by Leia Stone
It was all set. We left tonight.
Now I was sitting with Master Aki for our final lesson before we took Damien’s private jet to Boston, for Operation Fuck the Traitorous Government—we’d let Maxine name it. I hadn’t slept in a few days, though the others had gone in. We felt that me sleeping as little as possible now that the breeders were gunning for me was best.
“There, do you feel it?” Master Aki asked me.
I could, actually. After two mind-numbing days of waving my hands in the air and opening my senses, I could feel something, a thickness, a snag from the other side.
I nodded. “Yep. I’m a master of sensing the other dimension,” I declared proudly.
My mentor gave me a little smirk. “Good. Now open it.”
I froze and gave him a bug-eyed look. “Say what?”
He gave me a bit of a lopsided grin. “Open it. I know you can. I’ve seen it.”
There was a lot of trust happening in this relationship right now. These past few days, I’d been feeling it, but never in my wildest dreams did I think he’d say, “Open it.”
“You need to get this before we get on our plane,” he rushed me.
Open it. Just like a door. Okay.
I felt for that snag, that heaviness, and when I caressed it with my fingers, I pulled them wide.
Nothing happened.
I let out a groan.
“Not with your hands. With your mind.” He tapped the side of my head.
Open a portal to the dream world with my mind. Sure thing, bud.
“I love you, you know that, but this is… it’s crazy. Impossible,” I told him. Sure, some of us humans had some weird powers creep up, but it didn’t mean I was going to start laying eggs and doing weird breeder shit.
He placed both of his soft hands on my face. “I love you too, and I know you can do this. Please, try harder.”
His words, his touch, were so sincere that I almost started to cry.
“Okay…” My voice was small as his hands slipped away from my face.
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and put my hands out again, feeling for the heavy edges in the air before me. When I felt them that time, I used my mental magic—as I’d now come to call it—and thought about a piece of paper tearing. ‘Open,’ I thought and pushed. I imagined the Dream Wars, the smell, the green hue, Dawn, anything I could think of, and that’s when Master Aki gasped.
My eyes flew open and standing before me, surrounding my outstretched hands, was a twelve-inch circular opening. Through it I saw a pod plant and the shoulder of a sentry. I dropped my hands and shook them, which closed the portal.
“Holy fuck,” I breathed.
When my eyes met Master Aki’s, I knew nothing would ever be the same.
Sixteen
Brisk, Damien, Maxine, Nox, Master Aki and I were on a private jet with Santiago and four of his guys. We’d left Ronnie, and her annoying coffee-crazed cat, back with Josephine and Mr. Hansen to watch over Jeremy. We’d snuck enough explosives onto the plane to blow up an entire apartment block. Master Aki had come up with a crazy plan that I was sure wasn’t going to work. It involved me opening a gateway into the Dream Wars while the team rolled the barrels of green stuff inside and blew them up. No evidence. But when I tried to explain to everyone that I’d opened a tiny twelve-inch window, one time, and it wouldn’t work, my pleas had fallen on deaf ears. All they heard was that I’d opened a gateway, and they were now looking at me like I was a freaking ghoul.
As we landed on the tarmac, Damien’s thumb traced small circles on my palm. I wasn’t used to gentle, touchy-feely boyfriends. It was weird but also nice.
“Are you freaked out now that I’m some breeder replica or something?” I asked him in a whisper, while the others stood to unload. I was staring at our hands, afraid to meet his gaze. Ever since the full extent of my powers had been revealed, I’d been having a total existential crisis. Did it make me like them? Was I somehow evil? All the random questions had jumbled my brain, and now I was left feeling insecure.
His fingers came up under my chin as he tilted my face to meet his eyes. His gaze flicked to my nose and he smiled. “I knew that first night when I saw these freckles on your nose, and that fiery look in your eyes, that you were going to be my undoing. I’ll admit that some of your gifts are unsettling, but it’s only because I worry for your safety. Nothing could scare me away from how I feel about you, if that’s what you’re asking.”
