The DreamStream building was made of glass and promise. Architecture designed to look transparent, modern, inevitable. Inside, however, the air was heavy, like a room that never opens its windows.
In the 18th-floor conference room, an entire wall was taken up by monitors split into graphs. Red bars were plunging. Subscriber comments popped up in a side column like insects smashing against a light:
"CANCELED."
"NEVER AGAIN."
"YOU'RE BRINGING THIS."
"MY KID CAN'T SLEEP."
A thin executive, immaculate hair and restless hands, pointed at the falling lines as if he could shove them back up.
"Viewership dropped seventy-two percent in twenty-four hours," he said. "Seventy-two. That's not fluctuation. That's panic."
A woman in a gray blazer—the compliance director—answered without raising her voice.
"It's not just panic. It's risk. If a Dreamer broadcasts and a monster Echo appears somewhere… if the public connects the dots…"
She left the sentence unfinished. To finish it would be to sign the company's death warrant.
In the corner of the room, a young man with discreet tattoos along his neck watched in silence. Caio. Dream producer. People trained to edit, cut, soften oneiric transmissions. DreamStream sold dreams—but not just any dreams. It sold beautiful dreams. Dreams with narrative. Dreams with aesthetic.
Caio knew what never made it through.
Nightmares were cut. Waking up drenched in sweat wasn't monetizable. Terror went straight to digital trash.
Until yesterday.
"We need a statement," the executive insisted. "A live stream. Something like: 'DreamStream condemns…'"—he made a vague gesture, as if the disaster were just a sensitive term—"'whatever happened on July 9th.' 'We're cooperating with authorities.' 'We support Dreamers.'"
A short, dry laugh sliced through the air.
Raina D. wasn't on the screen now. She was there. Unfiltered. No studio lights. The face the world knew as the perfect Dreamer looked pale, fragile, almost ordinary.
"You're going to put me on a live stream?" she asked, with a calm that hurt. "To say what? 'Hi guys, everything's fine? I know a street vanished and came back full of dead people, but subscribe to my nightmare for nineteen ninety-nine'?"
The executive swallowed.
"Raina, nobody's saying that. You're our star. If you speak—"
"If I speak, they'll say it was my fault," she cut in. "Because I dream in public. Because I have a camera in my head. Because you sell what I see. And now the world is afraid of what it might see."
She ran a hand through her hair, as if trying to undo an invisible knot.
"I'm afraid too."
Caio looked at her with silent empathy. He had seen Raina's raw footage for years. He'd seen what became entertainment—and what became confidential archive. He'd seen things that never made the final cut: shadows that seemed to notice the camera, corridors repeating like rendering errors, whispers that didn't belong to any dream character.
"July 9th…" Raina went on, her voice wavering. "Did you see the drone footage? The hole of dirt? That's not a normal Echo."
The executive spread his hands, defensive.
"The DAO is investigating. They asked us not to spread—"
"Of course they did," Raina replied. "They always do. They always hide it. Because if the public understands how it works, they stop consuming."
The compliance director leaned forward.
"Raina, with all due respect, you can't talk about the DAO like that in a meeting."
"Yes, I can." Raina stared at the table. "My contract means nothing if I can't sleep. And I'm not sleeping while you pretend this is just collective anxiety."
Caio cleared his throat before speaking.
"There's something else. The drop isn't just the audience. It's the Dreamers. They're buying suppressants. Shutting down channels. Vanishing from the network. We're running out of product."
The word landed heavily in the room.
Product.
Because the product was people.
A young woman from marketing, with the dark circles of someone who'd spent the night there, raised her phone.
"This is going viral," she said.
It was an old clip. A discarded transmission, from a minor Dreamer who never became a celebrity. In the dream, a street identical to July 9th. Same number on the sign. Same corner. And in the sky, an impossible purple hue, like spilled paint over clouds that no longer knew how to be sky.
"This was three months ago," she added. "We cut it for being 'repetitive nightmare.' A subscriber reposted it today. They're saying DreamStream predicted July 9th."
The executive went pale.
"Do you have any idea what that means?"
"It means," the compliance director replied coolly, "that DreamStream could be seen as complicit. Or as a trigger."
Raina stood.
"I'm out."
"You can't just—"
"I can." She cut him off. "I'm a Dreamer, not a machine. And if you push this, I'll broadcast my nightmare live. No cuts. No filters. Let everyone see what you pretend doesn't exist."
The silence that followed had weight. The kind of silence that comes before a building collapses from the inside.
The executive understood. That wasn't a business threat. It was worse.
If the world saw a purple sky on a screen, it wouldn't be rumor anymore. It would be an image lodged in the collective mind.
And the human mind, when afraid, always looks for someone to blame.
Raina left the room without looking back. In the hallway, Caio followed her almost by reflex.
"You okay?" he asked.
She stopped for a moment. The mask cracked.
"I dreamed of an empty street last night," she said. "Dirt where the asphalt should be. And when I woke up… July 9th already had—"
She didn't finish. She didn't need to.
"I don't want to be next."
Caio didn't answer. Because in that moment, he didn't want to sleep either.
And for the first time, working with dreams felt like the most dangerous thing in the world.