Lola gasped, sputtering as she came up for air. Her hands batted the edge of the tub in a frantic attempt to sit up. She had nearly drowned herself. Water sluiced from her face. She filled her lungs, and she blinked to clear her eyes.

Home, safe and sound. The neat, orderly bathroom came into focus. She hadn’t died from foolishly falling asleep in the tub. The ring sat on the ledge, where it had been before she dozed off. She probably hadn’t even picked it up. She stared at the broken wine glass in dismay. At least that much had happened.

“Nice going, Lola,” she muttered, climbing from the bath. “If you wanted to kill yourself, there are easier ways. Also, nice that you’re talking to yourself. Going for full-on crazy today, I see.”

Her mind tumbled with details of the strange dreams of the handsome hallucination from the supply closet. She cleaned the mess of glass shards and wrapped a towel around herself, lifting her cellphone from the bathroom counter. Barely five minutes had passed since arriving home from work. Yet, the dream had spanned for much longer.

Lola padded from the bathroom and yanked open the kitchen cabinets. She was ravenous. She felt like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. She groaned with pleasure when her teeth sank into a saltine covered in peanut butter. She carried the snack to her bedroom and dug through her bureau for something to wear to sleep because she was still tired. Like she hadn’t rested in weeks. It was almost like jet lag.

Pausing, Lola consulted the time and date again. It was the same as before—a handful of minutes since entering her apartment. “Huh,” she hummed, shrugging.

She made a mental note to schedule a visit to the shrink she hadn’t seen in ages. Her therapist had gotten her through her teen years without her mom. But, Lola had to admit this was different. She had never suffered hallucinations.

It was unusual enough to prompt her to reconsider the dangers of her overbooked schedule as she climbed into bed. She had read plenty of medical papers about people dying of exhaustion. The body could only handle so much strain.

Maybe it wasn’t overwork. Maybe it was loneliness and isolation.

Glancing at her phone, she knew there was no one to call. Her colleagues hardly counted as friends. Besides, if people knew she was losing her marbles, it would end up in the tabloids. She had gone into medicine to get far away from anything Cambridge Studios related. A mental breakdown would bring the paparazzi crashing into her world. She would keep her problems to herself.

Lola powered on the television to blot out the creepy silence of her empty apartment. Then, she pulled the covers over her shoulder and closed her eyes, willing her tired mind to cease with the racing thoughts.

It was hard not thinking of him, though. Soleis, Son of Arken. What kind of name was that? With his mesmerizing voice and subtle confidence, he reminded her of the movie stars she occasionally hung out with at her dad’s famous house parties. Soleis was otherworldly good-looking like a celeb, except his good looks had nothing to do with plastic surgery or makeup.

His good looks had been built by her overactive imagination. Of course, he didn’t need plastic surgery or makeup. Of course, he was chiseled and toned, as if his muscles had been acquired from years of hard labor, instead of sculpted in an air-conditioned gym. Of course, he looked like he could melt her panties off with a whisper.

That was the crux of it. She was sex-starved; so, her mind was supplying dreamy eye candy. In a day or two, she would come off it. “Forget the therapy bill. I should buy some batteries,” she mumbled. A minute later, she was snoring. She didn’t dream of him. She didn’t dream of anything.

* * *

That couldn’t be the eight o’clock news playing in the background.

Lola cracked an eyelid.

She had never overslept a day in her life, but that was definitely her alarm bleating incessantly. She pried both eyes open and snatched up the phone. Forty minutes late! “No, no, no, no, no!” Lola wailed in disbelief and shot out of bed.

Her feet pounded the hardwood in a mad dash to the closet for something to wear. “This can’t be happening,” she groaned. She flew through her wardrobe and scrambled into a dress, ready in six minutes flat.

Lola hopped on one foot to tug on her shoe as she stumbled into the bathroom. Brushing her teeth would have to wait. She shoved her toothbrush and toothpaste into her purse. The contents of her makeup bag clattered into the sink, and she wailed again. No time for a full face. She dabbed on foundation and swiped lipstick over her lips. Turning from the bathroom sink, she spotted the ring on the tub.

Without thinking twice, Lola grabbed it. It matched her lipstick. She sprinted out of her apartment and fumbled to lock the door. A run materialized in her hosiery as she skipped across the dewy patch of grass that separated the parking lot. “I do not need this!” she shrieked. Her high heels skidded over concrete, and she slid to a halt at her sportscar. The vehicle chirped, and the door popped open.

