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

by Casey Herzog

  “I want you to see something: the reason why I’ve been so confident.”

  Maria jogged helplessly after him as he pulled her through the community’s space, past areas she knew she might never see again, and corridors she would possibly not walk down after their expedition. A pang of regret rose from her gut, the feeling of not doing enough to stop the journey from taking place. Stop this, she scolded herself. It’s already done.

  The boy pulled her all the way across the place Johanna had called Eden to the garage, a space that seemed more like a resting place for dead vehicles now. In this new world, even food and water were easier to produce than a way to repair and maintain vehicles. The war had cost humanity too many resources, and fossil fuel was now a very expensive and rare commodity.

  Alex pulled the large, rusty garage door to one side and closed it once they had entered.

  “Let me see, where is that swit—” he found the lever that activated the lights and flipped it on. “Ah. Here we are.”

  Maria blinked the brightness away, her eyes having long grown used to the dim radiance of the areas outside. When she finally saw what lay before her, she let out a soft exclamation of surprise and joy.

  She had rarely stepped into the garage, typically leaving its spaces to Alex and his father, Frank, but it seemed the young leader of the community had been up to something while she had been on her shifts.

  “Wow,” she breathed. The place was clean, the dust and dirt all rinsed away and all of the cars and larger vehicles shining under the light. “Quite a nice job. I’m guessing you brought me here to tell me you managed to finish repairing one of the cars or a couple of bikes?”

  Alex shook his head and smiled.

  “My dad…before he left, he was working on something much better than that. I, well…I finished his work. He deserved to come back and find it like this.” A look of sadness crossed Alex’s face, but he walked over to a large vehicle concealed with a cover made of plastic.

  When he pulled it off, Maria’s eyes widened.

  It was a large canvas truck, big enough to transport all of the kids and the boxes with their supplies. Alex had repaired it, washed it, and even replaced its broken windows. Maria had been present when the truck had stopped working after being a loyal servant to their community for so long.

  “You brought it back to life,” she breathed.

  “Yes, and we’re going to use it to look for our people. Some of the crates have already been loaded, those that needed to be kept somewhere safe before we left.”

  Maria’s expression warmed as she hugged him. She had needed a moment of positivity, a reason to believe. Alex had just given it to her. If they weren’t going to have to struggle their way across the lands on foot, things were different. There was less risk this way, and they could easily get away from danger.

  “I believe in this now, babe,” she said, and Alex grabbed onto her hand with a smile.

  “Let’s go, we have one last night to spend together before we leave Eden behind.”

  The two of them walked out of the garage and slammed the door shut, making sure to switch the lights off beforehand. As they walked back to their room, they passed a dark, unused chamber.

  It was at that moment that Maria let out a soft gasp and stumbled back in terror. She had seen something horrible in the blackness.

  “What? What’s wrong?” Alex turned to take care of her, lifting his flashlight and shining it into the room they had just walked by. “There’s nothing in here, Maria. What did you see? Tell me!”

  Maria shuddered, her fingers growing cold as she pulled the young man away and hurried back.

  “Nothing, I—I’m sorry. Let’s go.”

  The two of them walked away, their steps soon growing fainter until they faded completely.

  In the gloom of the dusty chamber, something opened its dark eyes and smiled.

  Nathan walked up to the garage door and pulled it open a tiny fraction, a space large enough for him to slip through. All of a sudden, he was alone with the truck and the crates.

  It was what he’d wanted all along.

  The sound of the truck’s engine igniting was greeted with a massive cheer. Alex’s big surprise brought great joy to the community, and many rushed forward to begin setting the metal plates. The only way for a vehicle to enter and exit the community was by way of a huge steel blast door that lay concealed at the end of the tunnels, but the tunnels were flooded up to shoulder height in dirty water to both give intruders a hard time and to keep the illusion of harmless sewers intact.

  Callum had long ago devised a way of transporting vehicles over the water by laying metal plates from ledge to ledge, the surfaces acting as a road for the vehicles to travel over until they reached the blast door. When the vehicle had left the area, the plates were removed and the sewers went back to being just an empty bunch of drowned tunnels with a vault door at the end.

  The truck rocked worryingly as it began to climb up the first plate and drove forward onto the second. For a moment, Maria looked at Alex uneasily as she wondered if it would have been better to load it with the crates after they left the tunnels and not before, but he had insisted.

  “Easy does it,” he said softly, pushing on the gas lightly and sending the truck forward onto the third plate, and then the fourth. By the tenth plate, he pushed the truck forward a bit faster and finally they reached the end of the tunnel.

  The great blast door sat in front of them, and it required nothing but force to be opened.

