Dreamfall

by Amy Plum

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to sixteen-year-old me.

  And to answer her question:

  Yes, your dreams are scary enough to put in a horror novel.

  EPIGRAPH

  Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer—both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.

  —Bram Stoker, Dracula

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue: Cata

  Chapter 1: Jaime

  Chapter 2: Cata

  Chapter 3: Jaime

  Chapter 4: Fergus

  Chapter 5: Jaime

  Chapter 6: Cata

  Chapter 7: Fergus

  Chapter 8: Jaime

  Chapter 9: Cata

  Chapter 10: Jaime

  Chapter 11: Cata

  Chapter 12: Fergus

  Chapter 13: Jaime

  Chapter 14: Fergus

  Chapter 15: Jaime

  Chapter 16: Cata

  Chapter 17: Fergus

  Chapter 18: Jaime

  Chapter 19: Cata

  Chapter 20: Jaime

  Chapter 21: Fergus

  Chapter 22: Cata

  Chapter 23: Jaime

  Chapter 24: Cata

  Chapter 25: Jaime

  Chapter 26: Fergus

  Chapter 27: Cata

  Chapter 28: Jaime

  Chapter 29: Cata

  Epilogue: Jaime

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ads

  About the Author

  Books by Amy Plum

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  CATA

  WHITE ROOM.

  White lights on a white stage.

  White screen lowering from the ceiling so the white-lab-coated doctor can beam her laser pointer at a giant balloonlike image of a human brain and tell us just what she plans to do with our own messed-up models.

  As if we don’t already know. We’re neck-deep in this thing. We understand what we’re signing up for.

  The overload of clinical whiteness makes my vision swim. I rub my stinging eyes and try to focus. But it’s stuffy in the amphitheater, and I haven’t slept in about forty-eight hours. I feel my eyelids droop and my head dip as I start to nod off. Focus, Cata.

  I shift in my chair, sit up straighter, and take a deep breath. I inhale a toxic-smelling blend of antiseptic and new plastic, which ties my insides into a nauseated knot. But at least it’s woken me up.

  Okay. What did I miss? The doctor, this tiny dark-haired woman, welcomed us and introduced herself and the other doctor. He sits onstage, hunched over, with his arms crossed, next to a boy who looks embarrassed to be here. I glance down at the agenda for the names:

  Qiuyue Zhu, MD, DSc, PhD, and Thomas Vesper, MD, PhD

  Pasithea Sleep Epidemiology Research Facility, Radcliffe Medical Center

  I pinch the skin between my thumb and index finger to help me stay alert. Dr. Zhu is now pointing at a highlighted section of the brain and talking about the thalamus, “. . . one area affecting sleep, and the part we will be focusing on.”

  I glance over at Barbara: she’s listening intently like she’s hearing it for the first time, but we’ve read all of this in the paperwork the researchers sent us. I know it so well that I could probably be up there giving the presentation myself. I’m just here to sign the waiver. Along with Barbara, that is, since she agreed to be my legal guardian. Two more years until I’m officially an adult. Which is strange, since I’ve felt like one since I was about nine.

  My eyes wander, and I look at the others in the room—this motley assembly of families whose children are so crippled by insomnia that they’re as desperate as I am to try this radical new experiment. No one could possibly understand unless they had a sleep disorder themselves. They wouldn’t know that being so tired during the day that you can barely function and then wide-awake at night can make you crazy. Literally.

  My vision starts to blur. Focus, Cata. I try.

  Zhu clicks to the next slide, and up comes one of those stages-of-development graphs: a baby on the left, then a small child, adolescent, adult, and an old man far to the right. Her pointer hops back and forth between child and teen. “Most of the myelination, or development, of the brain occurs between ages five and twenty.” The red dot flicks east and lands squarely on the adolescent’s forehead like she’s hit a bull’s-eye. “Most major development has plateaued and ceased between ages eighteen and twenty. And though our brains continue to develop, after this age it’s mainly a question of deterioration and regeneration.”

