I spent the rest of the morning looking for something without really knowing what. The words of mirror-me kept resounding over and over in my mind, the urgency and irritation in them as vivid as if she was hissing her command right into my ear.

Find the thread.

But what was that even supposed to mean?

The other prisoners stayed out of my way. They must have probably thought that I was crazy as I paced the common room in nervous circles like a tiger in a cage. Then again, according to Cloud, they were all mad here.

I slid my hand along the smooth walls to feel for any dents or edges. There were none. I knocked against the black window panels, but could not discern from the sound alone what the material was, or what may have been beyond them. It might as well have been a solid brick wall. I investigated the panel that hid the niche in the wall where the food appeared, feeling along the seamless edges of the opening behind it. I looked under the couches, and found not even a speck of dust, which was probably the oddest thing yet, considering that several people lived here, and I doubted that Hell Hotel had any routine room service. But it was nowhere near odd enough to allow me to snap out of this dream.

I closely inspected the few objects that the prisoners had at their disposal for entertainment, besides the books in the library: a chess set (not in black and white, but made with clear and matte glass, so that it turned almost invisible as it sat on a shelf in the common room), a box filled with miniature tools, like a saw, a rake and pitchfork, and various others, to serve as jackstraws (made from some kind of plastic, and white, of course), and a cube about the size of my palm, consisting of various smaller cubes that could be rotated and shifted per row or column. A Rubik's cube, I recalled the name of a similar toy that had been popular in the Old World, and had found some fans also in our day and age. But this one had no colored sides, instead it was purely white (although with a little imagination and some squinting, I could make myself believe that the plastic had a slight grayish hue to it), with numbers printed on each little cube's face.

I twisted and turned the puzzle for a while, before I gave up with a frustrated sigh. There was some rule to the way in which the numbers had to be arranged, I was certain, but since they had already been displaced in a random order when I had started, I couldn't quite figure it out. It seemed like a strangely fitting metaphor for my entire situation.

My gaze lingered on the number on one of the little cubes at the center of one side. Eleven – my number, as Dia had called it, the one I was supposed to remember well.

With an irritated sigh, I put the cube back on its spot on the shelf and continued my aimless investigation of Tartaros. It led me to the other rooms that branched off from the atrium. The common bathroom had a row of sinks with no mirrors hanging above them, and four separate, smaller rooms with milk glass doors and showers. At least there was some privacy guaranteed – not too bad for a prison. Otherwise, the room was as inconspicuous and unremarkable as a snowflake in an avalanche.

I left the white-tiled walls behind me and stepped back into the atrium. The fake sky up ahead was glaring down at me, and somehow it made me miss the gloomy twilight it had seemed to emit in the morning. I looked around at the doors that lined the walls of the circular room. Aside from the bathroom, there was only one other door that I knew wasn't somebody's private room.

I slipped into the library, as quiet as if there was a librarian who would shush me otherwise. There was nobody else there but me, and I didn't quite know why, but somehow, that made me feel uneasy. As if the place was some kind of sacred temple, and the priest was sorely absent.

I began my search, for whatever it was that I was looking for, by randomly cracking open books and skimming over the texts. It felt slightly sacrilegious to do this in such an unceremonious manner, without much consideration or time spent on savoring the feeling of the paper under my skin and appreciating the rustling sound as I flicked through the pages.

After I had finished desecrating an entire shelf with my random sampling, there was only one conclusion. They were real.

I didn't quite know what to make of that. But for those books that I had read, their contents definitely matched what I remembered, even if I couldn't remember them by heart. I even looked up some passages that I could have definitely recited in my sleep, from some of my favorite stories.

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where—" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"—so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

When I put back Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland, a strange sensation lingered with me, just like when I had played with the Rubik's cube. It all felt like a giant joke – it seemed to me that my subconscious was trying to tell me something with all of this. But it wasn't just feeding me the hints in hushed whispers. It was screaming them at me, but I was apparently deaf. Like the proverbial wood for the trees, it was like I couldn't even see the puzzle for all the clues.

