Reverie

by Ryan La Sala

  Dean shrugged, committed to letting Kane rule this conversation.

  “Poesy said she made the Others by turning pain to power. What did she mean?”

  Dean considered this. “Poesy is a master manipulator of etherea. Her expertise is crushing ethereal power into new forms, like when she crushes reveries into charms. Like the Dreadmare armor I wear. That was an early attempt, I think.”

  “At what?”

  “At weaponizing etherea in a way she can control. Etherea needs to be channeled through a form, so she tried creating armor like the Dreadmare. It was once some sort of shape-shifting abyss of terror, but she basically turned it into a pelt. And now she’s working on channeling etherea through people. Through us, I guess.”

  “But wouldn’t that create a reverie?”

  “With a normal person, yes. But we’re lucid. It means ethereal manifestations—reveries—don’t overtake us like everyone else. That’s why she chose to grant us powers. To see how people who are always between worlds, and never within them, might manifest power. She’s been watching you and the Others for a long time.”

  “Can she control us?”

  Dean swallowed. “She doesn’t have to,” he said. “Think about it. Our powers… Don’t they feel more like curses? What she said to you about pain confirmed a theory of mine. Etherea taps into our subconscious and materializes our fantasies, correct? Well, some people have bad fantasies and believe bad things about themselves. Whatever Poesy’s method is, I think she filters etherea through our pain, and the result is a power that we fear. That’s a pretty ingenious way of making sure none of grow too power hungry or surpass her, I would say.”

  Kane thought about Adeline, whose grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s. He wondered if she thought it was her fault that her grandmother’s memory faded so fast. And Elliot. Pragmatic, pedantic Elliot, whose powers forced him to live in the half-light of trickery and illusion. To hide among the familiar manipulations of his father.

  Ursula was the most gentle person Kane knew. Ursula was the girl who had been torn apart her entire life because of her body and her strength. Ursula was the strongest among them, her powers the most brutal.

  “What about your powers?” Kane asked. “What about your pain?”

  Dean was silent. He had a way of watching things without looking at them. His eyes were always on the distance, but his body was open to Kane now, considerate and patient, waiting to be held.

  “I can see things I should not be able to see, and I can go to places I should not go. I can run from anything, and in my life this has always hurt me.”

  And he would say nothing else. Kane’s thoughts selfishly turned to himself. “But my eyes don’t glow.”

  “That’s right.”

  He passed his free hand over his temples, his burns now turned to scars. “So I’m not like the you and the Others.”

  “That’s right. You’re the piece Poesy has yet to figure out. She didn’t give you power. You just have it, like her. Actually, you are like her in many ways. She thinks of you as her protégé, you know.”

  Like her?

  The thousands of charms spun in Kane’s mind, cut into kaleidoscopic shards that shredded him with their muted agony. His mouth went acidic. If he hurled off the bridge, would the vomit just float on the updraft as a gooey net of chunks? I’m not like her, he told himself. I would help those people, not keep them trapped for…for…

  Adeline was right. They had no idea why Poesy kept those charms.

  Dean squeezed his hand. “Still there?”

  “What does she want with all those reveries?” Kane asked. “And who is she, even? And what is she?”

  “Poesy is Poesy,” Dean said. “No one knows where she began, or how, but by now she is more a force of nature than she is human. This power to manipulate etherea that you both share—it’s incredible. She uses it to harvest reveries, and then she experiments on them. She dissects them for their resources.”

  “Resources?”

  “Treasure, beasts, architectures, magics. She can even take out weapons and magical artifacts—like the whistle and the door. Anything she wants, she takes. It’s all just material to her. ”

  “Material for what, though?”

  Dean lowered his chin. “You really can’t tell?”

  Kane shrugged.

  “She’s building her own world,” Dean said. “Her own entire reality, bigger than just a reverie. All she needs is a source of etherea powerful enough to help her weave it all together.”

  Kane’s eyes cut through the tapestry of East Amity, up into the wide, blank clouds. “That’s why she’s after the loom.”

