Run? What does he mean?
Grey Man turned and held out an impatient hand to third person, one she’d never seen before, who guarded the door. The man stepped forward and handed him a thick manila folder. Grey Man opened the folder and removed a stack of photos. He plucked the top photo from the stack and held it inches from her face.
A child’s mutilated corpse, not the sweet little boy killed in the bomb blast in the dream she’d had, but another child just as innocent, riddled with bullets. Lara felt her stomach heave. Worse, she’d seen this exact image before. She’d been there. Stood nearby the scene of a mass shooting at a school by militant zealots in the Philippines. An icy tide coursed down her spine. These people knew about her nightmares? How could they? She’d told no one but her therapist about the dreams.
Grey Man dropped the photo to the floor at her feet, and took the next from the stack. Bodies shredded and hacked to pieces, ravaged. Sightless eyes. A dead mother’s arms shielding her dying baby. Most were pictures of places she’d been to in her dreams. Atrocities she’d witnessed. Death piled up at Lara’s feet, like a cement block threatening to drag her under.
One thing she’d always wondered. Had she had the power to stop these things from happening? They didn’t always occur in real time. Sometimes there was a few hours lag. What if she’d spoken up? Tried to warn people instead of denying it all and telling herself she was out of her mind?
By dreaming these things, was she also responsible in some way? Were these lives laid at her door?
“They did this, Miss Freberg.”
“What?
“The people you want to protect. They’re responsible. They’re behind these crimes.”
What was he talking about?
“The man you met in that room is one of them. A terrorist.”
“No.” She shook her head. “He can’t be.”
He’s talking about someone I made up.
“See this?” He snatched up one of the photos scattered on the floor. It showed a frail old woman, her tongue cut out, hanging upside down by her ankles, which were tied to a tall, razor wire-topped fence.
“He was there. That man was there at this killing. He personally supervised. He stood by and smoked a cigarette while they strung her up.”
“No.”
Grey Man tossed the photo aside.
“You don’t like me, do you Miss Freberg?”
He paused. What was she supposed to do? Was she supposed to nod along? Or would that get her another kick or punch in the face?
“I don’t need you to like me,” he said. “What I need is to use you to stop them and bring this man and others like him to justice.”
Shame choked her. Her pulse pounded in her ears and her eyes swam with tears. Her body began to shudder uncontrollably. Her vision dimmed to an ugly black froth.
“Christ,” said Grey Man in annoyance.
He glared at the man holding the syringe, who cringed at the unwelcome attention.
“Is it too much to ask to get the mixture right?”
Lara lost consciousness, but didn’t return to Jack or his bedroom. This time the blackness merely fetched her and took her down.
Chapter 20
Jack inhaled and exhaled, several deep, slow breaths, and then opened his eyes. It was a little after midnight. He’d gotten the pacing out of his system and though he’d had almost no rest, he hoped the passing hours had given Lara a chance to regroup. She’d need every bit of any residual strength she had left if he was going to save her.
He got up out of bed and crossed the room to where he’d dropped his pack when he’d first gotten here. He rifled through it for the small amber bottle he’d brought with him. Inside were three pills, a designer drug with a complex chemical name, but known among runners as Karat, slang inspired by the 24-karat hue of the fields. The drug was manufactured in-house by society labs, and offered only to finders and other agents. It would boost a runner’s already extraordinary abilities, but came with risks, rendering his twin dangerously susceptible to physical harm for the next 48 hours. Jack didn’t even think about the risk. All he thought about was Lara.
One pill was the recommended dose. He tossed back all three and chugged water to get the horse-pill-sized meds to go down.
His body seized. His heart rate and breathing sped up and his vision shuttered down so quickly he was blind within seconds.
What the hell?
Muscles cramping under a fiery assault on the nerves in his arms and legs, he reached out, fumbling for a nearby chair and collapsed into it.
This couldn’t be right. He’d taken Karat only once, and it hadn’t been like this.
Jack.
Her voice whispered in his mind, laced with anguish and a swirl of bitter emotions he didn’t want to name.
Lara.
This was happening to Lara, not him. The empathy between them kicked in again. As soon as he realized this, his strange symptoms cleared, the rushed pulse, agonizing fire in his limbs, the shakiness all fading in an instant.
He blinked, could see again, and found a golden string hovering in the air in front of him. He stood up to examine it from another angle and it moved with him. Amazed, he saw the thread of light didn’t just match his movements, it was attached to him. The other end of it started in mid-air, about three feet away and went straight for his chest.
Every dreamrunner, every human for that matter, had his or her own golden thread connecting them to their bodies, but they were wispy, elusive things. No one he knew, no matter how strong a talent, could see his own thread well. Stare at it head on, and it would slip away from sight. Adjust your angle of view, and it jumped away again.
Not this one. Thick and strong, it remained steady. What was it? It couldn’t be his. He wasn’t running, not yet. You only saw them when you were separated from your body and in the fields.
He walked over to the mirrored closet door, hoping to locate where it entered his body, if it entered his body. Nothing. It didn’t show up in his reflection. Yet, Jack was certain the golden beam, almost as thick as a rope, anchored itself in his heart.
