by Rob Horner
Another fanciful idea of the times was the concept of nuclear winter, where the explosion of a certain number of atomic weapons would inject so much soot into the atmosphere it would block out the warming rays of the sun, resulting in a global cooling that would kill plant life. Originally posited by Richard Turco in 1983, he had since backed off the extreme outcome scenario, though nothing stopped the media and politically minded scientists from running with the scare tactics.
This was a current debate on many of the major news networks, fearmongering in response to Iraq’s scorched earth philosophy, that if we can’t have it, no one else can mentality behind their setting fire to oil wells, lakes, and fire trenches as they retreated from Kuwait. These fires were each thought to be injecting as much soot into the atmosphere as a nuclear explosion, and the evening news was filled with dire predictions of impending doom.
It wouldn’t take a nuclear winter to decimate humanity, not if what Iz and Fish predicted came to pass. Just a couple of missiles aimed at strategic places where humans gathered, their heads full of ideas of rebuilding, rebellion, and redemption.
Into the silence flashed a scene from my dream the night before.
I was standing in the center of an aisle made up of portable dividers which separated cubicles which contained nothing but a desk, a computer, a phone, a chair on rollers, and a secretary, though not all of them were occupied. From my position, I couldn’t make out a company logo or name, and the police piling into the building made a search for evidence unwise.
I dropped to the ground between fake aisle walls, scurrying on hands and knees into the nearest unoccupied cubicle. My heart raced and my hands clenched and unclenched, that fight or flight response shooting adrenaline through my arteries, setting every nerve alight and ready to respond.
I could purge them all, I thought, and immediately my hands began to glow.
“How do we get in?” a human voice asked. No identification, no presentation of a warrant.
A female voice with a huskiness to it that sounded like something needed to be cleared out of her throat answered, “There’s a stairwell down into the facility in the back of the building.”
“It would be good to have the cops on our side, if we can manage it,” Brian said.
The time to ask about the dreams was now, before the conversation got sidetracked again.
“Actually,” I began, “before we talk about that, I need to tell you about my dreams.”
Chapter 11
Dreams
The first dream I had didn’t really count as such, being more a memory of actions that occurred while my mind was still on cooldown. It was right after the red light came out from the trailer and the Phosphorescent Catalyst came down, the two battling inside of me.
For a few minutes my conscious mind played armchair quarterback while my body ran through the dark trailer park, almost gave a Volvo a new blood-red paint job and staggered down a couple of residential blocks. The quote-unquote dream ended when my alarm woke me up for school the next morning, still wearing the same clothes and sporting a four-fingered scratch mark that could have been left by a Freddy Krueger who wanted to play, rather than kill.
The second dream was much stranger, harder to define, and had the greatest lasting impression. It began in a dark hallway of stone walls, smoking torches, and fine bone grit littering the floor. I started walking one way, only to come to a crossroads where every direction but the one I’d come from appeared to lead into a red light. Standing on opposite sides were the two girls who each had a hold on me, though in different ways. At that time, Crystal was the romantic interest, and Tanya was the one that got away. Both were too far away for me to save.
I ran back down the tunnel as the red light consumed them, only now the tunnel had alcoves on both sides. In the first set were two bodies suspended on meat hooks, the kind you see in all the good horror movies, hanging from the ceiling in the freezer where at least one victim will be trapped by the serial killer/unkillable monster/risen dead teenager who had sex a year before on prom night and shouldn’t have. I didn’t know who they were at the time but put names to the faces two nights later when I met Gina and James. Those bodies didn’t just resemble the two Mandatum Chosen. They were the redhead and the black guy who could shoot lightning out of his hands, right down to the fade on the side of his head.
The second alcove held Tiffany and Ricardo, recognizable even in death, hands reaching for one another just as I’d seen them do in the elevator. No one I’d met yet resembled the third pair, an Asian woman with blond hair or a six-foot-tall Amazon, yet it was only a matter of time. There was no doubt I would eventually meet them.
The lesson of the dream was in its conclusion, when the red light overcame me, changing me into one of them. With so much of it coming true, the end must also be accurate.
I was doomed to lose.
There was a third dream, more a snapshot of memory from before it happened, like seeing a trailer for a movie months before it comes out, then going to see it and realizing you’d already seen that exact scene. It happened the night before our raid on the carnival and centered around a period when the girls were taken by the demons and I was desperately searching for them while also trying to avoid being caught. Out of nowhere Crystal appeared, and we hunkered under a dirty trailer. Once the demons passed us by, she revealed her true nature, transforming and attempting to capture me with the aid of a half-dozen other demons. The dream ended with me being converted. But because of the dream, because I remembered her words even as she spoke them, I was able to escape, meeting up with the forces from Mandatum and coming to this installation with them.
Then came the dream last night, the same attack seen from four possible viewpoints, and all the implications that went with the last one.
Iz and Brian goggled through most of my recitation, but Fish became visibly agitated. Well, agitated in that he began bouncing slightly in his chair.
“This is fantastic!” he said when I finished.