By the time she was in the driver’s seat, she had her cellphone pressed to her ear and her supervisor on the line. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I overslept, but I’m on my way.”

“Slow down, Dr. Cambridge,” Dr. Vargas laughed.

“I simply had a string of bad luck this morning.”

“These things happen. Just take your time getting here. I know you’re one of my stars, so I won’t hold being late against you this time. Drive safely.”

“I will,” she said as her tires squealed.

She peeled out of the parking lot of her apartment complex and raced to the interstate, going well-over the speed limit. She hated unforced errors. If she hadn’t been so preoccupied with the man of her dreams, this never would’ve happened. Lola gripped the steering wheel and mentally berated herself for acting like a lovesick teenager, but even as she dressed herself down, she knew she was being unreasonable.

So what Soleis was the last thing on her mind when she fell asleep? She had gone to bed around noon yesterday. There was no way she should’ve slept through half a day, all night and most of the morning. Something wasn’t right. She still wasn’t feeling like herself, and she wondered if she was coming down with something.

She shoved a hand in her purse as she drove, digging around for her thermometer. Her fingers grazed her wallet and a couple of peppermints, a loose tube of lipstick, a wad of cash. Something warm and smooth slipped onto the tip of her finger, and she withdrew her hand. The ring. She wiggled it down over her knuckle and prepared to rifle through the bag again as she turned the wheel to take her exit.

Two things happened at once. The ring slid past her knuckle, and her foot tapped the accelerator with more force than she had intended. Lola yelped as the car shot forward off the overpass. Her scream lodged in her throat, and her stomach flip-flopped from weightlessness.

“Oh, God!” she gasped.

She squeezed her eyes shut when the vehicle tilted nose-down, descending into a tangle of trees. She thought of Soleis. She would never meet him in real life. The sportscar exploded in a fireball when it struck. Her purse landed near the wreckage, wallet open, her identification exposed. It was all that was left of her.

* * *

She didn’t feel a thing.

She saw cages. A circular white floor with blue walls and ceiling. No. A glass dome. The blue was beyond the glass. Lola reached out but snatched her hand back as a humungous whale came into focus. She hugged herself and shivered, watching it pass. She was somewhere (somehow) underwater. So deep that she couldn’t see the surface above her.

The climate-controlled dome was icy cold, clean and antiseptic like a surgical bay. The room was completely empty, save for those two cages. Lola studied the bodies inside, curled with their backs to her. She vaguely assumed she was dead, and they were dead with her. She was more curious than scared. She remembered the car accident. She was grateful she hadn’t felt any pain. The death must’ve been quick.

She thought of her dad, who would mourn her loss, but would soon bury himself in work to numb the heartache. Her funeral would be packed with people, friends of his. It would look nice, but she knew no one would be there for her. Sad, really. She wondered if her mother would show up. Maybe a few people from work. She remembered her supervisor was waiting for her. Lola clicked her tongue. Nothing to be done for it. She was gone.

She took a hesitant step toward one of the mesh cages and peered inside. If this was death, then where was her final destination? Something told her it wasn’t heaven. Heaven didn’t have cages.

“Hello?” she whispered.

Neither of the bodies moved. She licked her lips and looked over her shoulder. There were no guards. She didn’t see a door of any sort. It was such a foreign, unusual place that her mind simply didn’t bother making sense of things. She accepted it all at face value. This was a dome, underwater, where two men were held prisoner. Her, too.

“Excuse me?” she tried again. “Can you tell me what we’re doing here?”

“Tell me I’m dreaming,” one of the men said groggily.

Lola jumped away from the cage in shock. She squinted at the broad back. “Soleis?” He sat up and faced her, and her heart beat a rapid tattoo. It was him. “What the hell are you doing here?” Lola blurted out.

“I would ask you the same thing, but you seem to show up whenever I need you. Do you have something to get us out?” He flashed a relieved grin that melted her core, but she shook her head.

“You’re not supposed to be here. This is my afterlife.”

The other sleeper rolled over and cracked an eye open. “What’s going on?”

“This is the doctor, Flev. She saved your life.”

Lola glanced at the other man and realized he was the sickbed patient from her dream, looking healthy as ever. “I don’t understand. You and you don’t exist. I exist, but… I was driving. I—I—I was falling.” She fumbled for words, using her hands to narrate. “Now, I’m here. I died. Why am I here?”

