by Gareth Otton
“Take it easy, I’m not mad.”
“You’re not,” the man asked, his voice shaking.
“Disappointed, but not mad. I’m not going to hurt you, Ian,” he said, not sure why the man looked so scared. Is that how people saw him? Sure, the dreamwalkers and the people who were siding with them had reason to fear him, but his fellow soldiers and the people fighting the good fight would never have to worry about such things. It saddened Kuruk to think that they would.
“Where are they waiting?” he asked.
“In the dining room.”
Kuruk nodded and thanked him for bringing the news, then left the man behind as he moved along the narrow hall and down the creaky stairs of the old farm house that he had been using for the past week.
Kuruk had been telling the truth. He wasn’t mad about the man’s failure. However, his anger rose when he headed down the dark hall at the bottom of the stairs and saw that two of his men were guarding the entrance to the dining room, and one was locked in a staring contest with a man in a black suit. Judging by the curly wire running from behind his ear, Kuruk thought this man might be secret service.
“For the last time, get out of my way,” the man growled at Kuruk’s guy, who, to his credit, didn’t budge in the slightest. “I’m here on orders of the president and I am telling you to move.”
“I don’t care who your orders are from. You’re staying here until the boss says otherwise.”
The agent tensed up like he would reach for his gun, but Kuruk chose that moment to intercede.
“Enough!”
His deep voice cracked like thunder, and all parties flinched, Kuruk’s own men included. The agent who had been reaching for his gun spun to face Kuruk, but thought better of pulling his weapon.
“Andy, Michael, stand down,” he ordered his men, acknowledging their loyalty with a nod. Then he turned his attention to the agent and kept walking forward, crowding out the man until he had the good sense to back up into the room behind him where three of his friends were waiting.
The dining room was much like the rest of the farmhouse; it looked like it had been decorated at the turn of the twentieth century. Old, yellowing wallpaper filled with ornate flower patterns covered the walls, the sturdy furniture was made from wood so old Kuruk’s grandparents hadn’t been alive when the trees were felled, and the room was a barely lit by the single, naked bulb that tried its hardest to penetrate the gloom but was hindered by the cluttered shelving filled with decorative China plates.
It worked as a dining room for a bed-and-breakfast, but was inappropriate for the men occupying the room. The secret service agents in their crisp suits and the giant Kuruk in his simple jeans and t-shirt belonged in something from the twenty-first century. The tension in the room only made them look even more out of place.
“Kuruk Campbell. We’ve been ordered to bring you with—”
“No,” Kuruk interrupted. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The man who stared out Kuruk’s guard earlier, a man in his middle thirties with jet black hair and a square jaw superman would be envious of, tensed up at being interrupted, and again his hand strayed close to his gun.
“Move another inch, and you’ll have a serious problem,” Kuruk said, his voice cold. The man froze, as did the men around him. However, it was clear by the look on their faces that they were prepping themselves to push the issue. “You are in a house surrounded by soldiers with dreamcatchers who are loyal to me. I shout one word, and they come running. So this is the last time I will say this. Move your hands away from your guns before I get angry. “
“We are here under orders from President Rosi. She has demanded—”
“Look, you want me to speak to the bitch, then put her on the phone. But I’m not going anywhere.”
The four men exchanged glances like they couldn’t believe someone would deny their request. Kuruk watched their expressions closely. They looked like the kind of men who were used to getting what they wanted and were more than capable of backing up their orders if that was called for. They had never faced anyone like Kuruk though, and they knew that.
Finally, the lead agent did the first sensible thing he had done so far and moved his hand away from his gun and reached for the inside pocket of his suit jacket, making it clear with how he moved that he was not being threatening. Kuruk doubted he had a weapon there, and sure enough, when the man’s hand emerged, he was holding a phone.
Kuruk waited patiently, adopting a bored expression that did nothing to ease the tension in the room.
“Yes ma’am, it’s me. No. He’s here with us now… No. I… I understand… Yes… We told him to come and he… I don’t think that’s the right play here, ma’am. He says he will talk to you on the phone but—”
Kuruk could hear the president yelling, and he didn’t have to fake his smile this time. He had been overwhelmed when he first met her, but the awe at talking to the president quickly wore off. The woman was a snake who thought she was far too clever for her own good. It was pleasant to hear her so frustrated.
“Yes ma’am, one moment,” the agent said, trying to remain calm even though he looked anything but after a chewing out like that. A moment later, he turned the phone toward Kuruk, and Kuruk saw the face of the president waiting on the screen.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she barked before Kuruk could say anything. “You need to come here right now. That is a direct order.”
Kuruk kept his smile in place and said a single word that made the president’s face purple with rage.
“No.”
“No? What the hell do you mean, no? You need to come and explain your actions. Over the last week you have not at all done what we agreed and I—”
“What we agreed?” Kuruk interrupted. “Actually, I think I have been more than living up to my end of this bargain. You wanted my help training up an army with dreamcatchers and you have an army with dreamcatchers.”
