In the City of the Nightmare King

by V. S. Santoni

  “This is the way.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I can still feel his aura.”

  It was strange that Blake sensed the Nightmare King but I didn’t. Was this a trick? Was the Nightmare King confusing us with his magic, spinning us in circles like children on a roundabout?

  “How come you can feel it but we can’t?” Hunter asked.

  “What do you mean you can’t feel it?” Blake said. “Can you feel it, Ali?” Alison slowly nodded. “I don’t know why you guys can’t sense him, but we can.”

  “How do we know if we can trust you?” Hunter asked.

  Blake gave Hunter a fierce look. “What’s wrong with you, Hunter?”

  Hunter set his jaw. “There’s nothing wrong with me. What’s wrong with you?”

  Tensions flared. My muscles stiffened.

  “Nothing’s wrong with me, Hunter. Why’re you acting weird?”

  “Maybe it isn’t Hunter at all,” Alison said. “Did anyone ever think about that? I mean he’s supposed to be deeper in the Night City, isn’t he?”

  “Maybe you aren’t who you say you are,” Hunter said to Alison.

  “Well, there’s two of us and one of you.”

  Hunter’s rosy cheeks went ashen.

  “Leave him alone!” I said. “Did you two forget we came here looking for him?”

  Alison put her hands on her hips. “Johnny, are you being serious?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be? Everyone needs to calm down. We’re not fighting. We’re friends.”

  Blake cut his eyes at me, then Hunter, but never said a word.

  “We need to get away from these two, Johnny,” Hunter said.

  “No!” Blake said. “We’re not splitting up.”

  Hunter cupped my hands in his. “Come on, J. Don’t you trust me?”

  Blake seethed. “I said, you aren’t leaving.”

  “See, Johnny,” Hunter whispered, “he’s trying to keep us on the wrong path. We shouldn’t trust them.”

  “What’re you saying to him?” Alison asked.

  “Nothing. Come on, Johnny, let’s go back.” Hunter wrapped his hand around my arm and urged me, but he didn’t pull. Blake maneuvered around Hunter before I could move. “Get out of our way, Blake, or I’ll make you,” Hunter said, balling up his free hand.

  Blake’s body went rigid as a marble statue. “Try me.”

  Hunter let go of me and shoved Blake’s chest, and Blake pushed him back. Hunter swung at Blake’s head, but Blake stepped back and avoided the right hook. Hunter raised his fists and took another shot, but Blake dodged again—he never lost his temper. But Hunter had pushed him beyond his limit and he threw a jab of his own and clocked Hunter in the mouth. Hunter grabbed his jaw, blood trickling from his busted lip.

  I blocked Hunter with my body. “Blake, stop!”

  But Hunter shoved me aside and flew at Blake, fist raised. Blake side-stepped Hunter and tripped him. Hunter stumbled, and before he could get his bearings Blake spun around and punched him, knocking him off his feet and bloodying his nose.

  My mind whirled. Blake and Hunter always got along. “Get off him!” I pulled Blake’s shirt until it tore. He moved away, and Hunter wiped his nose on his sleeve and got to his feet, ready to keep fighting. “Hunter, stop!”

  “Don’t worry,” Hunter said, “I got this, Johnny.” Hunter charged again, and even though Blake tried to dodge, Hunter calculated his movements and redirected his fist into Blake’s cheek. Blake then grabbed Hunter’s shoulders and they tumbled to the ground, rolling around, each struggling for the upper hand. Blake won out and pinned Hunter, straddling him. Then Blake started to wail on Hunter.

  “Help, Johnny!” Hunter cried while struggling to block his face. Alison watched helplessly. She wanted this to stop as badly as I did.

  I had to act, so I focused on the light sword spell. The Nightmare King’s tight reigns felt like a plastic sheet over my face—magic was like oxygen and I was suffocating, but I needed to pull through, to rip the sheet off my face and harness my powers. For Hunter. For Blake. For Alison. For me. Surging energy into my fingertips, I fought against the Nightmare King’s powerful stranglehold, forced my magic to pool in my hands, and when it waned, when I could feel the Nightmare King tightening his grip on the threads that held his spell together, I fought even harder. So hard the cells in my body felt ready to burst and set me ablaze, and when I felt the Nightmare King’s clutch weaken, I shattered through his spell and sparks fired from my fingertips, coalescing into a glowing light sword. The swords’ warmth filled my hands, unaffected by the Nightmare King’s indomitable hold. I had broken his spell.