“I don’t follow,” Iz said.
“It’s what we talked about earlier, about a residual connection. Only it’s different than we imagined. Instead of a weakness the Dra’Gal can exploit, it seems he’s retained a rudimentary link to their hive mind. It’s ephemeral, maybe only present when his conscious mind is shut down, but it’s allowing him to see their plans, which his brain translates into dreams.”
I started to object, but Brian beat me to it.
“Wait a minute. That might make sense if he dreamed of something like, I don’t know, the President being converted and holding a press conference from the Rose Garden where he declared today to be National Dra’Gal Day. That would be a plan. He’s seeing people he’s never met, remembering conversations before they happen. And now picturing an attack on this facility.”
“From four distinct places,” I chimed in.
“Yeah that! Which to me—and I admit I’m not a genius scientist—still seems like something not set in stone yet, something his choices can change.”
“I’m with them on this, Fish,” Iz said.
“I wasn’t finished,” the Quin protested, his reflective visor turning from one person to another. “Let’s take the people in the dream, as that may seem to be the hardest to explain.”
“Okay,” Iz said.
“We know Josh was a Dra’Gal, and he was inside Mandatum. So, we assume the Dra’Gal know about us and where we are. What if Johnny was also picking up the faces of people from Josh? Seeing what he’s seen and who he’s seen.”
The idea was compelling. Iz and Brian both looked thoughtful, mulling it over.
“I could also be picking up the idea of an attack the same way,” I said. “But that doesn’t explain why I’d see it from four different places.”
“It might help if we cleared away some of the unknowns,” Fish answered, “see if we can narrow down your location in subsequent dreams by eliminating possibilities.”
“I like where this
is going,” Iz said.
“I wish I could say it isn’t possible that some of our people upstairs have been converted, but we already know the Dra’Gal can convert us. They took almost my entire planet by surprise. Just knowing that, and knowing that one Dra’Gal managed to infiltrate us, might be all the impetus your mind needed, especially if you were picking up stray transmissions along the network.”
“So, where’s the hidden stairwell?” I asked.
“There isn’t—” Iz began, but Fish waved his protest away.
“There is a back-door stairway in the Staging Area,” Fish said.
“What the hell?” Iz bellowed.
“Calm down, my friend,” Fish said, rising and standing next to the Marine. “My people insisted on it, a way for me to be extricated in case the worst was to happen.”
Iz sputtered, “I’m the man you brought in to organize security! I’m the one you trusted to identify potential recruits. You’re telling me none of your kind trusted me to know about this?”
“You have to see how that also makes you a prime target for conversion. If the Dra’Gal got you, well, there had to be at least one thing you didn’t know about.”
As suddenly as his anger erupted, Iz quieted. “I can’t betray what I don’t know about.”
“Right.”
Brian’s eyes narrowed. “So, does that mean your people are the only ones who know about it?”
Fish shook his helmeted head. “Sadly, yes, which also means another part of your dream was probably accurate. We need to get Angie up there to see who’s been converted.”
“No, we need to seal off that stairway! It’s a liability,” Iz asserted.
“But it’s one we know about,” Brian said. “We could probably hold it, now that we know they might be coming that way.”
“If it’s in the Staging Area, we can lock down the whole room, if need be, right from here.”
“Actually,” Brian said, a flash of light surrounding his hands, “we could just clear it out and let the bad guys come to us.”
The light faded, revealing what looked like a hand grenade in each big hand.
“Holy crap, you’re like a militaristic Mary Poppins!” Iz exclaimed with a smile.
Brian laughed, dismissing the explosives in a second flash of light.
“Now just hold on,” Fish said, his voice rising in tone for the first time in my experience with him. “These are my people manning those offices. We must be careful about this. I don’t want any of them getting hurt.”
A peculiar aspect of the dream resurfaced in my head. None of the people up there were wearing helmets.
“How can they be Quins?” I asked. “I didn’t see any helmets in my dream.”
“Were you aware, before this moment, that the upstairs was staffed by my people specifically?” Fish asked. “Except for the cooks and the security staff, who are all ex-military.”
I struggled through my memory, trying to recall every detail I’d heard from the night before until the time I passed out in the Instilling Room. Finally, I shook my head. “No, I don’t think I heard anything about that.”
It would be interesting to see if my dream left out a detail like that because it really was just interpreting stray impressions, rather than making actual predictions. But speaking of actual predictions…
“How do you explain my dreaming about Crystal being converted, and the conversation we had under a trailer?”
That stumped them. Fish had some good ideas, and it wouldn’t be right to call them all incorrect because one fact didn’t fit. The simple truth is that we were walking a line between the knowable and the unknown. Fish’s explanation of the mechanism used to give us abilities gave a reason for the differences in them. But it didn’t explain everything. Many of the abilities were physical in nature, like mine, Chris’s, and Jason’s. Others like Gina, James, and Michael could conjure energies out of nothing. Brian, Jeff, and Tiffany could manipulate matter. While Mrs. Jean and Dave (don’t call him mister) developed powers related to telepathy. I should probably include Tanya in with them, since telekinesis is so often linked to telepathy in the comic books. Wasn’t it possible that I might have a precognitive ability, something that flowed alongside my brush with the hive-mind, maybe even inspired by it?
