text: In a small town, there lived a six-year-old girl named Maddie who had recently lost her parents. Orphaned and burdened with grief, Maddie sought solace in daily sessions with a compassionate psychologist after school. During their conversations, Maddie revealed a peculiar aspect of her dreams. Most nights, her dreams were black and white, and they remained uneventful. However, the night her parents tragically passed away, her dreams shifted dramatically and were in color. The color dreams depicted the exact manner in which both of her parents died. The psychologist tried to reassure her that dreams do not kill people, that accidents can happen, and that, while tragic, it is a part of life. Maddie is adamant that her dreams are what killed her parents. The psychologist probed further, asking why she thought this. The child recounted being irritated with her mother before going to bed the night before her mother died because she wouldn't allow her to watch another episode of her favorite show. She recalls sitting in bed, thinking about the terrible things that could happen to her mother. That night, she had her first color dream, in which her mother lost control of her car and crashed into a tree. The next day, she found out that her mother died in a car accident just as she had dreamed: down to the curve in the road, the road markings, and how the accident shattered the axle of the front tires. Three months later, her father did something similar when he promised her she could go to her friend's house for a sleepover but had to back out since he had to go to work early the next day. She doesn't remember being angry at him, but her mind continually returned to the idea that her father was mean. That night, she had her second color dream, in which her father fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck against a cement floor. Her father, like her mother, tripped while walking fast down the stairs, rolling end over end and breaking his neck on the cement floor at the bottom of the stairs. The psychologist dismissed it as a coincidence and asked Maddie to experiment with her. She asked Maddie to think of someone she was angry with or, at the very least, annoyed with. Maddie said she would think about a student in her class, Greg, who had called her picture "ugly" during art class. The psychologist instructed her to think about Greg before bed and then report on her dreams in the next session. So Maddie left the psychologist's office and went to bed thinking about Greg. She had a color dream for the third time in her life. Greg fell out of a fourth-story window and landed on his head in her dream. The next day, she went to school, and Greg was not there. The teachers were huddled and apprehensive, and the start of school was delayed. Eventually, the principal entered the room and announced that one of their classmates had passed away that morning. Maddie told the psychologist about her dream and the news that Greg had died that morning. The psychologist was speechless; she didn't know what to say. She was certain Maddie's dreams had nothing to do with these deaths, but the evidence was mounting. The rest of the session was spent trying to pull Maddie's attention off Greg's death and onto more positive things, but the psychologist was concerned. After that session, she called a colleague from the university to get another perspective on how she might help Maddie. The colleague was a consultant for the military and wanted to run a sleep study and some brain scans. Since Maddie was a ward of the state, the psychologist granted permission because she trusted her colleague, and he helped children all the time. Maddie was subjected to several tests over the next month, ranging from brain scans to psychic interviews. They kept repeating the same test, telling Maddie a story about a criminal, an evil person, or an enemy of the United States. They would tell her to think hard about this person before bed. Maddie would experience a color dream about the person they wanted her to think about overnight. And every time she had a color dream about the person they wanted, they died the next day. The military saw Maddie as a potent weapon, and her recurring nightmares continued to affect countless lives. Almost every night, Maddie was told a story about a horrible person. Everyone from leaders of countries with which the US opposed, tyrants who were murdering their people, to criminals who were destroying society. Maddie was being used so regularly by the military that she told them, "I only dream in color; I don't like colored dreams anymore." The military leadership didn't care since their implications were too phenomenal to ignore. There was no one to look for Maddie because she was an orphan; she was the property of the US Military, a weapon that could never be traced back to them. Maddie's original psychologist had passed her over to her colleague almost a year ago, and she hadn't seen her since. She saw her colleague at a conference, and Maddie was the first thing that came to her mind. It was an awkward encounter; the colleague felt bad and acknowledged that he had handed over the girl to the US Military and that her claims that her color-death visions come true were real. From then on, the psychologist did everything possible to find Maddie and bring her out of this horrible circumstance. She was stopped at every turn, suffocated by paperwork, and threatened with prison for meddling with classified information. Realizing the dire consequences of her dreams, Maddie reached a breaking point after 60 consecutive nights of being manipulated by the military. Maddie asked her night guard for a sip of water, and he unlocked her bedroom cell and let her down the hall to get one. As Maddie turned on the faucet, she heard the guard's phone ring, and he turned around the corner so Maddie couldn't hear what they were talking about. Maddie took advantage of the situation by sneaking out of the prison, navigating into the surrounding woods and climbing over an 8-foot fence. She ultimately arrived at a main road, where a truck driver reported seeing a young child and called the police. Maddie was picked up by a squad car about a mile from the station after the local police were notified. Agents from the top secret facility went to the police station and took Maddie back to the base. However, the next day, a reporter listening to the scanner heard the call about a missing child and questioned the local police about it. The police did not provide much information to the reporter, but it made the reporter skeptical of what was happening. Why was a little child out in the middle of nowhere on a country road? Was it related to the military base in the woods? What became of the girl? Despite publishing the article, it received little traction and soon faded. Maddie returned to the military base and her nightmares, but there was now proof of a mystery girl emerging from the woods in the middle of the night. Maddie's original psychologist uncovered the story of the girl who came out of the woods in the middle of the night two and a half years later, nearly 600 deaths later, and more stories of evil told to an 8-year-old than should be heard in a lifetime. The psychologist lobbied the US military to release Maddie and let her back to her life. The military was concerned that her location would be discovered and decided to relocate her in the middle of the night; little did they know that the psychologist was watching the base and noticed Maddie and yelled out to her. The psychologist gathered photographic evidence and decided to go to court. The military eventually released Maddie after considerable public outcry and the psychologist's unwavering efforts. The military attempted to explain that if Maddie were freed from military custody, she would be a danger to others if she was not constantly supervised. Ultimately, the military’s refusal to admit that they had this weapon would lead to Maddie's freedom. They were concerned that if it were discovered that the military had this weapon for more than three years, all deaths caused by Maddie's color dreams would have serious consequences for the United States. Maddie continued to see the psychologist, who helped her control her color nightmares and work through the reoccurring stories of violence she was cruelly told while under military custody. Her psychologist became her loving guardian, and Maddie's journey towards a brighter future began.