Blood began to ooze out of the walls, a thick nightmarish waterfall springing through the wallpaper and pooling on the floor. Selene gasped and scrambled away, to her feet, as the sanguine blood covered the wall of soaring windows and dripped from the chandelier.

A gob of blood fell on her face, and Selene shrieked, trying to wipe it off, stumbling against a wall, but her hand was engulfed in red and she pulled it away to stare in horror at the blood, growing and swelling and dripping to the ground, leaving spots of red in the carpet, flowing down her arm, swallowing her whole in shining gore. She felt it seep from the wall through her back, sticky in the silk of her gown. Selene jumped away from the wall, screaming bloody mary and soiling further her already raw cheeks with tears-- She sobbed and cried and ran to the door, rubbing her arms and trying to be rid of the blood getting everywhere, sticking to her face, matting down her hair. Reaching the door, Selene tried the handle desperately, pulling and crying, screaming murder after Bement, but it was sealed tight with the starving blood.

Selene collapsed to the floor in exhausted anguish, squeezing her eyes shut and digging her fingernails into her arms as she sobbed. What had Bement done to her? What was in that syringe? Selene could feel the thick blood pooling around her, filling the room, and then suddenly-

It was gone, and the horrible gurgling and advance of the blood was replaced with eerie, ringing silence, filling her ears and emptying them at once. Selene stilled and slowly opened her swollen eyes, glancing around.

There was nothing there.

Stumbling to her feet, Selene yanked the door open and tore off down the hall. She needed to find Dr. Darnel. She needed to get help. She didn't know what was going on inside her head to make the walls bleed like that- what kind of solution did Bement have to make her hallucinate like that, where it felt so real, so suffocating? She didn't know when it would start again, she needed to go fast—

It was then that Selene slowed to a jog, and then a walk, and then stopped altogether, spinning in circles with her brow knit. Something was wrong. It was too silent. Too still. It was then that Selene released that she hadn't seen anyone the entire time she'd been running, through normally bustling hallways. The corridors rang with an eerie silence, filling it with emptiness and a horrible, horrible foreshadowing light.

Selene's breaths ran short and ragged, and very suddenly, a shrill screech filled the halls and pierced through Selene's head like a bolt of lightning, a spade of titanium. She screamed with a curdling pain and swept into a crouch, digging the heels of her hands into her ears and squeezing her eyes shut so tight she could see helixes, a single tear escaping her eye, the remnants of her room's bloody excursion. The horrible noise didn't end, a single sprint across the palace, and Selene swallowed painfully. It was starting again. She had to get to Darnel.

Laboriously, she stood, taking her hands off her ears and wincing as it became louder, and louder, and louder. Selene began once more to stumble down the eerily empty halls, her bare feet pounding rhythmically, her ears and head splitting. It filled her head, the noise, and Selene could hardly think. She hardly knew where to go next. She felt a warm, familiar trickle down her neck, and knew her ears were bleeding, her eardrums burst from the horrible sound, and she sobbed once and ran into the elevator, burying her face in her hands and letting the doors close on the grand velvet interior. With them they took the noise, and Selene sobbed once more in quiet relief as her ears throbbed and ached and her head split and roared. She took a moment to think straight, to let her shaking body recover slowly, and she opened her eyes, only to be met by her next horror.

Selene shrieked and fell to the ground, wherever it was. She was in an inverted world, a mirror and a fractured, seething pit, the floor giving way below her slowly, cracking with long moans and falling away. Selene placed a hand on the elevator wall and scooted into the corner, watching in horror the kaleidoscope of broken glass and reality form around her. And then, suddenly, she heard a voice, large and echoing like it came from deep in the bowels of the moon.

"Oh, Selene, how pathetic you look."

Selene pulled herself to her feet in the fracturing elevator, staring straight ahead and at nothing at all. It was Levana.

"You were going to be all right forever, though. You were invincible. Nothing could hurt you." From a split in a cracking wall appeared a ghostly Levana, all smiles and sugar and fake beauty. Selene backed into the wall and watched warily her translucent approach. Levana stood above her, and Selene found herself wondering if Levana really was there. In the elevator with her, physically there, past the guises of cracking walls and breaking floors. The thought made her shiver.

"Selene, I want to make you run. I want to make you run, and then fail, and then bleed out slowly." Levana's ghostly form crouched before her shaking niece and caressed her cheek. Her hand was cold and very real on Selene's face, and she whimpered, clawing at it. "I want you to see your own nation chopping you down, your own courts hunting you and killing you."

A small motion Levana made with her free hand caught Selene's eye, and she stopped shaking, glancing fearfully back up at her aunt's ghostly, smirking face as Levana pulled the dagger from the folds of her dress. "But then again, I guess you'll be a little bit too dead."

A swift stab downwards, and Selene's instincts were flawless, rolling out of Levana's cold clutch and scrambling to her bare feet. The world fractured and broke back into focus, and Levana was there, just as pathetic and simpering as she'd always been, seething half blood-crazed on the floor. Selene slammed back against the wall and pressed the emergency open door button as Levana screamed and lunged for her -- her dagger slashed out, nicking Selene in the shin, and Selene kicked her away as the elevator door opened between floors. She climbed into the top floor, stumbling to her feet, running and leaving behind the screams of Levana in the elevator.

Selene whimpered as the lights started to flicker ominously, and she knew they'd never done that before. Her waking nightmares were beginning again, and she knew with a breaking certainty that Levana had taken her to the other side of the palace from the research wing. Selene's ankles ached and her shins burned, but even as she heard the first wolves howl she did not hesitate to run. Even as the lights flickered more and more, even as they began to die, and she knew she was running out of time.

Wolves and dogs were bounding behind her, frothing at the mouth at the smell of her blood and baring gory canines. One glance over her shoulder told Selene all she needed to know. Ryu, the white wolf from the menagerie, was there, and there were dozens more at his heels. Selene skidded around a corner. Her bangs were matted to her forehead with sweat and her hair was wild and tangled, and Selene could make out in the flickering white light of the hallway familiar landmarks. She knew exactly where she was, and she knew with an exacting dread exactly where she needed to go.

From hollows in walls and shadows in corners came the glowing red eyes of the guards, and Selene did not slow down, because if there was anything her head could be trusted to tell her anymore, it was that none of then would help her. The eyes seemed to leer and follow her as her feet pounded and spun corners and tried to put as much distance between her and Levana and her pursuing wolves as she could.

Selene gasped for breath she could not find and turned her final corner, ramming into the hangar doors, motion activated metal ones that slid open quickly with hammering thunder. The wolves leaped one final jump at Selene as the doors closed, and Ryu's teeth almost closed down on Selene's arm as she slid inside and shielded herself with it, flinching, but the piercing pain never came. She slowly opened her eyes.

None of it's real, Selene told herself as she clutched an arm and got to her feet. The wolves wouldn't activate the motion sensors because they existed only in her head. She felt like she was lost in a nightmare. Her head throbbed with pain and blood and sweat and her entire body ached. She felt drowsy and like she was floating away, but the lights still flickered on and off. Selene stumbled toward the royal podships painfully, her feet sore and her mind foggy and spinning. She needed to get to a ship. She needed to get out of Luna. She--

Selene glanced up and saw the first guard without glowing eyes she'd seen so far, leaning against a wall, completely frozen in shock, staring right at her. Selene took a step forward and almost laughed in surprise at herself, before stumbling weakly forward and collapsing against him, grabbing his shoulders, looking up into his eyes pleadingly.

"Jacin," she whispered desperately, "you've got to help me. Please." She dug her fingers into the fabric of his uniform and knit her brow. "They're coming to kill me."