[ There are a lot of animals running around up in the Ag levels; some harmless and in need of scooping up and rescuing, some dangerous and still in need of scooping up and restraining. They're never going to solve this crisis with the generator or sustainably move forward in the future using this area for its intended purposes if there are animals running around everywhere.

And so, extremely reluctantly, Ben has agreed to help in the effort to catch the glowing animals and house them somewhere - either as pets for those who are willing or some other places where they can be contained and looked after. He is not enthused about this. In fact, by all appearances he is in a weird, quiet, or grumpy mood. The weirdest thing about it, perhaps, for anyone who might be working with him in one of these shifts, is that he doesn't seem to be happier dealing with kittens than he is with an actual mutated lizard that's practically the size of a komodo dragon. In fact, if anything he seems warier of the most domesticated and harmless of the animals. Any rodents in particular - mice, rats, guinea pigs - will cause him to go quiet and hang far back, waiting for whoever he's working with to step up. ]

1
[ Ben has seen one of these swarms in action before; it's just that, the first time he encountered one, it wasn't his own nightmare that manifested. He also did not see the part where it transformed from a cloud into someone's waking worst case scenario.

So he doesn't know to avoid it, when he walks past a cloud in a well-trafficked corridor near to the residences that has old gouges running deep into the walls. He gives the cloud a glance but barely notices it; he's attempting to perfect this new skill of typing on his device while walking. It isn't an image that makes him stop, but a sound. ]

Number Six!

[ The voice is crisp, accented, and horrifically familiar. Ben freezes immediately, rooted to the spot. It can't have been what it sounded like. Can't have been his father. His father is dead - has been for more than a month now. ]

I'm waiting, Number Six.

[ The feeling is not unlike if someone poured ice water down the back of his shirt. Every muscle in Ben's body is tensed as he slowly, slowly turns around and sees, right in front of him, real as can be, Sir Reginald Hargreeves, eccentric billionaire and adventurer, and yes, the worst thing he can imagine.]

((Feel free to have your character encounter Ben while nanite Reginald is still present, or immediately after when he's wandering around kind of dazed))

2
[ Ben grows a little more accustomed to what the nightmare clouds are capable of over the next week. He tries to avoid them entirely, the places they show up the most, and the shadows. But he is careless one day, and wanders by a spot that isn't on his mental to-avoid list.

Worse, still, the reason he is distracted is because he is walking with someone, talking to them - whether a stranger he has only just met or an older acquaintance. Either way, they will be in danger the moment the cloud coalesces into an extremely odd sight. There is a human-shaped figure - one that a keen eye might notice is the same height and build as Ben himself - but which looks like it has been molded out of a night sky - black and empty with tiny, distant, cold stars shining through. And then, from the stomach of this void-person, come pouring those too-familiar tentacles, whipping out, blood thirsty, ready to curl around anything nearby that is living and rip it limb from limb, or smash it to pulp against the nearest hard surface.

Fortunately, these tentacles aren't as fast or as strong as the real ones - but they still pose a very real threat. Ben has never been on the opposite side of his own power, before. And this vision - of himself, but erased, nothing but a portal through which violence pours and pours relentlessly - is such an old nightmare that it freezes him in place. ]

3
[ It's a bad night. Ben tries not to have them, but they do come, occasionally. Diego is sleeping and Klaus is somewhere with a friend from Hadriel probably, and Ben hadn't had the heart to disrupt either's plans. So, sleep-deprived and clumsy, he stumbles out of his living quarters, looking for somewhere quiet and bright to sit a while and try to banish the gloomy thoughts.

Only he isn't going to have much luck doing that, after he trips over the ankle of a body on the floor that hadn't been there a moment ago. He's too exhausted and already lost in his thoughts to connect this newest horror with those nightmare swarms. All he knows is that he sees Klaus's lifeless body on the ground, pale and not breathing, limbs at an awkward angle, and all the air rushes out of him.

He's seen Klaus like this before. He has so many memories of ambulances and CPR and hospitals and alleyways and good samaritans and close calls of every stripe. Ben just knows Klaus must have slipped, taken something, taken too much, and now it's too late. Ben hadn't been there with him when he happened. When he drops to his knees, whole body shaking, Klaus's body is rigid and his skin cold. Not dying, but dead. ]

Klaus - Klaus, no...

[ Come ask the newly (self-)appointed librarian for book recommendations, or offer to help out with old documents / alien languages!]