I looked along the shelves, across the names and titles that seemed all more or less familiar. If this place was truly in my mind, what were the odds that I could really remember all of these stories? Perhaps I just had to find one that I didn't know, and see what it held. My gaze continued to skim over the identical backs of the books, until it was captured by one in particular.

The book was bound differently from the others, it was more grey than white, and the linen was different.

Dark Abyss. By Bianxiao Liu.

The one book I couldn't for the life of me remember ever having heard of. The perfect test object.

I stepped up to the shelf and reached out, but hesitated before I touched it. I tensed up, and stared at the back of the book until the letters began to shift and dance before my eyes. I wondered, what would happen if I opened it? What lay beyond that titular abyss? And did I really want to know?

I gritted my teeth together. I had to know. My blood was pounding through my body as I forced my hand closer to the book, through what felt like an invisible aura of aversion. It was as if that damned book didn't want to be read. Which was ridiculous of course, because I highly doubted that even in a place as insane as my own mind, simple books could have a will of their own.

"Ah, there you are."

The voice behind me startled me so much that I jumped in surprise. I whirled around and was faced with Dia, whose wide smile did preciously little to calm my heartbeat down again.

"Sorry to scare you. I just wanted to fetch you for lunch," he explained.

My heart was beating somewhere in my throat, so there seemed insufficient room for any words to pass through. So I simply nodded in response.

A glanced back over my shoulder as I followed Dia out of the library. The book just sat there, a conspicuous speck of grey amidst white, and I felt as if it was mocking me. But somehow, I felt strangely relieved that I hadn't opened it.

~ ~ ~

Lunch had manifested itself in the form of something that was reminiscent of rice, if rice had an equivalent that was made of meat. It didn't taste too bad, but I couldn't force myself to eat more than a few spoonfuls. I didn't like eating among strangers, and while the conversation at the table was lively and nobody was paying me any heed, I felt watched with every bite I took.

Afterwards, I came to sit on one of the couches and pondered the things I had learned so far – or rather, the glaring absence of anything worthy of any conclusion or interpretation. I stared off into the distance, trying to sort my thoughts despite there not being very many of them, until something curious attracted my attention. At the table, Dream, the old blind man, was building a house of cards while Arrow and Dia were watching him. Arrow had procured the Rubik's cube, and was turning and shifting it rapidly in his hands without looking at it.

Perhaps Dream isn't fully blind after all? I thought.

But the man had his pale eyes directed towards the ceiling, so even if he wasn't blind, he certainly wasn't watching where he was putting the cards. Yet the structure he built seemed perfectly balanced and would likely even withstand a bump against the table. The sight filled me with equal parts admiration and bewilderment, and so I got up and walked over to them.

"Excuse me, I don't wish to be rude, but... I was wondering," I said as I approached the three, "how do you do it?"

A smile washed over the old man's face and he put down the card he was holding.

"Let's play a game, and I will show you," Dream suggested, and gestured to the spot opposite of him.

His voice was a rich, dark baritone that coated every word he spoke with a gravity that hinted at a very significant, but enigmatic hidden meaning. I looked at him more closely for the first time. His dark brown skin reminded me of leather, weathered and wrinkled from a lifetime of experiences and adventures. His hair was close-cropped, and had certainly been dark at some point, but white had long since overtaken as the predominant color. His eyes had unsettled me in the beginning, but now I could appreciate a certain eerie beauty of the two pupil-less discs of pale gold.

The expression on his face was pensive and inquisitive at the same time, and when he heard the chair scratch over the floor as I complied with his request and sat down, his lips were drawn into a wide and crooked smile.

"So... A game? Like what? Poker?" I asked, watching with suspicion as he shuffled the remaining deck skillfully.

I was really terrible at any kind of card game. Even though I might have stood a chance if my opponent was blind, something told me he had other aces up the sleeves of his white jacket.

"Oh, no, not poker," he chuckled. "Just close your eyes for a moment."

"Uhm... Okay." I was surprised, but complied.

"Now tell me, what do you see?" he asked.

