping. And in the converted warehouse, Phoenix Thorne settled back into their chair, ready for whatever mystery the dream world would bring them next.The electric thrill was already building again, that familiar anticipation of the next challenge, the next puzzle to solve in the shadowy realm where consciousness and reality blurred together. After all, Phoenix thought with a smile, everyone had to make a living somehow—even reformed con artists who walked through other people’s dreams.