3

by James Phelan

  “And now, what?” Sam asked.

  “We reached out to Dr. Dark, and to your Professor,” Jabari said. “We have admitted our wrongs and now we are here to set it right. There are only twenty of us left, but each is now sworn to protect you and what lies beyond the Dream Gate—to the death if it must be so.”

  Eva and Sam looked unsure, Eva eventually breaking the silence. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. We’re glad to have you on our side now.”

  Jabari smiled gratefully and shook her outstretched hand.

  We need all the allies we can get.

  Suddenly Lora looked around. “Where are the owners?” she asked.

  “They’ll be back soon,” Dr. Dark said. “Don’t worry, they’re fine. We need to focus on getting Sam and Eva to their destination.”

  “What do you know of it?” Lora asked, suddenly alarmed.

  “I’m afraid that Eva’s dream is out there for many prying eyes to see,” Dr. Dark said.

  “That can’t be,” Eva said. “I mean, we’ve told no one!”

  “The Professor and Jedi had all the Academy’s dream recorders switched off specifically to stop anyone breaking in,” Sam said.

  “Stella can do it too,” Jabari said. “She’s managed to get into the Dreamscape. She has a global dream-reading device online.”

  “And she can tap into anyone’s dream?” Eva said.

  Dr. Dark nodded.

  “Via the old Tesla coils?” Sam asked.

  “In theory,” Dr. Dark said. “We have tracked a signal to a site in the Ukraine that they are using to boost the Tesla machines to incredible power—worldwide power.”

  “The Ukraine?” Lora said.

  Both Dr. Dark and Jabari nodded, and Lora looked into the fire again, lost in her thoughts. “What can we do about shutting it down?” she asked.

  “We can tell the authorities,” Dr. Dark said, “hope they go in with police troops, or the army, given it’s a restricted zone, and arrest her.”

  “But by then it will be too late,” Jabari said, his deep voice grave. “Far too late.”

  14

  “Jabari’s right,” Dr. Dark said. “It will take them a few days by the time they put together a team, try to negotiate and storm the site—and then what? Battle her Agents for a few more days? They’ll be well fortified there, they might be able to hold out for weeks. And that’s beyond the timeframe we’re working with to get the Gears.”

  “We have to turn it off, it’s our only option,” Eva said. “We have to try. You want to take a team in there,” she said to the leader of the Egyptian Guardians. “You want to make sure that Stella is stopped once and for all, don’t you?”

  Jabari nodded. “In a sense, yes,” he said. “Although I do not think that I should lead the team there.”

  “Oh?” Lora said.

  “No,” Jabari replied. “I think you should lead my men.”

  Lora looked to Sam and Eva. “I need to protect them,” she said. “I need to go with them to Australia.”

  “But together,” Jabari said, “we can shut this down. The dream receiver, Stella, all of it. For good.”

  “There’s got to be another way,” Eva said.

  “No,” Dr. Dark replied. “I’m afraid not. There’s more at play now. Powerful Dreamers who have been skeptical of the race now recognize Sam’s importance. They’re looking for him—the Zang family in China, the Mexicans, the Greeks. All the powerful dynastic Dreamer families, and they’ll stop at nothing to get their hands on a piece of this action. Going public with this, Sam, may have been a mistake, I’m afraid.”

  Eva looked at their faces. Great, she thought. Now we can’t even decide what to do for the best.

  “OK,” Lora said, then turned to face Sam and Eva. “Let’s work with what we have now. The two of you go with the owners from here. They’ll get you to where you need to go.”

  “But—”

  “No buts, Eva,” Lora said, then smiled. “These people? They’re good people—the best. They’re my parents. And right now we don’t know who to trust. There could still be a spy in the Academy or Enterprise. But my parents? I know we can trust them.”

  “OK,” Sam said. “We’ll do it.”

  “OK,” Eva said. She nodded but was far from happy with this new travel arrangement.