  I’m sixteen. So after a couple of years, it’s basically downhill. Joy.

  “That is why it is important for this particular insomnia treatment—one that can actually change your brain patterns long-term—to be administered while you are young: before the brain finishes the myelination process.”

  Dr.—I check the agenda again—Vesper stands now and takes the mic. He’s still hunching, and his eyes are really deep set. Cavernous. He looks like a vulture. A vulture who’s going to be messing with my mind. Not terribly reassuring.

  The vulture speaks. “Your participation will help thousands of people like yourself. A week from today you will be our partners in a major breakthrough—not only in the treatment of, but in the cure for sleep disorders.”

  Partners? More like test animals, I think, and scan the room to check out my fellow lab rats. In the front row, center, is a small boy wearing a knitted hat with earflaps and fingerless gloves to accessorize his short-sleeved shirt and shorts. It’s an unseasonably hot March in Larkmont. He’s writing everything down in a notebook, oblivious to his parents, who sit on either side casting worried looks at one another.

  To my right there’s a boy about my age, maybe a little older. His skin is light brown, and the woman sitting next to him looks like she’s from India. From the way she touches his arm—lightly but protectively—it’s clear that she’s his mother.

  The boy’s got black wavy hair and is cute in a skater-boy way—if you ignore the dark circles under his eyes and the bruise on his chin. I wonder why he’s here. What he’s got that’s bad enough to keep him from sleeping. It could be anything: OCD, depression, narcolepsy, or PTSD, like me. For the millionth time, I think of the absurdity of it all: It’s not like I’ve survived a war or some sort of horrible disaster. My trauma is just my life . . . stretching back over the years like a fire pit I’ve had to cross barefoot. It wasn’t until I got some distance from it—left my life, my family behind—that the doctors claim the post-traumatic stress kicked in. I think of my sister and brother, and guilt twists in my chest like a knife. I left them. With him. I can’t think about that now. I look at the girl in the row in front of me.

  She’s blond and pale and superthin. She looks worn and drawn like everyone else in the room. But with a huge dose of sadness. Her face is so empty it’s like a bottomless pit swallowed her features. Her parents hover, more obvious with their protectiveness than the mother with her son. She’s a girl in danger . . . of what is anyone’s guess.

  A boy farther to my right looks about my age. Dirty blond hair. Tanned and freckled skin. Nondescript. He fades into the background next to the flashiness of his parents, whose jet-set casual clothes and impatient expressions suggest they’re missing cocktail hour at the yacht club.

  There’s a boy with a short-cropped Afro sitting next to a woman dressed in a brightly patterned tribal-looking dress with matching head wrap. The way they’re concentrating on Vesper’s words makes me wonder if they speak English. The boy looks out of place in a way only a foreigner can.

  And then there are
two parents sitting alone. Holding hands. Not in a loving way, but like they’re trying to keep each other from falling off a cliff. Their faces are drawn. Gaunt. They are going through something bad—no question. Their child isn’t with them, but they obviously belong here.

  The skater boy leans over the empty seat between us and whispers, “Bet I can read your mind.”

  I glance back at Barbara. She and his mom are both absorbed in the presentation and have decided to ignore us.

  “Go ahead. Give it a try,” I whisper back.

  “You’re thinking, How did I get thrown in with this room full of weirdos?”

  I can’t help but smile. “You’re half-right. Room full of weirdos . . . check. But I actually included myself in the freak-fest. I feel right at home here.”

  He reaches out his hand. “I’m Fergus.”

  I shake it. “Cata. What are you in here for?”

  “‘Insomnia stemming from narcolepsy,’” he says, using air quotes. “You?”

  “Insomnia stemming from PTSD.”

  He nods, and looks like he wants to ask more—what trauma I am post—but is polite enough not to.

  “I feel like we’re in one of those twelve-step meetings. Like I should stand up and say, ‘Hi, I’m Cata, and I’m an insomniac.’”

