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panic. The worst is that the part of me that knows I’m dreaming can’t do anything to wake up, either, no matter how scared I am. It’s only after I turn around in the nightmare that it finally lets me go.
    I force myself to turn around, and this is where the dream changed, this last time. Instead of Chord or Luc or one of the Alts I killed standing there just watching me, always so close no matter how far or fast or long I’d run for, it’s her.
    Julis sets her tablet back down on the desk and motions for me to pass her mine, too. “Here, let’s just have you talk for a bit now.”
    “I don’t mind writing it out, Julis.” But I hand my tablet over, anyway, knowing I’m just protesting because I like talking about any of this even less than writing about it. Julis can be big for talking out new developments. Let’s shoot the shit the old-fashioned way, she’d said once.
    She tosses me a small bag of candy from the stash she keeps in a goldfish jar on her desk. My favorites, which I’m sure she knows. “So. Let’s have at it, West. What happened after you turned around and saw your Alt?”
    I open the bag of candy, begin to pick out the blues. “Normally that’s right when I wake up. But she … talked to me.”
    Julis leans back in her chair. Waits patiently.
    “She said that she’ll always be with me,” I say, trying to sound normal, pretending that a cold chill isn’t trying to crawl up my spine at the memory of her face and voice. So like mine, but not. “She said that she’ll never leave me alone.”
    “And?”
    I frown. “And what? Am I weird for being freaked out? Who wants to have their dead Alt talk to them in their sleep?”
    “I didn’t know you believed in ghosts, West.”
    “I don’t. Just … sometimes.”
    “Like when?”
    “I don’t mean with her, or Luc, or Ehm, or Aave,” I say carefully.
    “So you mean … ?”
    “I mean the Alts I killed, when I was a striker.”
    “Ah.”
    Not sure what to say next, I start sifting out the brown candies from the pile in my hand. Only reds left, already beginning to stain my palm.
    “West, think back to a few sessions ago, what you said to me about why you see the people that you see.”
    “Shame. Guilt. Learning to live with both.”
    “Good, solid reasons for you seeing them, yes? So your Alt showing up …” She leaves it at that, and I know she’s waiting for me to fill in the gaps.
    “Maybe seeing her means I’m just working out the fear still,” I finally say. “From being on the run. The more I see her, the faster the shock value goes down. Like exposure therapy.”
    Julis tugs a thread from her sleeve and lets it float to the ground. “What about the idea of her being an active participant in your healing?”
    “That makes no sense.”
    “What she said to you is absolutely true—she won’t ever leave you alone because, dead or not, she is always going to be a part of you.”
    I lift an eyebrow. “This is that technique, isn’t it? When you tell me to reimagine the nightmare into something that can’t scare me.”
    “No, it’s not that. This isn’t necessarily a new nightmare. Having your Alt appear at the end doesn’t change the structure of your regular dream.”
    “It hasn’t really worked, anyway. I’ve written out so many different versions—like I’m going to Chord’s house instead, or going to school. It’s like boring fan-fic or something.”
    “I think you seeing your Alt is a significant step, West,” she says, leaning forward in her seat, her hands clasped in front of her. “I think you already know that, too.”
    I shake out more candies into my hand without eating them. “That maybe I’m finally ready to face what happened, and that’s why it took her this long to show?”
    “Ask yourself why you’d want your Alt to say something like that to you. What kind of response do you think she’s looking for?”
    “In other words, if it was the other way around and she was the one