  There was a loud noise outside. Eva looked out the window. It was Jedi’s car, an old rust bucket he’d restored. He’d made one significant alteration, though. It was coated in the same material that made the new Stealth Suits invisible to the eye, capable of blending in with its surroundings. Two middle-aged people sat inside, waiting.

  “That’s my parents,” Lora said. “They’ll get you to the airport. And in that car, they’ll get you past any roadblocks with ease. Stay safe.”

  She hugged the two of them and they all walked outside.

  “So what’s this place that Stella is using?” Sam asked Jabari.

  “A devil’s place,” he replied, “a dangerous place.”

  “And why are you best qualified to lead the Guardians?” Eva asked Lora. “Apart from being super-tough, of course!” she added.

  “Because I know the area,” Lora said. “I’ve been there before, when I was a young girl.”

  “That’s right,” Dr. Dark said. “It’s a place in the Ukraine, the only site in the world that can be used as Stella is using it. It’s the site of a terrible nuclear disaster.”

  Lora looked at Eva and Sam and said, “It’s Chernobyl.”

  15

  SAM’S NIGHTMARE

  I blink at a blinding sun and hold up a hand to shield my eyes. It barely helps. I’m standing at the top of a hill. There’s dense foliage and water. It’s a sea, I’m on an island. There are tropical trees, beaches dotted between cliffs. Several other specks of land are just in view. They seem smaller than this one.

  “You guys are too late,” a voice says.

  I turn and see a friendly-looking man dressed like a park ranger. A dark, ruddy face of someone who has not only lived his life in the elements but has ancestors who have for millennia. A name badge is sewn onto his shirt pocket—Malcolm.

  “What do you mean?” Eva says. She’s standing next to me, on the flat rock outcrop that forms a viewing platform over this idyllic paradise.

  “What you’re lookin’ for,” Malcolm said, “they moved that, years back, before my time even.”

  “How do you know what we’re looking for?” Eva asks.

  The guy breaks into a big toothy grin. “Because of that look on your faces,” Malcolm replies. “I’ve seen it before, many times. My father saw it in his time, and his father, and so on, for hundreds of years.”

  “But we’re too late?” I ask.

  “Too late by a long shot,” he says. “Still, all is not lost. Follow me—this island has a few secrets yet.”

  We follow the ranger down a barely visible path through the scrub. We’re headed toward a rocky cove, the water breaking at headlands, the tide out, showing a vast stone shelf that has surely wrecked a lot of boats mistaking it for a calm harbour.

  At what must be the tideline, we find a path that’s more clearly defined.

  “This looks ancient,” Eva says, walking the narrow paved road.

  “Yep,” Malcolm replies.

  Eva turns to me, she wants to know more, and I say to the ranger’s back, “So, ah, what is it that we need to see that is not what we came for?”

  “You’ll see,” Malcolm replies. He is a man of few words.

  Eva looks back to me and I shrug.

  We walk around the cove, following one of the headlands, and just before its point, we stop.

  “Through there,” Malcolm says.

  He’s pointing to where the smooth path carved into the stone disappears into a crack in the rock face barely big enough to squeeze through sideways.

  “Are you serious?” Eva asks him.

  “Not usually,” he replies with a big smile. “But sometimes.”r />
  “Is this one of those times?” I ask.

  “Yep, I reckon.”

  “Right,” I say. “I’ll lead.”

  “No, mate,” the ranger says. “You follow her.”

  “What’s through there?” Eva asks.

  “It’s a special place,” Malcolm replies, looking absently into the yawning darkness of the cave. “Has been through all time. Though the rock must have shifted over the centuries.”

  “Why do you say that?” Eva says.

  “Because,” he says, “there’s no way they got all that stuff in there through this little space. Maybe there was another way in once, and the land has hidden it. Mysterious, this island. But then, most places are, if you look at them right.”

  Eva takes a flashlight from her pack and squeezes through the rock fissure. I watch from the opening, and see the light getting duller and dimmer as she heads deeper.

  “Are you guys coming or not?” Eva calls out, her voice distant and full of echoes.

  I go to follow, but the ranger catches my arm.