“That’s an interesting theory,” Fish said when I asked. “So far, you’re the only person to have been interacting with the Dra’Gal network when the Catalyst struck. Who can say what it did?”
“Seems like you should be able to,” Brian muttered. I tossed him a thankful smile. That wasn’t the first time he’d come to my defense, and his support was welcome. It felt a long time since an adult had truly had my side of things.
“That’s just rude,” Iz replied, glaring at the bigger police officer. “Considering what his people have been through, and that they have nothing to gain by helping us—”
“Pardon, Iz, but they do have something to gain,” Brian replied. “I know I’m new, but I’ve been trained to put together pieces, find motive where there doesn’t seem to be any. And for all that the Quins may seem to be acting altruistically in coming to our defense, the simple fact is that if they help us defeat the Dra’Gal, they’ll be able to reclaim their home world. Am I right, Fish?”
Fish didn’t hesitate in answering. “That is one idea. But it’s not our primary reason for helping you. We could sit back and wait, let the Dra’gal defeat you. Your planet appears to be much better suited to their physiology. There have been some among us, a small but vocal minority, who’ve advocated just such an approach. Why risk ourselves by alerting your people to our presence, or to the existence of life outside your planet?
“But the Dra’Gal are a threat to all peoples, not just ours and yours. In defeating them, we protect your people, and assure ourselves they can’t come back to our planet.”
Iz grunted, which might have meant I told ya or I didn’t think of it like that. Brian also let the subject drop, which was cool of him. A lot of guys might have pressed forward, arrogance driving them to try to get an acknowledgment of their idea, or praise for their insight. It was clear that Brian took no pleasure in finding holes in other people’s arguments. It’s just something he did to get to the truth.
“All right,” Fish said, breaking the silence. “We’ve covered a lot more than we normally go into for a first meeting.”
“There’s a damn good reason for that—” Iz said.
“But we felt a need to get you two up to speed fast,” Fish said, talking over the grumbling veteran. “The discovery of Josh as a Dra’Gal plant means that we need to prepare for a possible assault. Your dream confirms it and gives us more to worry about.”
“But it also gives us a timeframe, right?” I asked.
Fish nodded slowly. “Maybe, but I think if we never let you near the Distilling Room and absolutely swore that nothing would happen at a mall, it would still come to pass. I don’t think anything in your dream is immutable. I…why does that make you smile?
I couldn’t help it. I’d been worrying about those dreams since they first started, more since losing Crystal and Tanya. Meeting people whose faces matched those in the alcoves made me want to protect them from their fate. To hear someone else, an alien with knowledge far beyond anything I could imagine, state so plainly that we should be able to alter the outcome of a dream gave me hope.
“Anyway, let’s finish up the welcoming formalities, and get to work unscrewing the upstairs crew,” Iz said.
Fish spun in his chair, pulling open one of the drawers set into the counter below the computer monitors. He removed two white cards with gold squares set into their center. The cards were attached to lanyards meant to be worn around the neck. Holding one in each hand, he presented them to Brian and me.
“These will open most doors within Mandatum. Just hold the card to the wall on the right side of the door, near the center. You two have been assigned to Barracks Room A-7. A selection of clothes in browns and blacks has be
en placed there for you.”
“What about—” Brian began, but Fish held up a hand.
“Let me finish, please. We run several small missions each day, trying to reach out to stray Chosen, finding the occasional lone Dra’Gal. We have two scheduled for today, one of which you will go on. Those operations will change soon, considering your presence and what Josh’s possession indicate.”
“My presence?” Brian asked.
“Yeah,” Iz answered. “You asked us to do something about your brothers, and we’re inclined to think it’s about time we got the local police back on our side.”
“And about the Quins upstairs,” Fish continued, “let’s see if we can reconnoiter without alerting them to our suspicions.”
Spinning back to the keyboards, he made several deft passes over one of them. Instantly six of the monitors on the left side of the wall changed, no longer showing scenes of the oceanfront. Now five of them showed the interior of an office complex, complete with the rows of cubicles I remembered from the dream. There were people sitting at several of the desks, asexual forms in full body clothing topped by helmets like the one on Fish’s head. There were differences in the helmets, a purple racing stripe here, a flash of gold outlining a faceplate there, just as there were differences in the style and colors of clothing.
The sixth camera showed a kitchen large enough to service a good-sized restaurant, with three human men moving between cook surfaces and storage shelves, no doubt working on the lunch menu.
“These are our people above,” Fish said.
“How are we going to know if they’re okay?” Brian asked.
In response, Fish tapped another key, then spoke, “Angelica, can you come to Operations, please?”
His voice echoed from hidden overhead speakers, a type of intercom system he could access from inside his helmet with no need of an external microphone.
“Remember Crystal from my story?” I said in answer to Brian’s questioning glance.