“Do me a favor and hold up your hand,” said Soleis. She did as she was told, and they both stared at her ring. Lola’s finger tingled where the gold touched her skin. She reached to take it off, but he stopped her. “Don’t! If you take that off, you might not make it back here for another several weeks. Frankly, I don’t think we have that long. It’s like the Heart.”

Flev sat up. “You summoned her?”

“Something like it.”

“Wait, wh-what are you talking about? What’s the heart? Why can’t I take this off?”

Soleis moved to the wall of the cage facing her and reached through a narrow square of the mesh to grab her hand. “You’re not dead, Dr. Cambridge, but if you take that off, you’ll likely end up in that car crash you just avoided. Am I right? I’m glad you had the good sense to put it on before your accident, even if you didn’t know it would keep you from harm.”

“You are not making any sense,” she said slowly and loudly.

“Look, there’s not much I can explain right now because all of us are in danger unless we get out of here. Just believe me when I tell you that you have to keep on that ring.”

Lola didn’t want to believe him. She couldn’t believe him. Yet, it made a certain kind of sense. In yesterday’s dream, she had returned to her apartment right where she left off when she removed the ring. Who was to say the same wouldn’t happen this time? She could wake up in her car, in serious pain. Maybe this wasn’t a dream. It couldn’t be real. But, she could be in a coma. If that was the case, she wanted to sleep through the worst of it.

“I want to go home,” she said firmly.

“If you get us out, I’ll get you where you need to go, but you have to trust me,” Soleis replied. He pointed across the empty room. “There’s a control panel hidden in the floor somewhere over there. Run your foot over the space to see if you can find it. I saw the rebels do it to lock the cages when they put us in here.”

“The ones you told me about? The Resistance?”

“Yes, they found us a week ago while we were visiting the outlying cities and villages. We were checking for signs of the illness.”

“A week ago. Right. I saw you yesterday. Get your story straight,” Lola muttered. She tapped around the floor with her foot until she felt a loose corner, like a floorboard not properly secured. The rest of the floor appeared to be solid stone. When she pressed harder, a box popped open, and she kneeled to it. “I don’t recognize the language.”

“There should be a symbol that looks like an open circle.”

She nodded and pushed the button with her thumb. Both cages snapped open, and Lola breathed a sigh of relief and hopped to her feet. She was one step closer to waking up in a hospital bed, hopefully with all her limbs intact.

The dream she had experienced the day prior had ended the minute she figured out how to save Flev. She assumed she would awaken once she saved the day again. Only, this new lucid dream was her mind’s way of coping with trauma. No telling when she would wake up.

“Well, that was easy. Too easy. The rebels have you captive with no guard? No anything?” she asked.

“They underestimated us,” Flev said with a grin.

Soleis flashed a lazy, sexy smile as he stepped out of his cage and flexed his shoulders. “I so love to be underestimated. Now, can I get you to step back and close your eyes, Dr. Cambridge?”

“What now?” she groaned.

He clapped his hands, and a wave of energy shot out from his body. A blinding light made her shut her eyes against the glare. She felt, rather than heard, the shockwave. Then, suddenly, the ocean rushed into the broken dome. Lola frantically sucked in a breath as the water crashed into her. She would drown! She wouldn’t make it out of this coma alive.

A hot, hard metallic vise clamped around her upper arms, and she felt her body jerked upward. She struggled with everything in her until she realized that struggling merely used up her limited supply of oxygen. As she went limp, her ears popped, and her lungs strained. She couldn’t see. Fine bubbles misted around her.

She was pulled through the water. The dark blue of the ocean became a lighter aquamarine. She couldn’t gauge how long she held her breath. When she dared open her eyes, she was zipping higher and higher, past sea-life, coral, anemone, slimy kelp. It all blurred together until the surface of the water shimmered overhead with rippling, white light.

She squeezed her stinging eyes shut again and braced herself, afraid her heart would burst. Another few seconds, and she broke from the waves with a startled cry. Lola wheezed, breathing loudly in and out as fast as she could fill her lungs.

She looked up to see what machine had saved her from Davy Jones’ Locker. But, it was no machine. She was in the talons of a gigantic blue dragon. She had never seen anything like it in her life. Lola nodded and shook her head at the same time. Dreaming. Coma. Crazy. Whatever. She gave up trying to figure it out. Her head lolled to the side as she lost consciousness and sank into blessed darkness.