  “Let her have a moment in there first,” he says to me.

  I’m unsure what he means but I nod.

  “After all, Sam,” Malcolm says, his smile beaming. “This is her Dreamtime. We’re just her guests.”

  “Run, Sam—run!”

  No sooner have I made my way through the tightest squeeze of the cracked rock, than it opens up to a whole new world.

  I look back and the rocks are gone. I’m now somewhere else.

  A whole new world …

  An endless expanse of landscape is around me. It’s hotter and drier than the island, and the scene is almost like the surface of Mars—barren, red rock gravel and rocks and boulders. The only things distinguishing it as part of the earth is the occasional scrub and brittle tree, a road and what looks like, well, like some kind of space station.

  “Sam!”

  Eva is pointing behind me.

  I look, down the road. There are a couple of shapes coming at us.

  Riders on quad bikes, kicking up dust plumes behind them. They’re really hammering it—they want to reach us in a hurry.

  I turn to Eva and we run across the red rocky ground, away from the surreal-looking space station compound, away from the bikes, away from the road. Eva’s feet ahead of me are moving faster than I thought possible.

  My head spins as I think maybe we are on Mars or some other planet, but I remember what the ranger, Malcolm, said before going through the rock—I am in Eva’s dream.

  “Eva!” I call. “Eva, stop!”

  She stops running.

  I do too. We stand together, panting for breath. The bikes are still speeding toward us, still on the road, maybe a minute away.

  “Eva,” I say, “this is your dream that we are in right now. You can control it, you’re driving it all—the people chasing us, where we are, all of it.”

  “Right, of course. Why did I forget?” she says.

  “Think. Why are we here? What did we come for?”

  Eva’s face creases in concentration for a moment. She smiles and looks down at her hands. They are palm up, one on top of the other. There’s something bright and shiny there, glinting in the sunlight like a golden coin.

  Only this is no coin. And it’s far more valuable than any coin.

  It is a tiny little brass Gear, actually two linked Gears, part of a machine. What we came for.

  “I’m so sorry, Sam,” Eva says.

  I look up to Eva’s eyes and see sadness and alarm there.

  “I didn’t know he’d be here until it was too late,” she says. “I thought … I thought we’d lose him.”

  There is a presence behind me. I feel its shadow cast over me.

  Solaris.

  “It’s OK,” I say to her, fighting every urge to turn around or to run. “He won’t harm us. He needs us.”

  “No,” Eva says, and tears fall from her eyes. “He doesn’t. Not anymore.”

  SAM

  Sam woke.

  He was still on the airplane. Eva was next to him, asleep. Her eyes were moving behind her eyelids—dreaming.

  Part of him wanted to wake her, in case she was having a nightmare. But another part told him that they needed every bit of her dream that they could get if they were going to beat Solaris.

  Sam pressed the call button and waited to order a snack and some water. He wiped his face with a paper napkin and opened up the air-conditioning vent above his head so that cool air washed over him.

  Across the aisle, Lora’s mother was reading a book. She looked up at Sam. “We’ve only been in the air an hour,” she said, “you two must have been tired.”

  Sam nodded. The flight attendant arrived and he placed his order. Next to him, Eva still slept soundly.

  And then Sam had an idea—about changing the future.

  16

  ALEX’S NIGHTMARE

  I creep down the hallway, my feet silent. I open the door to Ahmed’s workroom. There’s no sign of the archaeologist, nor anyone else. I go inside and close the door behind me.

  It’s dark in here, but not completely pitch black, the three round port windows at the waterline letting in some moonlight reflected from the sea.

  I move forward in the dark, my feet shuffling carefully and my hands outstretched to guide my way. I feel the light box. It’s a big solid structure, about the size of my ping-pong table back home. The sides are made of steel, and the top is opaque glass. I walk around it, my hands running along the sides, feeling for the power switch. I find it, flick it to “on.” The lights are a bright white, throwing eerie shadows around the room.

  And it illuminates maps.

