The Lucid Dreamer (Dystopian Child Prodigy SciFi) (The Unmaker Series Book 1)

by Casey Herzog

Andrew nodded.

  “Good answer, actually. I was going to tell you that I’m neither the strongest nor the smartest. But that’s because I don’t need to be. All that matters is that everyone else thinks I am one or the other. Or both, most of the time.”

  Dante conceded a smile. The teenager was good at what he did. A manipulative bastard, the boy thought. If this place falls, I wouldn’t mind having him at my side.

  Before the healer could continue prematurely imagining the fall of the University, King spoke up.

  “We’re here. Sorry for taking this long route, I just wanted to shake off any pursuers, you know, those people that…” his voice trailed off in Dante’s mind, for the healer wasn’t listening at all anymore.

  “Wow,” he breathed. They had reached a beautiful area, a place that made the already-magnificent University look even more impressive. “I can’t believe this.”

  The corridor had opened up into a beautiful garden, its lawns covered with flowers and orchards, with insects flying around in tranquility as they hopped from flower to flower. In the center of the garden was a plaza with a willow, its long branches brushing against the old, weathered stone below. There were benches beneath its shadow, one of them occupied by a laughing young couple. A fiery torch was lit on each corner of the plaza, and Dante let out a soft chuckle at the delicate nature of the place.

  “Do you like it?” Andrew asked.

  “I love it.” He felt his eyes going moist and held back the tears of emotion he felt at witnessing such beauty.

  “Then welcome, Dante.” King put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “This is your new home.”

  The very last surprise was still to come.

  Andrew guided him away from the gardens and into a concealed corridor to where the boy’s rooms were. Dante managed to spot a clock on a wall and suddenly understood why he was so tired. It’s nine o’ clock. I should be sleeping so that I can be rested for my first day of class.

  King stopped in front of a door with a scratched X on it.

  “This one is yours. Remember that I promised you would have interesting company? Thank me later. Good night, Dante.” He opened the door and allowed Dante through.

  “Good night, King.” The door was closed behind him, and Dante took a step forward. It was dark inside the room, and he felt nervous. “Hello?”

  There was something about the darkness that didn’t feel right. He looked around and realized that he couldn’t measure the depth of the room for all he tried, almost as if he had stepped into an abyss. A small voice in Dante’s mind begged him to turn the door’s knob and flee, but he couldn’t bring himself to. I’ve come too far to flee.

  “Who’s in here?” he asked with an authoritative tone. “I can see through your gift. Quite an interesting ability to have, actually.”

  A soft laugh came from one side of the room, and Dante felt relief wash over him. His ploy had worked — he didn’t know exactly what the stranger had done, but it involved changing the nature of the walls and floor around him somehow.

  “You’ve got me.” The boy stepped forward and the floor suddenly shifted in color, the blackness turning to a soft cream color, as if someone had dropped light-colored paint into a dark pool. “How’d you see it?”

  Dante shrugged and shook his head.

  “Sixth sense, I guess. The darkness didn’t seem to be coming from my surroundings, but the room itself somehow.”

  “I see.” The other boy was short and stout, his freckled and friendly face half-obscured by a large pair of spectacles. “I’ll work on that. Thanks, healer.”

  “My name is Dante. What’s yours?”

  “I’m Aaron. They call me The Chameleon around here. Wrongly, I’d say. It’s not my appearance that I change; it’s my surroundings. Always be watchful with what you see when I’m around…my abilities can fool even the most observant of watchers.”

  Dante took his words into account and looked to the far side of the room where the bunk was. Despite the room’s limits now becoming visible through the darkness, it was still a large chamber.

  “I’m sleepy. Do you mind if I go to bed?”

  “Of course not. You can use the bathroom if you want.” Dante nodded and walked towards a side door that was probably the restroom, but he crashed uselessly against a wall. A real door appeared beside it a moment later. “Like I said, always stay alert,” Aaron laughed.

  “There will come a moment when you need my help. I may just let you die,” Dante said intensely. e enHjoyed the look on the other boy’s face as the lad was forced to decide whether the healer was being serious or not. “One last question: what are we called?”

  “We? Already?” Aaron laughed. “We call ourselves…The Lucid Dreamers.”

  With a smile, Dante nodded and closed the door behind him. He looked at himself in the ornate mirror before him and splashed his face with water. His sea-green eyes were different somehow; it was as if he had matured since the last time he’d seen them back home at the community. True enough, the feeling of purpose was only growing more and more within him now, and he felt that despite the bad experiences he had been through, they had helped him grow.

  “I can do this,” he whispered to himself in the mirror.

  Tomorrow was a big day, but he was ready to face it.

  He saw the faces of the people he loved in his head — Johanna, Margaret, Callum — and it made him stronger.

