[Night Walkers 02] - Paranoia (2014)

by J. R. Johansson

  I swallowed hard and shook my head. It felt like someone had turned on a faucet and filled me from bottom to top with disgust. “That’s not the problem.”

  Jack nodded. “Good. It’s very difficult to do, almost impossible—especially for someone like you, one of the Divided.”

  I didn’t need to ask for clarification. I knew what he meant. “That’s what you call it? Divided?”

  “You have a better name?”

  “No. That seems about right.” I picked up the ball and rubbed my thumb along the seam. “How do people become … like this? And what does me being Divided have to do with the question?”

  “It happens when a Watcher gets extremely sleep-deprived before finding a Builder to heal them.” Jack gave me a look that almost held pity or regret before looking away and continuing. “There’s a line somewhere that if you cross, you can’t go back. Once you become Divided, a Builder can’t fix it. They can still heal you, but you’ll always be Divided. It’s like your brain decided you couldn’t handle the situation and it broke off a piece of you that only cares about survival.”

  Only survival. That sounded pretty accurate. I nodded but didn’t speak. Then a thought bubbled to the surface that made me so angry it took several seconds before I could even form the words.

  “You—and my dad—you both knew what was coming?” My tone dropped to a low and dangerous whisper. “And you just sat back and let it happen?”

  “No!” Jack sounded so appalled it mollified my anger a bit. “We didn’t even know for sure you were a Watcher. Let alone that it was this bad. It can vary widely—when or if someone develops into a Night Walker. We weren’t sure.”

  I didn’t respond, and Jack closed his eyes before finishing.

  “You were good at covering your tracks, much better at continuing on with a normal life than we expected. I didn’t even know for certain you were a Night Walker until I saw you screaming at the passenger seat in your car … just before your accident. At that point, you were already Divided.” Opening his eyes again, he stared hard at me. “It was too late. I was too late. For that, I’m very sorry.”

  The sincerity of his statement was hard to argue with, but I was still too upset to admit to any forgiveness. So I sat, letting him squirm with discomfort while I tried to sort through the mountain of new information that every conversation with Jack deposited into my brain. Finally, he changed the subject.

  “Anyway … back to your question. In order to do that kind of damage to a Dreamer, you have to mean it. You can’t have any doubt or distraction. Your mind must be one hundred percent focused on destroying them. In the Divided, the two sides rarely have the same plan or goal in mind—so it doesn’t really happen.”

  I’m not sure when my thumb stopped moving over the ball, but my body was completely still. When I’d attacked Dr. Freeburg in his dream, I’d felt no hesitation, no resistance. It could have been the one time Darkness and I acted together.

  “Finally, you realize—” Darkness appeared right in front of me and I took a faltering step backward. With his back to the light, his face was hidden in shadow. The only thing I could see clearly was his cold smile. “You should be afraid of what I can do.”

  My hands were shaking, so I tried to dribble the ball, but all sensation in my fingers seemed to have been cut off. After one bounce the ball hit my foot and flew over on to the grass. “I see.”

  I looked down and felt Jack’s stare piercing through the side of my head. But when he finally spoke again all he said was, “Next question?”

  Picking up the ball, I squeezed it between my fingers, grasping onto the first question that came to mind. “When you say a Builder can make you stronger, what do you mean?”

  When he responded, his voice sounded like he was in a trance, like his mind was visiting some pleasant memory far away from the here and now. “They can craft a dream unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. Absolute peace. Everything else disappears. They can reconnect the breaks in your brain, repair the damage that all the missing sleep has done. Even build new connections where you had none before. Depending on what they focus on, they can improve your memory function, your coordination, your ability to think on your feet and brainstorm. Everything you can imagine and more. They make you whole again. Like I said, they can’t fix a Divide like yours, but everything else is better—new and improved.”

  I sat down on the opposite side of the bench, working hard to ignore Darkness and everything wrong with me that he represented, and tried to picture what a dream with a Builder would be like. Truly turning my curse into something that could help me, something useful. It was hard to imagine. “I see the appeal.”

  Jack laughed. “Yeah.”

  “How do you find a Builder?”

  Jack bent forward, resting his elbows on his knees and studying the cracks in the pavement below his feet. The sky was long past sunset now and I couldn’t make out anything but his ears. His face was in shadow and his voice changed to match. “It’s extremely hard. There are as many Builders as Watchers, but since their ability doesn’t harm them in any way, most don’t know about it. Night Walker traits run in families, so we try to find and watch the bloodlines, but it isn’t easy or reliable. And even if you find a Builder, they’re always in danger. Many Takers target suspected Builders as well as Watchers. They capture them—or kill them. They consider themselves superior and the rest of us defective. Why should other Night Walkers live normal lives when they can’t? And if they wipe out the Builders … ”

  “The Watchers die with them.” I watched Jack’s shoulders as he drew in a shaky breath. “But still, why?”

  I didn’t know what else to say. This was a fight Jack had lived with for years and I’d just found out about today.

