Borderlands (The Dreams of Reality Book 5)

by Gareth Otton

  “Alright, it looks like the phones are fine so I’ll—”

  Jen never got to finish her sentence because the second her phone finished loading, a picture of Stella’s face filled the screen and it started vibrating. Jen’s stomach dropped as she thumbed the answer button as quick as she could.

  “Stella. What’s wrong?”

  “My dreamcatcher’s gone… I can’t get him… He’s so bad… Jen, you’ve got to come quick.”

  That sinking feeling in her stomach turned into a full blown cramp as Stella’s tone took Jen’s fear to new heights. She had never heard that tone of panic in Stella’s voice before.

  Jen didn’t even hesitate long enough to tell Dr Burman to jump. She simply thought of the King Dream Gate and changed the channel.

  The hospital walls vanished, the cold of the night struck her hard, the moans and wails of injured people assaulted her ears, and everything went dark. The lights that normally lit up the site were black, all the buildings surrounding them were nothing but dark silhouettes against a starry back drop. For five long seconds Jen struggled to make her eyes adjust as Dr Burman was doubled over, trying not to be sick. When those five seconds were up and she still couldn’t see anything but dark shapes, she called to Dream, augmenting her eyes as she did when she looked at an injury, but this time making them more sensitive to light.

  It was less like the world was getting brighter, and more like she could distinguish between the shadows better. What she was seeing didn’t make sense though, because the scene was too alien to comprehend.

  There were injured people everywhere, with barely a single person standing. They were all laying on the floor, groaning and in obvious pain in most cases, while a scary number of others weren’t moving and never would again. The cost of this battle had been high, but it didn’t explain why so many of these people were writhing in agony. Then she remembered the dreamcatcher on the hospital wall and it made sense.

  Nearly every person here today had at least one dreamcatcher tattooed on them. Obviously there were Kuruk’s people who were tattooed up to the eyeballs, but even regular soldiers had been given some tattoos to give them a chance in this magical fight. Whatever her dad had done that overloaded all the dreamcatchers had done the same thing here, and it had taken every one of these people out of the fight.

  About the only people who weren’t groaning in agony were the ghosts, but even those didn’t look right. Most of them looked exhausted, with few remaining on their feet, but Jen recognised that this would be because they had been part of whatever Tad had just done.

  It took her another five seconds to take in what she was seeing, as it was such an alien sight that it was impossible for her brain to make sense of it. But then she remembered why she was here and the panic in Stella’s voice, and she frantically looked around for sign of her or Tad. However, the chaos was too extreme and she knew it would take her too long to look that way.

  “Hawk!” she shouted, sending her voice through Dream to the dog who had been waiting with Miles. She had barely finished the word when there was the familiar pop of a dreamwalking dog and she said, “Find dad. Quickly.”

  Hawk didn’t sniff as she expected, instead he lifted his head and let out a little yip, almost like a puppy bark but much louder. She wondered what he was doing until there was an answering bark and understanding dawned.

  Jen turned to the sound, looking for another giant dog that looked very similar to the one at her side. She couldn’t quite make him out yet, but Hawk didn’t need visual confirmation, and he nudged her thigh with his head. The second he made contact, the world shifted again. Suddenly Jen was grateful that dreamwalkers were immune to the perils of travelling unexpectedly. Any thoughts of gratitude vanished the moment she arrived, though.

  The scene before her made her flash back to a little over a year earlier when she had first laid eyes on Stella. She had found her in an alley on her knees with Tad’s unconscious head in her lap while she leaned over him to shelter him from the rain. There was no rain this time, but Stella still leaned over Tad, gingerly stroking his face while she rained tears down upon him. The woman was broken, and one glance at her dad told Jen why.

  There was a reason Stella’s touch on Tad’s face was so hesitant, because it was hard to see where she could touch him without aggravating some injury. Just like her brain couldn’t make sense of what was happening with the scene upon her arrival, she couldn’t make sense of what she saw right now. She knew it was her dad, but at the same time, it looked nothing like him.

  He was covered in blood that seemed to have come from his ears, eyes and nose, not to mention that hole in his shoulder or the gaping wound in his chest. But those were just the start of his injuries. His face looked swollen and bruised, almost like he had been beaten to a pulp, and the same effect travelled down his neck and beneath his clothing. Glancing at his good hand, she saw that his fingers too were swollen and purple. He looked like an explosion had gone off inside him that had somehow been contained by his skin, but only barely.

  “Jen, please help him. He’s barely breathing,” Stella sobbed, breaking Jen from her stupor and forcing her mind back to reality. That was why she was here, to help fix this. But where on earth could she start with this?

  “Dr B!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, looking back in the direction she had come from to try and find the figure she had left behind. “Dr B!”

  She saw a hand wave as the man made himself known and she changed the channel, appearing at his side a moment later before she told him to jump and then changed the channel again the second his feet left the ground.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said, pointing at her dad and trying her hardest to keep from breaking down. Dark thoughts in her mind were doing somersaults to get her attention, her whole body was shaking as the crippling fear was trying to take hold, and it was taking all of her strength right now not to lose it entirely.

