by James Phelan
‘Wow,’ Rapha said. ‘That’s crazy.’
Sam nodded but Xavier shook his head.
‘Well,’ Xavier said, ‘for me, what really blows my mind and freaks my bones, is this whole da Vinci thing.’
‘Da Vinci thing?’ Rapha said.
‘Long story,’ Sam said, sitting back in the airplane seat and trying to relax.
‘Create us, enhance us, whatever, to have vivid dreams,’ Xavier said, ‘then train us to master our dreams and use the dream world to alter the reality that later pans out. OK, that’s plausible.’
Sam rolled his eyes, knowing where this was going.
‘But each of us having a dream that leads to a Gear to build a machine that da Vinci made, like, over five hundred years ago?’ Xavier went on. ‘Gears that are scattered all around the world, lost in time? To find a Dream Gate that is thousands of years old? Yeah, that’s the mind-blowing stuff right there.’
Rapha looked at the brass Gear in his hands.
‘Yeah,’ Sam said. ‘But it hurts my mind just trying to think about that.’
‘So just go with it?’ Xavier said.
‘What else can we do?’ Sam asked. ‘They’ve explained it to us at the Academy, but the rest is up to us. It is happening, so we know it’s real. I think we have to accept that there are things going on here that defy logic. But the world moves in mysterious ways, as do dreams. The mind, the collective consciousness, the dreams—all of it is true, we’ve seen that. It … it is what it is, and it makes … not sense, but it’s believable.’
‘With every day,’ Tobias added, ‘it becomes more believable.’
Rapha nodded but Xavier looked unconvinced. His dream had led them to the Gear in Berlin, but Solaris had taken it from them.
Maybe that’s it. Xavier found his Gear but we lost it. Maybe that’s what’s making him so sceptical now?
‘I believe it, Sam,’ Xavier said, ‘like I believe in gravity, like I believe in all the science I know to be true, like Newton’s laws of physics. But I just want to understand how it all works.’
Sam nodded. This was the Xavier he’d known at school—always questioning, always wanting to know every little detail about everything. His father, Dr Dark, was a brilliant psychiatrist and Dreamer, with the same inquisitive nature about the world and everyone in it.
So Xavier will probably always be like this, like his father—it’s a Dark family trait.
‘To me, the “how” is not that important,’ Sam said, and Xavier shook his head. ‘I don’t want to overanalyse it—at least not right now. Afterwards? Sure, I’ll study the legs off it.’
Xavier laughed.
‘Until then,’ Sam went on, ‘I trust it, rather than question it.’
‘As a scientist,’ Tobias said, ‘I look at it as a new frontier, some kind of new science—somewhere between physics and psychology and noetics and whatever else.’
‘No-what?’ Rapha asked.
‘Don’t ask,’ Sam said.
‘Seriously!’ Xavier added. ‘Don’t get him started on his pet science topic.’
‘Guys, I’m hurt,’ Tobias said with a laugh.
‘You mean as Dreamers we are like discoverers, or explorers,’ Rapha said, his gaze far-off as it sunk in.
‘Exactly!’ Sam said. ‘And these Gears are part of a machine, a device that will lead us to the Dream Gate. Think of it as the world’s first GPS.’
Rapha held up the Gear to catch the light. The brass was green in places, where it had been exposed to the air for too long in the hidden Amazonian city.
Rapha nodded. Xavier did too.
‘That all sounds great,’ Xavier said, ‘but that’s only if there will be a “later” when we can ask all those questions and study it. I mean, you’re assuming that we win.’
‘We won’t lose this race,’ Sam said, his jaw clenched in determination. ‘We can’t.’
06
ALEX
Alex sat in the Professor’s office at the Academy, along with the Director of the Enterprise, Jack, his mother, Phoebe, and two of the last 13, Zara and Gabriella. It felt weird being there—so much had changed since he had met the Professor at the Academy’s now-destroyed Swiss campus.