  Jack rubbed his knuckles across the stubble on his chin. “As they go farther and farther down their sleep-deprived roads, Takers become less in touch with reality. Combining delusions and hallucinations with already sociopathic tendencies is not good. They can take over a Dreamer and kill their enemies without any trace of evidence leading back to them. They can walk into a police station, lie down on the benches in the waiting room, and kill someone while living inside the Dreamer’s body. They are capable of iron-clad alibis and can get away with whatever they want. Even worse,” he continued, “since Takers can’t easily identify a Builder by their dreams the way a Watcher can, they just target anyone who known Watchers get close to.”

  I growled under my breath as images of my friends and my mom spun through my head like one of those picture carousels. “I’m really starting to hate Takers.”

  The muscle along his jaw tightened and he raised his face and stared hard at me. “That’s a good instinct. Hold on to that.”

  chapter seven

  The air around us seemed to have dropped twenty degrees in the fifteen minutes we’d been outside. I shivered as much from the chilling conversation as the temperature. Jack’s voice dripped with pain, with truth. I was glad I’d never run into a Taker before last night.

  Then his eyes met mine before I could think to look away. I flinched, but he didn’t react at all.

  I grasped for another question, anything to change the subject. It made me feel powerless just thinking about the Takers. Darkness was bad enough, but at least I’d been able to fight him off most of the time—and hopefully would again once Mia came back and I got a little more sleep. These Takers … they were new monsters in my world and already seemed more terrible than anything I’d ever witnessed in a nightmare. Monsters that I’d never even known existed until today.

  “Okay, here’s a question for you,” I finally said. “What did you mean when you said you couldn’t get ahold of my dad if you tried?”

  When Jack lurched back and immediately looked away, I realized I’d been asking the wrong questions all day. I’d assumed it wasn’t that weird for Jack not to be able to get in touch with Dad. After all, I’d spent the last four years in that position. But from his reaction no
w, it was clear his situation was not the same.

  “That doesn’t matter right now,” he said.

  “Jack … ” I leaned toward him across the bench. Darkness disappeared from where he’d been standing and my voice came out in a fierce snarl. “Where is my dad?”

  Jack stood up and stretched, but he didn’t give any further response. Jumping to my feet, I grabbed the front of his leather jacket and nearly jerked him off the ground.

  He let out a surprised grunt and pushed against my chest, hard enough to break my grip. He stared at me like he was seeing me for the first time, and a low growl escaped his lips. “I am not your enemy.”

  “Uh … you guys want any dessert?” Mom’s voice broke the heavy silence so unexpectedly we both spun to face her. Even from here, I could see she’d caught at least some of Jack’s words. Even if she hadn’t, our postures looked more like we were waiting for someone to ding a bell so we could attack each other than two new friends hanging out.

  I stood up straight, knowing if I tried to play it off she’d be even more suspicious. “Yeah, we’re just having a little disagreement. Give us a minute?”

  Her expression looked torn between the desire to defend me and the knowledge that she should trust me to handle my friendships on my own. After a few seconds she nodded and put on a fake smile. “Hurry. I’ll dish it up.”

  When she went inside and closed the door, Jack’s shoulders relaxed, but he didn’t look any less wary.

  “I don’t need to know where he is,” I said. “I need to know if Dad is in trouble. Tell me that much and I promise I’ll leave the rest alone—for now.”

  Today had been too much, and the fatigue was abruptly closing in on me from every angle. Dad had been gone for years, but it was already obvious I didn’t know the whole story. No matter his reason, I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive him. Yet setting all that aside, he was still my dad. If he was in danger, I wanted to know about it.

  “You’ll only keep that promise if he isn’t in trouble.” Jack watched my feet as I backed slowly toward the house. “If he is, you’ll immediately try to find him.”

  I froze mid-step and almost fell over. “He’s in danger, then?”

  Sighing, Jack closed his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck with his left hand. When he opened them again, he looked resigned. “Yes. You could definitely say that.”

  My legs felt shaky beneath me and I forced myself to stand up straight. “What kind of danger?”

  “They have him, Parker.” Jack walked closer to me and lowered his voice, checking the back door to make sure Mom wasn’t there before he finished. “The Takers have finally caught up with your dad.”

  We struggled through an extremely awkward ice cream sundae where I fought hard not to look like an upset teenager pushing his melting rocky road around in circles instead of eating it. Mom still looked concerned, but Mr. Nelson—Tom—was a welcome distraction. When I said we were going to my room to play computer games, she didn’t seem too worried.

  “Make eye contact with your mom,” Jack muttered as we were about to walk down the hall.

  With a quick nod I went over to them, shook Tom’s hand, and gave Mom a quick hug. “If we don’t come out before noon tomorrow, send in Coke and Milk Duds.”

  She laughed and I met her eyes for a second or two before following Jack down the hall to my room.

  Once the door was shut, I flipped on the small lamp by my bed. Then I grabbed my sunglasses from the dresser, tossing him the extra pair just to be safe. “What happens when two Watchers make eye contact?”

  He pushed the glasses onto his nose and shook his head. “Same as when your Dreamer is awake. The empty space, except you’re stuck in it together. I prefer dreams, though … the empty space is boring.”