It was, but I would never admit it. I gave him a sheepish grin, and he leaned in to kiss me. As my lips parted and his tongue brushed against mine, a loud whistle rang out through the plane.
“Get it, girl!” Maxine hollered, and we broke away red-faced.
I would get her back for that one.
We unloaded our gear from the plane that rested in small hangar we’d pulled into. We didn’t fly into Logan International Airport but to a tiny, privately owned one that was conveniently near the loading docks, and they didn’t check our bags or explosives.
As our SUVs took off into the night, I found myself growing worried about this whole thing. Yes, it was totally necessary to blow this green shit up, especially after they blew up the Bisbee mine. But it was also totally illegal, and although we were going to be super careful that no one got hurt, we could still go to jail if we were caught. Jail was a death sentence. You were put in a cell with no weapons and no friends for days on end. Eventually, you fell asleep and dropped into the Dream Wars, alone and unarmed. The longest an inmate had survived in jail was thirty-seven days.
I thought of the shock I’d felt at scanning over those papers I’d found, and it realigned me with the cause. We would do this, and coupled with the missing file, and my little ‘traitors’ note, the government would know that we knew. And they would know we weren’t going to let it happen.
Damien reached across the driver seat and squeezed my thigh. “I’d rather die trying to stand up for something, than live as a slave.”
“Amen, brother,” Nox cheered, and then the entire car was silent the rest of the way.
When we reached the docks, they were easy to infiltrate. They had one guard who usually fell asleep, and after Maxine showed some cleavage and acted lost, he put down his gun to help her. She knocked him out. Now we were prying open the door to the shipping container where they stored the green stuff. As the doors creaked open, the stench hit me. The Dream Wars had that same smell, and now it was on Earth and that felt so wrong. Who knew what the long-term complications were of having this shit on Earth? Burning it into our atmosphere? How stupid.
“Okay, Kit, Nox will rig it with explosives while Brisk gets the pallet jack. You need to start working on opening the portal, and then we’re good to go,” Master Aki informed me. He’d taken point as leader of this mission somehow, and said that entire sentence with a straight face.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” I beckoned him away from the crowd, Santiago and his boys armed and suited up at the edge of the dock, looking out onto the water. I stepped aside as Master Aki got close. “Look, I made a twelve-inch portal with my hands.” I mumbled. “I can’t make a ten-foot portal. My arms don’t even go that wide.” I held my arms out for maximum effect.
He chuckled. “Kit, you didn’t make the portal with your hands. You made it with your mind.”
Yoda was back and the metaphors were alive.
“Actually, I did make it with my hands,” I countered. At least I thought I did. It had closed when I shook my hands, so yeah, I did.
He shook his head, adamant. “No.”
Ugh, this is useless. “Can’t we just blow this bitch, and get out of here?” I said in frustration.
“No, this bitch is blowing on their turf. Now concentrate,” he scolded me.
Whoa. That was the first time I’d ever heard him cuss. It shook me.
“Okay.” I could at least try. I owed everyone that.
Stepping up to the dock, in front of where Brisk was now driving a h
uge Bobcat type thing, I took a few deep breaths and started to feel around the edges of reality. I waved my hands in the air like a lunatic until I felt that heaviness, but instead of pulling it open with my hands like I had tried so many times before, I pushed it open with my mind, with thoughts of it opening.
Peeling one eye open, I saw that a one-foot-wide hole had revealed itself.
“Holy shit, homie. You hang with some crazy people,” one of Santiago’s boys said.
My eyes snapped in his direction and the hole closed.
Santiago smacked him in the back of the head, and he apologized.
“Try again. Put your hands down, they’re doing nothing,” my mentor told me.
I was tired as hell, and I wanted to sleep, but I didn’t. It was a catch-22. Taking a cleansing breath, drowning out the sounds of Brisk loading the pallet barrels onto his rig and the wide-eyed looks from Damien, I tried again.
‘Open.’
That time I mentally went deep, imagining a huge hole opening before me. After a moment, I felt the warm breeze of the Dream Wars on my face.