  “Boys!” he shouted, taking advantage of his leadership position, “And girls, of course…Time to heave!”

  The lever holding the door shut didn’t budge at first, but the dozens of children pushing at it gave their all.

  “Heave!”

  The lever creaked slightly, but remained stuck in place by rust and time.

  “Heave! Come on, you! Don’t make me come out there!” Alex turned to Maria, and she laughed guiltily.

  SCREEECH

  The mechanism flew open, the door detaching from the wall releasing clouds of dust raining down onto the children below. Alex hopped out of the truck and pulled his sleeves back, ramming his body weight against the massive door and pushing it up and off its frame. It swung outwards, the dim light of the polluted sky flooding in all of a sudden.

  There was collective silence, the kind of silence that follows a moment of awe. Everyone standing below the open door had seen the sky before, witnessed the world that lay beyond the surface, but few had been outside the community for months, even years. Masks and protective gear were hastily placed on faces, although Alex just stood there with his hands hanging by his sides, breathing in the air of the world above them.

  Our world, Maria thought. The one that belongs to us, yet we scurry beneath it like rats. There was nothing wrong about their expedition. Nothing at all.

  “I was wrong,” she said loudly, climbing up the small incline to join Alex at the blast door’s frame. “We must go out.” There were voices of approval from several of the gathered community members.

  Alex lowered his gaze, taking in all of the boys and girls below him. More were joining them as he watched, and finally he heard the distant slam of the vault door being closed.

  “We must,” he echoed. “This world has fallen. It has become a shadow of itself, something broken and ugly. Look at the sky; look at the lands around us. Our parents didn’t grow up in a place like this; why must we?” He shook his head and took a deep breath. “This expedition is about far more than just finding the adults of our community — it is about recovering what is ours. This is our world. It doesn’t belong to a few groups of criminals or to the remains of a dying race. It isn’t the property of a ‘Coalition’ of soldiers who bomb their own people. It is our planet. It is our Earth.” His expression turned fierce and he clenched his fists. “Today is the first day of our journey…a journey that ends when we recover what is ours by right. Who’s with me?”

  There was
a powerful roar that burst from the mouths of all the gathered teens and children, and even Maria found herself joining in.

  Whatever happened next, they were all on board.

  The conquest of the new Earth had begun.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  ~Wake-Up Call~

  Night fell. Proper night, with an actual dusk and a real moon shining in the sky. It was the first of its kind for Dante. On the previous day, he had gone straight to his room after the eventful examination and fallen asleep, ignoring the world that surrounded him. Tonight however, he had climbed to one of the upper floors where there were tall windows, and the stars were visible in all their beauty. Outside, the wind blew and the grass swayed. It was a beautiful sight and would have been a wonderful scene to fall asleep to.

  Nevertheless, the healer’s eyes remained wide open for hours.

  Fear enveloped him, the fear of loss. It was a feeling that made him sick to his stomach. Andrew had tried to calm him down by telling him that the visions could take place today as they could within five years, but Dante had seen the child and although he couldn’t properly discern the boy’s identity, it was certainly a member of the community he’d seen before.

  It won’t happen within five years because the kid looked just he did when I left the community behind. It’s happening now, soon. Coalition Special Forces had killed them, no less. The best of the best. But why?

  What got the community targeted by such an enemy? How many of them died in that vision? He needed more, but Andrew had not given him the answers. After what I did just moments after his confession, I doubt he’ll give me anything at all, ever.

  He had genuinely lost it after the teenager had told him the vision would come true. After initially pleading with the boy for more answers, he’d grabbed at King’s shirt and shook the young man threateningly. It took the strength of both Chameleon and Liquidus — Aaron and Beth, respectively — to tear him off the suddenly frightened-looking Andrew.

  The pale fear slowly fading from his face, Andrew had banished him from their quarters for a night.

  “Reflect on what you just did and what will happen if I abandon you. You’re getting only one chance to fix this,” King had said menacingly.

  Dante had not reflected on a single thing at all other than how he could save his people back home. Still, it was a useless fantasy. Who would take me back? It wasn’t like the University would let him go on his second day or ferry him across the nation just to return him to his home.

  “I have to stay,” he whispered under his breath in conclusion. “There’s no other choice.”

  Alex, Maria…Please protect the kids. Make the enemy pay at least. Don’t go down without a fight.

  A soft footstep made him turn, and Dante looked up at the entrance of the large room. There was nobody there.

  “Who are you talking to?” a voice asked from behind him, causing him to jump.

  “Whoa! Don’t creep up on people like that!” Dante put his hand on his heaving chest and narrowed his eyes. He had seen the person standing in front of him before. She had been at the examination. “You’re one of the…the ones in charge, right?”

