Borderlands (The Dreams of Reality Book 5)

by Gareth Otton

  Her thoughts trailed off as an idea struck. She looked up, new hope in her eyes.

  “I’ve got an idea,” she said, still running through the concept in her mind and not finding a downside. “This will work,” she muttered even as the doctor was asking her what she was talking about and being ignored.

  The more she thought about her idea, the surer she became that this was her best option and her tears dried up as that burden of responsibility felt a lot more manageable. There might just be a way to pass her powers on after all.

  “Come on,” she shouted at the doctor, grabbing his hand and tugging him over to Ryan. She glimpsed her dad out of the corner of her eye. He looked like he was coming out of his shock and she thought about bringing him in on her plan, but she didn’t like that look in his eye and worried about what he was thinking of right now. With what she had planned, dark thoughts would be a problem, so she pushed aside her worry for him and turned back to Ryan.

  She touched his shoulder, then told Dr Burman to jump. The waiting room was replaced with an operating room, only this was like no operating room either of them had been to before. The walls were crafted out of white light that perfectly lit the area but somehow didn’t blind them. Ryan was on an operating table that was larger than normal to account for the spillage around him. Even Jen and the doctor had changed, no longer in their normal clothes but dressed as though ready for surgery.

  “What… What is this?” Dr Burman asked, looking around with wide, terrified eyes as his brain struggled to make sense of what was happening.

  “This is Dream,” Jen answered. “It’s a place where anything you imagine will come true. That means that here, you can do what I do.”

  The doctor looked at her with wide eyes as he realised what she was thinking.

  “You can do more than that,” Jen amended. “You can do better than I can in the real world here because you don’t have any limitations. You imagine what you want to happen, and it just happens.”

  “But… how does it work? I don’t underst—”

  “Imagine yourself holding a scalpel. Go on, just try it. Think of a scalpel, what it looks like and how it feels when you’re holding it.”

  The doctor did as asked, and an instant later he was holding the result of his imaginings. It only lasted a moment before the doctor let out a surprised yelp and let go of the Dream object. It fell for a second, then vanished before it reached the floor.

  “It wasn’t real,” the doctor whispered in awe.

  “It was real and it wasn’t,” Jen disagreed. “Here, everything is real while you are thinking about it, but ceases to be real as soon as you are no longer thinking about it. That’s how you can help Ryan here. You imagine what you think should happen, and it will happen. We can save him here, Dr B.”

  “It can’t be that easy,” Dr Burman said, looking at Ryan who had completely lost consciousness. They were running out of time to help him. “If it were, then we should just bring everyone to Dream and heal them here.”

  “You’re right, it’s not that easy,” Jen admitted. “I don’t know for sure what will happen if you just healed him here and took him straight back. I don’t think that would work because it takes a lot of energy to make changes from Dream permanent. Normally you would need a dreamcatcher to lock that Dream in place… or you need a dreamwalker to do it. I think I can use my powers to lock whatever changes you make to Ryan in place.”

  “But—” the doctor said, trying to raise another objection, but Jen spoke over him. They didn’t have time for this.

  “Can you heal him first, then we can answer your questions,” Jen said, nodding at the patient. “I don’t think he has long.”

  Dr Burman’s mouth snapped shut as he bit off his complaint. After a long second of him trying to get his thoughts under control, he nodded at her.

  “You’re right,” he said, before turning to face Ryan again. “Let’s see…”

  He walked around the man, examining the wounds with an uncertain expression. Jen suspected he was worrying about this not being his area of expertise and not knowing what he was doing. Welcome to my world, Jen thought, but never said as much as she didn’t want to interrupt.

  “And I just imagine what I want to happen?” the doctor said again, still not believing it.

  “Just like the scalpel,” Jen agreed, wishing she had brought the doctor here before so he would be used to this idea and it wouldn’t take so long. However, she didn’t need to worry much longer because where the doctor was struggling to understand how this worked, Dream was always eager to help. It latched onto his thoughts, making his imaginings real before he was ready for it.

  Jen watched in horrified fascination as Ryan’s entrails slithered like the world’s most disgusting snakes, curling themselves into a tighter and more organised pile before crawling back into Ryan’s stomach.

  “That… That was me?” Dr Burman asked, stunned.

  Jen nodded, and the doctor swallowed once and looked back at Ryan’s guts in amazement. However, soon a look of concentration replaced his expression, and this time when the entrails moved again, it was a much quicker process. The squelching sounds they made were disgusting, and Jen implemented a little Dream of her own to hide those sounds and save them both from having to deal with that.

  Soon Ryan’s guts had pulled their way back into his stomach and were arranged just like they were in medical books. Then the skin around his stomach knit back together, sealing up like there had never been an injury. The doctor laughed as he got the hang of what was happening, and soon he had Ryan’s arms returned to normal and his knees back to how they should be. In less than a minute, the Ryan laying on the table was identical to the one Jen remembered save that he was a little paler, but even that changed as the doctor continued to walk around him with his brow creased in concentration.

  Finally, after he had done maybe three laps around the table, Dr Burman let out an explosive breath and stepped back, exhausted and amazed.