  “And that’s why she must never find it,” Dean said. “Whatever reality Poesy creates, it’s going to replace this one. I’m sure of it.”

  Kane reminded himself that the wavering was within him, not beneath him. He fought for focus. He wanted to ask how to stop Poesy, but he already knew the answer. He had to find the loom before she did and destroy it utterly.

  “You helped me try to stop her once, didn’t you?” Kane asked.

  Dean nodded.

  His scars prickled as he looked upon the dark waters that had once held his burned body. He was playing with a similar fire now, guessing at his past instead of just asking about it. But it felt safer to guess, like passing his hand through a wobbling candle flame whose little licks couldn’t burn him.

  “But whatever I did hurt you, and now you’re not helping me anymore. Not in the same way at least.”

  “I have been helping you.”

  “Helping me survive is not helping me achieve.”

  Kane pulled his hand away, jamming his leg into the corner of two bars so he could look at Dean head-on. Dean reached for him, but stopped, seeing a new hardness in Kane’s face. It was time to know the truth.

  “Tell me what happened. Tell me about us, and how it all ended.”

  Dean’s eyes skipped over Kane with the dexterity of a dragonfly. “There is a lot to tell.”

  “Start from the beginning, then.”

  Dean’s eyes settled on his own empty palm and stayed there. When he spoke, it was like each word hurt more than the last.

  “Poesy recruited me last winter. My instructions were to watch over the Others as she experimented on their powers and to follow you closely. Your powers are connected to the loom, somehow, and Poesy believed that your abilities would eventually lead you right to it. She told me that looms are like wishes; they appear to those who are desperate enough to need them. In that way, you were her key to this loom, but also her competition. She needed me to watch you. And keep you safe. She gave me my powers and the Dreadmare armor as protection and told me to never interfere in the reveries unless your life was in peril. I kept to the shadows, only watching, until one day you found me out. We fought. You won. You forced me to tell you everything I knew. Somehow, we became friends.”

  “And the Others never knew?”

  “I think they suspected something. They became very suspicious when we began…”

  “Began what?”

  Dean looked dizzy. His voice was strained.

  “Searching. We used to sit up here and talk about what we’d do if we had the loom’s power. The worlds we would create. The wrongs we would right. But then, when we did find the loom…when you found it, in Maxine’s reverie, you…” Something shook Dean’s voice, a fissure breaking open in him. “You didn’t wait for me. You took it for yourself, and the ensuing blast tore Maxine’s reverie apart. It nearly tore through reality itself, but then Adeline—”

  “I know,” Kane cut in. “I know what Adeline did. But this doesn’t make any sense. I would never take that power for myself. I would never ask Adeline to…to…”

  “You gave up,” Dean said, suddenly loud. “You made the choice to take that power for yourself,
and when it was too much, you decided it was easier to start over than to finish what you began.”

  Kane was stunned. This whole time, Dean had never raised his voice. Dean stood, swaying in the wind like the fall couldn’t kill him. Then he hiccupped—a strange, strangled noise. Kane realized he was trying to stop himself from crying.

  “You forced Adeline’s hand. You took yourself away. Like it was easy. Like everything was just a game to you that you could reset when you weren’t winning. You ran away, like you always do.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kane said, defensive. “But I’m not that person anymore. I’m not the one who left you.”

  Dean rubbed at his eyes. “Funny, you have his smile.”

  Kane watched cars glide beneath them. Black holes were heavy, right? He wondered how a bridge of thin metal bars could withstand the weight of the void opening within him. Dean was right. He was the same, lost person, always running, always failing.

  “Here,” Dean said, tossing Kane a small pouch. In it were the charms they’d tried to steal from Poesy’s collection. “Maybe you can still save Helena.”

  He wouldn’t look at Kane. The moment was over, and Dean was closed again. Kane took out his phone and turned it on.

  Messages poured in. Texts, voicemails, DMs. Tons of them, so quickly Kane couldn’t read them. Then his phone lit up with a call. It was Ursula again.

