by Gareth Otton
“Wait, Leon called him that?” she asked, a sinking feeling in her stomach. “You mean this was an eidolon attack?”
When Miles’ alert came through, it said to come armed for dreamwalkers. Now she thought about it though, she should have realised the truth. There weren’t that many dreamwalkers left in the world, most of them were in a specially designed prison for their part in last month’s activities, and Stella suspected the rest were lying low for a while as they either wouldn’t want to be caught up with the bad optics of Jacob’s attack, or they just wouldn’t want the repercussions of outing themselves as dreamwalkers right now. However, Leon knew Stella had only shared the truth of her eidolon heritage with Trevors, and most of the Dream Team were ignorant of them. Saying to come armed for dreamwalkers was telling them to be ready for anything, and was the best thing he could have done in this situation.
Part of her was furious with herself for keeping this a secret from her team. The reasons for doing so weren’t clear to her right now, though she knew she had some. But how many of those men who died today would still be alive if she had just shared what she knew?
Another part of her knew they went armed for dreamwalkers and as far as she was concerned dreamwalkers had far more potential to be dangerous than the eidolon, at least if Tad was anything to judge by.
Trevors nodded to tell her she was right in her assumption, and then he described the rest of the event. Stella had never heard of an Overlooked before, nor of this other eidolon who could shrug off so much damage like it was nothing. By the time he was done talking she was close to reconsidering who was more dangerous, the eidolon or dreamwalkers. Thinking of Tad cutting a tidal wave in half with a thought, creating a two hundred foot tall fire tornado to protect them all back at the Senedd and using chain lightning to destroy that nightmare the other day, she thought she had to give the edge to the dreamwalkers. However, she also didn’t know enough about her people and she would need to remedy that soon.
Trevors lapsed into silence when he finished his story, almost as though he was waiting for her to start shouting. However, though she adopted a policy of radical honesty with Trevors in order to rescue what was left of their working relationship, she couldn’t see anything he had done wrong and told him as much.
“You couldn’t have known about the Overlooked. It was—”
“We were told to come prepared for dreamwalkers,” Trevors snapped. “That means come prepared for anything. It doesn’t matter if I didn’t know about him, I should have expected something. Now, because of me more men are dead... good men with families and loved ones. They deserved—”
Stella had a flash of deja vu as she thought of going through similar conversations like this with Tad back when he was still blaming himself for the fallout of the Merging. What was it with the men in her life blaming themselves for everything? She wondered just how big their egos needed to be to think that the whole world hung on their actions, or lack of actions. However, she soon realised how uncharitable that was. These men got this way because both of them cared. She couldn’t blame them for that.
“Trevors, you can’t account for everything. You had a good plan that should have worked. We have never heard of anything like someone who could make himself invisible before, so you can’t take this personally. Blaming and doubting yourself will only make you hesitate in the future and it will just lead to more deaths. Your people need you to be performing better than that… I need you to be better than that.”
“I can’t... Stella, I can’t do this anymore. I am the wrong guy for the job. I told you, I shouldn’t be here—”
“Trevors, I can’t lose you right now. After everything we’ve been through over the last couple of days, I need all the help I can get, and I can’t afford to find someone else to do your job. Christ, even now I’ve got Gary and Chakikra off dealing with a new nightmare in Bridgend, and there’s another nightmare in Newport that I had to send Tad to alone because we’re all out of people to... What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Trevors’ expression had frozen in a way that made Stella’s arm hairs stand on end. It was the kind of look that told her she was missing something important that was right in front of her face, and she wasn’t going to like whatever he was about to say.
“Are you telling me that right now there are two nightmares happening at the same time as the attack on Lizzie... All at exactly the same time.”
“Well, give or take five minutes,” Stella said, frowning as she realised how strange that was. Nightmares had come close together before, but now that she thought of it, she had never heard of it happening at the same time. “I just assumed it was Kuruk’s people again, causing mayhem.”
Trevors jumped to his feet and snatched up his gun from the table.
“It probably is,” he agreed. “But to do two at once and to have it timed with the eidolon attack... Let me put it this way, what’s the best way to rob a fire station? You set multiple fires and then you break in while the firefighters are away dealing with them.”
Stella frowned as she thought of that, then shook her head. “That analogy only works if the eidolon are working with Kuruk’s people, we have no proof of that.”
“Really?” Trevors scoffed. “There just happened to be a major attack on Lizzie’s studio at precisely the same moment that there was a nightmare dangerous enough to require a Dream Team presence at two other locations. If that’s a coincidence, then the gods of fate really have it out for us, Stella.”
“So you think they’re a diversion?” Stella asked, starting to come round to his way of thinking.
“Not necessarily. It could just be a divide-and-conquer kind of thing. Spreading our resources thin across all three events would make us easier to take out. But the thing is, if I planned that attack, I’d have a fourth target in mind as well.”
“The fire station,” Stella said as the horror of what Trevors was suggesting hit her. “You think they’re coming here.”