  Dr Burman looked to where she was pointing, but she could see by the expression on his face that he couldn’t see anything in the darkness. She fished her phone out of her pocket and activated the torch, then called over to Dream to really give them some light. The doctor gasped and even Jen sucked in another shocked breath as in the light Tad was looking even worse.

  Dr Burman stared at Tad with an expression similar to what was on Jen’s face a moment earlier, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Jen didn’t have the patience for him to recover naturally.

  “Dr Burman, what do I do?” she asked, stressing his name so that she could break him from his stupor.

  He shook his head like he was clearing it, then knelt next to Tad, looking him over in the light of Jen’s phone as if he too didn’t know where to start.

  “How did this happen?” he asked Stella.

  “He was shot and then Kuruk stabbed him in the chest,” Stella answered, each of her words making Jen cringe in horror. “But the rest of this… I don’t know. Tony had some kind of plan, and then he moved on and Tad’s eyes went blank for—”

  “Tony moved on,” Jen gasped, the light of the phone flickering as she almost lost her grip on Dream. “He… What?” she asked, as the world turned blurry from the tears that were filling her eyes. “No, he wouldn’t do that. He—”

  Again Jen felt a nudge against her leg, but it wasn’t Hawk this time. Growler’s sad eyes conveyed a message that words never could and suddenly it was too much. The light on the phone returned to the light of a normal torch and her legs gave way as she lost control of Dream. She barely felt the pain from the fall as her mind was so overwhelmed with everything going on. All the death around her, Tad dying on floor, Tony gone… It was too much.

  “Jen,” Dr Burman said in surprise, sounding like he was about to rush to her side to make sure she was okay. However, even through the shock that was crippling her mind, she knew he needed to be with Tad right now and she waved him away before turning to her ever faithful puppy who looked just as sad as his
brother as she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his fur.

  Tony’s gone, she thought, still unable to believe it but knowing it was true.

  “Stella, what happened next?” Dr Burman asked.

  “I don’t know,” Stella answered, sounding desperate. “He got this vacant look over his face for a couple of seconds, then he started bleeding from his ears and eyes, then he started shaking and turning red. Before I could get to him, though, there was this enormous pressure, almost like an explosion in reverse, and then that pressure exploded outward and my dreamcatcher overloaded. By the time I got over that, he looked like this. He mumbled a few words, but then his eyes closed and I called Jen. What do we do?”

  Dr Burman just blinked, shaking his head like he didn’t know. But he snapped out of it and said, “We need to get him to a hospital… Or… We need…” Suddenly he turned to Jen and said, “I need you to take us to Dream.”

  Jen looked up from Hawk, eyes wide as she understood his meaning.

  “But that didn’t work,” she gasped, remembering what happened to Ryan. She had flat out refused to try that again, unable to face that happening another time. “I can’t take him—”

  “Jen, listen to me. I don’t know what happened to him yet, and until I do know, I can’t fix him. The problem is that I don’t think he’s got long enough for us to find out, so I need to take him somewhere where we can buy ourselves some time. I know you don’t want to do this, but it’s the only way.”

  “But we can’t fix him there,” Jen sobbed, her tears flowing freely now as she failed to hold back her trembling, and the panic was truly taking hold. “He will die just like Ryan and…”

  Her words were becoming unintelligible as it was getting harder to speak past the enormous lump in her throat, and soon her sobs were taking over.

  “Jen. Jen,” Dr Burman said, and she was surprised to find that he was by her side all of a sudden, his hands on his shoulders as he shook her to get her attention. “I need you to listen. I know this is scary, but this is the only way. Take us to Dream or he will die, anyway.”

  Jen sniffed, wiping her nose with the back of her hand before looking again at her dad. Every time she looked at him, he looked worse, and she almost gave in to the sobs again before she saw Stella’s face.

  The beautiful woman looked utterly defeated as she caught Jen’s eye with her own and begged, “Please.”

  That one simple word spoke with such desperation from one of the people who Jen most looked up to in the world somehow reached past her own terror and spoke to the rational part of her mind.

  This is the whole point of this, Jen. It’s why you’ve been practising. Why you started healing in the first place. Everything you’ve done is so that you could make a difference when it counted, she told herself. Well, it’s never counted more than right now.

  Sniffing again, she looked back at her dog.

  “You take Dr B,” she told Hawk, before again she reached for Dream to animate her legs. With Growler’s help, she climbed to her feet and made her way over to her dad. Like Stella had earlier, she didn’t know where she could touch him without hurting him, so she just gently laid her hand on his shoulder.

  “I want to come too,” Stella said, and Jen just nodded before reaching for Dream again and changing the channel.

  Once more, the world shifted and again light was the first thing she noticed. The darkness vanished as it was chased away by the same white light that she had used before when she had come with Ryan, and again they were in that operating room with Tad on the table.