  “Urs, don’t worry. I’m fine. I have Helena’s charm. We can—”

  “Kane.” It was Adeline. Instead of anger, her voice shook through barely managed panic: “Please. Come back.”

  “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  Kane’s phone vibrated madly as more messages poured in.

  “It’s a reverie. Elliot and Ursula are already inside. They’re looking for her. It’s…”

  A frequency rose in Kane’s ear, needling and hysteric. “Who, Adeline? Whose reverie?”

  “Sophia,” Adeline cried. “Kane, it’s your sister.”

  • Twenty-Nine •

  THE ARCHIVIST

  Dean wrapped around Kane, swinging him away from the drop and holding him steady. And good thing; otherwise Kane was sure he would have burned apart, just a million embers scattered over East Amity as he fell.

  Through the phone, Adeline’s voice might as well have been cast from another world. Already Kane could hear the telltale whisper of etherea swallowing her up as she quickly tried to give him the details.

  “I told you to let me erase her memories of the Beazley Affair. I told you. Her mind was vulnerable, and then you ran off tonight, and she fucking snapped. It’s all in her messages. She felt her reverie taking over. She called all of us, and when no one answered, she drove herself to the complex to find us. I have no idea how she made it that far, but that’s where it took her down. Somewhere in the complex. And now she’s in there, and she’s alone, and…”

  Whispering static swallowed Adeline’s voice.

  “Where?” Kane cried. “Tell me where!”

  Adeline’s voice faded in and out.

  “You can’t let her in,” Adeline hissed. “You can’t allow Poesy to get her, too.”

  The line cut off, leaving Kane to stare down the litany of messages that had been building up while his phone was off. Sophia had called him, over and over. In her messages, her voice was barely audible against that same, horrible whispering.

  “Kane, I’m here at the complex. Just pick up. Please pick up. I’m here. Something bad is happening to me. The buildings are breathing. I’m lost. I feel—”

  And from there her screams merged into the undulating static, the line going dead with a polite boop, just like Adeline.

  She was gone. Lost to her reverie. All while Kane and Dean sat atop a bridge, talking, watching over the exact location where Sophia’s reverie had formed: the Cobalt Complex.

  Kane shoved Dean off him, nearly losing his balance on the girder. “Where is Poesy?”

  “Her sanctuary. If she knew about the new reverie, she would have already summoned me, but she’ll be expecting me to return soon either way.”

  “Can she enter without the whistle letting her in?”

  “Yes, but the whistle is her shortcut.”

  Did Adeline still have the whistle? Kane could barely think. There was no logic to any of this. It was all unreal, but it all mattered.

  “Distract her. Make sure she doesn’t find out what’s going on. Teleport me to the reverie’s edge, but make sure you don’t get too close.”

  Dean reached for Kane. “I can help you from the inside.”

  “I don’t want your help inside,” Kane snapped, remembering the violence of the Dreadmare annihilating Helena’s precious creatures. He couldn’t subject Sophia to that pain. “I don’t want you anywhere close to my sister’s reverie. Or did you forget you’re still a nightmare?”

  Dean pressed forward. “I’m not losing you again, Kane.”

  Kane’s fury ignited. “This isn’t about me! It’s about my sister!” Kane choked on the words, on his regret. The last thing time he’d talked to Sophia was in that gas station, in front of the stupid blue Slurpee machine. “All you care about is what you lost.”

  “You’re wrong,” Dean shouted back.

  “And you’re nothing.”

  It echoed out over the river, breaking the peaceful night. Kane breathed around the knot in his throat. “You’re nothing but Poesy’s pet nightmare. If you want to help me, get in Poesy’s way and get out of mine. I’m not running away from this.”

  Resolve started in Dean’s eyes, smoothing him out as it passed through his long limbs, until he was back to the stoic, distant boy Kane had first met. He pulled the chess piece from his pocket and with a whisper it unwound into a silent storm of black ivy. The magic weaved over him, until the black-armored knight stood in his place.