In answer, Trevors rushed past her, throwing open the abused door almost as hard as Stella had when she came through it, and sprinting back the way she had come, making people jump and look on curiously all over again. Stella rushed after him, the gears in her mind spinning ever quicker as she built on Trevor’s theory.
If they were all working together, then the attack on Lizzie’s barn was closer to the nightmare call-outs than Stella realised. They had spotted that attack early. Stella was willing to guess that if they hadn’t spotted it, it would have happened at exactly the same time as the nightmare attacks. That would mean that the eidolon were working with the dreamcatchers, which put a whole new spin on this war and made her job twice as hard. Hoping to God that Trevors was wrong, she rushed after him up the stairs and down the corridor beyond, headed straight for Miles’ office.
Miles jumped as they both appeared, and even as he recovered, Stella could tell that not all was well with him. He looked weary, and she was sure that whatever had happened at the barn must have weighed heavily on him.
“What’s happening?” he asked as soon as he got over his shock.
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Trevors answered. “Pull up the security feeds.”
“What?” Miles asked, looking to Stella for answers.
“Just do it, Miles. Time could be a factor here so explanations will have to wait.”
Miles blinked in surprise, and then that big brain of his put together the clues and he fell back into his chair.
“Not again,” he muttered as he spun towards his computer and started hammering the keys on his keyboard. Instantly one of his many screens filled with small windows, each showing a different view of the perimeter of the building.
Suddenly Stella wished she had a chair to fall into.
“Oh my God,” Trevors muttered even as Miles stared on in horror at what they were witnessing. There were people approaching the building from all directions, completely surrounding it. Stella flashed back to the dre
amwalker attack last month, then pushed past that thought because this was different; it was worse.
The group was a hundred strong, and Stella could see the black lines of dreamcatchers tattooed onto the skin of some people. However, it wasn’t these that scared her as much as who was accompanying those dreamcatchers. There were men decked out like soldiers and they were armed like they were heading into a war zone.
“Are those rocket launchers?” Miles whispered in obvious horror.
“We need to evacuate,” Stella said, gauging the force she saw on the monitors against what she had left to defend the DTHQ. Less than half of Trevors’ men had returned and there was no way they could hold out against what was coming. The dreamcatchers alone were a worry, but the firepower that was coming with them... those weren’t Dream related, and there was nothing the dreamcatchers in the building could do to defend against those.
“Miles,” Stella shouted. “Sound the alarm. We need to get this building evacuated, now. Send everyone to Mitena’s escape tunnel. We need to get the hell out of here.”
Flinching at her sharp commands, Miles spun away from his desk and rolled over to another desk atop which sat a custom built array of buttons, each of them bright red and covered in a plastic housing. They had been disaster planning since the last attack and Miles had gone overboard with being able to trigger certain things with the press of a button. Stella thought he was overthinking things, but now she was happy that he had thought ahead.
He flicked up the plastic covering of the third button in a row of twelve, and then he pressed the red button underneath that started glowing with a bright light to indicate it was active. A siren sounded throughout the building, along with a recording of Miles’ voice repeatedly saying the same phrase.
“Everyone move to the escape tunnel immediately. This is not a drill.”
“We’re just abandoning this place,” Trevors asked.
“We need to be realistic about this,” Stella said. “The people are more important than the building. Now come on, let’s get out of here and clear the building as we go.” Turning to Freckles she said, “Run ahead of us, make sure that people get the message that this isn’t a drill and drag them out if you need to.”
Freckles didn’t hesitate before rushing out of the room with Trevors hot on his tail. Stella turned to find Miles still tapping away on his keyboard.
“Come on Miles, you’ve got to leave too.”
“Not until I trigger some self destruct programmes I’ve written.”
“What?” Stella asked, thinking of movies where criminal bases were rigged to explode if a self destruct sequence was activated. She sure as hell didn’t give him permission to do anything like that.
“The data,” Miles explained. “I need to wipe the drives and kill some of the hardware because I don’t want anyone who gets in here to have access to our files or some of the important networks these computers are part of. It won’t take a second.”
“We don’t have a second,” Stella argued, glancing again at the monitors. The group had reached the carpark now and the building was surrounded. Stella thought they could measure the time left to them in mere minutes, if not seconds. “Come on, Miles.”
He ignored her as he hammered away on his keyboard, windows opening and closing in front of him and code running at the speed of light across his screens. Stella looked at the cameras one last time and decided enough was enough. She grabbed Miles’ shoulder to drag him out.
“Just one second, nearly there,” he complained as he hammered out the last few key strokes. Despite her growing tension, Stella waited as long as she could before she decided that enough was enough, and she yanked hard on his shirt, almost lifting him from the chair.
“Wait,” Miles yelled and with one last ditch effort he clicked the enter key and ran one last programme. “Done. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Stella didn’t need to be told twice. Still holding onto his shirt, she rushed from the room, dragging Miles behind her and ignoring his protests about her going too fast. However, she didn’t get far.