  Time to make you all proud.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Sphinx

  That night Dante dreamed.

  He saw himself sitting on a small hill, the wind pulling at his clothes as he looked out at the wastelands. There was a familiarity about the lands around him that he couldn’t pinpoint, but he had definitely been there before. The soft roar of distant thunder reached him, and he pulled his jacket closer around him. It was strange to be out without a mask, but in dreams there was always an unrealistic sense of security.

  Suddenly, a kid ran across Dante’s field of vision. The healer turned where he sat, watching the child leaping over rubble and stumbling his way to what looked like an open hatch on the ground several feet away. There was a look of fear on his face that made Dante sit up and watch as the boy slid down into the darkness and closed the hatch as carefully as he could to avoid making noise.

  Dante didn’t understand what was happening.

  “What…?”

  A moment later, the six men appeared. They had rifles, their helmets and visors a bright shade of red with a familiar sign on the sleeves of their gray uniforms.

  Shit, Coalition Special Forces, Dante thought. He’d seen them only once before, luckily not having to fight the dangerous individuals who were known for their absolute disregard for human or Outsider life. There were tales about their training — it was said they were made to kill countless innocent people until the feeling of remorse wore off. Those who couldn’t deal with it were executed. But those are just tales…right?

  Dante jogged down the hill and followed the men, his curiosity getting the better of him and a terrible feeling taking hold of his heart.

  The soldiers were no fools, and soon they followed their prey’s tracks back to the hatch in the ground. Dante saw the largest of the men pull open the hatch with a grunt, and the rest came to peer down into the opening.

  “As suspected,” the one in charge said with a robotic voice. His helmet had a pair of white stripes around it. “Rommel, keep watch. The rest of you, inside.”

  His orders were followed immediately, the red-helmeted figures slipping down a ladder and disappearing. Dante’s curiosity got the better of him, and he jogged down the hill to get a closer look.

  I have to see what happens nex—No, wait.

  His heart sunk and he froze where he stood, just yards away from Rommel. This place wasn’t just familiar.

  He had known all along, but the dream had kept him in a haze.

  This place is the community, he knew.

  A moment lat
er, the gunfire began.

  The gunfire and the screams.

  His own scream ended as he woke up.

  Aaron was standing above him, staring at him curiously.

  “I was about to wake you up, but it seems something ugly already did it for me,” he said with a strange look. “Are you okay? Guess you’ve seen as much shit as we all have.”

  “Of course I have. Yeah, I’m fine. First lesson coming up?”

  “For you maybe. I wonder how you’ll cope with catching up with us. The teacher’s already given us several classes on the current subject…still, you’re younger than most of us, so you have time.” The freckled boy shook his head. “Look, just get ready. We’ve got class with the Sphinx. He’ll take pleasure in ruining your life if you’re late.”

  “The…Sphinx?” Dante got off his bed groggily and remained sitting there for a few seconds. A proper bed. Only now did he realize that he’d slept on a bed for the first time in ages.

  “Just get up, damn it!”

  Dante ran to the bathroom.

  Once he was done, they both stepped out of their room and walked along the corridor. Several others joined in on their way out. The plaza was as beautiful as before, Aaron filling the place with light as they walked through it. He crerated the illusion they were witnessing a beautiful dawn. Dante admired the boy’s ability, even if his own was far more crucial to survival.

  By the time they’d walked out onto the main corridor that led back to the stairs, there were at least a dozen Lucid Dreamers walking with them. Other students kept their distance, and Dante saw Andrew walking at the very front, his eyes focused on something in front of him as if he was witnessing a vision in his mind.

  Maybe he is. The name of the gang, the dream he’d had…Dante felt there was something strange going on, but he would have to wait to ask anything about it.

  They walked down the stairs and crossed the entrance lobby. Dante expected them to head towards the corridor that led to the examination room, but instead they opened a pair of double doors and walked out onto a larger hall. This one was similarly designed to the one they had just walked through, but it had flowing scriptures on the walls that seemed to transform as the observer moved. The result was that Dante read many different things, depending on the angle he was looking from. They were mostly quotes by famous, long-dead people, but there were other phrases without an author cited right after them.

  “Who wrote those things?”

  “The teachers at the University,” a pretty girl said from beside Dante. She flashed a smile at him, and he blushed. “My name is Beth. Nice to meet you, Dante; we’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Dante was left with his jaw hanging open as she hurried her strides and left him behind.

  “Hey, you,” Aaron said from nearby, “Keep up. The Sphinx won’t take ‘I was too busy recovering from meeting a cute girl to arrive on time’ as an excuse!”

  The healer cursed at the other boy under his breath and followed them through another doorway, and finally they entered the classroom.