  “Yeah, but instead of group hugs, we get our brains fried.” This boy is funny, and I immediately feel a camaraderie.

  Fergus’s mom smiles apologetically and pats him on the arm. “Honey, you should really be listening.”

  He shrugs helplessly, but leans back in and, after a brief hesitation, whispers, “Are you scared?”

  I nod. “You?”

  “Shitless,” he responds.

  “I know . . . We could ask for adjoining beds so we can hold hands while we get our brains fried,” I say, trying to act brave and flippant, and then realize how what I just said could be read. Did I just engage in nervous flirting? I wait for a blush, but none comes. I’m too tired to even be embarrassed.

  Fergus smiles widely, apparently reading my thoughts, or an approximation of them.

  “Honey,” Fergus’s mom says. He wiggles his fingers good-bye.

  I turn my attention to the stage as the kid who was sitting next to Vesper stands and shuffles over to join him at the mic. “This is Charles,” Vesper says, “the sole member of test group Alpha. He’s the reason your Beta group even exists. Just three months ago, Charles was like you. Sleepless and desperate for a solution. Now he experiences full nights of sleep.”

  Full nights of sleep. Those words are like a drug. Too tempting to be legal. Too promising to be true. I look around. The others want it as badly as I do.

  “Does anyone have a question for Charles?” Vesper asks, and the boy in the front row’s hand shoots up.

  “You mentioned that one of the side effects of the treatment is short-term memory loss,” he asks. “How long will it last?”

  “The retrograde amnesia produced by the treatment will only cause you to forget events that happened in the days or weeks before treatment,” the vulture responds. “But that is short-lived, and you should regain your complete memory quickly. Charles, would you like to share how this went for you?”

  The “sole member of test group Alpha” starts talking, but I’m not listening anymore. This meeting feels like a theatrical production. The white room, white lab coats, medical words, and technical images are all meant to lull us into a sense of security. Place yourselves in our hands. We know what we’re doing.

  And what, exactly, will they be doing? Well, in a few short days, they’ll be laying us out in a lab, fitting our heads with electrodes, and running electrical currents through our brains until our insomnia is fried into extinction. They’ll be shocking us into normalcy.

  Yes, I’m scared. But if this is what I have to do to be able to sleep again, I’m ready to sign my life away.

  CHAPTER 1

  JAIME

  I’M IN A SCENE FROM STAR TREK—IN THE HIGH-TECH, sterile setting of the flight deck. At least, that’s what it looks like from where I sit overlooking the darkened laboratory, where a computerized column rising from the center of the room flashes ominously with multicolored lights.

  The door opens, and a stream of gurneys is rolled in one by one by nurses wearing light blue uniforms. The weird lighting casts their faces in shadow.

  I pinch myself for the nth time for proof that this is real. I, a mere premed student, am sitting here in the world’s leading sleep technology clinic, about to witness a cutting-edge experiment.

  Okay, maybe it helped a bit that I’m at the top of my class at Yale. And it didn’t hurt that my mom is the personal assistant for one of the clinic’s biggest donors. But I count everything I get in life as a gift. There is nothing I take for granted.

  Focusing on what is happening below me, I sketch the room’s layout in my notebook. The nurses are carefully transferring their seven wards onto beds arranged around the column like spokes on a wheel. The column flashes like a psychotic Christmas tree and sends out a whirring electrical hum. Stenciled numbers are painted on the concrete floor next to the beds—one to seven.

  The nurses bustle around prepping the patients for the doctors’ arrival by attaching sensors taped all over the subjects’ bodies to cords spewing from the column. As each one connects, a light changes from flashing red to stable green, until there are only a few pulsing diodes left, scattered around the pillar.

