by Gareth Otton
“You nearly took a ton of super-heated shrapnel to the face and if it wasn’t for that explosion that blew you into me, I never would have got to you in time.”
“You were trying to save me?” Tad asked, unable to hide his surprise.
Trevors grunted out a laugh.
“I may not always like you, Holcroft, but I’m on thin enough ground with Stella as it is and I’m not about to let you get killed on my watch or work will become unbearable.”
Despite everything, Tad chuckled at his words, but it didn’t last long. While he was here laughing, there were people who had been severely injured, and some that had died back in Cardiff. He needed to get back. However, he still didn’t feel up to moving. Here in Dream he had infinite energy, but he could tell it wouldn’t survive a trip back to the real world.
“How did we get here?” he asked.
“As soon as I grabbed you I dreamwalked us both away, but didn’t know where to go, so I just came to Dream. I could do with getting back, though. I need to make sure that those nightmares are finished.”
“They are,” Tad said. He may not be sure of much, but he was sure of that. The lightning that connected to all of them had, in a strange way, been part of him as it was his connection to Dream that powered it. He felt it connect, even briefly, with every one of those metal birds, and he knew they were gone.
Trevors stared at him for a moment and grunted.
“Maybe. But the number of those things was growing all the time. I didn’t see any myself, but I think that there might have been more of Kuruk’s people there, letting out new nightmares. They could be doing that now.”
A spike of panic shot through Tad at the thought and he climbed to his feet, prepared to dreamwalk back whether he was ready or not.
“Whoa, I didn’t mean for us both to go back,” Trevors argued. “You’re not looking so good.”
“If there're more nightmares then I have to help.”
“I saw what you did. I’ll head back to HQ and grab Chakikra or Gary, and pass the word on how to stop them. I’m sure they can manage… Unless…”
“Unless what?”
Trevors hesitated a second before asking, “Do you know a way of finding Kuruk’s men even if you can’t see them. Maybe the same way that you can find ghosts and nightmares?”
Tad thought about it for a second, then shook his head, then hesitated, then nodded.
“Maybe. If they’re using their dreamcatchers, then yes I could sense them, but otherwise the dreamcatchers are just ink on skin. I wouldn’t know where to look.”
Again Trevors hesitated as he thought of a plan and asked, “If we go back and I somehow force those people to activate their dreamcatchers, could you find them all and take them out at the same time, like you did with those nightmares?”
“You mean kill them?” Tad asked, frowning.
“I mean save civilian lives before those people can do any more damage like they did last night in Todmoryn and today in Cardiff. It would be good to take some alive so we can get information from them, but I’m not going to worry if they’re all dead.”
Even as Trevors was speaking, Tad realised he could very well do what Trevors asked of him. He didn’t think it would even be that hard to figure something out to affect them all at once. With his ghost’s help and if he took them by surprise, it was a near certainty.
However, while he had killed over the last year, it had always been in self defence or the defence of someone he loved. Even then he had been losing sleep on nights as their faces haunted his nightmares. Could he really kill so many people in cold blood?
He had no eyes to see it and he wasn’t concentrating on himself right then, but his skin had drained of all colour and the nerve damaged fingers of his left hand were twitching violently.
“It’s a war, Holcroft. You’ll need to get over that,” Trevors said, reading his reaction and not needing to hear his answer. “At some point, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty.”
Leaving Tad with that troubling thought, Trevors blinked out of existence as he returned to the real world. He didn’t offer to take Tad with him, and in Tad’s current state, he wasn’t sure he could follow on his own. He still needed time for his ghosts to get him back in fighting shape.
He desperately wanted to go back to Cardiff, to help the people who might have been hurt when he failed to act quick enough to save them. However, he would also have to see the results of what happened when he burned those people, and he might be put on the spot about what to do if there were still men with dreamcatchers there making a nuisance of themselves.
Even when he was just a history teacher who shied away from conflict, Tad never considered himself a coward. However, thinking of going back now, of facing those accusing eyes and potentially having to take so many lives, he couldn’t deny this fresh fear.
He knew he was too beaten up to help, but as he decided not to go back just yet, he couldn’t help wondering what part his fear played in that decision. It was a dark thought in a place where dark thoughts were literally dangerous, so Tad decided it was time to head back to the real world. Not to Cardiff, but to the safe house that was his new temporary home.
Knowing he would hate himself for this decision later, he changed the channel and fled the fight.
16
Wednesday, 28th December 2016
08:15 (Local Time)
Lizzie looked at her watch and grimaced.
It would be six-fifteen back home and that was way too early to be up considering she had been working late every night for three days. But with a war to cover, sleep had to be sacrificed. She was momentarily jealous of Stella’s ability to go days without sleep, but even now, when they were on the same side for a change, thinking of Stella only made her angry. Instead, she focused on the coffee shop on the corner of the street, waiting for him to emerge.