  Alison’s face flushed with shock. “Johnny, how did you—what’re you doing?”

  Blake saw me coming toward him with the glowing weapon and scooted across the floor, away from Hunter.

  Hunter looked to me, bruised and bloodied. He set his stormy eyes on Blake, his sweetness souring into cruelty. “That’s not Blake, Johnny. Kill him.”

  Blake kept quiet, staring at me defiantly. I clenched my hand around the energy sword.

  Alison shielded Blake with her body. “No way, J! This is crazy.”

  Hunter joined me at my side. “They’re both trying to trick us! Kill her too!”

  Both hands around the hilt, I pointed the blade at Alison and Blake, and lowered my gaze. Alison looked terrified. But was she faking it? Behind her, Blake glared at me, daring me to lash out at them. I steeled myself.

  Then I did the most horrible thing.

  I turned and drove the sword through Hunter’s stomach. Tears gathered in his frightened eyes when he realized what I had done. Uncertainty drilled into my aching heart. But I pushed the sword deeper, searing flesh, vaporizing bone. Killing him.

  “Johnny,” Hunter said with a painful gasp, “why would you . . .” His words tapered off, and his skin blackened like charcoal. Smoke billowed out his mouth and he crumbled to the floor like ash. I lowered the blade and my head. The smoke that had seeped out of him floated in the air then transformed back into the Nightmare King.

  “How did you know?” the Nightmare King asked.

  Stray tears slipped down my cheeks. “Hunter never would’ve asked me to hurt Blake or Alison. He would’ve been too afraid that they were real.”

  “You know your family quite well after all.”

  “We had a deal.”

  The Nightmare King’s fearful gaze fell on Blake. “First, I have something I want to show you.”

  Chapter 18

  Black stage curtains fell around us. The Nightmare King pulled one aside, revealing a dimly lit lab. Glass pods numbering in the hundreds had been arranged into rows throughout the facility. Inside each tube, people lay suspended in bright-green fluid. If not for that greenish glow, the lab would’ve been too dark to navigate. I didn’t know if this was another trick, but the Nightmare King held the curtain open for us. No one wanted to be first, but Blake took charge, then I skittishly walked in with Alison. The Nightmare King dropped the veil, and the curtains vanished behind us.

  A faint stench permeated the air. Eirineftis. The lab smelled like eirineftis. As Alison and Blake walked off to conduct their own investigations, I approached one of the pods. The chamber was connected to a life support machine, and a boy with a blond buzz cut and a scar above his right eye floated inside the tube. He had been stripped to his underwear and an oxygen mask was affixed to his face. I studied him more intensely until realization chilled me: the boy sleeping in the chamber had been Blake’s foster brother in the Dreamhaven, Ben. I hurried to another tube and found Tiffany, and in another Scott. All the Dreamhaven’s residents were gathered in this facility, kept in stasis inside these strange green pods.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “We are under the Marduk Institute’s Heka Building,�
�� said the Nightmare King.

  “What?” Alison said, voice high with anxiety.

  “Yes.”

  Blake asked, “Won’t the Institute know we’re here?”

  “These are only your dream bodies. Your real bodies still lay wherever you left them. The scientists at the Institute aren’t omnipotent, and my magic is quite powerful.” I reached out to touch the tube, but my hand passed through it as if I were a ghost. The Nightmare King had taken our dream forms into the real world. “Do not try to wake up,” he warned. “Your bodies are under a spell until we are done here.”

  “Why’d you bring us to this place?” I asked.

  “To show you.”

  “To show us what?”

  “Everything.”

  “What is this room for?”

  “It is where the Institute keeps the Dreamhaven prisoners.”

  Blake brought his face close to a pod. The green glow from inside illuminated his skin. “And this green goo . . . it’s eirineftis isn’t?”