“Get behind her and shoot anything that moves in there,” Master Aki ordered.
I opened my eyes and was completely gob-smacked. A ten-foot circle had opened before me; where the blue ocean should be was now the Dream Wars. I could see a grunt off in the distance, but otherwise it looked calm.
The opening suddenly started to close in on itself. “Concentrate!” Master Aki shouted.
I swallowed hard and once again felt for that distinction between the two worlds.
‘Open. Stay Open. I’m in control,’ I chanted, with my eyes closed.
A motor sounded beside me, and I peeled my eyes open just in time to see Brisk coming in from an angle so he wouldn’t run me over. Santiago’s men were on my left and right, guns pointed at the green scene before me. It was hands down the most surreal moment of my life, standing there on Earth, controlling an opening that led to my worst nightmare.
“Don’t go inside with your body. We don’t know what that does,” Master Aki told Brisk.
He nodded as he continued to maneuver the load of barrels to the edge of the Dream Wars. I held my breath, concentrating on keeping it open as he drove the pallet to the edge of opening. He was half in and half out now, and it was slightly terrifying. Maxine used her booted foot to kick the barrels, and one by one they rolled into the opening, each with a stick of C4 attached to it.
Now that my eyes were focused on the sight before me, I noticed that off to the left was the little building I’d raided for the snacks and water. That was interesting. So every time a portal opens here, it matches the same spot there? That’s good information to know.
Brisk moved lighting quick and made three more runs until he had the last load of barrels on his rig. That’s when the sentry appeared in the opening.
Panic spiked through me and the opening started to close. The sentry seemed confused at what he was seeing, so he stood there dumbfounded and didn’t react. It was long enough of a pause for Santiago’s boys to light him up with bullets. The sentry scrambled backward once he realized the firepower that was coming at him.
Brisk stepped on the gas and then slammed on the brakes at the last minute, causing the load to topple over into the Dream Wars. “That was it. Light it up!” he yelled to Nox.
Nox waved everyone back. “It’s gonna kick. Get back,” he shouted.
The portal shrunk as I tried to hold my concentration, while stepping backward twenty paces. Damien’s firm grasp came up around my hips and helped me walk back. The portal had shrunk to six feet in size by that point, and the sentry was back, firing bullets out of it.
“Now!” I shouted to Nox, who pushed the button on the detonator.
I wasn’t prepared for the sound, and force that flew from the opening. The second I saw the first explosion, I started breaking down the hole. It shrank as a heat wave came at our face, and then it was gone. It left an acrid smell in the air, and two of Santiago’s guys on the ground.
“Is everyone okay?” I looked around frantically.
One by one everyone nodded, when I got to Brisk he was open-mouthed, gawking at me.
“Holy shit balls, Kit. You just…” He couldn’t seem to find the words, just left it hanging there.
I rubbed my arms nervously. “I know.”
For the next thirty seconds, everyone stared at me as if in disbelief of what had just transpired. Hell, I was in disbelief.
“Let’s get out of here,” Maxine finally said, snapping me out of my trance.
Oh yeah, that’s right. What we’d done was super illegal, and we needed to get back to Canada before the government found out what went down.
I turned to look for Damien, finding him standing farther back from our group, facing me. Behind him, a portal had opened, and a grinning breeder was standing there with her arms outstretched.
“Damien!” I shouted, but it was too late.
In one swift move, the breeder grabbed him and closed the portal around him, sucking him into the Dream Wars.
My whole body went numb as fear and shock threatened to make me pass out.
Maxine was the first to act, shaking me by the shoulders. “Open it back up!”
Her words jarred something in me, and I scrambled to calm my mind. ‘Open, open, open,’ I thought frantically, but to no avail.
Master Aki moved into my line of sight and placed a hand on either side of my head. “Nothing good can come from panic,” he said, in his normal Zen-like tone.
He was right, of course. I forced my heart to slow its frantic pumping. The edges of my vision were blurry with adrenaline but I breathed through it, trying not to think if Damien was already dead or not.