"Well, the inside of my eyelids, I suppose?"

"And when you think of the room we are in, can you see it?"

"In my imagination, yes," I answered, knitting my brows together in growing confusion.

"Now tell me, where are Dia and Arrow?"

"Seriously?" The furrow on my brow must have rivaled the Mariana Trench. But I realized that I could still hear the faint clicking noises of the Rubik's cube that Arrow was playing with.

"I suppose Dia is still sitting to your left, and Arrow to your right. But I can't be sure."

"Now raise your hand in front of your face. Keep your eyes closed!"

"Uhm... okay." I held my hand up and felt extremely silly.

"Do you see it?"

"No, of course I don't," I sighed in exasperation. "My eyes are still closed!"

"Right. And yet you know that it is there."

"Of course I do. Because it is, well, my hand. How could I not know?"

"Put it out, flat," he ordered me.

Somebody placed something in my palm the moment I stretched it out.

"Do you know what this is?" Dream asked.

"The deck of cards," I replied, feeling extremely stupid.

"Chose one," he instructed me. "Any one. Take your time."

I suppose since I am not looking, it means it doesn't matter which one I pick, I thought. I began to anticipate some kind of card trick.

Blindly, I shuffled through the deck, then spread out the cards on the table before me. I slid my fingertips across them, and on a random hunch stopped at one and picked it up.

"Do you know which one it is?" Dream asked.

"Of course not. I cannot see what's on it," I explained, still unable to understand the purpose of any of this.

"No, you cannot see," he said crptically.

The card vanished from my hand, and I opened my eyes. Dream had put it flat on his palm and traced the edges with the tip of a finger.

"It's the queen of hearts," he proclaimed with a faint smile.

When he flipped it over, I saw that he was correct. Dia and Arrow had remained silent throughout the entire exercise, but now they burst into laughter as they saw my surprised expression.

"So... you don't see the cards, but you somehow... feel them?" I asked doubtfully. "Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

"In a way," Dream replied with a deep chuckle. "I feel things that are around me. Just like you feel some things you cannot see. Your hand, outstretched in the dark. Static electricity that makes the hair on your arms stand up. The sensation of somebody watching you when you turn your back. And I just remember the places where I felt these things. Like this room. And the people in it."

"I understand... I think," I replied. "But to build a house of cards like that - that's quite impressive."

"Ah, old man, I think you're not getting enough credit here," Dia said and winked at me, "You should see him in a trial. He is incredible. For a blind old man, that is."

Dream burst into a deep belly laugh, and his voice seemed to reverberate through the sparsely furnished common room.

"So how do you handle the trials?" I asked, thinking of the desert and the mountain and whatever other insane places there were.

"You have been to the well," the old man said. "So you know that here is no need to see in that one. In the forest, I have my ears. I am not sent to the other places, usually. I am sent to a room."

"A room? Like for the puzzles and tests that you mentioned?"

"Sometimes, they take you to a special room that seems to be made just for you," Arrow chimed in to explain. He put the Rubik's cube on the table before him and eyed it suspiciously, as if it was a symbol for the room he was talking about. "They make you do things there that seem to... have something to do with your talents or something, I don't really know. I don't understand it either. It's weird."

"In my room," Dream went on, "They test how good I am at seeing things with senses other than my eyes."

"Here, let me demonstrate," Dia said.

The younger man reached out for the stack of cards and flipped through them. Then he took one out and flicked it up into the air in a quick motion. In the blink of an eye, Dream snatched the card out of mid-air, leaving me wide-eyed with surprise, and causing Dia to chuckle at my reaction once again.

I had never met a blind person before - diseases or genetic conditions resulting in blindness had all been eradicated or corrected via genetic engineering, and if somebody lost their sight due to an accident, there was always cybernetic implants to make up for the damaged tissue - but I was fairly certain that this ability was extraordinary. I wondered which part of Dream's visual system was affected by his blindness, and if he had always been blind. Perhaps he was, and that was why he was so good at adapting to his surroundings with his other senses.

If any of this was real, of course, I added to my line of thought.