“An army who had clear instructions and haven’t been following them,” the president snapped. “You have no idea the kind of trouble your actions have caused this country. You were supposed to—”
“I know what I was supposed to do,” Kuruk said.
“Then why have you not been carrying out your orders?”
Kuruk sighed and rubbed his eyes. He wanted to put off having this conversation, and he’d hoped to have more safeguards in place before he acted. But enough was enough, and he was going to have to move up his schedule.
“It’s funny you should talk about agreements,” he said. “Because I remember ours clearly. I would share my knowledge of dreamcatchers with you and I would build you a dreamcatcher army. In return you were going to use that army to wipe Dream—”
“And I have lived—”
“Don’t fucking interrupt me!”
The president flinched as Kuruk shouted, but not nearly so hard as the agent holding the phone. He took three steps back and almost dropped the phone before he got himself under control again. But Kuruk didn’t care. It was time to bring this to a close.
“You were supposed to help me take down all the dreamwalkers and everything Dream related. You were supposed to help me save the world. But you had no plans to do any such thing. Your interest has only ever been in taking the Borderlands for yourself. You have fallen into the same trap as so many people do around big men. You assume that because I’m big, I must be stupid. While I’m no genius, I’m far from stupid, and you’re not as smart as you think, so it was easy enough to see what you were doing.
“So in short, no, you haven’t lived up to your end of the bargain and you never planned to. So that is why neither me nor my army will come back to see you today, nor will we be following your orders. We have our own mission, the one you agreed to when you first came to me, and we will be living up to our end of the bargain.”
The president gaped at him, speechless, but Kuruk was done with her. He turned to leave, which prompted her to give the ord
er he knew was coming.
“Take him into custody right now,” she snapped at her agents. She might have said more, but Kuruk never gave her the chance. Igniting all three of his speed dreamcatchers at once, the world slowed so drastically that it was like time had stopped. A fraction of a second later, it started again, and Kuruk was just in time to catch the phone before it fell from the hands of the dead agent who crumpled to the ground with his head facing the wrong way. There were three other thuds that happened simultaneously for the same reason, but that was drowned out by the unholy roar of shattering china. It turned out you couldn’t run around a room so fast the human eye couldn’t follow you without causing a bit of a back draft. As a result, the decorative antique plates came crashing down, showering the bodies and the rest of the room with white dust and shards of broken china.
Kuruk ignored it all as he looked down at the phone in his hands.
“This war doesn’t end with Britain,” he said. “Dream is something that can not be tolerated in this world. A message needs to be sent that the cost of using it is so high that no one will never even want to mention the word Dream again. So, when I’m done with this country, I’m coming for you next, and anyone else who wants to use this power that no man was supposed to have. You’ll pay for your broken promise a hundred times over before I’m done.”
He took half a second to enjoy the horrified expression on her face before he ended the call by tapping into one of his strength dreamcatchers and crushing the phone like it was a paper cup.
Turning around, he found that the guards on the door had been replaced with the men Kuruk trusted most since he started this army. Each of them believed in his mission every bit as much as he did. They had never spoken about this before, but Kuruk thought they believed in it so much that they would choose the greater good over their country if it came to that.
Regardless, he tensed up and waited to see what they would do next.
He needn’t have worried. Each of them looked around the room in surprise, their eyes lingering on the dead bodies and the broken phone, but then their expressions turned serious and they met Kuruk’s eye.
“What do we do now?” one of them asked, and Kuruk let himself relax as a genuine and grateful smile came to his face.
“Now we do what we came here to do. She’s going to be scrambling, trying to get some control back on the situation, so we need to act fast. Before she tells the soldiers we’ve brought over to stop taking orders from us, we need to put them to use. It’s time to turn things up a notch and get this war going. We do this right, and she won’t have any choice about continuing because they will already be committed.
“Friends, after tonight, no one will ever question whether this is a war ever again. Are you with me?”
There was only a slight hesitation as they evaluated his words, but then one by one, he received nods in answer. Again, he smiled at them and felt a very real urge to tell them what their support meant to him. But there wasn’t time. Right now, they were in a race against the president to mobilise the army they had smuggled into the country. It was time to commit America to this war and show the world the cost of dealing with Dream.
“Let’s get to this. We all know what we need to do because this is the attack we’ve been talking about for months.”
“The big one?”
Kuruk’s grin turned cold as he nodded at the man who asked the question.
“That’s right. It’s time to go all out and show them what we’ve been training for.”
Answering smiles appeared on each of their faces and they rushed off to do as told, leaving Kuruk alone with four dead bodies and a mountain of destruction. He took one last look around and a small voice in the back of his mind asked what his sister might think if she saw him now. However, as much as it killed him to think this way, Mitena had made her decision and sided with the enemy. He couldn’t let any love he had left for her make him weak and stop him from doing what needed to be done.
Choking down that last protesting thought, he stepped out of the room and prepared himself for the biggest night of his life.