What is it? Where does it go?
Was this the Karat doing this?
He lifted his hand and cautiously touched the thread with a fingertip.
A shock shot up his arm, and a flash of knowledge splashed in front of his eyes. The place where they held Lara, a windowless cell with a steel bulkhead door, a man in a grey suit standing over her, and next to him another holding a syringe. Her body curled into a fetal position on the cement floor dressed in the type of jumpsuit you would give to a terrorist suspect at Guantanamo Bay. Surrounding her, disordered piles of photographs fell at her feet like leaves. He couldn’t make out what the photographs showed, but they gave off a noxious energy, tainted and calculated. Lara already had or was about to lose consciousness. Jack couldn’t see her captors’ faces, but the sight of the men standing threateningly over her fragile, vulnerable body, sent him into a white-hot rage. It wasn’t bad enough that they’d spent almost three days brutalizing her. They’d just added something worse than physical torture.
Since he’d first seen her, and observed her actively fighting the Greys during her kidnapping, he’d experienced pride in his Lost One. She’d been so strong so far, well beyond anything the Society could expect, even from a trained runner. Now that pride turned to fear. Whatever they’d just done had taken her to a very dark place. Lara was willing herself to die.
No preparatory trance was needed. He wanted into the fields and he made them open to him. Whether Karat or his anger was responsible he couldn’t guess. He only knew that when he thought it he was able to launch himself into that lustrous gloom. The golden cord would lead to Lara. That was its purpose. It joined them. He didn’t know why, only that it did.
True to the fields, however, nothing was so straightforward. The thread knotted freakishly, becoming tangled in each new pathway he found that bore Lara’s signature. If he were meant to save h
er, why wouldn’t the thread lead him right to her? Instead, it got in the way, confused and misled him. Intuition told him he was already too late, something had irreversibly altered her, but he kept going, kept up the Herculean task along false trails, into and out of dead ends, psychic traps and bottomless pits created by the collective mind of humanity, bleeding its fears, hungers, and most twisted emotions into the fields.
Lara, help me find you. Let me find you.
No answer.
Jack kept running.
Chapter 21
With an explosion of molten light, a hole in space opened and Jack hurtled into Lara’s cell. His sudden appearance displaced the air molecules around him and sent a shudder through the walls. It was a huge gamble. If her captors hadn’t already expected someone to come after Lara, they might feel the vibrations shaking the building. It couldn’t be helped. For the last hour, he’d sensed Lara’s breathing growing alarmingly slower, shallower, the spark inside her dying. The thread joining them had thinned, become fainter with each passing moment. Jack couldn’t afford to waste precious time on a more stealthy approach.
She lay unconscious on the cement floor, curled up protectively around her injured hand. He had to fight the overwhelming instinct to rush to her side. Years of training kicked in long enough to demand he learn the dangers here first, specifically if anyone else was nearby and armed. He turned toward the door to the cell and halted, frowning.
It was ajar.
Worry hit him at this unforeseen discovery. Why would her abductors leave the door open and their captive unguarded if they were still concerned she might flee?
Gavin’s grim assessment of what it would be like to try extricating a Lost One from the Greys returned to haunt him. What if they’d already turned her? Maybe what he’d sensed was not Lara willing herself to die, but the last part of her humanity slipping away under her abusers’ skilled tactics.
Then another possibility presented itself to him. What if turning her wasn’t the real object here? What if they’d sent her to him at the safe house as bait to lure him back here? They had Taylor, but another trained finder would be worth much more than a clueless Lost One. She may not have known the part she played in their strategy against the Society, and yet was guilty all the same.
Lara’s defenseless, beaten pose on the floor nearly unmanned him. She affected him more deeply than any other person he’d ever met. The way she cradled her mangled hand. Each of her labored breaths. Fragile and delicate, her body was so starved and quiet it seemed as if he was looking at her in running state, not in the flesh. A soft, golden glow caressed her skin, showing him how tentatively she clung to life. Her twin hovered a fraction of an inch above her true body and was no longer securely tied to it. Jack’s noisy entrance should have made her stir, but she remained unnaturally still.
Again, fighting the urgent compulsion to rush to her, he headed for the door to the cell. Reaching it, he peered through the gap, saw no one on the other side and chanced opening it a few inches more.
A typical institutional hallway stretched ahead for approximately twenty yards, dim and smelling of dank cement. It ended in near impenetrable shadow at the foot of a stairwell. Steel doors to other cells lined the corridor. Lara’s cell was the last, hers facing the stairs. Several doors away, another cell stood open and light spilled outward into the hall, indicating a human presence. Inside, two men he couldn’t see argued. Luckily, it appeared they were so engrossed, they either hadn’t noticed the muffled boom of Jack’s arrival, or had attributed it to something else more ordinary. Their words reached him garbled by distance and the walls separating them. Jack could tell, however, that one was in charge, berating the other in tones that threatened more than job security, while the other responded with occasional gulps and spurts of feeble backpedaling. He heard Lara’s last name mentioned once, then again and knew the altercation centered on her.