While Dia and Arrow momentarily engaged in a conversation on their own, the old man and I continued to talk.

"Tell me something, child," he asked, "Do you dream?"

He had directed his pale golden gaze at the ceiling again, and wore an expression on his face as if he was watching the sky and looking for shapes in the clouds. I wondered what it was that he saw in his mind's eye, and as I mulled his question over, I realized that I found his question harder to answer than expected.

"Honestly? I believe I am dreaming right now," I finally replied.

The man chuckled. "Then what do you see when you don't dream?"

Now that's an interesting way to put it, I thought.

"Another... world, I suppose," I finally answered, for a lack of better words to describe it.

"Me too," he said. "A world filled with color."

I looked around the common room with its white walls and white furniture. Yes, that's pretty accurate.

"I think you came from that world," Dream continued, "Because I saw you there."

"You.... saw me?" I asked, raising my eyebrows.

"In a dream," he said cryptically. He lowered his gaze from the ceiling and it came to rest somewhere in the general vicinity of my face. I found that easier to accept than the idea that the blind man was practically staring me down now.

"But I have to ask you something..." he continued. "Tell me, what color are your eyes?"

That was certainly not what I had expected. I tensed slightly, casting an uneasy glance over my shoulder. I half expected Rain to come down on me like a hurricane if I continued this conversation. But she was nowhere to be seen.

"Why do you want to know?"

Can a blind person even have a concept of color? I wondered.

"Just curious," he said with a smile on his lips.

"They're blue," I answered his question, the exact same moment that Dia, who had apparently overheard us talking, chimed in, "They're green."

"What?" Dia and I both exclaimed, and looked at each other in surprise.

"Well... there are no mirrors here, so I suppose you'll have to believe me..." Dia said apologetically, scratching his head.

Apparently the exchange had left him almost as baffled as me. Rendered speechless for a moment, I blankly stared at him, but my gaze was really focused on something in infinite distance as I tried to piece together the hints. But I still couldn't quite see the puzzle.

My scars were gone. My eye color wasn't right. Everything felt the same, but whoever I was, I didn't seem to be me. So who was I? Who was prisoner eleven of Tartaros?

Then I remembered the girl form that dream within my dream. She had looked just like me, but her eyes had been green too. So perhaps she had been my mirror image? I had no way to check. It was disconcerting, not knowing who I was supposed to be and what I looked like, and only added to the feeling of being trapped in this place. For the first time, I understood what Estelle, one of the characters in Sartre's "No Exit", must have felt like.

Hell is other people, the quote from the play popped up in my mind again. Maybe this is not a dream after all? But what is it, then? Hell? Really?

I looked from Dia, whose quizzical and doubtful gaze was still glued to my own eyes, to Dream, who seemed utterly unfazed by any of this.

"Interesting, interesting," the old man just hummed and shuffled the deck of cards in his hands with mesmerizing speed once more.

"Oh. You forgot this one," I said, and picked up a card that lay between us on the table.

"Take it. It's special."

I turned it over - it was the queen of hearts. Dream's deck of cards had a pretty, ornate design style, and this one showed the red silhouette of a woman adorned with heart-shaped ornaments. I could not see anything special about it, though. It was only when I turned it again, so that the back faced upwards, that I noticed that the corners were slightly frayed.

That must be why it stood out to me and I picked it before, I thought, And it must also be the reason why the card stood out to him as special.

"But you'll be missing it in the deck now," I argued.

"Oh, don't you worry, child," he said, wearing his wide and crooked smile again while he continued to shuffle the remaining cards. "I won't be needing them. It's not like I use them to play poker."

I looked down at the card again. The picture of the queen of hearts was only a silhouette, but I couldn't help but feel as if she was winking at me. Perhaps she was mocking me, as I was handed what felt like another answer to a question I hadn't yet figured out how to ask.

______
A.N.
This scene was originally planned to happen a while later, but I realized now that with some re-writing, it actually fits quite well at this point. I hope you're not bored of a lack of action? :)
Let me know what you think & thanks for reading up to this point!