As Thomas sat in the cooling shadows of the twilight, watching the silhouettes of the crowd move like ghosts across the hillside, Oliver approached.
The middle-aged man wore a wide, beaming smile that seemed to radiate a genuine, infectious warmth—a stark contrast to the sterile, professional smiles Thomas had encountered in his previous life.
"Our hero," Oliver announced, his voice booming with a friendly authority. "It's time for us to return."
"So soon?" Thomas replied, his voice still catching in his throat. He felt as though he hadn't moved a muscle in hours.
He had spent the past two hours sitting motionless on that jagged rock, his eyes scanning the horizon for any sign of a familiar landmark—a skyscraper, a street sign, a flickering neon light—anything that might shatter this elaborate hallucination and return him to the grey reality of Wall Street.
"It will take much longer, of course, to get all of them tested," Oliver said, nodding patiently toward the sprawling line of people still snaking up the hill.
"But for a hero like yourself, the rules are a bit different. You don't need to wait and wither away like the others. Come, I'm going to personally give you a ride back to the heart of the settlement."
"A ride?" Thomas asked, scepticism colouring his tone. He looked around the barren, rust-colored landscape. There were no paved roads, no glint of chrome, no humming engines. He didn't see anything that resembled a car, let alone a plane or a helicopter.
"You'll be riding with Becky. You're going to love her," Oliver added with a wink. He was the type of man who seemed to treat the entire world as his neighbourhood, getting familiar with anyone he met in a matter of seconds. He reached down and grabbed Thomas by the arm, intending to pull him to his feet.
As he was hoisted up, Thomas didn't offer a thank you. Instead, he levelled a freezing, razor-sharp gaze at Oliver.
It was the look of a man who had spent his life maintaining a strict perimeter around his person. It was a silent, lethal warning: Never touch me again.
Oliver flinched slightly, withdrawing his hand, but his good nature wasn't easily dampened. "Oh, don't forget your tree... wait. Why does it have such a crystalline cover? That's weird... I don't recall seeing that bubble before..."
Oliver's frown and the sudden shift in his tone drew Thomas's attention back to the Bonsai. His heart gave a strange, rhythmic thud against his ribs. The tree had changed again.
A translucent, milky-white fog now swirled around the branches, contained within a perfect, shimmering sphere that looked like a bubble of thin glass. Thomas was certain—absolutely certain—that such a thing had not existed ten minutes ago.
"This..." Thomas whispered, his detective's mind racing to find a logical pivot. He had owned this tree for over five years. He had meticulously pruned it, watered it, and studied every curve of its bark. Never, in all that time, had it sprouted a localised weather system or a glass shield.
"Come, let's go. We have a long trip back," Oliver said, shaking off the mystery with a casual shrug. He began to lead the way, his boots kicking up clouds of fine, yellow dust.
Left with no other options, Thomas gathered the heavy pot into his arms and followed. He kept his eyes glued to the shifting fog within the sphere.
It wasn't static; the white vapour moved in slow, hypnotic swirls, spiralling around the gnarled trunk as if governed by a private gravity or some unseen, mystical current.
It was beautiful, but to Thomas, beauty was just another layer of the lie. He needed to test the boundaries of this dream.
Out of a sudden reflex, he extended his left hand—the one still coated in the dark, dried crust of his blood—and reached toward the shimmering bubble.
He expected to hit glass. Instead, his hand passed through the surface as if it were made of nothing but light.
The moment his skin touched the swirling fog, a sensation of profound, liquid cool washed over him. It was refreshing, like plunging a fevered limb into an alpine spring.
When he withdrew his hand, his eyes widened in genuine shock. The clotted blood was gone. His palm was as clean as if it had been scrubbed by a surgeon.
But the real impossibility lay beneath the surface: the deep, rounded puncture wound he had received from the statue had vanished. Not a scar, not a mark, not even a bruise remained.
"Can it heal your wounds? Now that is an interesting tree," Oliver noted from the side, having caught the tail end of the miracle. "It's a magical tree, a fine pet indeed! I get it now! Hahahaha! By the way, I realised I never asked—what's your name, son?"
"Thomas," he replied flatly. He was struggling to process the healing. What Oliver had missed was the most disturbing part: the bubble looked solid, but offered no resistance. His hand had passed through it like a ghost.
"Thomas... nice name," Oliver said, pausing to give him a long, searching look. "I have a good memory for faces, and I don't recall seeing you around the settlement before today. Where are you from?"
Thomas felt a spike of adrenaline. How was he supposed to answer? Am I a dying detective from a different dimension? The natural, grounded way Oliver asked the question made Thomas feel a sudden, jarring doubt about his own sanity.
"A pretty amazing dream world indeed," Thomas thought, clinging to the hypnosis theory like a life raft in a stormy sea. "The detail is staggering."
"Oh, I see!" Oliver shouted, slamming a fist into his open palm as if he'd just solved a complex riddle. "You came from the wilderness! One of the small outlier villages near my settlement, right?"