Borderlands (The Dreams of Reality Book 5)

by Gareth Otton

  “So, I know I’m asking a lot, but can you find it in you to help one last time?”

  “I’ll do it,” Lizzie said, sounding resolute and glaring at Miles as if daring him to counter her. “My guys are already editing the footage. Besides, I know this topic well enough that I barely even need a script before going live. I bet I could have the story going viral before the sun comes up.”

  Miles sighed and said, “Then I guess I’m in because someone needs to run some tech support so you survive to save her when the eidolon come for revenge.”

  “I’m in,” Jen said, sitting up straight and looking determined. Tad never doubted that she would back down from this for a second. Even after everything she had been through, she still didn’t hesitate to throw herself into danger.

  “You know I’m in,” Tony said. “And I know my ghosts will want to be part of this as well. Kuruk’s people don’t have the dreamwalkers to destroy us at the moment, so we can help until we’ve taken enough damage that we need to move on. That could make a big difference.” Turning to Tad, he added, “And I’ve checked with them all. They’re ready if you need to draw from them at any time. They won’t fight you when their strength is needed.”

  “I’m coming too,” Amber announced.

  “You are not. You’re staying here with Jen,” Tony argued. Amber looked like she was about to put up a fight, but Tad interrupted.

  “Please Amber, Tony’s right. If Jen is here healing people, then she needs someone to watch her back. We’ve already seen Kuruk do surprising things and hit at targets we weren’t expecting. Any extra warning you could give Jen would save a lot of lives. Please, stay.”

  Amber looked torn with indecision for a moment before she nodded in agreement, though she continued to glare at Tony in a way that said he’d be hearing about this later.

  “I think I can help too,” Mitena announced. “I’ve been working on a dreamcatcher that can help with Kuruk and his people. Also, if I am on site, I might be able to ward up the trap location to give us even more of an advantage.”

  Tad glanced at Stella, not sure he could trust Mitena’s motives. However, when the human lie detector nodded as she read the question in Tad’s expression, Tad put aside his worries and trusted Stella’s instincts.

  “Then we’d be glad to have you with us,” he said.

  “You don’t need to ask me. Of course I’m in,” Rodney blurted as Tad’s eyes turned in his direction. “That’s what I’m here for, to help, right? That’s what you said you were here for as well,” he spat at Thomas.

  “Easy, none of that,” Tad said. “I don’t want to pressure—”

  “No, he’s right,” Thomas said. “It is what I’m here for. I thought I’d be helping more with politics and in more diplomatic ways, but if lending you my strength can help even save one life, then it will be worth it.”

  “Thank you,” Tad told the man.

  “I’m in,” Leon said. “Though I think I’ll stick by Lizzie’s side for now. She’s going to face eidolon backlash for this, so I should be there just in case.”

  “Thanks,” Lizzie said, and Miles repeated the notion a second later, though he looked like he wanted to beg Lizzie not to do this at the same time.

  “And we all know, I’m in,” Stella said, finishing the table... or at least Tad thought they were finishing the table. The twin barks that accompanied the giant dogs jumping up so that their forepaws rested on the table, told Tad where they stood on this idea as well.

  Despite everything that happened, Tad grinned at their support, as did a few others around the table. Even Stella smiled, though there was a twinkle of moisture in the corner of her eye as she no doubt was thinking of the dog that wasn’t here right now.

  All the more reason to finish this today, Tad thought to himself. Kuruk has a lot to answer for.

  “Alright, everyone. We each know what we need to do. I think it’s time we get started,” Stella said, rising to her feet. Maybe not the most inspiring words on which to end their little meeting, but they worked regardless.

  One by one, the people in the room climbed to their feet and headed out to try and end a war.

  36

  Saturday, 31st December 2016

  04:56

  “Don’t even try to talk me out of this,” Lizzie warned as Miles rushed out of the room after her.

  “I’m not. I just… Lizzie, will you stop for a second and talk to me.”

  He accompanied his words by grabbing her wrist and spinning her around. She angrily pulled her hand out of his grasp, but didn’t walk away.

  “What?” she demanded, even as Miles held up his hands to show he meant nothing by grabbing her like that.

  “I just wanted to say that you read me wrong back there. I didn’t mean to say you were doing this to profit off what’s happening, just that you don’t need the Borderlands to be successful. You’re better than you think you are, and you would have been successful no matter what.”

  Lizzie rolled her eyes. “Whatever Miles. There, your conscience clean now? Can I please go and—”

  “No, because you’re still not listening. I don’t want you rushing off all mad at me when… When… Lizzie, we could all die today. You get that, right? Thomas wasn’t wrong. We’re poking massive bears in the eye and sticking around to see what they’re going to do about it. I don’t want to… I don’t want this to end with you mad at me.”

  It was his expression that sold her more than his words, and though she wanted to keep hold of the comforting strength of the fire fueled by her anger, it ebbed away as she realised Miles was right. That meeting might be the last time she saw a lot of the people in that room. Was that conversation how she wanted to say goodbye to these people who had come to mean so much to her over the last year?