  This time, when the Dreadmare reached for Kane’s hand, Kane took it, grasping the smooth leather for half a breath before it flung him into the in-between and whatever lay beyond.

  Kane walked into the reverie alone.

  This time, when he came to, he was standing in a ragged breach carved into the side of ruined skyscraper. He swayed above a perilous drop of pure darkness. There was no one to keep him from falling, so he sunk down, held on tight, and faced the world Sophia had created.

  It was nighttime in the reverie, but dawn glistened upon the utmost edge of a far-off sea. The scene before Kane was a futuristic city. Buzzing neon signs hovered over bladelike buildings, casting grainy colors into the low clouds so that the city lay cradled in a dreamlike, candied haze. Whirring aircraft dipped through the clouds, their spotlights sweeping the streets below, and far off in a residential district there were sirens. But that was the only noise. The city returned the echoes with silence that felt more than indifferent. It felt enforced.

  There was a curfew, and someone had just broken it.

  Kane drew into the breach, turning to explore the wrecked skyscraper. It was full of forgotten junk, as though abandoned midway. Graffiti covered everything. OUR SOCIETY IS A SCAM, read bloody letters. Another slogan said: KNOW THY UNHOLY HISTORIES.

  The most vibrant graffiti was on the back wall: a glove, palm up, a moth alighting upon gently curled fingers. Beneath it in block letters was DAMNATIO MEMORIAE. All of it was brilliantly white against a panoply of flyers calling for the capture of a group called the Archivists. Kane grazed the graffiti with his fingers; the paint was fresh. Had his character done this?

  A crash sounded in the depths of the building, and the cords in the elevator shaft whipped into a frenzy. Kane hid beneath an overturned desk, watching as the elevator lurched up to reveal, miraculously, Sophia. He stood up, not even thinking they might be enemies in this world.

  “Brother!” Sophia cried. She wore a structured jacket and high-waisted slacks that made her look like a matador, and
her hair was tucked up into a wide-brimmed hat. Her whole outfit was a deep, lusterless green, except for her gloves. They were so white they glowed, dazzling Kane as she clapped her hands over his face and said, “We have a most distinguished guest!”

  In the elevator was the narrow shape of a girl. Adeline. She wore a gray shift dress and a gray headband. She was handcuffed, and the look she gave Kane meant he better not ask about it.

  “You know I don’t usually fancy the Nobles, but I needed a hostage,” Sophia explained. “We’ll ditch her here for The Society to find. Those sirens are close. I’m sure they’ll be here any minute. You secured our extraction point, right? The fourth and fifth corridors are already locked down, but we can take the ninth to the bridge, then make our way to the harbor.” Sophia’s boots clicked as she strode to a mound of boxes in one corner. She ripped into them, pulling out cartridges of ammunition. Then she produced no fewer than five handguns from her jacket, which she began reloading with the ease of someone who held (and emptied) guns often. Kane thought one gun was an antique revolver, but then Sophia rolled several glowing orbs into the barrels. She pressed a button and the seams of the weapon glowed blue.

  “I want you to see tonight’s haul. It’s fantastic.” Sophia gestured at Adeline. “She’s got it on her. I knew they wouldn’t blow it up if they knew it was being transported on the body of a Committee-Man’s daughter.”

  Kane approached Adeline. “What’s your name?”

  “Adeline,” said Adeline.

  “It’s Ms. Adeline Van Demure,” Sophia called, mockingly. “I hid it in her girdle.”

  Adeline grimaced as Kane fumbled under her dress, locating a small knot of burlap. In a whisper he asked, “Where’s the whistle”

  “Around my neck. Safe.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I appeared in whatever house she was robbing—I’m assuming it was mine. I ran into her, literally, and the alarms tripped. I let her take me hostage, and we lost the guards on the way here. She’s some sort of thief, but she keeps hinting at a rebellion. She’s being kind of tough and boisterous. Judging off clichés, I’d say this is a dystopian teen reverie, and she’s the tough, no-nonsense female lead.”