  “Agreed.” I grabbed my backpack and started dumping it on the bed. “How far away is he? We need to pack things up.”

  “Parker, this is why I didn’t want to tell you.” Jack plopped down on the chair in front of my computer. “We aren’t going after your dad. Now is not the right time. To be more specific, you are not the right person.”

  I sat down on the bed and dragged the empty bag onto my lap. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you inherited more than just your dad’s blue eyes.” Jack rested his elbows on my desk and bumped my mouse, making the screen light up. In the dim light of my room it cast an eerie shadow across half his face. “You have his temper, too. If you think for one second I’m taking the person he asked me to protect into the heart of everything he wanted to keep you safe from, you’re even crazier than I thought.”

  Everything in me wanted to argue, wanted to pin him against the wall and force him to tell me where Dad was. I gripped the straps of my backpack so tight my fingertips went numb. Jack’s spine stiffened, like he could feel me sizing him up. I had a few inches on him. Since I’d started getting more sleep after the fire, I’d put on some muscle. While Jack was thin and probably very fast, I was stronger. If I caught him off guard, I could do it. There were so many things in my room I could use as weapons. Whether I decided to just hurt him or kill him …

  I stopped and my skin went icy-cold in an instant.

  This wasn’t me. This was everything I’d spent months fighting off. I mentally shoved Darkness back with all my strength. I couldn’t help my father until I got control of him first.

  My twisted half appeared again, looking furious as he leaned against the wall in the far corner of the room.

  “Someday you’ll understand. Not all my ideas are bad just because they don’t come from you.” And then Darkness dissolved back into the shadows.

  His appearing and disappearing again and again was really getting exhausting. He created a war everywhere I went … in my house, my room, my head. How long could I keep fighting him off?

  “What do you suggest we do?” I picked up my newly emptied backpack and took out my frustration by shoving everything back into the bag—hard. “What do they want from him?”

  “They’ve been after him since he left you guys, but they’ve never caught him before.” Jack’s head shifted back and forth as he watched my motions. “We know for certain he’s alive. They need him alive. For now. That has to be enough.”

  “Again … what do they want from him?” I was tired, scared for my dad, and getting really tired of repeating myself.

  Jack leaned over and rested his forehead on the smooth wood of my desk, as if every piece of energy that kept him upright and animated had been sucked out by me asking the question again. “They want him to keep them alive—for a long, long time.”

  The bag slipped out of my hand and I barely caught it before all the contents fell out again. “W-what?”

  Jack sat up straight and pivoted his chair toward me. “It’s a complicated brain chemistry thing that I’m not even sure I understand, but here’s the general idea. Your dad is a chemistry genius. The Takers want him to make them a magic drug that will let them take over Dreamers’ bodies long-term. We aren’t sure exactly how long, but from what I understand it could be indefinite. They call the drug Eclipse. In theory, it would allow a Taker’s body to rest in perfect health for a much longer time period without moving or eating, which enables the Taker to just stay in the body and brain of a Dreamer. They’ll run the Dreamer’s body into the ground, the same way they do now, but when the body finally dies of sleep deprivation, the Taker will just switch to a new one. If your dad gets the formula right, Eclipse could enable Takers to survive—possessing bodies and never technically sleeping—for at least a normal human lifespan, maybe even longer.”

  I slouched down on my bed, trying to comprehend what I was hearing. “Are the Takers all crazy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would they think he could make this drug? It’s not even possible … is it?”

  “Before he left your family, he was working on a drug to help the rebellion, to make Takers more like Watchers. He wanted to find a way to make them
sleep somehow, so they could survive. He thought that if they could live longer by using his drug, then the rebellion could use it to get the Takers under control and stop the fighting. Instead, he ended up creating the prototype for Eclipse. His plan backfired, big time. The drug had major problems and wasn’t safe, but still, the Takers were enthralled by the potential of what it could become. Your dad ran because they wanted him to keep working on it, trying to fix it.” Jack shrugged. “Who knows if he can? But it doesn’t matter because they think he can, and as long as they think he can, they need him alive.”

  Nodding, I didn’t move. My entire world had turned upside down in under twenty-four hours and I felt like I was still trying to shake it around to make everything fall into place. Exhaustion pinned me down and every movement felt like a struggle. I missed Mia’s dreams and real sleep. I missed Finn and his ability to make everything seem more manageable.

  I missed Addie—how everything about her made me believe I could handle anything.

  “What else haven’t you told me?”

  Jack turned in the chair and seemed very interested in a picture of Finn and me on the soccer team. “I told you everything I think I can trust you with—that’s all I can do for now.”

  “You don’t trust me?” I was oddly offended by this.

  His head spun toward me and he squinted. “Can you think of a reason I should?”

  “I can’t think of a reason you shouldn’t.”

  “The way I see it, you don’t trust people until they earn your trust.” Jack leaned forward and stared hard at me. “And for now, the simple fact that you’re Divided is all the reason I need not to trust you completely.” He scoffed, then muttered, “Hell, you don’t even trust you completely.”

  I closed my mouth on any response I might have had. I didn’t like it, but he had a point.