A BLACKNESS expanded in your sight as you were hooked into the somnetic bed, IV lines filling your arteries with various cholinergic oneirogens and copious amounts of other drugs you hadn't memorized clearly enough, or were clearly forgetting the names of in your deluded state. In other words, you were high as shit, and slowly being drawn into that maw of sleep that wants to introduce you to all your new playthings. Sleep was the goal, of course; but each moment you were counting down. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

An abrupt noise jerked you to awareness. Restart the count.

Each jolt got slower, quieter. The last jolt was barely felt. Not even heard.

You regained awareness in what former oneironauts called the Waiting Room. It is a framework of your slumbering mind; a tower being built actively as you dream, and whatever you see is the television that'll play for your slumbering mind. You will forget it all, of course. A personal mandala.

Only this time, the drugs in you have enough of an effect that you are able to clearly remember, and begin your objective. You begin to close your eyes; though in this dreamscape, it's more like closing the representation of your eyes. The mandala, the dream itself, disappears in an instant. The minds view of emptiness, or what you don't see.

You begin to remember the instructions of your training program; do not spend more thirty minutes preparing. Do not get lost in your thoughts. Begin remembering key parts of the world you were about to enter. If at any point you forget, self-terminate.

The wording was clear, though you didn't like self-terminating. It was more painful in a lucid state, even if it wasn't real. Everytime a self-termination occurred, pay was docked heavily. The glowies were not pleased with any sort of setback.

You began to remember the specifics of the dream-world you were trained on for years, the name of which was formally HSDS-1; but to you and the rest of your partners, you called it the Arcade. It was a name derided by staff, but they begrudgingly allowed it to be kept only due to the fact that it improved the odds of successful immersion.

Slowly, the details began to be drawn. You could feel it warp around your 'form', and you felt the cold night air of the Arcade. It was always night, something none of you understood. You were trained only to explore it; not to understand it.
The warping lasted only a second as you quickly jolt your eyes open and take in the view of the place, a large labyrinth of metal and narrow streets, a Kowloon within your mind.

This was your first mission; your first real one. And it was going to be a long one; dilation within the dream not counting, you'd be here until you woke up. And they'd ensure you stay here as long as you can. You won't be getting out until you have your information.