Once more she was putting her dreamcatcher to good use, as she was in Athens again. Another side effect of the war was that she hadn’t had much time to pursue the eidolon story as she covered the attacks and their fallout, determined not to let the Americans get away with what they were doing. Unfortunately they had been fighting back, denying the Prime Minister’s claims and trying to discredit her. Dealing with that didn’t leave her much free time for even sleep, let alone anything else. But she checked the cameras Miles installed daily and it was from one of those that she got this lead.
As if summoned by her impatience, her target exited the coffee shop with a large paper cup that steamed from the small hole in the plastic lid. He was a man of average height, and though she rarely thought this sort of thing about people, he wasn’t particularly handsome. His nose was crooked, his eyes a touch too far apart, and his mouth a bit wide. Normally she would overlook that, but when trying to make sure he wasn’t one of the universally attractive eidolon, those physical details were important.
He didn’t look up as he exited. He turned and started walking down the same route he took every day on his way into work. According to one of her investigators, this was a route that took him forty-five minutes every morning as the man liked to walk before the start of his shift. That left Lizzie with plenty of time. She hurried across the street and fell into step beside him.
“Morning Deacon. Do you mind if we talk in English, I’m afraid I don’t know any Greek.”
The man glanced over in surprise, his eyes widening as he recognised her. They had never met, but Lizzie’s channel had the largest subscriber count on YouTube and her own fame had sky rocketed over the last year. She didn’t get mobbed on the street like Tad might. After all, being a reporter was hardly the same as someone who literally changed the world, but she was still recognised.
After getting over his shock at seeing her, the man started talking fast in Greek, pretending like he didn’t know English.
“I know you work at New Olympus on reception and I also know that they don’t hire anyone to work that job unless they speak more than one lan
guage, English being one of the required ones.”
Looking a little shamefaced at being caught in the lie, the man finally answered with words she could understand.
“I have nothing to say, so you should leave me alone.”
“That’s not very nice,” Lizzie admonished. “After I came all this way to speak with you, you can’t even give me a few minutes?”
“It’s hardly an effort with that tattoo you’ve got,” he answered, and it was her turn to look surprised.
“You know about that?”
“They make it a point to keep us briefed on people of interest,” he said. “We’re the first line of defence to stop people like you getting into the building.”
Lizzie heard the bitterness in his answer and had to fight to keep the smile from her face. That was exactly what she wanted to hear from this man and would lead to him working for her.
“So they know I have a tattoo. I’m assuming that’s because I showed up in New Zealand.”
“I don’t know how they know what they know. They don’t exactly share things with me.” He looked around nervously and then said, “You obviously know who I work for, so you know how much danger you’re putting me in right now. If anyone sees us together I could—”
“No one is going to see us together,” Lizzie interrupted. “You’ve been working there long enough that they trust you.”
He snorted at that, and she knew why. It was the reason she came here today. The day before yesterday, this man had been shouted at by his boss so loudly that the cameras picked it up from across the street. It was over something tiny as well, at least from what Leon told her after doing a bit of translating. Deacon had been embarrassed in front of all the employees and visitors to the tower over nothing more than a minor slip up. Lizzie suspected it wasn’t the first time it had happened, either.
“Ha. I’m the last person they would ever trust.”
“They trust you enough to come into work every day and they don’t think enough of you to have you followed, they don’t see the point.”
He bristled at her words and demanded, “Is that why you’re here? To insult me and—”
“Why do you keep working for them? You obviously hate them,” Lizzie interrupted.
“I don’t hate them—” he started, but again she interrupted him.
“They have something on you, don’t they? Okay, maybe not,” she said, doing her best to read his expression as they walked. Once again she found herself envious of Stella, as she would have been able to read the answer from his expression. “They won’t let you leave, will they?”
She didn’t need Stella’s gift to recognise the way he flinched, and she knew she’d guessed right. Seeing that she wasn’t going anywhere and determined to get this over with as quick as possible, Deacon answered in a rush.
“You don’t know what it’s like to work for them. You come for a job because the pay’s great and it looks like a cool place to work. But once you’re in, they share secrets with you and they say that once you know these secrets, there’s no going back. You don’t get an option to leave after that.” He shuddered and added, “You don’t know what they would do to me if I tried to leave... but it would pale in comparison to what would happen if they saw me talking with you.”
“Then let’s do something about that,” Lizzie said. “I can help if you want to get out of there.”
Again he snorted a laugh and the look he gave her was anything but kind.
“Then you aren’t as well informed as I thought. These aren’t the sort of people you can help me with. They’ve been in power longer than most countries have existed and—”
“And they rely on the fact that people don’t know about them to keep that power. There are nearly seven and a half billion people in the world that aren’t eidolon. They know that no matter what kind of power they think they have, they stand no chance against that many people turning against them.”