  “We can’t think that way, Miles. We’re not only going to get through this, we’re going to win. Thinking that way is the only way we can make this work.”

  “I know. I just couldn’t stand it if… If the worst happened and you didn’t know that I was sorry… Didn’t know how I feel.”

  The last of Lizzie’s anger drained away, and she pulled Miles into a hug.

  “I know how you feel, Miles. Just like you know how I feel. We’ve argued before and we’ll argue again, we’re too obsessed with what we do not to clash. But never doubt that.” She disentangled herself and said, “Now, we’ve both got work to do. See you in a few hours, okay?”

  “Yeah… Uh… See you then.”

  She smiled and was about to leave when she spotted Leon coming out of the room and met his eye. “You coming or not?” she teased before she thought about the tattoo on her hip and changed the channel.

  Warmth flooded the inky lines and the world shifted, the corridor opening up into the large space of her studio that was filled with tired but excited people glued to computers. Those nearest jumped at her sudden appearance, then jumped again when Leon appeared at her side. Lizzie ignored their surprise and rushed to the main set before climbing onto the desk so everyone could see her.

  “Right everyone, listen up. Today’s going to be the most important day of our lives and you’re going to have to forget about sleeping for the next twenty-four hours. Sorry, but it’s worth it, trust me. Days like today are why we do what we do.” Before anyone had chance to respond, she pushed on.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard about what happened with the Prime Minister this morning.” Nods confirmed her words along with faces that still echoed the shock Lizzie still felt. “We’re going to be covering that, of course, but it’s not going to be our biggest story of the day, just a part of it. I’m sure by now that most of you have pieced together some of the special project I have been working on. Well, it’s time to tell you what’s going on.

  “Dreamwalkers are not the only supernatural beings on this planet. There are other people, like my friend Leon here, who call themselves eidolon, or idols, to us normal folk. You know the legends about the ancient Greek deities? Well
, it turns out they weren’t legends. They are people powered by the belief of their followers, and given enough belief, their potential is limitless. Show them,” she said to Leon, who looked startled to be given a part in her little performance. He looked around for something to do, but in a moment of stage fright, he failed to find anything.

  “Forget it, you’ve all seen the footage of him with the beer kegs, amongst other things. Well, all of that strength is because of belief. But that’s not as important as the fact that these people exist, they’re powerful and thousands of years ago they traded one type of power for another. Apparently, the old gods were so powerful that when they went to war, they almost wiped out humanity before they were stopped, and they decided amongst themselves that they would never let themselves get so powerful that such a thing couldn’t happen again. Therefore, they limited themselves, but started taking a new role as puppet masters, working from the shadows to shape the world as they saw fit.

  “Right now, the lead puppet master is the man behind this little war that’s tearing our country apart, and it’s fallen to us to break this news to the world. We have footage of the President of the United States being given her orders by the leader of this group, along with other footage of very important people visiting the headquarters of this organisation. In short, we have enough to expose them to the world and hopefully stop a war.”

  “How will it stop a war?” Larry, her graphic designer, asked a little hesitantly. Unlike the rest of them, he was not so driven by journalistic desire, and she half suspected she wouldn’t find him here working through the night as it wasn’t worth the pay cheque. However, he looked as eager to be part of this as anyone in the room, and he genuinely wanted to know.

  “If we shine a light on a shadow organisation, it makes it harder for them to operate. It also exposes the strings on the puppets, only these puppets don’t always know there are strings and they might not like finding out the truth. If this works, it will mean huge things for America… Huge things for the world. This is the biggest story since the Merging, maybe even bigger in some ways, and right now we are the only people who know about it. So you have to ask yourself, do you want to be part of breaking the biggest story of our time, or do you want to go to bed and get a full eight hours sleep?”

  There were a few chuckles at that, but no one took up her offer to leave. They had seen enough over the last few months with her that they didn’t doubt what she had told them. Lizzie could feel their excitement to be part of something this big. She shared that excitement. This was history happening in front of her eyes and she wished there was someone filming this so that she could document it. However, she had too much to do to spare anyone right now, so she pressed on.

  “I thought not. So, why don’t… we…”

  Her words trailed off as something twigged her curiosity. Her eyes were drawn to one of her more reliable reporters, a man named Terry. He was in his middle forties and had spent a lifetime working on the fringes of journalistic circles because he had always refused to toe the company line. He told the truth no matter what, even if it made people unhappy. It was an attitude that most employers hated, but Lizzie shared herself, and therefore she thought she knew the man fairly well. Of all the people in the room, she thought he would be the most eager to be a part of this. However, the more she looked at him, the more sure she became that something wasn’t right.

  At first it was just the lack of emotion on his face, then it was other little details like his hair looking darker than normal, and was he always so short? His skin looked darker too, and soon she started wondering just how she had ever thought that this was Terry.

  Confusion made her frown for a second as she puzzled through the feeling before realising she had felt this way before. She flashed back to a memory of graffiti coming to life and cutting a man’s throat, and she flinched back so hard she almost fell off the table.

