Brandon Breyer was thirteen, and nights were no longer safe for him. When he closed his eyes, the world turned into a nightmare. That night, like so many before, sleep came quickly but brought no peace.He stood on a hill, surrounded by the fields he knew from Kansas. But the ground wasn't golden with corn—it was red, sticky with blood. Bodies lay everywhere, lifeless, their faces frozen in terror. Brandon wanted to scream, to run, but his legs were leaden. He looked at his hands—they were covered in blood, warm, pulsing. He raised his eyes and saw the sky, black, starless. Emptiness. And then he heard laughter—cold, cynical, full of contempt. It was his laughter.He woke with a scream, his heart pounding like a hammer. The room was quiet, only the crickets outside playing their monotonous tune. Brandon sat up in bed, wiping sweat from his brow. That dream again. Always the same. He hadn't told anyone, not even Tori or Kyle. He didn't want them to look at him differently.
In the morning, at breakfast, Tori noticed the shadows under his eyes.
"Brandon, did you sleep poorly?" she asked, setting a plate of pancakes in front of him.
"A little," he mumbled, avoiding her gaze. "No big deal, Mom." Kyle, sipping his coffee, glanced at him over the newspaper.
"You look like you've been chasing wolves all night. Something up, son?" Brandon shook his head, forcing a smile.
"No, Dad. Just… a dumb dream."
Tori placed a hand on his shoulder.
"You know you can tell us anything, right?"
"I know," he said quietly, but deep down, he felt it was a lie. He couldn't tell them about the blood, the laughter. He didn't want them to fear their own son. After breakfast, as usual, he slipped away to the old shed at the edge of the farm. There, hidden under piles of boards and hay, was his ship—the one he'd crashed in eight years ago. For years, he'd studied it in secret, piece by piece. There was nothing remarkable about it—cold metal, strange symbols that meant nothing to him, and a core that must have once powered the machine but was now dead. Just a ship, he thought for the hundredth time, running his fingers over its smooth surface. Built to survive. But why? And for whom? Sometimes, when he touched the hull, he felt a strange tingling, as if the ship was trying to tell him something. But every time he searched for answers, he found only silence. He didn't tell his parents. He didn't want to worry them. Or maybe… maybe he was afraid that the answers he'd find would change everything.
That afternoon, Brandon sat in the attic, flipping through old Avengers comics he'd bought at a town sale. He tried to focus on the stories of heroes, but his thoughts kept drifting back to the dreams. Why did he see blood? Why did he hear himself laughing as if the world were his toy?
The next day, Brandon went to school. Not many hours later, his parents received a call to come to the school quickly. It was about their son.