Chapter Five: Nightmare Thread

The spider trembled and unclenched her fangs. When their pact formed, thousands of nightmares poured into his head. He used the deer's sense to navigate the crowd's fears and the toad's hunger-sense to identify a foreign strand. Someone wasn't afraid. Someone was greedily stealing secrets from the dream. Lu Chen seized the strand and pulled. A man screamed in the distance. The flight board flashed on, briefly revealing the gold-watch smuggler behind a red-copper mask. Beside him lay airport utility maps, with Oversize Baggage Nine circled in black. The spider bit through the hook at her heart. Hundreds of people woke together, believing they had merely dozed. She shrank to the size of a button and crawled into Su's medical bag.