  “Thank you, Jen,” Dr Burman said, before he asked Stella to leave Tad’s side, and then he got to work.

  Jen wanted to retreat to a corner and cry, her mind overwhelmed with everything that was happening and with the news that Tony was gone, but she knew she needed to watch what Dr Burman was doing and she needed to pay attention. She couldn’t have the same thing happen to her dad that happened with Ryan… She couldn’t fail again.

  The wound in Tad’s chest was the first thing to vanish, and the difference was instantly noticeable as the rasping shallow breaths that he had been taking before evened out into much more normal breathing as he could use his lungs properly again. After this, the doctor spent some time near his head, and this time Jen couldn’t see much of a change. However, when the doctor turned back, he announced he was done.

  “But… You didn’t do anything,” Jen complained. “He still looks awful.”

  “That’s because we’re going to learn from our mistakes,” the doctor said. “This time we heal only what will immediately kill him and we’re buying ourselves time to find out more, remember. I’ve fixed his chest and his shoulder to stop him from suffocating or bleeding out. As for his head, I don’t know what’s going on up there yet as we’ll need to do some scans, but hopefully I’ve done enough to help him last until we can help him more.”

  “But he still might—”

  “We’re learning from our mistakes,” the doctor repeated, his voice firm to cut through Jen’s emotional response. “Remember what I said about last time, the reason it didn’t work is that we tried too much too fast, and I couldn’t explain it all to you. This time we’re not going to do that, okay?”

  Jen bit her lip, then nodded, not trusting herself to speak right now. Dr Burman smiled and waved her closer.

  “Good girl. Now come over here while explain what I’ve done.”

  Having done less, it was considerably quicker to explain himself this time. When they had come with Ryan, Jen had spent the better part of an hour trying to fix the changes in place. Now he was done in less than ten minutes. The extra five minutes after that was Jen trying to double check her work to make sure that she understood what he had done and she had fixed everything in place. When she wanted to go over everything a third time though, the doctor put his foot down.

  “I need to get him into a scan as soon as possible, Jen. These fixes have bought us some time, but not so much that we can waste it here. It’s now or never.”

  “But I—” Jen began to say, starting to panic again at the thought of this not working.

  “You can do this, Jen,” Stella said, squeezing her shoulder in support. Over the last fifteen minutes, Stella had pulled herself back together and looked more like her old, confident self. “I believe in you, and your dad does as well. We know you can do this, and he would be so proud of you right now.”

  “But what if it doesn’t work?” Jen asked.

  “Then we try something else,” Stella said. “But staying here isn’t an option. He has to go back at some point, so lets be strong just a few minutes more and do this now, okay?”

  Again Jen bit her lip, trying to keep it from trembling, but finally she nodded.

  “Okay,” she said, before turning her attention back to her dad. She placed her hand in the same place she touched to bring him here, and then, after counting down from five in her head, she told everyone to jump again.

  One last time the world shifted as the white room was replaced with the controlled chaos of the hospital waiting room. Injured people jumped in surprise at her arrival and there were a few startled yelps, but Jen didn’t pay any of them attention. She just focused on her dad and held her breath as she watched him for any signs of change.

  She listened to his breathing, as she knew that if anything went wrong, it would start here.

  He breathed in and out.

  So far so good, but Ryan hadn’t reverted to his injured state right away either.

  In and out.

  Jen reached up to Stella’s hand that was still on her shoulder.

  In and out.

  She squeezed that hand as hard as she could as she continued not to breathe while listening to someone else breathe.

  In and…

  Jen gasped in horror as Tad’s breath suddenly changed and for the second time tonight her strength left her as she realised what that meant.

  45

 
; Sunday, 01st January 2017

  11:21

  For once the sound of that door slamming closed didn’t make Brad flinch, nor did he mind the sound of the lock clicking back into place. For over a month, those sounds had haunted him, reminding him he was not a free man and that he might never be free again. They reminded him of all the mistakes he had made that led him down this path, but for once, he didn’t react.

  He shouldn’t be surprised. What was a locked door after after what he just lived through? Even the chaos on the day they tried to take over Cardiff had not come close to what just happened at the King Dream Gate. So much violence, so much death. Yet more kids that Brad had talked into a course of action were now dead, and Brad knew that this too would weigh on him for the rest of his life.

  Yet, though he was rightfully horrified by their deaths, he didn’t feel as bad as he thought he should. He felt guilty, but that guilt wasn’t crippling. He was tried, but not in a world-weary way, but like he had just finished a workout and… dare he even think it… he felt satisfied.

  He was so confused by the sensation that clashed with the memories of violence in his head that he paused one step into the common room of their prison and wasn’t paying attention to the world around him.

  “So, you’re back?” a familiar voice asked. “You didn’t get a free pass for convincing those kids to die then? Hardly seems worth it if they’re not letting you free.”

  Brad looked up, finally feeling that weariness he expected when he found himself face to face with Jacob again.

  “No, they’re not letting me free. That was never an option offered to any of us.”