  “It’s Deo,” she hissed, pointing at Terry, whose eyes widened as he realised his ruse was up. The illusion of him being someone else dropped away.

  Leon didn’t hesitate, but he was on the other side of the barn and even he wasn’t that quick. Before he got even half way across the room, the inhumanly handsome Deo spoke into a device on his wrist.

  “Now,” he shouted.

  A series of loud booms accompanied dust and debris as parts of the roof exploded. Lizzie yelped and jumped down from the table, narrowly missing a chunk of wood that came flying past her face, a chunk of wood that had once been a beam that held up her ceiling.

  Four dark figures dropped through the holes in the roof, dressed in black and holding weapons. Balaclavas covered their faces, but their eyes shone brightly enough that Lizzie knew that these were eidolon who had come for another shot.

  A phantom pain in her stomach from when Deo stabbed her immobilised her brain, and she found herself unable to move. She could only watch in horror as her staff screamed as they tried to avoid the dark shapes, but they weren’t quick enough and two were dead in moments as the dark figures opened fire. They might have killed more had Leon not changed direction mid run and collided with one of the figures so hard that he was knocked through the wall of her barn, opening yet another hole to the cold of the outside world. There was a sickening, wet crunch that accompanied the cracking of wood. Even though the wood had given way from the force of the impact, as in most fights with human flesh, wood always won. Today was no different as bones broke and organs were ruptured before the man’s momentum carried him through the hole. Lizzie doubted he would get up any time soon.

  Another scream caught her attention as one of her reporters was shot in the arm and fell to the floor, her face pale and her shirt stained with a growing pool of blood. Again she was saved by Leon, who drew the attention of her attacker before he could finish her off. He spun his gun in Leon’s direction, but Leon was too fast and dodged the attack, knocking the gun from the man’s hand.

  He moved so much faster than Lizzie had ever seen and now Tad’s comment about Leon and Stella levelling up made sense. However, no matter how strong he might be, these were still eidolon and there were more of them than Leon. While Leon was taking out that second man, the others were turning their attention on Leon to take out their biggest threat.

  I need to get help, Lizzie thought, thinking of Tad or Stella. But her momentary hesitation as she remembered being stabbed had robbed her of the precious seconds she needed to dreamwalk away, and out the corner of her eye she saw a shape rushing her faster than was right for a human. She turned toward him, eyes wide and panicked even as she thought of the newest tattoo on her other hip that flared to life just in time.

  She made a note to thank Tad for insisting that she get this tattoo as the world around her slowed to a crawl. Her people moved as though the air was as thick as syrup, and only Leon seemed to move at a normal pace as he killed the man who had shot her reporter and turned to face the next attack just in time to dodge the bullet that was fired in his direction. He wasn’t fast enough to avoid it and the bullet hit his shoulder. However, rather than a gaping wound that Lizzie expected, there was only a trickle of blood on Leon’s t-shirt as the bullet bounced away, barely breaking the skin. She had seen this effect before on the Tough, as Leon had called him. The fact that the bullet didn’t penetrate much further surprised Leon almost as much as it surprised Lizzie, and he caught another bullet to the face thanks to his hesitation.

  Lizzie had just enough time to see that Leon somehow survived this as well, before she remembered the reason she activated this dreamcatcher. Deo was still sprinting toward her, and though time had slowed, he was moving faster than a normal human, so he was almost upon her. She spun to face him and sidestepped so that he would pass right by her. She got the pleasure of seeing his eyes widen in surprise as she moved too fast for him to follow, and then he overbalanced as the person he expected to collide with was no longer there. He tripped, tumbling past her and rolling away.

  Lizzie thought about goi
ng after him and doing something while he was down and helpless, but the tattoo on her hip was only a small one and it was already growing uncomfortably hot. Tad told her it wasn’t meant to give her long, just enough time to go for help. Unfortunately, she had squandered that time and she had no choice but to let the tattoo go and allow time to flow normally.

  The sounds around her became sharper and she flinched at the sudden noise.

  I need to get help, she thought, but once more she was too slow. Rather than sidestepping Deo, she should have dreamwalked away, because now time was moving quicker again, Deo was recovering quicker as well. In the blink of an eye, he was back on his feet and was racing for her, a knife in his hand. She knew she should change the channel while she still had chance, but the sight of that steel in his fingers terrified her so much that she panicked and couldn’t settle her thoughts. The one downside to dreamwalking was that she needed her mind to focus hard on where she was going before she called on her tattoo.

  “Deo, no!” Leon screamed from the other side of the room even as he fought with two other eidolon who were close enough now that their guns weren’t much use to them. However, they were still enough of a handful that Leon couldn’t get the advantage. “You don’t have to do this.”

  Lizzie was surprised that his words impacted this horrible man. His eyes widened and the determination on his face softened. He was still coming at her far too quick, but the words had hit just hard enough that she dodged what felt like a clumsy attack.

  She jumped a few steps back even as Deo staggered to a stop, looked hesitantly at Leon before his face twisted into a determined expression and he turned towards Lizzie. Once again, she realised she was a fool for not taking advantage of that split second to flee, but everything was happening too fast.