Borderlands (The Dreams of Reality Book 5)

by Gareth Otton

  Tad had heard all of it before from Ryan and Mitena, but this was the first time he had seen the zealotry in Kuruk’s eyes and heard his passion as he spoke of his cause. He was a man unhinged, but he presented his arguments clearly. His speech might just win over other people who held similar views but had been sitting on the fence.

  All thoughts of that worry fled from his mind when Kuruk finished speaking and brought out a special guest.

  Tad had witnessed a change in Norman since he first met him as the upcoming war and the struggles of his day-to-day life ate away at the man. But this creature that was marched in front of the camera was little more than a shell of the prime minister that Tad remembered. He was covered in dust and flecks of blood, and there were nasty burns on his hands where dreamcatcher cuffs had heated up and fused with his skin. They must have been agony, but one look at Norman’s eyes told Tad that he wasn’t feeling it right now.

  It turned out he would never feel it again. With one final warning about what happens to traitors to humanity, Kuruk ended Norman’s life with a quick twist of the man’s head, and the broadcast ended on that fatal note.

  “I can’t believe he’s gone,” Stella whispered, breaking the stunned silence in the room. “He was just…” Blinking back tears as she tried to control herself, she turned to Tad and said, “This is bad. Norman was the only thing keeping us free to do what was we needed to fight this war. There’s a lot of scrambling in Westminster right now, but once the dust has settled, you know I won’t be in my job any more and you’ll be told not to interfere… they may even try to arrest you. A lot of parliament feels the same way about you as Kuruk does and I don’t think they’ll see what happened tonight as proof they were wrong. They’re going to turn against us to stop something like this happening ever again.”

  “Which means we’d be surrendering this war before it’s really started,” Rodney muttered, not happy with the notion. “I don’t think they’ll have military support. After last night, half of the army knows what they’re up against and that they need you both.”

  Tad flinched at the reminder of just how much was weighing on him, but Stella spoke before he could.

  “Even if they disagreed, that would just cause an even bigger problem because then we’d have infighting in a time of crisis. It would tear the country apart and leave us weakened to future attacks.”

  “Then we need to do something before that happens,” Tony said, serious for once. “We need to end this war before it goes any further.”

  Another silence settled over the room, and one by one, Tad felt the eyes of everyone at the table turning to him.

  “Tad, after everything you’ve learnt about animancy. Is there anything that—”

  “No,” he interrupted Stella before she could get started. “It makes me stronger, but I still don’t know what to do with that strength.”

  “You need to fight,” Rodney argued, a touch of red filling his aura as he grew angry with Tad’s refusal to act. “This isn’t murder, Tad. You’re defending your home and keeping us safe from the same sort of thing that happened last night. The kind of people who would do that aren’t fit to continue breathing.”

  “You were with me last night. You know what I could have done with that strength. Are you really telling me you would be okay with using that on large numbers of people?”

  “It’s no different from using a bomb on the enemy,” Rodney argued.

  “Well, I’ve never done that either and I’m not sure I could. I’m just not that person, Rodney. We both know that if I wanted, I could have killed hundreds, maybe thousands, last night. But I am not a bomb, and in my head that would make me a mass murderer. I can’t do that or I’d just be proving Kuruk right.”

  “More like you’re just too cowardly to—”

  “That’s enough,” Stella snapped. “After everything Tad has done over the last year, all the times he risked his life, all the things he sacrificed, coward is a word no one can use around him. You of all people should recognise that.”

  Shamefaced, Rodney stayed silent, but there was still a flicker of red in his aura.

  “You’ve been thinking about how to end this war since before it began. Have you really got nothing?” Thomas asked Tad, a note of desperation in his voice.

  “I’ve been over it again and again. I am sure we’re missing something, but the way I see it, there is no way to avoid this war without somehow fixing the imbalance in the world. While we have access to the Borderlands and other people don’t, we will always face this problem. If it’s not the Americans, then it will just be someone else.”

  “So how can we fix it?” Miles asked. “Whatever made the Borderlands in the first place, can we fix it with your new strength? We put the world back to how it used to be, then there’d be no more problem, right?”

  “But what about all the dreams come true, the ghosts who are getting a second chance at life, the break throughs that have happened?” Lizzie pointed out. “There’s so much good that’s come from the Borderlands and so much opportunity. We can’t turn our back on that.”

  “Even if it means stopping this war? I know the Borderlands and everything Dream related is a big reason for your success, Lizzie, but you don’t need it—”

  “I’m not saying this because of that, you prick,” Lizzie snapped, accompanying her words with a smack on his arm. “I can’t believe you think I’d be so selfish. I’m just thinking of the good that the Borderlands and the Merging could for to the world. Look at things like Dreamcatchers. You’ve said yourself that the uses for them could be endless. Think of what we could do if—”

  “It’s not worth the millions of lives that could be lost if this turns into a world war,” Miles argued.

  Lizzie was about to answer, but Tad spoke over them both.

  “None of this matters. I wouldn’t even know where to start fixing the Merging. It took more than power to create the Merging in the first place. It took the death of hundreds, maybe even thousands of Proxies, and I don’t know how to fix the damage that caused.”

