by Leia Stone
She nodded. ‘Dawn will take Kit to clear blue, and tiny colored food packet room.’
I frowned. What was this place she spoke of? It almost sounded like a grocery store, but I knew that wasn’t possible there.
I stood, changed into my now-dry jumpsuit, and placed my weapons into their holsters. I had one samurai sword, one gun, and one knife. Oh, and my amazing hat. That was it.
I looked up at my pink-feathered friend. I had Dawn too.
Mounting Dawn’s back, I held on as she quickly took to the skies. Resting my chest on her back, I kept my head low so the wind wouldn’t cut into me too much. We must’ve flown for almost an hour when she began to slow her pace. The sky above me was green and black, back to the way it was before, and I could see a giant off in the distance, far enough away that we were okay, but close enough to be nervous about.
Looking directly down I noticed a building, a brand-new brick building with steel roll-up doors similar to a loading dock at a grocery store.
‘What is this place?’ It was new, that was for sure.
‘Humans meet sentries here. Meeting place,’ she said, and my entire body broke out in chills.
Meeting place? Is this where the government made a deal with the sentries? My conversation with Kevin drifted back to me.
‘How often do they meet?’ I asked her.
Dawn was quiet for some time as she descended to the surface. There was a sentry at the entrance of the roll-up door, but we were landing behind the building, and Dawn’s wings were quieter than air. He didn’t see or hear us, thank God.
Did I have the energy to fight a sentry right then? I swallowed hard, my tongue big and dry in my mouth. I didn’t know how much longer I was going to be there, so I needed to stock up on supplies if possible. Might as well fight the sentry while I had the energy, because the longer I went without food or water, the weaker I would get.
‘Our government has made a deal with the ghouls. They let some humans live, and we get the green stuff,’ I told Dawn.
Dawn nodded as her talons landed softly on the ground. ‘Dawn has seen breeders open the worlds and transport green food to earth.’
My eyes widened. ‘When?’ Open the worlds? She actually said open the worlds….
‘Roger saw it first. Showed Dawn. Happens every moon cycle.’
Holy shit. So it was true. The government was totally selling us for fuel. Monthly.
‘The females open the worlds?’ I asked her.
Dawn nodded. ‘Use powers to open hole between worlds. Dawn saw Earth. Earth is beautiful. Lots of the clear blue.’
What the hell? The breeders must’ve opened it near an ocean, or a lake if she saw the big clear blue. My mind was reeling.
‘Why don’t the breeders invade Earth? Go through the opening?’ I was transfixed by the conversation. I was always under the impression that Dawn was withholding things from me and couldn’t tell me much, but now it was like she’d been given permission to fully unload.
‘Because they would die. Something on Earth hurts them. I don’t know what,’ she stated plainly.
Weird. Very, very freaking weird. And amazing.
I eyed the back of the building and saw a single entrance, but it had a keycode padlock. ‘So the clear blue is inside the building? You’re sure?’ I asked her.
Talking about water was making me so damn thirsty. Dawn nodded. ‘When metal doors are rolled up, you can see it.’
Okay. I trusted her. ‘All right, I’m going to shoot the padlock. That’s going to alert the sentry. I’ll run inside to grab the water and food, while you hold off the sentry with your fire. Then I’ll jump on your back and we fly away. Cool?’
Dawn nodded. ‘Cool.’
I smiled at her mimicking my language.
Leaping softly off her back, I landed on the ground, pulling my gun. ‘Ready?’ I asked her.
She nodded and started to walk toward the building. I did the same, keeping my feet and movements light. We reached the door quickly, and I wasted no time leveling my gun at the keypad and pulling the trigger. Three pops and the pad’s lights turned off. Then I shot the actual keyhole of the door and the handle turned with ease. If there were humans in there, I had no freaking clue what I would say or do. Act dumb, probably. Say I had run out of supplies and was scouting random buildings.
‘Sentry will be coming for that gunshot sound,’ I reminded Dawn, then pulled the door open jumping inside as quickly as I could.