The sound of the crashing waves out on the docks, helped to try and switch my body from fight or flight mode, to a more serene state.
“Now try,” my mentor said. The rest of the gang was standing behind me, guns drawn.
I felt for those edges, that heaviness, first with my fingers and then with my mind. I let go of everything but the here and now. In that moment, I was going to open the portal; what happened next, I didn’t need to think about.
Closing my eyes, I drew in a deep calming breath.
‘Open.’ I imagined a huge hole opening between the two dimensions, giving us access to Damien.
“Let’s move out. No man left behind,” Brisk’s clipped military tone rang out, and my eyes snapped open. I’d opened the gateway and smoke was billowing into this world. I couldn’t see beyond the wreckage, and there was no sign of Damien nearby.
“What happens if we go in there?” Maxine’s voice sounded slightly high-pitched and terrified.
“I imagine we can’t wake up from this. Kit will have to let us back out,” Master Aki stated.
Whoa. I hadn’t even wrapped my mind around that.
“Freeze, hands in the air!” someone shouted behind me.
My eyes went wide as I slowly spun around. An entire SWAT team was pointing laser-scope guns at my chest. With them were a few of the FBI agents who had raided Damien’s house in Beverly Hills.
“Close the portal around us,” Maxine whispered, trying not to move her lips. The rest of our team had stepped inside, leaving just Maxine, Master Aki and me standing two feet outside of the Dream Wars, on the docks of Boston.
“I can’t,” I replied.
I figured she meant move the portal until it was around us and then close it, and that shit was way too complicated. I was having a hard enough time keeping it open with the stress.
“Plan B, then,” she mumbled, and then there was a streak of red hair in my face as she crashed into me like a linebacker, and took both me and Master Aki down, knocking us backward into the Dream Wars. The second I hit the ground, with her weight on top of me and half my weight on Master Aki, I lost concentration and the opening closed.
Maxine was crazy! They could’ve blasted us full of holes, but it’d worked. That was good enough for
me.
“Damien!” I shouted and stood. I wasn’t outfitted for the Dream Wars. I had my Kevlar jumpsuit on, but only my samurai blades and one gun. No plasma cuff or RPG launchers or even food.
Standing, I unsheathed the blades and started to run, maneuvering my way around the fire explosion as I scanned my surroundings. There was gunfire over by the building where I’d stolen the water and snacks, and I started running double time in that direction.
My legs pumped faster and faster as panic washed over me.
Please let Damien be alive.
I heard Master Aki and Maxine running behind me, and I hoped that Brisk, Nox and Santiago, along with his men, were able to help Damien.
Coming up behind the back of the building and seeing nothing, I curved to the right and made my way around the front.
Shit! Damien was underneath the breeder, holding her up by the neck as her teeth chomped in the air. She was riddled with bullets and yet still going strong. There were three sentries and half a dozen ghouls, and everyone was engaged in some kind of battle. Stupidly, none of us had worn our plasma cuffs, so we were back to the good old days, and these bastards were hungry.
Master Aki jumped in front of me, his samurai swords drawn, and started to cut down a path to Damien. He was a sight to behold with such fluid and perfect movements; I could study the swords for fifty more years and never look half as graceful as him.
As he started the commotion, I sidestepped the war zone and made it to Damien. His arm was torn up pretty bad but not bleeding crazily. If I could get this bitch off him, he would live. His eyes flicked up to me, and the breeder started to turn in my direction, following his gaze.
Oh hell no. I wasn’t dealing with another one of these psycho bitches and their mind games.
Holding my blades up high, I aimed right for her neck as Damien removed his hands from her throat and held her in place by her biceps. Coming down fast and hard, I took her head clean off. Damien yanked her body upward, trying to miss the spurt of black blood that flew from her. A little got in his hair, but he was otherwise okay.
“Behind you!” he shouted, and I spun just as the sentry knocked into me. I flew backward, my body hitting the wall with such force that I felt a rib crack. I sank to the ground and then was suddenly face-to-face with the sentry.