  “Why Proxies?” Dr Burman asked, being one of the few people at the table who wasn’t aware of just what happened the night Tad ended Joshua King.

  “It’s all about the barrier that separates this world and Dream,” Tad explained. “Every time a soul leaves this world and moves on to the next life, a whole is opened in that barrier to accept them so the ghost can travel through Dream to whatever world is waiting. Normally, when that soul moves on, the hole closes up again, but with Proxies, the hole is permanent. By killing hundreds of Proxies on the same spot, King kept weakening that barrier and that caused the Merging.”

  “Why would a Proxy’s soul make that hole permanent?” Miles asked, and Tad shook his head.

  “I’m not sure,” he answered. “My best guess is that it has something to do with Proxies regularly openening holes in that barrier all of our lives. I think that doing that over and over for a long enough period created a weakness in the membrane separating the realities that meant the barrier couldn’t recover from the violence of our souls tearing a new hole in reality to move on.

  “I don’t think it’s just Proxies either,” Tad added, sharing a look with Tony as he was the only other person he had ever spoken to about this. The two of them had shared a head so long that Tony was the only person who understood this stuff… at least aside from another dreamwalker. Considering most of those were in prison right now and Jen was too young to trouble with this topic, that left Tad with nowhere else to turn but his old friend. “I think the reason that the Merging was so far reaching was more than just me finishing King’s ritual by killing him. I think it had something to do with Charles moving on as well.”

  “Your old ghost?” Lizzie asked. “He wasn’t a Proxy as well, was he?”

  “No, but he had been here for centuries and in order for a ghost to be here that long, they need to pull on the power of Dream so that they can affect this world. That constant draw is lik
e a Proxy using their power, and that weakens the barrier as well. I think that—”

  “Aren’t we straying a little off topic here?” Stella interrupted.

  Tad swore and shook his head. She was right, he was getting off topic. With everything that happened tonight, his mind was grasping at anything it could find to distract him from more troubling thoughts.

  “You’re right, and this information wouldn’t help, anyway. After last night, the Americans are committed to this action. Kuruk has seen to that. They’ve got to follow through with the war or they have to retreat and face the backlash of killing loads of people and destabilising an allied country for no reason. Fixing the Borderlands won’t be enough.”

  “It might if we fixed it along with Lizzie’s story,” Stella pointed out. “We show the American’s the truth about why they started this war in the first place, expose the eidolon and show how they are being manipulated, then they’ll have a good reason to stop this war and people to blame for what happened.”

  “It doesn’t change that I don’t know where to begin at fixing the Merging,” Tad pointed out.

  “Also, it wouldn’t make a difference, not in the time we have left,” Lizzie said. “If I’m listening right, we’re talking about doing something today so that we can finish this once and for all, and even a story this big just isn’t going to get the kind of traction it needs for that to happen in time.”

  Tad watched as one by one the faces around the room, already wearing expressions of desperation and fear, fell further as people started accepting defeat. He didn’t need Stella’s talents to understand this because he felt the same way. He had never felt more helpless in his life and his desperation was giving way to despair. However, seeing that look on the faces of the people he loved most in the world broke Tad’s heart and reminded him why he was fighting in the first place.

  They had lost so much already, but there was still more to lose if they didn’t act, and it was starting to sound like he only had one more shot to make this right. Before today, he would have expected this to be the moment that Norman would have spoken up, reminding them all of what they were fighting for. But that wasn’t an option now, and he couldn’t afford to let his despair take hold. He needed to focus on what he could do while he still had the chance.

  “Release the story,” he told Lizzie. “I don’t care that it doesn’t have time to help us today, it’s something the world needs to know, and it’s a shot that needs to be fired while we still can. Just because it might not work in time doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”

  Before Lizzie could answer, Tad looked at all the people around the table and said, “I know things look bad, but they have looked bad before and somehow we have always come through. Stella, Leon, you two have exposed yourself to more belief than any other eidolon since the Greek gods and you are just discovering your new strength. There has to be a way to use that. And with the opportunity animancy opens up for me, there has to be a way to use that too. Between all of us in this room, surely we can come up with a way that we can use our new strength to our advantage. Even if we can’t win this war, there has to be something we can do to end Kuruk and cut the head from that particular snake.”

  “Actually, I think I can help with that,” said the last person Tad ever expected to answer him right now. All eyes turned to the woman wearing prison garb who shrank back a little under their attention, but kept her eyes focused on Tad. “After what happened with Ryan… After I saw what Kuruk had become, I had an idea for how we might stop him.”

  “How?” Tad asked.

  “Look, I know my brother better than anyone. That’s why I know Ryan wasn’t wrong with how he planned to lure Kuruk into that trap. It didn’t work because he underestimated how intelligent Kuruk can be, but he wasn’t wrong about what would draw him out. Kuruk has always been smart, but he is single minded and that obsession can override his logic. I think it’s why he’s taken this as far as he has. Sometimes he blinds himself to the truth right in front of him.”

