by Gareth Otton
A heartbeat later, it did just that, and for the first time, Tad followed it.
With the help of the ghosts, following the impossibly fast bullet of light was child’s play, but it was mind bending at the same time. Tad had always had the impression that it shot away into the distance as it covered ground impossibly fast, and he wasn’t wrong, only he wasn’t travelling over distance as he understood it. The soul didn’t travel through the three dimensions of physical space nor the fourth dimension of time, but took a new direction that lead between realities.
It wasn’t a concept easily grasped by the human mind, which is why Tad had always seen it as a spark of light flying off into the distance. But now he thought about it, he knew that this is what he did when he dreamwalked, simply stepping in a direction humans aren’t meant to understand and moving between realities. Normally he took a shortcut through the door in his mind, whereas Tony’s soul was going the long way.
They covered an impossible distance before Tad sensed the barrier approaching. It was the membrane that separated realities, keeping Dream from leaking into the real world. It was the path all souls had to take, and it was what Joshua King had weakened by killing countless Proxies on the same spot for years. That barrier needed to open for a soul to pass through, but something about a Proxy’s soul made that opening permanent. Tad suspected this was because a Proxy had been opening holes to that other reality all of their lives in order to use their abilities, weakening the fabric of that reality where their spider web of life passed through the barrier. When they tore through it one last time, the violence of their passage shredded the already weakened membrane, making it permanent.
However, they weren’t the only ones to do that.
In order to stay in the real world after their death, a ghost too had to pull from Dream. Most ghosts didn’t last long enough to make a difference, but a Proxy’s ghost would have been pulling on that connection for years. In Tony’s case, fifteen of them.
It was why Tony knew he was the only person save another dreamwalker who could have made this sacrifice. He was the only soul that might give Tad a chance.
It was a theory Tad had never wanted to test, but now he was about to find out if he was right. The barrier between realities was coming at him like an oncoming train, and Tad didn’t know that he was ready for this. It felt too much too fast, but he had no choice. He was rushing head first toward it and the time to act was here.
Tony’s soul tore through that barrier like a bullet through cloth under tension. It tore a hole in the fabric of reality that rapidly expanded to something ten times the size of the entry point. However, it turned out Tad was wrong about the permanence of this wound, as almost immediately it started to close. However, Tad was right that the damage to the fabric was larger than it should have been, and therefore Tad had more than enough time to rush up behind it and get to work.
Drawing on the strength of all of those ghosts, he started building an image in his mind. This was an image of hands, reaching into that hole in the fabric of reality, and tearing it open. Then, as he had done a thousand times or more since the Merging, he reached for that door in his mind.
This was not like any other time before though, because with twenty ghosts behind him and merged with two more, merely touching that door caused it to fly open, and an ocean of dream flooded through him with so much force that it almost washed him away.
If touching Dream before had been like an electric shock, this was like trying to absorb the output of a hundred power stations at the same time. It was impossible for any one person to do, even if they were healthy, and Tad was far from that. His mind was assaulted by such agony as he hadn’t even felt when he had been burned alive, as every single nerve in his body lit up with the pain of holding this energy. However, as distracting as that was, he wasn’t with his body right now. His mind was in the space between realities and though he knew his body was breaking down behind him and he should care that as he was dying, he maintained enough focus to push all of that Dream energy into the image in his mind.
This was not as nature intended.
The golden rule Stella had discovered for him about how to use the power of Dream, to bend reality rather than to break it, was being ignored here and as a result, even with all of this power, it almost wasn’t enough. The mental hands he placed into that hole were straining under the pressure of the incredible weight of reality trying to close, and it was all he could do to keep that hole open, let alone widen it further. For a second in real time but what felt like a month to Tad, he was forced into a stalemate where reality wanted to return to how it had been before, whereas he wanted it to keep changing.
It’s too much, he thought to himself, horrified that after Tony’s sacrifice and after the damage he knew that his body was taking right now, he wouldn’t be able to do it. He was just a man after all. Who was he to dare think to mess with reality in this way?
Panic gripped Tad hard, and he was at the point of despair when he felt it.
Tony’s soul passed beyond a second barrier, this one between Dream and whatever other reality all souls went to. As it passed that barrier, a little of that next reality seeped out.
Warmth flooded through Dream, and in turn passed through the hole Tad was holding open. Just as the cold earlier had not been the cold of winter, this was not the warmth of summer. It was welcome, it was happiness, it was love, and it was everything that was good in the world.
Along with that sensation came memories. Memories of an old ghost approaching a nine-year-old boy to create a friendship that would be one of the defining relationships of that child’s life. Memories of a detective who was killed working the very case that brought Jen into Tad’s life, and wanted to stay so that she could watch over the little girl and the girlfriend she left behind. Memories of a childhood friendship that may have soured over time but was wonderful once. Memories of a man responsible for running a country and had a dream of a greater future that he had shared with Tad over the short time he knew him. Memories of a dog who gave his life to save someone Tad loved more than anything. And finally, memories of a teenage boy who was always quick to mock and tease, but who had a wonderful heart and who had sacrificed everything so that Tad could have this chance.