“You don’t understand the influence they have,” the man disagreed. “The people they have in their pocket. There’s nothing you can do to these people that—”
“Exposure will deal with that problem as well,” Lizzie argued, annoying the man with how she was continually cutting him off. “Listen, Deacon, I’m not stupid. I know how dangerous these people are and I know the consequences of getting on their bad side. I’m on your watch list, remember. That should say something. The thing is though, I also know how to defeat these guys. The key thing about shadow organisations is the word shadow. They need the dark to operate because they can’t work in the light. So the best way to counter them is to shine a light on what they are doing and expose them to the world.”
“You know what their power is and how they work, right? You do that and it will only strengthen them,” he argued.
“No, it won’t. I know one of the eidolon who has told me how their powers work, how beliefs make them stronger. But he also told me how to defeat them and the weakness of their entire race. The thing that brought down these so-called gods last time is the same weakness we can exploit now. Doubt. It’s the opposite of belief. Shine a light on these people, make people doubt their power and rather than build belief in them, you erode it.”
“That won’t be enough,” the man argued. “You don’t know—”
“Deacon, you need to ask yourself a simple question. Is this how you want to spend the rest of your life? You’re only a few years older than me, and you could do so much more. Do you want to spend the rest of it stuck behind a reception desk working for the bad guys as they continue to work from the shadows and take over the world? You know they aren’t up to anything good. Can you really stand by and do nothing while all that is happening? Are you willing to devote your life to that cause?”
He hesitated long enough that she thought he might not answer, but finally he said, “I’m not agreeing to anything, but what do you want me to do?”
Lizzie again had to fight back a grin. Though he hadn’t outright come over to her side of the argument yet, she had opened a crack in his armour and she knew now that she could turn him. All she had to do was keep applying pressure to that crack.
Fighting off the smile that would scare him off, she started laying out her plan of what she wanted him to do.
◆◆◆
Lizzie stepped out of Dream and Miles jumped, spitting out a mouthful of cereal across her dining room table. Despite the mess, she burst out laughing at his reaction.
“Haha, very funny. You know you take a year off my life every time you do that,” he grumbled.
“You’re cranky this morning,” she noted as she grabbed a dishcloth from the sink to clean up the mess.
“I was in a great mood until you scared the shit out of me.” With narrowed eyes, he said, “And you’re in a better mood than you’ve been in for days. You find an extra Christmas present or something?”
Lizzie smiled at his guess and nodded.
“It’s a present of one kind,” she agreed, then told Miles about her morning.
“Wait, you’re saying he’s willing to plant cameras in the building for us?” Miles asked, suddenly as excited as her.
“Yeah. You’ll have to show him how to set them up, though. I don’t think he’s that tech savvy and—”
“Can we go to the studio?” Miles interrupted, his cereal forgotten as he jumped to his feet in excitement. “There’s something I want to show you.”
“Now? You don’t want to finish breakfast?”
“I’ll finish it later. Come on, you’ll like this.”
Smiling at his enthusiasm, Lizzie took his offered hand and didn’t even need to tell him to jump before he leapt up, trusting her to take them both to her studio. Once again the world shifted, her kitchen disappearing and her studio taking its place. The moment they appeared, Miles rushed off to a corner of the studio he claimed for himself when he started doing jobs for her, dragging her by the hand. His main job was still working for the Dream Team, but his hobby was pretty
much anything tech related so he enjoyed building custom PCs for her editors, setting up her gear on the sets, and even tinkering with a few of his own toys in that space while waiting for her to finish work. It was a hobby that was bordering on obsession. However, as she was kept just as busy with her own obsessions, it worked out well for them both.
“Check this out,” Miles said as he let her go and retrieved a little black box from a drawer. He handed it to Lizzie.
It was about the size of the blue blocks of chalk that snooker players used to chalk their cues. It was black with a small circle of glass at the front, and fins of black metal on the back, almost like a mini radiator.
“This is a camera?” she asked. “Where do the solar panels go, I don’t see any inputs for them?”
“There aren’t any solar panels,” Miles said excitedly. He held out his hand asking for her to return it and when she did, he twisted the metal fins at the back, detaching them from the camera and turning it around so that Lizzie could see inside. She wasn’t expecting much, thinking this was just Miles nerding out over something she wouldn’t understand. However, when she saw what was inside, she squinted to make out the details and then looked up in surprise.
“Is that a dreamcatcher?”
Miles nodded, grinning like a child with a new toy.
“I’ve been working with Mitena to see if we could use dreamcatchers to power electronics. It turns out that getting the power from a dreamcatcher has never been a problem as once it’s activated it stays activated until either the conditions its supposed to serve are met or it’s destroyed because it can’t handle the power it’s pulling across. That’s where this thing comes in,” he said, holding out the metal fins arranged in a cube shape. “It’s a heat sync, kind of like you’d find in a computer that carries heat away from the CPU. This carries enough heat away from the dreamcatcher inside that it will never get too hot for the material to handle and therefore can work indefinitely.”