  I look at the map on the top. It shows modern-day Antarctica—a map made from precise satellite imaging and plotting. The light box lets me see through it to the next map, and several more underneath it. Four maps all up, from modern to historic to old and ancient.

  I lean in close to see details, but they’re hard to make out, so I lean in closer still—

  I fall into the light box.

  I fall through it, into another world. Everything around me is white.

  Am I stuck inside the box? Am I in …?

  I shiver. My breath fogs in front of me. It’s cold. I’m no longer wearing the track suit I had on. I’m now wearing a yellow snowsuit. The white around me is no light box.

  It’s snow.

  Suddenly, I know.

  I’m in Antarctica.

  And I am alone. I turn around and see nothing but white. The ground is white, the horizon is white. I take another look at the ground as something has just registered.

  There are other footprints next to mine. Turning around, I see the prints continue in a straight line, as though I walked to this spot with other people and stopped as they kept walking.

  Why did I stop here?

  Seeing nothing else around me, I follow the tracks, my eyes never leaving the prints in the snow. The wind blows icily and the weather seems to worsen. Soon ice and snow is being whipped at me and I raise my hands to shield my face. I’m crouched low so as not to be blown off my feet. I’m making slow progress, still following those prints.

  A noise pierces the air.

  What’s that?

  Howling, like that of an animal, is carried on the wind. I start to move faster. The sound is shifting, now it’s coming from behind me. I turn around but I see nothing. It’s getting louder.

  Whatever it is, wherever it is, it’s coming for me.

  And it’s getting closer.

  I run down a hill, into fog. Soon I’m running blind.

  I fall and slide, face first, down the slope. “Arghh!”

  I close my eyes and wish I was someplace else and within seconds come to a stop when the ground levels off and the ice gives way to pebbles. I get to my feet slowly and painfully, and dust myself off. I’m under the layer of fog now and see that I’m at a lake. The water is unfrozen, steam rising from it as though it is warm.
>
  “It is warm,” I mutter as I take off my gloves and feel my face. It’s warm to the touch. I walk to the water’s edge and touch the pebbles—they’re warm too—and then the water.

  It feels like a pleasant bath.

  “Ha!” I say. I look around. There’s no sign of anyone else, of who I have been tracking.

  Maybe they’re smart enough not to get chased by some unseen beast.

  The howling, screeching noise comes back as if in answer to my thought. Now it’s from up high, up the slope, and it’s moving, nearing again, fast.

  Whatever it is, it’s sliding down that ice slope like I just did.

  I run along the pebbles at the lakeside. The sound behind me grows in intensity.

  SPLASH!

  Behind me something huge hits the water, and hits hard and fast.

  I turn around to look.

  And I’m knocked off my feet, the air sucked out of me, and I’m fighting to breathe as I look up to the white sky as the howling gets louder and louder.

  “Alex!”

  I get to my feet and dust off a snowball.

  “Over here!” the voice calls. Sam is in the distance, pointing to something far off to my right.

  I look around, disoriented at first and then in awe.

  I am standing on a white cliff, and below is a vast sea full of icebergs. The horizon is moving toward me.

  It’s a wave. But no ordinary wave, this thing is huge, and it’s rushing at us, pounding, seething.

  A tsunami!

  In seconds, it’ll be here.

  “Sam—run!” I yell. “Run!”

  I turn to run but trip on the ground and land face down on the cold hard ground.

  ALEX

  Alex woke up covered in sweat.

  All he saw was a world of white. He pushed up, panicked, fighting against—

  Bedsheets.

  He pushed the white sheets away. He was in bed, in his stateroom on the Ra.

  A dream … it was a crazy, mixed-up dream. What I saw didn’t even make sense.

  But was it a true dream? What if it was? What if my dream becomes real …?

  17

  SAM

  They got out of the taxi at the Sydney Opera House. Sam walked up the plaza a little and stopped, looking around. The harbour twinkled under the sunshine poking through the clouds, the water full of ferries, boats and water taxis coming and going—a big city busy as it went about a new day. Eva was at the water’s edge, looking out across the harbour.