At first Alex had been surprised at the friendliness between the Professor and the Director. He’d once assumed, from his first encounter with the Enterprise when their Agents kidnapped him, that all they were interested in was winning at any cost.
Even if that meant lives lost along the way.
Like Sebastian in New York.
But not anymore. Now, he better understood the Enterprise’s motives. They did not want the Dream Gate to end up in the hands of evil any more than the Academy did. And now that Stella was controlling a rogue group of Agents and working with Solaris, the Academy and the Enterprise had no choice but to work together. The Professor clearly understood this, and so did Jack. Without each other’s help and knowledge, there was no hope on the path ahead.
So from here on in, we’re all in this together.
And for the last few minutes, they’d been discussing the latest efforts to locate and rescue their missing friends, Lora and Eva.
‘Can’t we just have the navy or someone hunt down Mac’s boat?’ Alex asked.
‘Mac has powerful friends,’ Jack said. ‘The Guardians who were watching over them in a helicopter were forced to land by the local police who didn’t realise what was happening. By the time it got straightened out and they got back in the air, Mac’s boat had slipped away.’
‘It’s not registered anywhere, so I’m afraid we can’t track it,’ the Professor added.
‘I promise you—we’re working on it,’ Jack said. ‘We’ll catch up with Mac soon.’
‘It’s my fault,’ the Professor said, his voice grave. ‘I should never have allowed that meeting—I should have overruled Lora.’
‘But we all know that’s not your style,’ Jack replied. ‘Besides, Lora being overruled? Please. You’d have better luck convincing her that the world was flat.’
‘It isn’t?’ Alex said.
The Professor chuckled. ‘And what about the Gears?’ he asked, letting out a sigh as he conceded everything was being done to find Lora and Eva.
‘Here’s what we know for sure,’ the Director said, opening up his laptop. With a few clicks, he projected a huge map of the world on the wall of the Professor’s office. ‘So far we have recovered the pieces to the Bakhu machine from New York, Italy, Germany, France and now Brazil.’
‘And of those,’ the Professor said, pointing to Gabriella’s Gear and Sam’s key locked in a secure glass-fronted vault set into his wall, ‘only those found in New York, Italy and Brazil remain in our possession.’
‘Correct.’ The Director tapped away at his laptop and the wall-screen was updated with more information. ‘Solaris has the Gears found in Germany and France, and his last known sighting was in Paris.’
‘By Sam and Zara?’ the Professor said.
‘That’s also correct.’
‘I wish I had, how do you say, punched?’ Zara looked to Gabriella, who nodded, understanding exactly how she felt. ‘Yes, I wish I punched Solaris across his face. Smashed that stupid mask.’
‘You’ll get your chance,’ Phoebe said with a grimace.
‘And what of our other threats?’ the Professor asked.
‘Hans is on the move and was last seen here, at the site in Brazil,’ the Director said, bringing up a dot marker that flashed red on the eastern border of Brazil. ‘Our contacts in German customs reported that his aircraft returned this morning to Berlin, but there were no passengers.’
‘And we don’t know where he is?’ the Professor asked.
‘No,’ the Director said. ‘But I have Agents at every major airport throughout North and South America, working alongside your friends in the Dreamer Council and their local law enforcement connections.’
‘Looking out for him and his entourage of German Guardians?’ the Professor said,
and the Director nodded. ‘I fear that with his wealth and power, he’ll find a way to slip away.’
‘We are doing our best,’ the Director replied tersely.
‘Why did they turn?’ Alex asked.
‘We’re working on figuring that out,’ the Professor replied. ‘But there are factions running right through our Dreamer Council and now Mac’s supporters have left us.’
‘Which brings us back to our pressing issue—Mac,’ the Director said.
‘He’ll be planning his next move, that is certain,’ the Professor replied. ‘And he is more dangerous to us than ever, now he has Eva and Lora to bargain with.’
‘So what about Stella?’ Alex asked.
He could see that it pained the Director that his trusted operations leader, Stella, had gone to the other side of the race to the Dream Gate. Of all their growing list of enemies, she was the only one they knew for sure was working with Solaris. Alex had overheard her plotting with him in Berlin.