  “The Chosen,” she corrected. She pushed the hood of her robe back, and Dante nodded. He had definitely seen her before. The woman had short, black hair, her eyes a light shade of brown. Her skin was an olive color that spoke of distant roots. She was strange, but beautiful. “The Chosen are mostly teachers, except in the case of Albridge and me. Please, tell me what has brought you up here to a forbidden area of the University?”

  Dante stiffened. More trouble?

  “Forbidden? I had no idea.”

  The woman laughed out loud and tilted her head.

  “It’s not forbidden, I was just playing around.” She smirked and sat down, signaling for Dante to do the same. He felt nervous beside her for some reason, although she was probably twice or three times his age. “You truly came at a very bad moment to the University. Everyone gets a welcome, but you showed up when the term had already started and when all the teachers were busy. I feel obliged to answer all your questions, if you wish to ask any.” She messed with his hair, and he scowled.

  “Well, you should start off with your name,” he answered in annoyance.

  “My name is Mya. I’m known as Chancellor Albridge’s ‘assistant,’ but I’m tasked with matters of security at the University. You really shouldn’t be up here alone, in all seriousness. Most students are well-behaved, but we’ve had horror stories take place from time to time…”

  “I’ll ask about that in a minute, but I have a more urgent question.” He had been curious about something until now. “Why are there so few adults here?” It almost felt like back home, but in a bad way.

  “We grind our students into meat for the kitchens once they come of age…” She laughed again and shook her head. “Kidding. This is the first building a Universitas Terra student will come across in his path to graduation. You’ll see gifted adults still studying here, but it is mostly because they have either been found too late in their lives, or perhaps, because they have received a sentence of some sort — either way, they are not the kind you will wish to associate with.”

  Dante nodded and looked up out of the window once more.

  “Why did you follow me here?”

  The question caught Mya off guard, and she couldn’t find a decent answer to give him.

  “Well, I wanted to see what you were going to do. Simple as that, really. I saw your exchange with the so-called King and wondered what your plan was next. Your arrival has really thrown everybody off balance. Maybe you can’t see it yet yourself, but you possess the potential to become the strongest of the gifted. Your abilities are incredible, and you’ve only scratched at the surface until now.”

  The healer nodded. He knew it, but during his life he’d never expected to come across any experts who could help and guide him. In his mind, he guessed he was going to end his days in some hideout, living out his days as a healer somewhere where no bandits or mutants could bother him.

  Oh boy was I wrong, he thought.

  “I don’t really know what else to ask.” He wanted to know more about himself, but Mya was probably not the one to tell him what he needed. Somehow, he didn’t want her to know too much about him either. “Just tell me the basics, I guess. The stuff you’d tell any new student.”

  Mya blinked.

  “Well…” She thought for a moment, and then took a deep breath. “You’re going to need to know your way around, so let me help you. Follow me.” She stood up and walked straight into a wall, pulling something aside and revealing a door handle. “Don’t just stand there staring, follow me!” She pulled a door open and revealed a ladder that led to the roof of the building.

  Dante walked over to it and began to climb behind her. Mya was fast and took mere seconds to reach the top; Dante did slightly worse. By the time he reached the top, he felt tired and needed a break.

  “Could you at least look up, kid?”

  Dante’s heart stopped in his chest as he looked around him. His expression quickly transformed from one of exhaustion to one of absolute joy.

  “This is…” he managed, crawling forward on the roof as the wind tugged at him and howled in his ears. “This is beautiful…”

  The entire expanse of the University spread across the world, its furthest buildings barely visible in the night fog. None were exact copies of the other; every structure had been designed differently and with different purposes, this was clear. There were even larger buildings than the one he was in.

  “The University was finally finished only five years ago — initially a pre-War concept, its construction was sped up by necessity. The world needs people like you and I if we want to recover what’s left of it.” She turned around and pointed to the distance. “Look at the point where it ends there. Did you know that we’re pushing back the pollution in the sky inch by inch?” She pointed at another place, this time a building on t
he edges of the campus. “That’s a refugee building where we take care of the lost and the displaced. Do you understand now what Albridge asked you? What this place is?”

  Dante remained silent. He was in awe. The guilty feeling of being safe while his people were in danger was fading. If I must be entirely honest, I probably wouldn’t trade being here with being back at the community, readying to fight the approaching threat. This is something else.

  “I’m out of words, really…” His breath misted in the wind. The healer’s excitement grew as he remembered he was going to spend a lot more of his time here in the following years. “There has to be a catch.”

  Mya smiled as she walked back to the ladder. The late night lesson had ended, clearly.