  It was an amphitheater-type lecture hall with ascending rows of seats that stood before a platform at the very bottom, where a man waited, resting against a screen. There was very dim lighting, and he was visible only as a silhouette contrasting against the soft, blurry blueness behind him.

  “That’s him,” Aaron whispered, and they all hurried to their seats. Students of all ages, shapes, and sizes already occupied most of the other seats.

  Dante looked down at the figure standing in the shadows and felt uneasy. It could have been his imagination, but it was as if the man was staring up right at him. Even after he sat between Aaron and Beth, the girl from before, he still felt the heavy gaze on him.

  Two more students arrived, and the mysterious figure waved a hand dismissively. The classroom door slammed shut and locked, a female student arriving a moment too late and looking shamefully through the door’s window. Dante saw the disappointment on her face and realized that students were given a very small window of time to arrive to class — it wasn’t even five minutes since the class was supposed to begin.

  “There’s always somebody,” a voice hissed from the front of the classroom, and the healer’s head snapped back to the man standing by the screen. “I see a new face,” the teacher purred hungrily, as if he wanted to find a way to humiliate Dante. “Stand up, boy…”

  Dante stood immediately, not needing to be told that he was the one the man was speaking of.

  “Yes, sir?”

  He heard Andrew chuckle softly, but ignored it.

  “Introduce yourself.” The teacher’s order was sharp like the crack of a whip.

  “My name is Dante. I’m ten years old and I am from the Southeast. I arrived here yesterday.”

  “What else?”

  Dante blinked.

  “I have the abilities to heal and repair, as well as to destroy things.” There were excited whispers. Everybody had been waiting for this moment.

  “Okay. Destroy something,” the man in the shadows said.

  “What? I…”

  “Destroy something or leave the classroom.”

  Dante looked furiously at his new friends, but they turned away and pretended not to notice. He stared at the man in the front of the room, but still couldn’t spot his identity.

  “No.” Several people gasped. There were excited murmurs.

  “What?”

  “No. I’m not destroying anything. I’ve answered enough questions. I’m going to sit down and listen to your class now, sir.”

  The boy sat, and everybody remained in a tense silence. The man at the front of the room didn’t move, his gaze still boring into Dante’s own. Andrew was staring at him now, a look of respect on his face.

  Finally, there was movement in front of the screen, and its surface lit up, a blue background forming to illuminate the man. Immediately, Dante was shocked at his appearance.

  The Sphinx was actually a handsome young man in his late twenties, and he was smiling.

  “Bravo, kid.”

  Dante’s eyebrow rose.

  “Sir?”

  “It’s about time somebody stood up to me.” He soon corrected himself, as if he didn’t want to undermine his own authority, “Not that I’ll forgive that from anyone else. So watch yourselves.” He turned to the screen and words formed on it immediately.

  THE BASICS OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY – LESSON FIVE: EMPATHY

  “I’ll lend you the first four,” Aaron whispered quickly, as tablet-screens popped out of the desks in front of them.

  “Chameleon, I’ll be the one talking for the rest of the class, thank you.” The Sphinx’s eyes were as hard as stone. “If he’s missed the first four lessons, then I guess I’ll need to find a way to get him up to speed, not you. You’re not the teacher here, I am.”

  Aaron flinched slightly and looked down at his screen in shame. Dante began to understand why everyone feared the teacher, but he liked the man’s methods.

  “Very well, let’s begin.” The lesson that followed was one that kept the students on the edges of their seats. Dante had to remind himself several times to continue writing while listening, such was the hold that the Sphinx had on his attention.

  The lesson’s title had sounded like something he could have learned back home at the community, but soon Dante realized there was a different touch applied by the instructor to adapt his class to the reality of the new world.

  Pictures of modern warlords were shown, and their case studies were used as examples. Many were long deceased, though others still continued their reign of terror. Eventually, the presentation passed over onto Lord Russell’s face. Dante’s lip curled in contempt, and the memories came gushing forth again in a wave of emotion.

  “…known for maiming his prisoners, this particular psychopath terrorizes the southern city of Ayia and its surroundings—”

  “Used to,” Dante blurted out. There was silence as everybody turned to look at him. Even
the instructor stopped talking and looked up as a spotlight shone down on the healer. Big mistake, he thought with shame. He hadn’t wanted the attention, but the reply had come naturally out of his mouth.

  “Did you just interrupt me?” The Sphinx asked, his eyes narrowing and mouth tightening.

  “I’m sorry sir. Lord Russell of Ayia is dead. He killed people I loved, but we killed him a week ago.” Dante looked down and remembered Johanna’s gasp as the warlord’s blade had sliced her in half — she hadn’t even had the chance to scream in pain. It had been too much. The boy bit down hard on his lip and wished he could have saved her somehow.