‘Stella, I’m happy to say, we have a bit more on,’ the Director said. ‘She was last seen by Sam, and the latest Dreamer, Rapha, at the Gear site in Brazil, where she and her men became locked in a battle with Hans’ Guardians.’
‘Well, at least that tells us that they’re not working together,’ Phoebe said.
‘My thoughts exactly,’ the Professor added.
‘That’s right,’ the Director said, then brought up a location marker in Canada. ‘Stella was spotted here, less than an hour ago.’
‘That’s near Vancouver, isn’t it?’ Phoebe said.
‘Yes.’
‘What’s there?’ Gabriella asked. ‘A Gear?’
‘I don’t think so,’ the Professor replied, deep in thought. ‘When Tobias called from Rio Branco airport he made no mention of Sam’s next dream.’
‘Can we have local authorities arrest her?’ Zara asked.
‘She’ll have already vanished into the ether,’ the Director said. ‘But we have assets moving to the scene, to track her on the ground.’
‘Can you think of any reason she would be in Vancouver? Do you have anything there?’ the Professor asked. ‘Any secret locations there that your Agents use?’
‘No, our Canadian sites are in Toronto and Montreal.’
‘Then why is she there?’ Alex asked.
‘I have no idea …’ the Director’s voice trailed off and he stood, stunned, staring at the projection on the wall. A list of archived events from the Vancouver area was displayed on the screen.
‘What is it?’ Alex asked.
‘Oh no …’ the Director said, looking to them all in the room, his expression a mix of shock and realisation. ‘There is an old site, from the government program that closed down years ago …’
‘What’s the site used for now?’ the Professor asked.
‘Nothing, it was abandoned,’ the Director replied, reading off the data. ‘It’s buried deep underground, it was a part of a Cold War military base, a command backup centre in the event of an all-out war.’
‘But the facility is still there?’
‘Yes.’ The Director hurriedly dialled a number on his mobile phone. ‘And if we hurry, maybe we can catch her there.’
‘Jack,’ the Professor said. ‘This site—what was it used for?’
The Director looked to Phoebe then shook his head. ‘You don’t want to know.’
07
SAM
‘We’re going to have to detour around this weather system and hunker down,’ Tobias called into the cabin of the plane. They’d been flying for a couple of hours, and now he and Rapha were wrestling with the controls as they struggled against the storm ahead of them. ‘I’ve just gotten clearance to land in Cuba.’
‘Stay the night in Cuba?’ Sam said. He immediately thought of Maria.
But could I really find her, with what little I have from my dream?
‘Yep,’ Tobias replied, then went silent as he concentrated on landing in the dark, wet world that surrounded them. The lights of a tiny runway glittered far below.
Sam nodded. Rapha, for all his flying experience in his ultralight, looked a motion-sickness shade of green.
‘You OK?’ Sam asked him, the little plane jinking and bucking in the storm.
Rapha nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘You know, this could be worse,’ Sam called over the sound of the ferocious storm. The world seemed to grow more sinister with every metre they descended towards their landing site in Cuba.
‘How do you figure that?’ Tobias yelled over his shoulder, his voice shaky as the vibrations worked their way through the control yoke up his arms and through his body.
‘There could be lightning,’ Sam said.
A flash of blinding white light pulsed outside, followed instantly by the loud rumble of thunder.
‘That was—’
There was another flash, instantly accompanied by more thunder, as if tearing the sky to pieces.
‘Close!’ Tobias finished. He fell silent as he wrestled against the elements to guide them down to safety.
Rapha looked over his shoulder to Sam, and neither of them spoke again as Tobias brought the aircraft in to land.
They could have been anywhere in the world—the torrential rain was an impenetrable curtain that made it impossible to see across the city street. The only thing that made Sam aware that he was in a city unlike any he’d been to before was the taxi they were riding in. The beautiful clunker was at least sixty years old and sounded as though it were powered by a tractor engine.
