Present day.

Everything was white. He had white gowns on. His surroundings were white. Above him was white. Unnaturally white. Lleyton was on his back, looking skyward. But there was no sky. Only whiteness. But the whiteness was not due to a sky bustling with clean clouds. Above was nothingness which extended seemingly in perpetuity.

He stood and standing across from him was the woman. Her white dress flowed, but Lleyton felt no breeze. He looked down at his hands. They were clean, but he knew they were not. He expected to see his hands of mud and blood and dirt and sweat, yet they were spotless. Confusion set in.

"What is this?" He called across, perplexed. "Where are we?"

"Exactly where you're supposed to be, I'm guessing," she said back to him. She started to walk towards him slowly, but something about her pace scared Lleyton. She had purpose, and conviction.

"Thank you for saving me. With the Field, lights, and the elevator. Now I want out of whatever this is, please."

The woman continued and quickened her pace. She wore glasses, her hair was tied back. She was incredibly pretty and older, the lines in her face unable to hide her beauty. Her dark hair poked through the whiteness of the odd world Lleyton found himself in.

"I saved you, now let me test you. Yes?"

Lleyton was tiring of the mounting debts he owed people who saved him. "Tell me what this is first. What is your name?"

"This?" she said to him, motioning to their surroundings. "This is how we destroy the devil. It's my greatest contribution to mankind. I'm Maeve. What's your name?"

"I'm Lleyton and please, no more riddles," Lleyton pleaded.

"It's no riddle. Who gave you that name?" Maeve said, her face contorting in genuine curiosity.

Lleyton continued to watch the woman. "Am I asleep? Have you drugged me?"

The woman shook her head. "You're in my lab, right where you remember being. The material on the bar you grabbed, when I grabbed it myself, we enter this world. Together. A world of will and imagination, the great Equalizer. A neural connection the two of us are a part of. Now ready yourself."

Lleyton could tell the woman was done with explanations. But how he was to ready himself, he did not know.

With a flash of unimaginable fury, a bolt of golden lightning rocked Lleyton in his chest, throwing him through the air and landing on the white ground behind him. He gasped for air, his skin burning as he gripped his eyes shut, his heart beating as fast as the bolt that struck him. The burning finally stopped and his muscles twitched.

"It's all in your mind but it still hurts like hell, doesn't it?" Maeve whispered in Lleyton's ear, inexplicably crouching right next to him. He crawled backwards away from her frantically. She stood and smiled at him, her arm in the air, bringing it back down and pointing her index finger at Lleyton to his horror. He looked upwards.

A planet impossibly came crashing down on him, appearing out of nowhere. The burning, massive ball approaching him with breakneck speed. It was beautiful and terrifying. Lleyton raised his hands out of desperation, his eyes closed and bracing for impact.

Could he die in this world? Would he simply wake up? He couldn't take the chance. He came too far already. And he still had so far to go. And so many people to fight for. He wanted to fight. He wanted to fight for them, he wanted to give Aimos answers.

His eyes reopened, and to his shock the planet was suspended above him, no longer moving. He was holding it. He looked over to Maeve, a cocked eyebrow and eyes wide with surprise.

Lleyton clenched his fist, shattering the planet. It fragmented and fell, the giant pieces falling all around Lleyton and Maeve, crashing and disappearing into the whiteness of the world as Lleyton got to his feet.

Maeve raised her arm again, this time pointing beside Lleyton. Two women appeared in a flash of white with their backs facing him, bound and tied, their feet chained to the ground, with golden and black hair and white robes. The whiteness was gone, too. He was back in Orconia City, within its great golden walls in the darkness of night and the glow of blue from the Field above. The chained victims turned to face him.

It was Eeva and Calysa.

With her other arm, Maeve conjured a giant steel train, hurtling along tracks she created as it sped, dented and beaten and smoking but hurtling towards them, a horn blaring. Lleyton held out his arm, this time trying to stop the moving locomotive. Maeve shifted both of her arms toward the train, overpowering Lleyton's attempt to stop it.
Eeva and Calysa let out a muffled scream through the white cloth between their grit teeth as the train approached.

Desperately and frantically, Lleyton fabricated a series of steel walls from his mind to derail the train, but Maeve's metal monster smashed through them all with ease and tenacity. Maeve analyzed his next move carefully as the train was mere meters from Eeva and Calysa.

