Kathy blinks a few times, is her imagination messing with her? She swallows loudly, she doesn't like the sight she's seeing. She has goosebumps all over her body.

In front of her are thousands of birds gathering, forming a huge, dark cloud of wings. She doesn't like birds... But she can't help to think this must be a strange thing to do for birds. She has never seen so many at once and then, till her horror, they're starting to fly her way.

For what could be only a few seconds, she's frozen with fear but even in those few moments, the black birds are all around her. Kathy screams when she feels their sharp claws burying in her skin, leaving painful wounds behind. She folds her arms protectively over her head and crouches down, but the ravens and crows keep attacking her. Swirling chaotic around her, clawing at her and picking her with their beaks. She has to get out of her before they would kill her! She can feel her warm blood running over her skin, pouring out of her already many wounds.

She imagines the inside of the building and in a grey cloud she disappears. She knows she's probably dragging some birds along with her during the teleportation, but she doesn't care. Hopefully her friends can handle a few birds but Kathy can't handle all the ravens and crows by herself.

With a loud Poof! she appears in the laboratorium, and Skyler and Diamond quickly avert their gaze from the hologram towards Kathy who's screaming in fear.

"Birds!" she yells loudly, slapping fiercefully around with her arms. "Birds everywhere! I hate birds! They almost killed me!"

Diamond stares at her confused and crosses eyes with Skyler who is just as suprised as she is.

"Uhm, Kathy?" Diamond starts unsure. "There's nothing here, you're alright."

Kathy stops slamming around with her arms and looks down in disbelief. There are no longer wounds on her skin.

"B-but," she stambles confused. She looks around and her fear of taking some of the birds with her, hadn't been necessarily. She's alone with Diamond and Skyler. To be sure she checks her arms again but there really is nothing there. But the pain had been so real, she can still feel the claws and beaks of the ravens buring itself in her skin. And the blood she had feel streaming over her skin, she shivers by the thought of it, but it was all gone now. What on Earth had happened?

"Kathy? What happened?" Diamond asks the pale-faced mutant. In stead of a grey skin she now has a skin white as snow due to the shock.

"I – I don't know. One moment I'm being attacked by the birds outside on the top of the Tower, and the next moment when I've teleported away from them, there's no sign of what have happened."

Skyler puts up the screen of the camera on the top of the building and in contradiction to what Kathy had experienced, there are no birds. Not even one sitting on the edge of the roof.

"I swear, birds attacked me," Kathy mutters, getting real unsure now. Was she going crazy?

Skyler nods at her. "We believe you. It must have been Cynar, messing with your mind."

"Indeed," Diamond agrees. "From now on, no one is going somewhere alone."

Kathy nods slowly. "Alright." She's more than happy to agree with that, she isn't sure if she even dared going back onto the rooftop, alone.

"What did you two find out?" she continues and Skyler's eyes lit up.

"The mist, it is remarkable. It creates sleep, I have never seen anything like it. But-," and with this her eyes lose their twinkling. "The longer they're asleep, the more in danger they are."

Kathy is confused. "How do you mean?"

"It also contains a toxic. The longer they breath it, the worser it is going to get. It's destroying their brains piece by piece, until they'll just become brain-dead."

"What?! We have to wake them up!" Kathy yells, they can't just let their friends die.

"Yeah, but the only way to do that is to kill Cynar, I suppose. He's the one who controls all this."

Kathy frowns. "Wait, why aren't our brains getting destroyed?"

"It appears we're breathing it in, but we also breath it back out. Must be the dragon's doing." Skyler answers. "But anywho, I think I have created a substance with the mist that will allow us to enter the dream without the help of the Asgardian."

"If it is one big dream," Diamond points out and Skyler nods.

"Indeed. Lets get back to the others, to find out what they have discovered."

Skyler throws some testing tubes - which contain the substance she had created with the mist - inside a heavy looking, silver coloured case, and heads back upstairs with Diamond and Kathy close behind her.

They enter the upper floor of the Tower but they quickly see Elizabeth and Katherine are still asleep. Iris is sitting in the middle of the circle of sleeping people and a deep frown can be seen on her forehead.

They quietly make their way towards them, careful not to get Iris out of her concentration. Skyler places the case on the coffee table and casts a glance upon her watch. She wonders how long they're having until it all will be too late to do anything at all. Time is ticking, and not in their advantage. The longer it takes them to discover as much as possible about this everything, the higher the chance is getting that their friends eventually won't wake up again.

Diamond clasps her hands together while Skyler keeps casting glanches upon her watch. All three can feel the urgenty of defeating this enemy as quickly as possible.

Kathy bites her lip, she actually wants to scream in frustration. They have to act now!

"Please hurry up," she begs them softly. But they can only guess what's happening inside their heads.

~~~