No, scrap that—tractor engines are quieter.
Their hotel was a building by the port and the four of them sat inside a suite, watching the stormy night through the open balcony doors. It was humid and still pouring outside. It was possible to make out some of the landscape across the marina when the sky was momentarily lit up by flashes of bright lightning.
‘Cuba’s one of the few countries in the world where we don’t have Guardians,’ Tobias said, sipping his coffee. ‘So we’d better not leave the hotel unless in a group.’
‘Sure,’ Xavier replied.
‘Is that why you weren’t sure if we should travel straight here?’ Sam asked.
‘Partly,’ Tobias nodded.
But Sam was more confident. He was glad that the weather had changed their plans. Since landing, he’d had that familiar sense of deja vu, along with the kind of anticipation that came with waking early on Christmas morning or on his birthday, thinking about the excitement the day would bring. Sam knew by now that this feeling always followed closely after he had a dream. Maria was here, in Cuba, he knew it and he could sense it.
‘Sam, you OK?’ Tobias said.
‘Ah, yeah, sure,’ Sam replied. ‘Just tired.’
Tobias paused and said, ‘Thinking about Maria?’
Sam nodded.
‘We’ll find her, but not in this weather, and not with the little you can recall from your dream. Hang tight, yeah?’
Sam nodded again.
I want to be sure before I say anything. Take it carefully.
There was a knock at the door and Rapha went to open it. He came back, wheeling a trolley from room service. Sam plugged in his huge brick of a phone to charge. The special handset that Jedi had given him looked a little worse for wear, covered in mud and scratches from his time in Brazil.
‘Food’s up!’ Xavier called, helping himself to the plates on the trolley. ‘Oh man, I’m starving!’
‘Help yourself, Rapha,’ Tobias said, ‘I ordered two of everything from the menu.’
‘Yeah, there’s enough here to feed an army,’ Xavier said, taking a rice dish.
‘Or,’ Rapha said, selecting a chicken burrito, ‘three growing boys.’
‘And one old man,’ Sam said with a grin and launched into a taco.
Tobias just smiled and took the comment in his stride.
‘I’ve got a feeling,’ Sam said, adding hot sauce and sliced jalapeños, ‘that tonight is going to be a go
od night for dreaming.’
‘And,’ Xavier added, ‘a bad night for gas.’
Sam was right.
That night, in a small bed by a half-open window with the storm raging outside, Sam did dream.
It was a vivid dream. But it was definitely not a good dream.
Solaris had been firing at him and Maria on the boat just as before, the leaky petrol from the engine igniting all around him.
Now, Sam was sweaty and shaking as he sat on the edge of the bed looking out at the dark sky. The breeze was cool on his face. The rain still fell but it was lighter now. A mist of steam had rolled into the bay. He closed his eyes as the better moments of the dream flashed back as fragmented memories.
The dream was good and bad.
Good because he now knew where Maria was.
Funny, how things intersect between the dream world and the real world. It’s as though destiny is bringing me to exactly the right place …
The bad part was the realisation of what would happen next.
Solaris.
Did Solaris break into my dream? Or am I making him appear in my dreams? It felt like the scenery disappeared as if he turned the Dreamscape to darkness.
Sam closed his eyes and could clearly see that dark figure that haunted his dreaming and waking life. He had said something, in that deep and evil metallic voice.
What did he say to me?
Sam looked across to the other bed in the room, where Rapha was quietly sleeping.
‘I need you, Sam—and you need me. We’re two parts of the same thing. The world, this race, cannot exist with just one of us. We’re the same, you and I. It doesn’t need to be a struggle, think of all the innocent people you could save from harm. Join me, Sam. Let’s fulfil our destiny together …’
Sam strained to recall where they’d been at the end of his dream, but it seemed featureless, a lonely place, perhaps a desert. It was just him and Solaris. He’d forced himself awake at that point, shutting down the dream, refusing to allow Solaris to influence his sleeping mind.
Is that what they mean about steering your dream?