I wasn’t prepared for the level of luxury I experienced. Was that air conditioning blasting my face? The floors looked freshly carpeted, and even vacuumed.
‘Dawn is ready to blow fire at tall one. Get clear blue,’ she told me.
Her words spurred me into action, and I ran into the hallway and toward the opening at the end, where I could see lights.
Bursting into the room, I stopped short, in shock. There was a twelve-person conference room table, and freaking water and food vending machines. That’s what Dawn had seen. The government officials sat in there drinking chilled water and eating little packets of cookies while the rest of humanity was slaughtered outside.
Oh hell no.
Rage ripped through me and suddenly I was seeing red. Thankfully the room was empty of people, and my eyes went to the whiteboard that took up half of the back wall.
I picked up the red marker and wrote the word ‘traitors’ in big block letters across the entire thing. Then I threw the marker down and picked up a chair, lifted it into the air and heaved, watching in satisfaction as it crashed into the first vending machine. Bottles of water fell out, along with shards of glass, and I searched around the room for something to carry things with.
The sounds of gunfire outside had me panicking, and I threw the second chair into the food vending machine. Next to it on the counter was a small file folder carriers, a plastic one, sitting right beside a super old-school typewriter. Opening the plastic file folder box, I saw it was only a quarter full. I smashed the files down to the bottom—in case they were important—– then started shoving water bottles, packets of cookies, and chips into the plastic case.
Latching it closed quickly, I busted ass outside to get to Dawn’s aid. She was standing in front of the door, guarding it, and the sentry was on the ground burned to a crisp.
‘You okay? I heard bullets,’ I told her as I hopped on her back, holding the case awkwardly.
She nodded. ‘Tall one was a bad shot.’
I chuckled, relieved and prepared for her to take off. Just as she lowered her body to leap into the air, a shadow passed over top of me and I spun, looking up just in time to see a breeder jumping down from the roof of the building.
Her body collided with mine, and with no warning I fell backward, hands up to protect my face and neck, which meant I landed right on my back from six feet high. As I smacked into the ground, the wind was knocked out of me and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. The female straddled me and pressed her thighs together, nearly breaking my rib cage.
“Ahhh!” I screamed in horrified pain and bucked her off by snapping my pelvis upward. She rocked a little, which gave me the leverage to twist underneath her and roll onto my side.
By the time she righted herself, I was able to tuck my legs up and then snap out with my foot, clipping her face with my boot. The female rocked backward, giving me enough time to fully scramble out from under her. The breeders wore no armor and didn’t seem to carry modern weapons. I wasn’t sure if it was because they didn’t need them or just weren’t used to fighting. Or both.
Dawn had turned around and was waiting for me, nervously watching the fight. There wasn’t much she could do. If she blew fire, then I would light up right along with it.
I was halfway to her when the pain rocked my skull, splitting through my head with such force, I fell to my knees panting.
Bitch.
I took a deep breath and then thought about any time in my life when I’d ever felt pain. Like right then. I pulled all those fe
elings together and whipped around, turning on the female and shooting out with my power, slamming ‘Pain’ into her.
She went rigid, panting in and out, and I took the time to take in her features. This one was different than the breeder I’d fought with earlier. She had a more angular face and wasn’t pregnant.
She closed her fist, and suddenly that creepy desperate feeling of panic came over me like before. ‘Death, pain, destruction, kill, kill, kill.’
“No!” I shouted and without thinking, I thrust my arms out and pushed my mental power at her. It was raw and concentrated but without focus, like the one time I did it with Maxine when I chanted, ‘Calm, calm, calm.’ This was blind panic, and chaos.
As the breeder fell to her knees and grabbed her head, I saw a thin trail of blood trickle down from her nose.
Holy shit.
I didn’t wait for her backlash of retaliation. I just spun around, swooped up the plastic file folder holding my score, and leapt awkwardly onto Dawn’s back.
‘Fly!’ I shouted.