Should he head out in the corridor, where he could listen in? Just getting a good look at one of the Greys running this operation would be invaluable intel. Their conversation might not be limited to Lara, but also include their plans for the Society or the whereabouts of Taylor and his cell phone. Jack might even be able to get past the open door without being detected, find an exit and thus learn where he’d run.
No. Too risky. You can’t leave Lara.
When trained as a finder, he’d been cautioned he might have only seconds to extract crucial information from a run. Be observant. Search for the tiniest clue as quickly as you can.
A sign mounted on the wall between Lara’s cell and the one where the men quarreled caught his attention.
WARNING, it read. ANY PERSONS WHO COMMUNICATE UNLAWFULLY WITH INMATES WILL BE PROSECUTED.
Much of the paint had flaked off the sign, making the Penal Code listed in parenthesis below illegible, but he recognized the acronym printed beside the number and the defunct military agency it stood for.
Jack ducked back inside the cell. He hurried to Lara and crouched beside her. Littering the floor around her was the spill of glossy color photographs from his vision. His stomach turned. Bodies. Victims. The vast majority were children. Hundreds of images of carnage. Jack had no idea how these figured into her abuse and indoctrination, but he could well imagine their effect on Lara.
He would slaughter the Greys. Make them pay. He almost turned around for the door again, ready to take on the men down the corridor. Only Lara’s quiet voice stopped him.
“The children,” she murmured.
“Lara?” he whispered. Gently, he took her uninjured hand in his own and gave it a comforting squeeze.
Her eyelids fluttered open. Eyes shimmered with a haze of golden light under their fringe of pale lashes. Woozy, she smiled at him, a smile so bright it almost vanquished the dark circles and tired hollows beneath her cheekbones.
“You,” she said.
Then in an instant, her expression changed. She pulled her hand out of his grasp and scrambled backward, forcing herself up against the wall.
“You,” she said again, but without the ache and longing she’d put into it before. “Stay away from me.”
“Please,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. He didn’t know whether she’d already been programmed to betray him, or exactly why the door to this chamber had been left ajar, but it was obvious she’d changed her mind since their last encounter and considered him the enemy.
Pointing her finger at the photo closest, she said, “You did this.”
Hell.
She thought he was a terrorist, then.
“No,” he said. He put everything he was, every truth he had into his expression, compelling her to believe him. “Never.”
“You’re a terrorist,” she said.
“Because the people who abducted you and have been torturing you for days say so?” he asked.
That stymied her. She started to speak, but fell silent. She looked conflicted. He didn’t blame her for her confusion, but they couldn’t delay here any longer. The two voices Jack had heard became suddenly louder as the men stepped from the cell in which they’d been conversing into the outer corridor. Jack and Lara had seconds, no more.
Lara heard the men, as well. Every one of her muscles stilled in apprehension. She had failed to notice one important fact, though. Her true body lay on the cement floor in front of her. It had not moved since his arrival. It was her twin that had scooted away from him, and now regarded him with suspicion.
She looked down and saw herself comatose on the floor. She froze, transfixed.
“What is–?”
“Lara,” he said. “We’re running out of time. Take my hand.”
She wouldn’t look away from the body on the floor.
“Lara!” He commanded her attention.
Hesitant, she finally reached out to him with her trust. It wasn’t a lot of trust, but he accepted what she offered, sliding her hand in his.
He pulled her to her feet and towed her after him into t
he glowing portal that marked the way back to the fields.
Chapter 22
Lara gave him her hand, and his fit around hers in a gesture that made her feel he’d held it a thousand times before.
But what he did next was so irrational her reflexes balked. He not only dragged her toward the wall of her cell, he ran toward it flat out. She visualized herself colliding with unyielding cement and dug in her heels.
“No!” she said.
Too late. His momentum carried them both relentlessly forward.
They slammed into the wall.
But it wasn’t a wall! A transparent, golden barrier covered her face and stretched so taut it was like diving into a swimming pool covered in melting plastic wrap. She panicked at its smothering embrace. Lara flailed, unable to see anything. She drowned or suffocated or some combination of the two, while at the same time Jack hauled her deeper and deeper into the glowing membrane.
She tried to scream but could draw no oxygen into her lungs. Amazingly, though, she was still able to shout.
“Stop! Don’t!”
With a loud tearing noise they broke through to the other side to air, glorious air.
Or was it? Dusky yellow with an odd iridescence, the fog, or murk, or was it dark light?—that sounded like an oxymoron—snaked around her. Nothing so recognizable as another room or an outdoor space surrounded them. She stumbled into Jack’s hard backside.
“Let me go!” She finished her chaotic thought. She tried to pull away from Jack and failed. His hand maintained his grip on hers like a tender vise.
“I don’t plan on it,” he said.
“Don’t plan on what?”
“Letting you go.”
“That’s not what I said. I said, ‘Don’t! Let me go!’ ”
“Sorry. My mistake.”
Giving lie to her demand, she didn’t fight his grasp in this surreal place. What was she walking on? She saw nothing under her feet. Just dead space.
Dangerous Dreams (A Dreamrunners Society Novel) Page 11