  It’s slightly chilly in the room. The subjects are wearing hospital-issued socks and are draped with those metallic insulated blankets designed to trap body heat. I don’t realize they’re conscious until one lifts her hand to drowsily scratch her nose. Then I notice small movements from the others: wiggling toes, shifting heads, a nod from one boy when a nurse whispers something to him. Their movements are slow, drugged.

  I pull my gaze away from the scene taking place below and acquaint myself with the area I’ve been assigned. The “monitoring station” I’m seated at is on a platform raised a couple of feet above the test area, allowing me and the researchers a clear view of all seven subjects.

  The thick three-ring binder in front of me bears the mouthful of a title: “Continuous Low-Current Electroconvulsive REM Inducement Therapy: Test File.” I flip it open to a page headed “Trial Parameters” and begin reading.

  I’m going to have to write this all up into a paper describing my six hours of field experience, so I start taking notes:

  •seven subjects, ages thirteen to nineteen

  •all suffer from chronic insomnia

  •new electroconvulsive technology will be used to try to cure them

  •trial will last five hours, fifty minutes

  That, of course, reduces a whole page of scientific explanations to four simple bullet points, but the paper is supposed to be more about my experience than explaining the experiment to my professor.

  I turn the page to the in-depth explanation of the thinking behind the experiment, precedents, and a whole lot more. Holy crap, this stuff is dense. I wish I had been given access to the information before today. It would have been nice to memorize the whole file and be better prepared. But Dr. Zhu and Dr. Vesper delayed my introductory meeting until yesterday (“for security purposes”), and, even then, only gave me the barest of descriptions of the trial.

  A large flat-screen monitor takes up most of my work space, and in front of it, there’s an expensive-looking computer. I’m not sure what it’s for, since the doctors specified that any notes I want to take with me must be written in the notebook I bought last night. I was told not to bring my laptop, and was actually asked to leave my phone at the front desk. Again “for security purposes.” Which I’m guessing means they’re worried I might upload this stuff to YouTube when they aren’t looking.

  Although I basically had to sign my life over in the confidentiality contract, I’m not complaining. Zhu and Vesper are rock stars in the sleep research world, working on cutting-edge brain studies. Th
is trial is going to shoot them into the stratosphere of medical-world fame. Like Nobel-quality material.

  The nurses are now placing IV bags on poles next to the subjects’ beds and plugging the tubes into the central column. I wonder what they’re for. I look under the heading “Pretrial Preparations,” and note:

  •subjects received mild sedation before they were brought to lab

  •they must remain aware until researchers speak with them individually before the trial starts

  •IVs provide the anesthesia that will knock them out

  I note which drug they’re using and read on. One of the machines they’re being hooked up to is a polysomnograph. I studied up on those last night, following Dr. Zhu and Dr. Vesper’s vague explanation, in my scramble to cram as much as I could. PSGs are typical equipment used in sleep studies, which monitor the subject’s brain function, eye movement, muscle activity, and heart rhythm. What’s not typical in this case is that this PSG will be monitoring seven subjects at the same time. This is where the high-tech column comes in.

  There is a whole section for “The Tower,” as it is called, which is basically the brain of the experiment. It manages the anesthesia, the electrical current, the feedback—making sure everything is equal and simultaneous.

  With a computer treating the seven subjects identically, the researchers will be able to say that the conditions were the same for all of the subjects when they report their findings. Something this groundbreaking will be picked apart by critics . . . especially since it’s an invasive treatment. Electroconvulsive therapy for children and teenagers is a hotly debated topic. It’s even illegal in some states. Until its efficacy is confirmed, this could kick up a shit storm in the medical world, so everything about the test has to be perfect.

  The door opens and in walk Dr. Zhu and Dr. Vesper. They glance around the room, their eyes flitting up to where I sit at the monitoring station. They approach the beds—Vesper hunching over as he moves; Zhu walking ramrod straight—double-checking the placement of the electrodes being attached to each subject’s temples, inserting the IV needles into the backs of their hands, speaking a few words of encouragement, and giving them a squeeze of the hand and a reassuring smile.