She jumped off the ground and then we were airborne. Glancing out over Dawn’s shoulder, I saw the breeder staring at me wide-eyed.
‘Kit okay?’ Dawn asked.
I surprisingly was. ‘Yeah. Thank you.’
I’d fought the breeder, without weapons, and had made her nose bleed. I did that.
Maybe I was a weapon like Jeremy said.
It was nearly an hour’s flight back to sky home, and the entire time I clutched the file folder box like my life depended on it. It did depend on it. I wanted to rip it open and chug the water inside, but I was afraid if I did so midflight, the contents would spill out everywhere and I’d be screwed. So instead, I spent the hour thinking about how quickly I’d devour the cookie packet and the chips. Not to mention chugging two full bottles of water. Screw rationing, I was absolutely famished and dying of thirst. I’d lost count of how many hours I’d been there. Twelve, maybe fifteen.
Once Dawn landed near sky home, it was dark outside and I hoped Maxine and the crew would be dropping in again soon. I’d never been in the Dream Wars this long, and I was absolutely freaking out.
I hopped off Dawn and she bid me farewell, said she had to meet with her council, and would be back later if she felt Maxine. I ran hastily to my den, clutching my little box as my stomach growled. I rushed by a few pregnant females, who nodded as I passed, and I tried not to look like a crazed woman but I probably failed. The thirst hit me full throttle, and I felt my heart pounding in my chest hard. Ronnie would probably say I was mildly dehydrated.
Getting into my little den, I threw myself dramatically onto my sleeping bag and opened the box. Grabbing the first bottle I could find, I cracked the lid, tipping my head back, and chugging it like a beer on my twenty-first birthday. Hunger I could handle, but I didn’t ever want to go without water again. After finishing the bottle, I decided a few cookies would do me good.
Reaching in for the bag, I noticed the manila file folders crushed at the bottom of the box. I opened a baggie of chocolate chip cookies and started to leaf through some of the material. At first, I wasn’t sure what the hell I was reading, just random names of people in other countries and information about them. Suddenly, with dread, I realized it was a file on various citizens over the years who had tried to make a device that would take out the ghouls. A sixteen-year-old kid, in Taiwan, and a fifty-six-year-old ex-Army dude, in San Diego, stood out. These people were all over the world, and they all had one word after their name and weapon information.
‘Terminated.’
Holy shit.
I was only half-surprised when I saw Damien’s name at the bottom of the list with the description of his plasma cuff.
No.
It didn’t say ‘terminated,’ but it showed the Bisbee mine location and had the word next to that instead. But Damien’s course of action was blank. My heart was in my throat, but I forced myself to keep reading. Tears rolled down my face with every word.
The United States wasn’t the only one in on it. Nearly every major country had banded together and signed an accord with the US to allow the complete terraforming of the human race. In return, they were each allowed one hundred people who were ‘safe,’ and barrels and barrels of the green stuff. They were planning a new world once the riffraff of humanity was gone. It was going to be full of population control, curfews, job assignments at birth, and so many other horrors that I could barely bring myself to skim over.
The final file was the location of where they stored the green stuff. It was some loading dock in Boston before transporting it to their top-secret location in Nevada. I committed the Boston address to memory.
‘Damien.’ I reached out frantically through the Dream Wars, hoping to speak with him.
Nothing.
I settled my mind, taking a few deep breaths. ‘Damien.’
‘I’m here.’ His response was immediate that time.
‘You’re in danger on Earth. You need to hire a security team to watch over you day and night. Protect your body while sleeping. Jeremy’s too.’ I rushed the words out in case our connection was broken at any moment. I needed him to know the government had a plan for him, and his life had an expiration date.
His energy bristled. ‘Why? What happened. Are you okay?’
How the hell do I explain something like this?
‘I’m fine. I found a government building and some secret documents. I just need you to trust me. Don’t go to sleep tonight without a team guarding your body. Do you promise?’
There was a pause. ‘I promise. I know a guy.’