Out of options, Lleyton desperately jumped in front of the train to save them, to absorb the impact.

***

Lleyton gasped and coughed and fell sharply backwards onto his side. He was back in his physical body. Back in Maeve's lab. He spat up blood and wiped blood from his nose, breathing deeply with his face pressed against the cold floor. It felt like he ran a marathon, his lungs screamed and his head throbbed. Maeve had exited her black cage and helped him to his feet, and passed him a jug of water.

After some moments passed and after gulping down mouthfuls, Lleyton looked up at Maeve, panting, her hand on his back. It was hardly comforting.

"How do you know them?" He asked her, referring to the apparition of Eeva and Calysa appearing in Maeve's world.

"I don't know who you saw. I willed into existence someone you care about. Only you saw their face."

Lleyton looked away solemnly. He couldn't think about them. He pushed their smiles to the back of his mind. He asked, "The train, why did you conjure it?"

Maeve shrugged her shoulders. "It was from a story my mother used to read to me as a child. Memories of bravery seem to enhance power in the world. I needed something you'd have difficulty stopping."

Lleyton stood shakily. "You're telling me you don't understand the world you created, yet you brought me into it? What did you test me for?"

"All you need to understand is that if you die in there, you die here."

Lleyton's head was spinning. "Then why am I alive?"

Maeve directed him towards her lab beyond the black gate, and said, "I yanked us before it hit you. Come, we need to talk."

Maeve slumped Lleyton into a chair situated beside glass cases of liquid, chrome tables and a plethora of grey monitors. He noticed a strange, ripped grey page with strange markings upon it at the top but blank beneath. She pulled up a chair across from him, her face inches from his. She was not shy. Lleyton uncomfortably retreated his head from her. Lleyton wondered if her strangeness was due to her apparent isolation from humanity within the Ring. For how many years, Lleyton could only guess.

"Where are you from?" She asked him.

"Orconia," he replied.

Without warning she took his hand and cut the back of it with a small surgical blade. A small cut seeped blood, and Lleyton pulled his hand backwards in pain. The small cut healed in seconds.

"Ah, a lone Wolf among whales. Why? Are you now travelling to Dazheen to find out who you really are?" She asked him.

Lleyton could tell he was not dealing with a simpleton. She was exceedingly bright. Her eyes had a light to them, the brains behind them remarkably intricate. Lleyton felt he was conversing with a different species.

"I can't remember. And that was the plan, yes."

Maeve analyzed the seated boy thoughtfully, and then said, "You can't return. Not yet. You must keep going forward."

Absurd. Of course he was returning to Orconia. He had to return to Aimos, and tell him about the Outlanders that attacked him with the pistols, that ultimately led him to the hell he found himself in. He couldn't keep gambling with the life he was lucky to have, and now without a working radio it would be foolish to continue.

As if reading his mind, Maeve continued, "Your radio stopped working, didn't it? So has mine. Aimos wouldn't have let you come without one. I have surveillance of you shooting a gun. Guns were supposed to be extinct years ago, yet here you are with one. Which Outlanders did you steal it from? Do you think both of these things happening are a coincidence, your radio going down and finding such a weapon?"

Lleyton hadn't had time to think how the two could possibly be connected, but slowly nodded at her. "I suppose it's strange."

"I know you want to return to Aimos. But by now he's realized the radio is down, too. Orconia is probably already in lockdown. You returning will have no impact on the safety of your friends out to the East, but you could save thousands still in the West." Maeve looked deep into the confused boys eyes for a moment, and continued, "It's also not a coincidence for the second time in Gaiathal history that someone came into the Ring rather than leaving it. It's why I saved you by opening the Field, leading you here with the lights of this ship. Now, you must listen because we don't have a lot of time."

Lleyton didn't know it was possible for her to get any closer to him, and for him to try and withdraw any further. Her eyes were motherly yet stern.

"I know the look. You think I'm some sort of genius. The truth is, I'm not the smartest on this tiny planet. And something is stirring in the shadows. I couldn't figure out the exact time they would come, but these events tell me it's beginning. That he knows it's the beginning."

Lleyton was perplexed, and asked, "Who is 'they' and 'he'? The Outlanders?"