31
Friday, 30th December 2016
22:18
In his mind, Tad watched it happen again in slow motion. Ryan bloody and broken after Kuruk had toyed with his prey, his stomach being sliced open while Tad did nothing to stop it.
It was your fault. You had the power to act, but refused. Just like when Charles died. Just like when Marcus lost his legs and you lost those researchers. Just like when you failed to protect those kids in the Swansea fire. Just like those people who were injured in the Cardiff Castle nightmare and—
“Tad, you still with us?”
Tad blinked at the question, coming out of his dark thoughts and disturbed to find that Norman, Stella and Amelia were staring at him like he was losing his mind. He was surprised to find himself in the ornately decorated living area where the prime minister entertained guests. He was just as surprised to find a bottle of beer in his hand. It was full and a little warm, but the beads of condensation that dripped off the glass into the puddle on his thigh told him that at one point it had been cold.
Embarrassed at zoning out for so long, Tad placed the beer on the coaster atop the coffee table between the twin sofas and forced his mind back to the conversation. He remembered enough to know that Norman had brought them here to discuss the direction the war was taking and to talk over next steps, but he had faded out of the conversation as Norman and Stella spoke about the role of what remained of the Dream Team would play in the conflict.
“Sorry, what did you say?” Tad asked.
“Norman wanted to know how things went with Ashley this afternoon?” Stella said, a worried expression on her face like she could read his thoughts and didn’t like them. It might even be possible that she was doing that. If the plan she had concocted with Lizzie worked, then who knew what her limits were now.
“It went frustratingly well,” he admitted.
“Frustratingly well?” Amelia asked. “How can something be both frustrating and go well at the same time?”
“It went well because Ashley was right when he said that the techniques are simple. It is frustrating because it was something that he could have told me about months ago and I would have known this much sooner.”
“You’ve mastered what he had to teach in a day?” Norman asked, his tone doubtful.
“There’s not much to master. It’s just a different way of looking at what I already do. I have always drawn power from ghosts, only in the past I was doing so by drawing the power from within. Once I learnt to look outside myself and connect with them that way, then it was pretty simple to work out the rest. That’s not to say there aren’t difficulties though.”
“What kind of difficulties?” Stella asked.
“It’s difficult in the same way exercise is difficult,” Tad said. “The concept is simple to grasp and you know what to do soon enough, but knowing what to do and actually doing it are two different things. To draw power from a ghost, I have to connect with that ghost and open up a channel for that power to come from the ghost to me. To do the same thing with multiple ghosts, I need to somehow maintain that connection while creating new connections with other ghosts. It’s overwhelming, especially if the ghosts I am connecting with are not willing to make the connection and fight back. There are just too many things to concentrate on at once.”
“Kind of like how when you start driving there seems like there’s so much to remember, but after a few months you can do it with your eyes closed,” Norman guessed.
“Who drives with their eyes closed?” Stella asked.
“A true master,” Norman deadpanned. “How long do you think before you can start using it?”
“I don’t know. I can do it to some extent right now. But, I don’t even know what I would use it for. I mean, I could get stronger for the next fight, but we all know my feelings about that. I can’t be sure I won’t freeze up again and ext
ra strength won’t help much.”
“Then what else can you do?”
That’s the million dollar question, Tad thought. It was the question he had been asking himself all day, but didn’t have an answer. He had been practising the new techniques that Ashley had shown him all day, but he felt like he was wasting time getting stronger for no reason because he had nothing to use that strength against.
The silence dragged on, and it looked like Norman might ask another question, but they were interrupted by a buzzing sound that came from Tad’s pocket. He jumped in surprise at the sensation, then fearing the worst because every time his phone rang it had been bad news, he fished it out. Seeing Lizzie’s face on the screen did nothing to quell his fears.
“Hey, Lizzie. Everything alright?”
“Tad, we need to talk,” Lizzie said, her words coming out in an excited rush.
“What’s wrong?” Tad asked.
“Not over the phone. I need to see you now. Bring Stella as well if she’s with you.”
“We’re in a meeting with the Prime Minister. Can this wait.”
“No. This is important… Actually, that’s a good thing. I kind of need to speak to him as well. Where are you right now?”
“Ten Downing Street,” Tad said, looking around the room at the curious faces as he gave Lizzie the information of how to dreamwalk into the secure building.
“I’ll be right there,” Lizzie said, then hung up before Tad could say anything else.
“I take it we have another guest?” Norman asked, even as Amelia was leaving the room so she could meet the reporter and smooth over her arrival with the security people.
“Yeah, I don’t know why, but she sounds excited.”
“Something to do with the eidolon, do you think?” Stella asked, but Tad could only shrug. That wasn’t enough of an answer for Norman and Stella, and the two started speculating about what Lizzie might have to tell them. Thanks to the magic of dreamcatchers, they didn’t have to wait long before Amelia was back with Lizzie just one step behind her.