  “So what are you suggesting?” Stella asked, impatient at what sounded like Mitena making excuses for her brother.

  “We draw him into another trap,” Mitena said. “But this time we do it right. Kuruk isn’t stupid, so he will recognise a trap the moment he hears of it. Therefore, we need to bait the trap in a way that makes him not care that it is a trap and will want to come charging in regardless.”

  “He came charging in last time and worked around everything we had done to stop him,” Tad pointed out.

  “No, last time you were relying on him not knowing it was a trap. You didn’t play to his obsession, which is to end everything Dream related on this planet, especially dreamwalkers and you. You just gave him a new opportunity to take you out, which is something Kuruk wants, but is smart enough to know that it isn’t worth risking everything for just one man. It didn’t entice him enough to stop him thinking rationally, and he found a way around your trap.”

  “So spit it out then,” Tony said. “What have we got to do to send him off the deep end and come charging in?”

  “We have to make him think that if he doesn’t act now, his problem will become much worse.” Focusing only on Tad, Mitena said, “Let’s put out the word that you are going to the King Dream Gate to do something that is going to drastically change the balance of power in this war. Make it obvious that we are desperate and will try anything, and that what we are about to do is the nuclear option that we were saving for when there was no other choice. We don’t need to say any more than that because his own imagination will do the rest of the work for us.”

  “He already thinks Tad is evil and assumes that if given the chance, he would do unspeakable things. If he thinks that we’ve been holding back on something that even we think is a nuclear option, he will be terrified of what might happen,” Stella guessed, sounding like she saw promise in the plan. “He’ll be desperate to make sure that Tad doesn’t complete what he needs to do.”

  “Which will trigger his obsession and make him rush in half cocked,” Mitena agreed.

  “But you said he would still know this was a trap,” Amber said, sounding a little hesitant to speak up and interrupt. When everyone turned to look at her, she blushed and shrank back, but at Tony’s urging she made her point. “What I mean is, last time you had a trap, he found a way around it. What if he does that again?”

  “No, Mitena is right,” Tad said. “Last time, we underestimated him. We only cleared the houses around us and not the entire village. We only brought a small back-up team, and not an entire army. This time, we clear the entire area as far as we can, we bring in every asset we can get our hands on, and we come at this like it’s the last-ditch attempt that it is.”

  “It still might not work,” Stella pointed out. “Kuruk has an army of men armed with dreamcatchers and trained to use them better than even the Dream Team could. Our soldiers just don’t have the right training to be as effective. We don’t have the numbers to be overwhelming here. Individually, I’d say that Kuruk’s people are so capable that you’d need a dreamwalker to counter them. Last I checked, there weren’t many of those lying around these days.”

  “Maybe there are,” Tad disagreed as an idea struck. “In fact, I know where we might be able to recruit quite a few dreamwalkers to our cause. I might have to break the law a little, but desperate times and all that.”

  Stella’s eyes widened as she realised what he was talking about, but when she didn’t protest, Tad knew that she was on board with this. That agreement with his plan lit a spark under Tad and the weariness he felt after the battles last night vanished.

  “What can I do?” Jen asked, eager to help.

  “You stay here with Dr Burman so we know where to find you if we need any help,” Tad said, determined to keep her safe while making it sound like he was still making her useful. He might actually need her before the day was out, and though he was loath to put that weight on his daughter’s shoulders, it also might be
the difference between life and death for someone.

  “So let me get this straight. We’re going to send her out to poke one really powerful enemy in the eye by releasing a story that is sure to piss them off,” Thomas said, pointing at Lizzie. “While at the same time stir up a hornet’s nest in another enemy camp so that we can fight an army of people we can’t stand against.” Looking around the table imploringly, he asked, “I can’t be the only one who sees how crazy this sounds, right?”

  “No, it’s the best way,” Rodney disagreed, passion back in his words after recovering from being told off by Stella. “So far the only thing we’ve been able to do throughout this war is react when the enemy comes for us. Now, we get to make them face us on our terms.”

  “Outnumbered, out-gunned and surrounded, while we’re up against a time constraint from our own leaders who are preparing as we speak to remove all of our support. Those are good terms for us?” Thomas demanded, sarcasm dripping from his voice.

  “They’re the best we have,” Tad interrupted before Rodney could, trying to head off the argument. “You don’t have to come with us, Thomas. No one does. I know this is dangerous and I don’t want to force anyone to do this if it doesn’t feel right. But I think this is our last shot of meaningfully striking back at the enemy while we still can. Even if all we do is give the American people reason to doubt this war and somehow end Kuruk, then it will be worth doing.”

  “But—”

  “No more buts,” Tad interrupted, rising to his feet. “We have a lot of work to do and not much time. I wouldn’t normally ask this of you, but Norman was just killed on a live stream and Amelia was killed as well. These weren’t just our friends, but people important to the entire country. And they’re just the tip of the iceberg of what we’ve lost so far. Freckles, Ryan, Trevors, the Dream Team, countless innocent lives... Guys, this won’t stop unless someone stops it. And while I don’t feel I’m the right person for this job, I don’t know anyone else who can do any better.