Those memories were of the best moments in Tad’s life, reminding him that though he might have lost a lot recently, look at what he had to lose in the first place. He had lived a life filled with wonderful people, happiness, laughter and love, and he should remember that, not the fact that they were gone.
Thinking of those people, Tad felt like he could feel them in that moment. He thought of what they would want him to do, felt the belief they had in him, and he used that belief as fuel for the fire of his will. Tad was always quick to point out that he was a flawed man, but if there was one thing that he was supremely confident in, it was that he would stop at nothing and bear any price if it was in the name of those he loved. Thinking of all those who loved him who had passed on and feeling that belief, he knew suddenly that he would never let them down.
Ignoring the pain of his wounded body, of the connection to Dream and the feedback of fighting with nature, Tad pulled on his strength from those memories and truly committed to what he was doing. He had gingerly held the door open before in order to let Dream in, now he was was tugging at the very door frame, making it wider to pull over even more Dream. Every drop of fresh power from that ocean, he poured straight into his imaginings as he threw caution into the wind and stopped caring about what this did to him.
Slowly, but surely, that hole in the barrier widened and that success was all Tad needed to keep fighting, pulling even more deeply on the support of the ghosts so that he could widen the hole in this barrier and in doing so, potentially end this war.
Right from the moment Norman first told him about the war, he understood it. While there was an imbalance in the world from the Borderland’s very existence, there could never be peace. Unfortunately, Tad had no
way of fixing what he had done to remove the prize that everyone was fighting for. However, there was one more way to fix the imbalance. Rather than fixing what King started, he could instead finish it.
He could widen the gap in the barrier between realities, extend the effects of the Borderlands to not just cover a hundred miles in any direction beyond the King gate, but cover the entire world. When the whole world was like the Borderlands, the Borderlands would cease to exist, and there would be nothing left to fight over.
However, as Tony forced him to remember before starting this, Tad was not Joshua King and therefore he did not plan to use the death of countless Proxies to keep widening that barrier. Instead, he would use his gifts, the aid of the ghosts he was connected to, and the sacrifice of one of his oldest friends to bring some form of peace to the world.
The gap between his dream hands was growing wider by the moment as he poured more and more Dream into the image. He was distantly aware of the agony of his body and the sensation of dying back in the real world as the energy he channelled was too much for a simple mortal vessel. But here he concentrated only on making that hole wider, and with every inch he gained, the process got a little faster. Soon it was thirty times the size it had been when Tony passed through it, then a second later it was double that, half a second later it was double that size again.
Mentally Tad screamed from the effort, and he could tell from his connection with the ghosts that they were dangerously tired as well. If he didn’t stop soon, they would have no strength left to help him and he’d use them up completely.
But then, with a snap similar to a balloon being popped, Tad forced the hole past the point of no return and he started the chain reaction where the hole started growing under its own power and his efforts were no longer needed. That hole spread ever outward at speeds that even Tad couldn’t follow, and he knew that his work was done.
Gratefully, he pulled the power from the image in his mind, fed a touch of it back down his link to the ghosts to keep them sane, and then he closed the door in his mind, cutting his connection to Dream.
That turned out to be a mistake.
Cut from the source of his power, his awareness was thrown over the vast distance between himself and his body in an instant and he was thrown back into the cruelty of reality so suddenly that his eyes opened wide and gasped violently, just in time to make the people around him jump. He saw frightened and concerned faces in his immediate vicinity, but he didn’t have long to study them before the world turned white.
There was an impossible pressure in the air that was like opening a vacuum container as the pressure equalised, only scaled up infinitely. It was the same inward rush of power that had crushed King tower and turned it to rubble, and it swallowed all sound. Stillness reigned for a second, long enough for Tad to feel like he was in a vacuum and his lungs would pop at any moment, but then the universe breathed out the mother of all sighs, and a shock wave burst over his head.
It didn’t move through physical space, but through that same space that the soul had gone, travelling between realities. As it passed, every dreamcatcher in the vicinity was flooded with an abundance of Dream that triggered them all at once. Bright light burst from each one, blinding to the extreme and pushing each dreamcatcher to its limit before overloading them. Enormous pops broke the silence, followed by the screams of men and women whose dreamcatchers were violently undone, and even more screams from people close to other dreamcatchers when they exploded.
The combined light of all those explosions blanked out Tad’s vision for long enough that he thought he might have gone blind were it not for the fact that he was surrounded by whiteness rather than dark, but it began to fade and after a half a minute longer, details of the world around him swam back into existence.
At some point, he had fallen on his back, and he found himself staring up at the sky. The power to the buildings around him had been knocked out by the shock wave, and he suspected a big part of the city must have been knocked out as well because the sky over Cardiff was filled with stars like Tad had never seen before. The sight was stunning enough to make him forget about his pain for a single moment.