  “It takes a surprising amount out of you to think that intensely,” he noted. “It’s one thing knowing what you want to happen, it’s another thing remembering it all so precisely that it will actually work.”

  Again Jen wanted to say, welcome to my world. She wanted to remind the doctor that he had it easier here thanks to the fact that Dream is always so eager to help, whereas in the real world it was more of a struggle. However, thinking of that struggle reminded her of the one that was facing her now, and she turned her mind back to her task. Despite what the doctor thought, the next part was the actual hard part.

  “What happens now?” Dr Burman asked.

  “Now I need to lock the changes in place. The thing is, I don’t know enough about what you just did to make the changes permanent. You’ll need to talk me through it.”

  “Can’t you just tell him to stay that way?” Dr Burman asked. “Everything else here seems so easy. That should work too, right?”

  Jen shook her head. “Everything here seems easy because you don’t have to worry about complexities. You imagine something here and you get what you imagine, but no more.” As an example, Jen imagined a huge TV that materialised from nothing, with a nature documentary playing in super high resolution. Dr Burman gasped in surprise. “See, this TV is here and working, but the thing is, I have no idea how a TV works in the real world, and neither does Dream. Think of it like advanced computer graphics. It looks real and you’re tricked into thinking that it works because you see it working, but in reality it’s hollow and if we were to use this in the real world where it has to obey the laws of our reality, it would stop working because there’s nothing inside it that makes it work other than Dream itself.

  “That’s the same thing that happened with Ryan. I am pulling over enough reality to lock this dream in place without us needing to think about it too hard. But you can kind of say that’s like taking a photo, whereas what we need to do before going back is build a model and glue all the pieces in place. Does t
hat make any sense? Sorry, this is complicated and dad is way better at explaining—”

  “No, I get it,” the doctor said, cutting Jen off. “You need to understand the details of what I’ve fixed so that you can hold them in place. What happens if you fail?”

  “I don’t know,” Jen admitted, shivering at the thought of failing again. “My guess is that everything will go back to what he was like when he first got here.”

  “I see. Well, you better come over here so I can explain what I did.”

  ◆◆◆

  It took an hour before Jen was ready to dreamwalk them back to reality, and even then, she was only willing to try because she was exhausted. Fixing Dream in place long enough for her to learn everything she needed to know was like constantly pulling on Dream in the real world. It was wearing her out. The countless times she had pulled on it more strongly to fix something in place had only intensified the issue, and by the time the hour was up, her head was pounding and she was feeling dizzy.

  “It’s okay, Jen. You’ve done enough,” Ryan said, a kind smile accompanying his words. He had woken up half an hour ago and was amazed that he was still alive and not in the agony he was in before passing out. Grateful for that relief from his pain, he had become Jen’s biggest supporter, even when she was doubting whether this would even work.

  “But if I haven’t done enough, then you might get hurt again.”

  “Then I’d be no worse off than before,” Ryan told her. “This isn’t on you. You’ve done more than anyone could ask. It’s time now.”

  “Maybe ten more minutes, just to double check I didn’t miss anything,” Jen suggested.

  “No, you’re exhausted and you’re pushing yourself too far. You pass out before you can take us back, then this is all for nothing. Neither of us can survive here without you. It’s time Jen,” Dr Burman said. “We have to trust that we’ve done enough.”

  Jen tried to answer, but her words wouldn’t form. She thought she had lost that weight of responsibility when she brought Dr Burman here, but it was crushing her again, and she wasn’t sure if she could handle this. However, Dr Burman was right. They couldn’t stay here without her and her vision was swimming, telling her she was pushing herself too far.

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Ryan laid a big hand on her shoulder and turned her to face him.

  “Before we leave, you need to know something. If things don’t work out when we get back, promise me you won’t blame yourself. You’ve done more than anyone could ever ask and this won’t be your fault. Promise me.”

  “I promise,” Jen lied, knowing that this was a promise she couldn’t keep. It cheered Ryan up though, as he squeezed her shoulder in thanks.

  Jen offered her hand to Dr Burman and when they were all joined, she took a deep breath to gather her courage, and then she changed the channel.

  The light was the first thing that changed. They had all been in that bright room so long that the electric lights of the waiting room seemed dim in comparison. Jen blinked a few times to clear her eyes and ignored the shocked gasps from the people in the waiting room, turning to Ryan to make sure that he was okay.

  “See, everything was… okay…” he said, his voice starting strong but then fading as a frown came over his face and he groaned.

  “Ryan,” Jen asked, her skin prickling and a sinking feeling twisted her stomach as Ryan’s groan intensified and he doubled up. “Ryan,” Jen said again, her voice more of a scream this time as the man fell back onto one of the waiting chairs, groaning in agony.

  A second later, Dr Burman was there, lifting the man’s t-shirt to see what was happening. The skin of his stomach remained in one piece, just as his arms were still straight and his knees were fine, but something was wrong inside. A blackness was spreading over Ryan’s stomach that was starting to swell at the same time.

