Chapter 19 Part 1
Rei stared at the restricted section of books in front of her in Ashram Conservatorium. The moment felt surreal. Had she really just been able to walk in, past the guards? Was she going to be able to pick out the Tao Te Ching? her eyes scanned over the spines of many texts with unfamiliar names. One was called The Bible. Another, The Koran. Still another was called The Odyssey. She wished her assignment was to become familiar with all these books instead of just the one.
Still, nervousness wracked her gut. Though she had gotten past the guards, what would happen if she reached out to take the book she had been asked to take? Would Cerberus emerge from nowhere and maul her? It seemed ludicrous to Rei to have such apprehension, but she could not entirely shake the feeling. When she had opened that message she knew her life would be different, and she felt opening this book would be another such moment. her understanding of reality and what that entailed at least as she had known it appeared to be eroding at an alarmingly steady rate.
Rei had slept fitfully the night before. She was able to reassure herself that all the messages she had received that seemed to speak to the issue of Cerberus were merely coincidence. With her mind thus reassured of one of the basic guiding principles that made the world make sense to her, she had been able to fall into a shallow sleep. Unfortunately, the entirety of her mind did not buy her theory, and so the deeper parts of herself kept dreaming about going to check her mail and being told all manner of urgent information. In her dream, she would open her mail and would be bombarded with messages hinting at various serious things that it appeared only she was able to decipher. When she attempted to explain what was happening to her friends, they thought her crazy. Eventually, her dream turned to being pursued by Inner Sanctum officials to be taken in for questioning. What they really wanted to do, Rei knew, was lock her away for being mentally compromised. Rei woke up in a cold sweat just as in her dream she heard the magnetic locks snap into place and felt the holonospheric restraints around her wrists and ankles as she sat in the corner of a padded room."
When she had finally woken up that morning, she could ALMOST dismiss the entirety of yesterday as a bad dream. She fell into her morning routine as she had for the majority of her life. Rei had almost completely convinced herself of this truth when she stepped outside to begin her walk to the Conservatorium.
She felt an inner disquiet at first when she glanced back at the street sign that she used as a landmark for her apartment, but was relieved to see that the advertisement had nothing to do with Cerberus at all. Instead, it featured some kind of home security system that illuminated the darkness outside and had a tagline that read "Scared? We'll show you the way!"