Not a bad final sight, he thought to himself, before time returned to normal for him, and the agony washed over him all at once.
The pain was everywhere. His head felt like it was splitting open, his organs felt like they’d been pulverised, his muscles each felt torn, and every nerve was on fire from the aftermath of Dream. There was so much pain that it was overwhelming his mind, and he couldn’t concentrate on any one thing at a time. In a way, that was almost a relief.
He was dimly aware of movement out of the corner of his eye and though he didn’t have the strength to move towards it, he didn’t need to. A moment later, there was the concerned face of an oversized dog. He wasn’t alone for long.
Soon Stella was there as well, smoke rising from her back where her own dreamcatcher had been destroyed, her eyes red with tears, and her expression filled with terror. Just one look at that expression and he knew all he needed to know. She wasn’t crying for the pain of her dreamcatcher, and she was not terrified by what just happened to the world. She was terrified because she knew that there was nothing that could be done to save him. Strangely, Tad was okay with that.
He remembered the warmth that consumed him, the love and affection of that next place, and he realised that if he had to die now, it wouldn’t be so bad. At least he had done what he needed to at the end. At least Tony’s sacrifice hadn’t been in vain.
“Tad, what did you do?” Stella demanded of him.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he used the last of his strength to smile and try to tell her he loved her. No words came out, though.
With the last of his strength used up, Tad gave up the fight. As he had been dying to do for months, he let the darkness take him so he could finally get some rest.
44
Saturday, 31st December 2016
23:29
Jen let out an explosive sigh and stepped away from the hospital bed, staggering as her connection to Dream faltered. That was the sixth person with life-threatening injuries that she had healed in the last thirty minutes and she was exhausted. However, now that she was no longer concentrating on the devastating injury, she could concentrate again on how worried she was.
She had been a bag of nerves all day, finding herself unable to sit still as she thought about what was going to happen tonight. So many people were dead already, and she didn’t like how everyone was talking about their chances. It felt like an all-or-nothing shot, and though no one said it to her face, she just knew that most people thought that nothing was the most likely outcome.
The long day of waiting while nothing happened only made things ten times worse. Then, just when she thought the waiting would kill her, everything started happening all at once. Miles started talking excitedly as the armies had shown up at the King Dream Gate, and almost immediately afterwards, people started showing up that desperately needed help.
The last half hour had been bursts of sporadic action, followed by bouts of crippling worry as she waited for news. That worry alone was exhausting, but she was pushing her abilities as hard as she could to save these people and avoid any more mistakes like what happened with Ryan, and that was just draining her more.
She hoped she would hear something soon because she didn’t know how much longer she could do this.
“Jen, are you alright?” Dr Burman asked as he saw the hitch in her step.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just—”
Jen’s words abruptly stopped and her eyes widened as she was filled with energy like she had never felt before. It surged through the connection from Dream that was keeping her legs walking and with enough force that Jen felt like she might burst. Then it passed, leaving her feeling wired as her exhaustion was now a thing of the past.
“What’s wro—” Dr Burman asked, but he was interrupted by a startled scream that made both he and
Jen look towards the nurse who yelped in surprise. She turned just in time to see a ripple of air rush through the nurse and collide with her, again carrying the familiar feeling of Dream almost like a scent on the breeze, only this time instead of wind it was pressure that washed through her as that shock wave travelled outward in an increasing circle.
In its wake, the lights faltered as the power gave out, but they weren’t in darkness long. There was another yelp, this one accompanied by a flash of light and another scream as one of the standard dreamcatchers to keep nightmares away that hung above the hospital bed flared with light and burnt itself out. Jen stared at in amazement because this was one of the new heat resistant smart materials that were never supposed to be able to burn themselves out.
Darkness reigned for five seconds before the hospital generators kicked in and the backup power came on.
“What’s going on?” Doctor Burman asked, his usually unflappable voice sounding a little shaky as he looked to a thirteen-year-old girl for answers.
“Dad,” was all Jen said as she realised this had to be him. She had no idea what he had done, but who else could create an effect so powerful she felt the spike of dream like an electric shock that overloaded dreamcatchers miles away from wherever that pulse started. “I need to see what happened,” she said, preparing to dreamwalk away. However, Dr Burman was ready for her, jumping forward and grabbing her arm before she could go anywhere.
“No, your place is right here, remember. That way, they know where to find you if anything goes wrong. They can all dreamwalk, so we need to stay here.”
Jen pulled her phone from her pocket before deciding whether she would do as Dr Burman asked. As she suspected it had powered down with everything else, and if it didn’t turn back on then she would go looking for her dad, no matter what Dr Burman said. They might all be able to dreamwalk, but what if something had happened and they needed her to come to them? She held down the power button and for three long seconds she feared that it wouldn’t come back on. She was almost ready to dreamwalk away when suddenly the operating system logo appeared and she breathed a sigh of relief.