by James Phelan
‘Yeah, well,’ Sam said, ‘I think I’m destined to one day practise my jujitsu against all those guys.’
Despite the good-humoured remark, Sam knew that Tobias was right. His dreams were becoming more and more unpredictable and dangerous. His enemies were emerging in them, trying to take control.
‘We have to beat them, Sam. Lora would be furious if we wasted an opportunity to find the next Dreamer. Eva too.’
Xavier and Rapha came into the room, yawning and stretching.
‘You guys look like you’ve been up for hours,’ Xavier mumbled. ‘Hope you haven’t been having too much fun without us.’
‘Not too much,’ Sam smiled. ‘But it’s time to get ready and go find our next Dreamer.’
‘Soon enough, Sam,’ Tobias said. ‘We’ll have to wait a few hours for some more Guardians from London to arrive—’
‘We don’t need more Guardians,’ Sam said. ‘Maria’s right here, and if anyone else can see into my dreams, then they will know that too, and they’ll be searching for her right now. We can’t afford to wait any longer.’
‘You know that Maria’s here? In this city?’ Tobias asked.
Sam nodded.
‘You’re sure?’ Rapha joined in, suddenly fully awake.
‘Yes. I had the dream again last night and I recognised a statue from when we drove in from the airport. She has a boat out at the marina not far from here.’
‘That’s amazing, my friend,’ Rapha exclaimed. ‘It is destiny!’
‘Who knew bad weather would help us find Maria?’ Xavier chuckled. ‘I’m loving us catching some breaks for a change. Nice work, Sam.’ He gave him a double thumbs up.
‘That is very lucky,’ Tobias said, but Sam couldn’t help noticing how uneasy that revelation made him look. ‘OK. But if we do this with a small team, we do it fast—in and out.’ The two Guardians were seated by the door, waiting.
‘I’m ready,’ Sam said, standing and putting his backpack over his shoulders and tightening the straps. ‘Let’s go.’
16
EVA
Eva embraced her aunt warmly and felt tears prickle at the back of her eyes.
At last, something that feels like home.
After talking through it all, the reasons behind Julia being there, Mac’s decision to pretend to side with Solaris, it started to make sense.
‘If it is all true, that’s pretty clever,’ Lora said. ‘By working with Solaris, you’ll get the inside track on what he’s doing and planning. We might finally get one step ahead and ultimately stop him.’
‘I appreciate you listening long enough to hear me out and to understand my plan. Thank you,’ Mac replied. ‘But I’m afraid that as long as you are on this ship, outside of this private room, it will have to appear that you are both prisoners here. I cannot be sure there are no traitors amongst my crew and staff who might divulge our secret before we are ready to act.’
‘I understand,’ Lora replied. ‘What will you do, with Solaris?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Mac replied, sitting back into a plush sofa. ‘I am intrigued by him.’
‘What does he want from you?’ Lora asked.
‘An alliance,’ Mac replied. ‘He knows I have connections, particularly in the military, and that we have a lot of technology around the world from when the US military was researching the Dreamer Gene. So I suspect he wants my resources.’
‘In exchange for?’ Julia said.
‘Solaris has offered his services as the frontline operator,’ Mac said, ‘to be out there chasing down Sam and the others, getting his hands on as many pieces to this machine as he can.’
‘But then what?’ Lora said. ‘At what point will you stop him? You can’t leave it too late.’
Mac shook his head but said nothing.
But surely Solaris might expect that Mac would doublecross him, just as he knows that Mac would suspect Solaris of doing the same.
‘How do you communicate with him?’ Lora asked. ‘He’s proven to be very elusive up to now.’
Mac shook his head. ‘He finds me. There is no communication. He just shows up, usually when I least expect it. Intriguing, don’t you think?’
‘Intriguing?’ Lora said. ‘You mean about his true identity?’
‘That, yes, and more,’ Mac said. ‘Think of what we know in the prophecy of the Dreamers, know of Solaris I mean.’
Eva said, ‘That he will rise …’
‘At the time of the race,’ Mac added. ‘That’s correct. But where did he come from? How was it that he showed up as the last 13 did? How can this ancient prophecy have known about Solaris? How could he be referred to thousands of years ago and then appear right on time? That is but one of the great mysteries of this race. Mysteries I intend to discover the answers to.’
‘How do you propose to do that?’ Lora asked.
‘By being patient,’ Mac replied. ‘The opportunity will present itself.’
Eva and Lora shared a smile at the phrase they had used to discuss their escape.
‘So,’ Lora asked. ‘What do we do?’
‘We?’ Mac said.
‘What do you expect of us?’
‘Ah,’ Mac replied, smiling. ‘Not now, but soon, I expect you to “escape”.’
17
SAM
Sam told the street vendor to keep the change as he bought a bottle of water, then walked across the marina. The concrete jetties were full of fishing trawlers and charter boats, bobbing peacefully in the turquoise-coloured water.
Behind him, Rapha, Xavier, Tobias and two beefy Guardians disguised as Cuban soldiers stood sentry, making sure there’d be no uninvited guests tagging along.