Maeve shook her head but nodded, too, adding to Lleyton's confusion. "Yes, them... we will have to deal with. But worse than them is the threat from the Gothreek Mountains to the South West. They are worse. Worse than the monsters you passed to get in here. Worse than the men you obtained your pistol from. They are the Dark."

She paused for a moment, her eyes filled with concern. "When they come, it is over. But we can buy time. I can learn how to defeat them I... but we'll need everybody. Go to each capital city of each province starting from the West coming back East, Blackland and then Baylon and then New Felix and then Orconia... New Felix is the most important, Panza has something we cannot let fall into his hands. Here," she passed him a small key, and said, "She gave me a spare if something happened to her. The chest, it would be in her ceiling, of her chambers. Make sure it's safe. We must get as far from the Gothreek Mountains as possible. Everyone must march as east as possible. Our only chance is to fight, together. If you accomplish this, come back for me."

Lleyton blinked at the woman, taking the key in his hands, a million questions racing in his mind. He asked, "Why haven't you warned everyone yourself? The way I see it, you could have radioed everyone years ago. Why are you hiding away here?"

She looked away from him, ashamed, and said, "This is the only place he will not find me. He will find me if I try and make contact with the outside world. And I still have work to do, here. I must perfect the world I've created, the one I have just taken you into. It's not ready. I wasn't sure the threat was so soon. Your arrival is a light in a sea of darkness, young Lleyton. You're the messenger I've been desperate to have."

Lleyton stood, furious. The anger at his lack of memory and answers for his own life came rushing back, and now again a stranger would not provide him any. How could he believe her? "Give me some answers, or I'm leaving. How does you making some dream world deal with... whatever threat you are talking of?"

Maeve looked at him, shaking her head in disappointment. "Even I don't have all the answers, Lleyton, but I promise you, when you see me again I will explain everything that I can. I beg you, collect the provinces and head as East as possible and as soon as possible."

A map of Gaiathal was flashing on a nearby monitor. Blackland in the South West, Dazheen to North West, Baylon to the North, New Felix to the North East and Orconia to the South East, both Orconia and New Felix stretching far eastward, all border lines converging on the centre where Lleyton found himself. Lleyton shook his head thinking of the unnecessary journey lying ahead of him. He must return. This woman was out of her mind.

"You would be dead if not for me. This is the debt I ask of you," her words cut sharply through his thoughts, as if she knew exactly how to make him comply.

Lleyton clenched his fists and closed his eyes. What he lacked in identity and memory he made up for with pride and a somewhat mis calibrated sense of honour. "Why would the Sixes listen to me? How does a mortal convince an invincible being that their people are in trouble?" He asked her, his voice straining with frustration. "You expect them to vacate their walls where they're best protected, because some boy tells them to?"

Maeve corrected him sharply, and said, "Careful about your assertion, boy. No one is invincible," she said, and then thought for a moment, continuing with, "You're not just a boy, I think. Tell them Maeve sent you, and show them this."

She passed him a white, shimmering stone with her name etched into it. It shone in his dirty, bloody hands, somehow comforting him.

"What if you're wrong? What if they're safer where they are?"

Maeve looked at him sternly. "I'm not wrong. We will win this together. Not apart. If you can't convince them, at least you can live with yourself that you tried to save this planet. We haven't any time to lose. You must go, now."

***

Maeve turned on several flood lights at the stern of Nighthawk, redirecting the Remainers away from Lleyton's path which was to the Western wall of the Ring. Lleyton rubbed away the purple blood that covered the butt of his pistol which he recollected from the elevator, tightened a fresh bag of supplies Maeve provided him on his shoulder, and adjusted the shield on his back.

The Ring wall began to split and creak, opening like the elevator doors had done through his hellish night, Maeve controlling them from her lab. The sun was starting to rise, blood pink light shining through the opening of the Ring and shimmering off of Lleyton's shield. 

"The quickest path to the capital of Blackland is through your home capital of Dazheen, the Wolf's Den. You could get to my cousin Nik before nightfall, depending on how long you stay in Dazheen. I hope you find the answers you have been looking for," Maeve had said to him before he left. "I hope our paths cross again."

Although his memory was still failing to come back, he somehow felt like he was growing. Like he was becoming who he was supposed to be, or who he once was. He smiled to himself at the triumphs of the night. Not just a boy, I think.

He took a deep breath and stepped through the walls into the wild of the West.