Running down the corridor, she could see out the windows to her right that the people attacking the building were in place and ready. Worse, there was a man on one knee with a large black tube over his shoulder and he was pointing it at the window she was looking out of.
It was such a surreal experience to see someone pointing a rocket launcher at her that it took her mind a half second to catch up to what was happening. That was almost too late.
“Get down!” she screamed as she stopped running as quick as she could and dived back the way she had come, dipping her shoulder into Miles and trusting that her eidolon strength was enough to carry them back towards his office and that it would be far enough away.
Time slowed as Miles grunted in surprise as her shoulder collided with him, and then they were both flying, only to collide with the wall at the far end of the corridor a moment later.
It’s not far enough, Stella thought to herself.
It was the last thought she could muster before the world exploded around her.
19
Wednesday, 28th December 2016
10:16
The first thing Stella noticed was the ringing in her ears.
It was the after effects of a night out clubbing magnified a thousand times. The high-pitched whine stabbed her brain, drawing her attention to a headache like none she’d ever had before.
She blinked rapidly, but everything remained dark. She tried to rub her eyes to clear them, but something was pinning her right arm in place and she couldn’t move it. Wondering what was stopping her moving made her aware of the sensations in her body, and a wave of pain like she had never felt washed through her.
She clenched her teeth to hold in her scream, but was unable to keep a groan from escaping. Panic seeped through her foggy mind. She was trapped underneath something heavy, and no matter how hard she blinked, she couldn’t see.
“What the...” she muttered, then trailed off as she heard movement nearby.
She froze, straining to filter out the ringing in her ears to listen for the sound. At first she could hear nothing but that infernal whining, but then she heard it again.
The shuffle of fabric and... yes, it was a groan.
It’s Miles, her tired mind screamed at her as it filled in the blanks of her memory. Slowly, things started to make sense. The attack on Lizzie’s barn, talking with Trevors, looking at the security feed and then...
“Miles,” Stella hissed, her mind back up to speed enough that she realised the precariousness of her situation. She remembered the explosion now, knew she must be pinned down under the rubble from the blast. The darkness must mean that the roof had collapsed. It was a miracle she had even woken up. The agony tormenting her put the lie to that miracle, but she would accept what she could get.
“Miles,” she hissed again, not daring to speak any louder so as not to attract unwanted attention. “You there?”
“Stella?”
The response was barely more than a groan, but it was enough to make Stella smile in relief. If he could talk, then that was a step in the right direction.
“Yeah, it’s me. Can you move?”
“I... Oh God!”
His exclamation was louder than she liked, and Stella hissed at him to be quiet. Though her right arm was pinned to her side, she felt some movement in her left arm. With a grunt of effort, she pulled it free, ignoring the feeling of fresh wounds opening as she scraped skin against broken stone. As soon as her hand was free, she reached to where Miles’ voice came from, hoping she was close enough. At first her fingers found nothing but rock, but finally they brushed against something soft and warm, Miles’ body. It was also wet, and she suspected the sticky substance was blood.
“Calm down, Miles. We’re getting out of here.”
“It hurt’s Stella. There’s something wrong with my leg... it hurts. It’s—”
“Be more specific,” Stella in
terrupted. “Take a guess Miles, what do you think has happened.”
“I think it’s broken,” he hissed after a slight hesitation.
“Broken. There’s nothing sticking into you or anything?”
There was another hesitation before Miles said, “I’ve been cut a lot. But I don’t think there’s anything sticking into me right now. I’m just crushed and... God, Stella. It hurts.”
So I can move you without worrying too much about you bleeding out, Stella hoped as her plan came together. Mentally she did some checks of her own body and came to the same conclusion. She knew she was bleeding, knew also that there were broken bones, but she didn’t feel like she would make things worse by moving… at least not by much.
A moment of doubt nagged her, asking her if she would even feel it if there was something seriously wrong with her body. But then she pushed that thought aside. The DTHQ was still under attack. She wouldn’t be surprised to find that there were people with Dreamcatchers already storming the building. That explosion must have taken down some of the protective dreamcatchers and opened a weakness in the building.
She was under no illusions what these people were here for. They wanted to wipe out the Dream Team, and as the head of the Dream Team, she knew they wouldn’t be happy with her walking away from this. They wouldn’t rest until she was dead.
Unless they want to capture you for information, a dark thought whispered, scaring Stella more than the thought of dying. She didn’t like the way this war was playing out, the lengths these people were going to. She doubted she would enjoy being captured.
I need to get out of here.
“Prepare yourself, Miles. You’re not going to like this,” she said, ignoring how she wouldn’t like this much either.
“What? Stella? What are you going to do?”
Stella didn’t answer. Instead, she tightened her grip on Miles’ arm and concentrated on her tattoo. Tad had forced her to practice with it, so she knew it worked and knew how to use it. However, she hadn’t practiced that much, and it still felt bizarre to think that she could do this.