I relaxed a little. The thought of anything happening to him or Jeremy made me sick.
‘Hey, Kit. Master Aki is on his way to Vancouver,’ he said.
My head shot back. ‘What?’
‘Yeah, Ronnie called him and… umm… well, Jeremy’s been getting live readings from your hat.’
I reached up and tugged the hat down, having forgotten I was wearing it at that point. I figured I’d made Jeremy a promise, and I needed to keep it.
‘Okay. Can Master Aki help find my body?’
That was actually smart of Ronnie. Master Aki had always had a sixth sense, so if anyone could find my body, it was him.
Damien didn’t answer my question, and it was then that I realized his wording. Jeremy was getting live readings from my hat, and that’s why they called Master Aki. Not to find my body.
‘What kind of readings is Jeremy getting?’ I asked him.
Silence.
‘If you ever want to get laid again, you better start talking, bud.’ I brought the hammer down.
‘Kit… it’s still a theory.’ Damien interjected.
‘Damien!’ I roared in my head.
‘Okay, he thinks you can shape matter, bend time, move objects with your mind, all of it. He said it looks like your brain isn’t even human,’ Damien explained.
Fear zipped through me at his words and I gulped. ‘I am human,’ I declared. I needed to hear the words.
‘I know, obviously… but something changed in you when they landed and…’
I was losing the connection, my panic making me lose concentration.
‘Damien?’
‘Will be there in two hours. Set your watch,’ he said finally.
‘Okay, I’ll contact you then.’
They were going in without me. That meant either Ronnie or Damien would be the leader, and Lord knew where their minds would bring them.
I had to be patient.
Thirteen
Patience was not my virtue. I sat in my den, eating cookies and chewing all my fingernails off, until two hours had passed. I’d asked Dawn to meet me back at sky home in exactly two hours. Now, I was praying like all hell that my friends would drop in within an hour or two of flight from my den so I could see them.
Once two hours and five minutes had passed, I sat next to Dawn on the little landing strip of blueish grass on sky home, and took three deep
breaths. Then I searched for Damien’s energy within this world, sending out my feelers, but came back with nothing. Trying not to get discouraged, I then searched for Ronnie. My best friend had an energy that I would be able to find easily if she was nearby. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest when I sensed her, there in the Dream Wars.
‘Ronnie!’ I shouted, so excited to have connected with her.
‘Kit! Are you okay?’ she asked me.
‘I’m fine. Is Maxine with you? Dawn thinks she can find her.’ I could sense Ronnie was in the Dream Wars but didn’t know her location.
‘Yes, she just dropped in.’ Ronnie’s reply was immediate. ‘We’re near one of the Galadria feeding lakes. We’re safe for now.’
They were near a lake? That was perfect. There were only a few in the Dream Wars, and Dawn knew them all because that’s where she went to eat and drink.
I relayed the information to Dawn, and she simply nodded and then went completely silent.
She was quiet for a whole two minutes, and I was about to speak when her eyes popped open. ‘I know where red hair is,’ she stated.
Tears leaked from my eyes as I pumped my fist in the air. ‘Let’s go get ’em.’ I climbed onto her back, the files tucked under my arm. I wanted someone else to look at them, help me sort through the info, and try to commit it to memory.
A few of the three-foot-tall younglings had come to see me off.
God, they are so freaking cute.
I waved at them as we kicked off and went up into the air.
‘Bye.’ I sent them a mental farewell.
‘Goodbye, blue-haired human,’ one said to me.
‘Her name is Kit,’ another admonished.
I smiled. I would miss sky home, but I was going to see my friends. Things were looking up.
It was a quick twenty-minute flight, and then I saw the expansive lake come into view. Flying over the Dream Wars was a simultaneous thrilling and horrifying thing. You were safe, but you also saw the untold horrors of the Dream Wars from a vantage point where you couldn’t help. Not everyone had the plasma bands yet, and those who didn’t were fighting for their lives, and losing.