  “You already know,” said the Nightmare King.

  So, the Institute had stored us in tanks filled with eirineftis. No wonder our magic didn’t work in the Dreamhaven.

  “I found a . . . wishing pond near the verge. I drank from it and my magic came back. If the eirineftis is supposed to keep us from using our powers, how come my powers came back after I drank from the water?”

  “Proximity to the verge may have given the pond anomalous properties,” said the Nightmare King. A sound theory—as sound as any. A few pods didn’t have eirineftis in them. I imagined those had Smiths sleeping inside.

  The Nightmare King hovered over to two doors near a biometric scanner on an adjacent wall. The scanner buzzed, and the words Access Denied were displayed in red. He waved a hand and the scanner beeped, and Access Granted appeared. The doors whished open and air gusted into the room. I wanted to analyze everyone trapped in the lab, but the Nightmare King was already leaving and I didn’t want to get left behind in this creepy place.

  I walked up beside Blake and Alison as we followed the Nightmare King. “Why do you two think he’s showing us all of this?”

  “No clue. I hope he doesn’t hand us over to the Institute or something,” Alison said.

  Blake’s full attention stayed fixed on the Nightmare King—my words didn’t even reach him. Something about the Nightmare King had burrowed deep in his mind. I drew Alison’s attention to Blake, but his stark expression bewildered her, so I minded my business. A familiarity surrounded the Nightmare King—it disquieted me too. His youthful voice . . . I’d heard it before but couldn’t remember where or when.

  The light panels on the ceiling flickered when the Nightmare King passed under them. His immense aura—sadness, loneliness, fear—unsettled the whole building.

  We entered a hallway with three pale scientists scribbling notes on digital pads as they stared through an observation window into an operating room. The Nightmare King silently moved past them, heading to an elevator at the end of a passage. With about as much sense as a mayfly, I stopped and peeked through the window. I was left breathless by the indescribable horror inside: A boy about my age lay split open, sternum to abdomen, on a medical table. Two surgical lights hovered over the boy. A surgeon wearing a black apron removed the boy’s kidneys and placed them on an electronic scale. Another doctor overseeing the vivisection announced their findings as he keyed in data on his own pad: “Subject is sixteen years old. His powers have been active for two years. Kidneys weigh 125 grams.” Next, the surgeon took out the boy’s liver and set it on the scale. “Liver weighs 1,561 grams.” The surgeon grabbed a drill off a table covered in medical instruments. He put the drill to the boy’s head, but I couldn’t keep looking. A high-pitched whirring followed. Had I been in my real body, I would’ve thrown up. Alison noticed the slight green hue to my skin and came over to investigate. She, too, peered through the window and gasped. Blake joined us and quickly turned away.

  “What’re they doing to him?” Blake asked, glancing between the ongoing vivisection and the Nightmare King. “Is he—” his voice dropped to a whisper “—is he going to die?”

  The Nightmare King stopped moving but kept his back to us. “If he did, would it matter? Isn’t that the point of the Institute?” Hands still clasped behind his back, he headed for the elevator. Although the Nightmare King sounded like a boy, he evinced an Institute scientist’s cold detachment. The Nightmare King used his powers to circumvent the security card reader and entered the elevator. Alison remained glued to the observation window. It took a few tugs before she stopped watching.

  “We need to follow him,” I said, pointing to the Nightmare King. Blake waited for us in the elevator. Alison nodded weakly and swallowed, taking one last, fateful glance into the surgical room.

  With us all in the elevator, the Nightmare King swept a hand through the air and the doors closed. The electronic display over the door ticked down.

  “Where’re we going?” Blake asked.

  The Nightmare King didn’t answer, though, and Blake didn’t insist. We all went quiet. I was still processing the violence I had just witnessed—that boy could’ve been me, Hunter, or any one of us. He’d earned that cruel fate for being born a non-Lineage wizard. That had been his only crime. Gaspar’s willingness to sacrifice people to destroy the Institute now made sense. My resolve to see this place burn to the ground had been solidified.