  “He’s bleeding internally,” Dr Burman said, his voice tight as he shouted over to one of the nurses to bring that gurney back out. “We need to get him into surgery.” He glanced at Jen like he was about to ask her something, then changed his mind.

  “Do we need to go back to Dream?” Jen asked.

  “No, we’ll deal with this here,” Dr Burman said. “You’re too exhausted to go through that again.”

  “I can manage,” Jen said stubbornly, though inside she knew she was lying. She was at the end of her strength and she didn’t think she could keep her legs working much longer, let alone dreamwalk anyone anywhere.

  “You’ve done enough,” Dr Burman said as the nurse appeared, helping him get Ryan onto the gurney she’d wheeled out with her. “It’s my turn now. You leave this to me.”

  Then, before she could argue any more, he rushed away with Ryan. Jen didn’t have the strength to follow.

  She had enough sense to head towards a nearby chair before her legs collapsed, but she barely noticed the discomfort of falling. Instead her eyes were glued to the back of the doctor as he retreated through the double doors beside the reception desk and the hunched over figure of Ryan on that gurney, groaning in agony as Jen’s latest failure made itself known.

  Her promise to Ryan was forgotten, because she knew this was her fault. If she had trained harder, she would have been strong enough to deal with that. Maybe if she had listened better to what Dr Burman was telling her, understood more about what was happening… Once again someone was getting hurt because she just wasn’t good enough for the job.

  She wanted to go help, to make up for her mistake, but she just didn’t have the energy for it anymore.

  You’d only make things worse, anyway, she thought to herself, and though she knew she shouldn’t be thinking such thoughts, she couldn’t shake the truth in the statement.

  Again an image of Freckles flashed through her mind and she couldn’t stop the tears from overtaking her. She kept failing, and other people were paying the price. She kept telling herself that she would get stronger, that she would start being more useful, but everything she tried just made things worse.

  I’m useless, she thought. Then realised that thought didn’t go far enough. She wasn’t just useless, she made things worse for everyone in her life.

  The world would be better without her.

  Exhausted and in agony as her head throbbed from her overuse of her abilities, Jen didn’t even have the strength to act on that thought. All she could do was curl up on the chair and give in to the tears that swept her up and carried her away into the river of dark thoughts running through her mind.

  26

  Thursday, 29th December 2016

  23:11

  Stella looked at her phone one last time before she decided enough was enough. She swung her legs over the edge of the sofa and climbed to her feet. Between Jen’s miracle working and her own eidolon heritage, most of her injuries were little more than pale scars now, but there was still tension in her muscles and dizziness that made her hesitate.

  Being in two explosions so close together had left her with a serious concussion amongst her many injuries and it was that concussion which was the slowest to leave her. For most of the last day she felt like she was living underwater, suffering from a mix of brain fog and dark memories that fought to keep her from doing anything important. However, she was done sitting here thinking about all the people who had died in the attack on the DTHQ. She was done mourning for Fre…

  Even now, she had to blink away tears and close her eyes as she struggled to control her emotions. Losing those other members of the Dream Team was bad enough, and despite everything she had been through with Trevors, his loss was painful; but it was nothing compared to losing her puppy.

  Freckles was one of the few things in her life that she allowed herself to love unconditionally right from the start. He had latched onto her almost as soon as Tad introduced them, and he had been by her side ever since. After a lifetime of betrayal, she couldn’t bear the thought of something so loyal that he had given his life so she could survive. Even now she could feel
him wrapping around her in that last moment, shielding her body with his own that was twice the size that it should have been.

  She blinked away yet more tears and tried to push thoughts of Freckles aside. She felt like she had cried more in the last few days than she had in the rest of her life and she had other things to worry about; like where the hell was Tad?

  Against her better instincts, she listened when he told her she still needed rest and that she should sit out Ryan’s ambush. He wouldn’t even let her go to their new headquarters to watch, knowing she couldn’t resist getting involved. So while Tad was off risking his life, she had been in yet another new safe house recovering from her injuries but unable to rest because she was worried sick. That worry only intensified when she spoke with Miles and learnt that the operation was a failure and, despite the efforts of Jen and Dr Burman, Ryan had died along with all of his people. However, no one had seen Tad since Jen disappeared with Dr Burman to try to heal Ryan. She knew he was off dealing with something and was more than capable of looking after himself, but that was hours ago, and even that knowledge wasn’t a comfort anymore.

  She glanced at her phone like maybe it had received some news from him since the last time she checked just seconds ago, but there was nothing so she turned her mind to thinking of places where she might find him. His home had always been his refuge, but she knew it would bring him no comfort now. Other than that, she couldn’t think of many places he might go. Or rather, she could think of too many. Her memories from the time she spent in his head, seeing his life as though living it herself, had faded. But she remembered enough to pick out a couple of spots that felt special to Tad, where he might seek comfort.

  However, none of them felt right and she kept thinking, growing ever more frustrated at how slow her mind was at the moment. She was sure that pre-injury she would have been able to put together the clues and find him in seconds. Failing that she’d have had Freckles who always seemed to know where his loved ones were at all times. Were he here now, Freckles could get to Tad without a problem.