  The elevator opened and the Nightmare King guided us into a dark, dome-shaped chamber with tessellated walls. Three somnambulist teenagers lay in glass pods angled at 120 degrees in the room’s center. The tubes holding them, unlike the ones in which they kept the Dreamhaven prisoners, didn’t contain eirineftis. Instead, numerous cannulas injected green fluid directly into their bodies. Keeping them submerged in eirineftis clearly didn’t work to suppress their powers. Each unit was fixed with an EKG and connected to a complex, rounded machine that shot a blue light up to the ceiling. A screen on the oculus displayed fuzzy, distorted images.

  Blake walked up to a pod, disbelief scrawled across his face. He muttered, “Mikey,” as he stared into the tube. Mikey, the same name as the boy who helped us escape the Dreamhaven. The somnambulist who’d once lived with Blake, who killed Blake’s best friend, Gerald, while possessed by a Mara. The boy’s complexion was unnatural and pale green. One of his hands was wreathed in a thick, boney covering, and pointy scutes protruded from patches on his face, like an ankylosaurus. He was ossifying. The other somnambulists also had greenish skin covered in osteoderms.

  “This is Mikey. This kid here is Mikey.” Blake looked away from the chamber and gave the Nightmare King a dirty look. “Show me who you are. Who you really are.”

  The smoke from around the Nightmare King’s head spiraled around his body, and when it faded, Mikey appeared in his place. He had icy-blue eyes that matched his jumpsuit, the outfit the Institute forced on all somnambulists.

  “Mikey?” Blake said.

  Mikey floated down until his feet touched the ground. “Yes.”

  “Why did I hear you over the radio in the Dreamhaven?” I asked.

  “The Dreamhaven chamber is close. I used what little power I had to send out that signal. I hoped that if a wizard received the message and escaped, they would come back and help the others.”

  “What’s happening to you? Why do you have . . . bones all over your skin?” Blake asked.

  “Prolonged exposure to eirineftis can be quite deadly. The Institute calls it ‘the green sickness.’ First, the skin turns a greenish color, then the body begins to ossify until every part of it, including organs, is nothing but white, calcified tissue. I am the current Nightmare King, but when I die, another will take my place. Most likely one of these two.”

  The Nightmare King was nothing but an endless procession of dying somnambulists. Their final days were spent sitting as Dea
th’s right hand, a warden for dying souls. The Institute had continued pumping eirineftis into Mikey even after he’d started ossifying. That explained why his anti-magic barrier in the Night City had been so inconsistent: his magic had been waning.

  “Why can’t they heal you—with magic or something?”

  “There is no magic that can cure a magical illness. Even those keen on the study of life magic do not understand the ways the cogs and wheels change and shift once one has acquired the green sickness.”

  “Why are they doing this to you? What’re you doing down here?”

  The chamber doors opened and the lights came on. Melchior walked in then with a man in his late thirties wearing a white suit. The man had short, black hair, and his powerful aura swallowed the room in otherworldly strangeness. In my mind, I saw a black expanse, cold and never ending, and in that darkness, trillions and trillions of eyes sprouted and watched me. Somewhere, far off, the discordant hum of twisted carnival music played. I didn’t know what he was, but I wanted to run to the other side of the world just to hide. Once the doors closed, feathers sprouted on the man’s face, and his head transformed into a horned owl with hungry yellow eyes. His fingers grew long and hooked, becoming razor-sharp talons.

  The sight frightened the words out of us.

  “What the hell is that guy?” Alison said, breaking the silence.

  “A vampire,” Mikey said.

  Melchior and the owl-headed man approached the machine in the middle of the room. The three somnambulists writhed and thrashed, gnashing their teeth as if in pain. Slowly, the blurry shapes on the oculus took on defined forms, becoming soundless images. A brown-haired boy with bronzy skin walked across a city street with a backpack slung over his shoulder. I didn’t know the city, but the old brick buildings towered, with stoops and fire escapes crawling up their sides and security bars on their windows. The boy stopped in the street, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a phone. He looked at the screen and scowled, then he started texting someone back—angry texting. At that same moment, a speeding gray sedan turned a corner down the street and hurtled toward him.