‘I checked with the Director back home, and he assures me they have no Enterprise-made Dreamers in Cuba,’ Tobias told Sam. ‘So it looks like Maria was naturally destined to be one of the last 13.’
‘Like me, right?’ Rapha added.
‘That’s right—and Gabriella too,’ Tobias said. ‘You just have to convince her like you did them. And take it slowly so you don’t scare her.’
‘Will do,’ Sam said, nodding. He adjusted his sunglasses and hoped he was wearing his best friendly face. He had changed his Stealth Suit to a Hawaiian shirt that Jedi would be proud of, along with some board shorts. His friends were dressed equally casually, while Tobias wore a white panama hat with an open-necked cotton shirt and linen shorts.
If this race to save the world doesn’t work out, maybe we can go into fashion design with these Stealth Suits.
Maria’s boat was easy to find. It was painted red, but it had faded and was weathering badly, the paint blistering and peeling away from the wood. Its name, the Scaramanga, was written in looping yellow writing along the large, flat stern. It looked exactly as it had in his dream. Maria did too—she was short and with a gentle face, her shoulder-length brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She had the well-tanned skin of a local who lived out on the water.
Sam neared where she stood on the dock. She was facing his way, arguing fiercely with a tall, skinny man wearing dark clothes. Sam could only see the back of him, and out of nowhere an image of Solaris flashed into Sam’s mind. He dropped his water bottle and ran towards Maria.
‘Hey! Hey!’
The guy turned around—he was certainly not Solaris. He was wearing dark overalls, perhaps navy blue once but covered in black now, as though he’d recently emerged from a coal mine. He was an old guy with a craggy face and ratty beard.
‘Hey,’ Sam said again as he joined them, trying to make it sound more like a greeting this time. The man and Maria both stared at him.
Sam said nothing. He felt awkward.
The pair looked to each other again, ignoring him and resuming their heated debate in Spanish.
Sam couldn’t help himself and started to laugh. ‘Sorry,’ he apologised. There was something about what Maria had said, even though he couldn’t understand it, which was universally funny—she was quite clearly giving this guy
an earful. Maria stared back at Sam with fire in her eyes. The man was annoyed.
He turned back to Maria, pointed a finger at her and then at his watch, rattled a set of keys and walked off in a huff.
‘What did he want?’ Sam asked, but when he turned around, he saw that Maria was not standing on the dock anymore.
Huh?
Sam spun around but could not see her anywhere.
‘Maria?’ he called.
There was still no sign, so he called her name again, louder this time.
Maria emerged from below the deck of the Scaramanga, eyeing him suspiciously.
‘Who are you?’ Maria asked, more puzzled than anything.
‘Sam,’ he said, smiling. ‘My name’s Sam.’
‘And?’
‘I’m, ah, well, I’m a friend.’
Maria looked up and down the little dock, empty but for a crew refuelling a small fishing trawler.
‘A friend of who?’
‘Well …’ Sam found that he could not hold Maria’s accusatory gaze—it was now both angry and questioning. ‘It’s kind of hard to—’
‘If you’re after money, Sam, you’ll have to step in line,’ Maria said sharply, turning her back on Sam and going to the little pilot-house on the deck.
‘I’m not after money,’ Sam said, taking a foot off the dock and placing it on her boat.
Maria turned to face him, a spear gun in her hand, pointed at his chest.
‘This boat is the last thing I have,’ Maria said. ‘So, like I said, if my father or his business partner owes you money, then you’ll have to wait to speak to them about it.’
‘I—’ Sam held both hands up. He couldn’t look away from the spear pointed at him. ‘I just want to talk.’
Maria lowered the weapon, but still held it ready. ‘How did you know my name?’ she asked.
‘That’s … that’s a long story,’ Sam said as he tried his best ‘don’t-shoot-me’ smile. ‘But I assure you, it’s got nothing to do with money or anything about your father or his business partner. This is about you and me, and a load of important stuff. You know, like saving the world …’ he said, lowering his arms and trailing off.
Maria nearly smiled. ‘Sorry, Sam, but I do not have a lot of time. It is like I am, well, like I am living in a nightmare right now.’
You have no idea …
‘You see,’ Sam said, ‘that’s just the thing.’
18
ALEX
‘There’s been no sign of Stella,’ the Enterprise Agent said. ‘But she could be in there already.’
Alex sat hunkered down behind a bush, next to his mother and the Agents, at a location about twenty kilometres north of Vancouver. He looked down at the complex below through binoculars. There were two tall fences, topped with razor wire. The second had signs saying it was electrified.
Alex scanned the scene from left to right. The only visible structures were a couple of box-like concrete buildings with broken windows dotted along their walls. The bare grey concrete was cracked. The adjoining desolate road and car park sprouted weeds through the asphalt and a tall water tower stood to one side. Eight large combat tanks were parked along one fence, with vines twisting all over them. They had obviously not moved for a long time. The abandoned military complex looked like a dumping ground, a graveyard for old, obsolete equipment.
‘This place couldn’t look more deserted,’ Alex whispered.
‘Been that way for years,’ the lead Agent said. He was a short athletic guy, wearing the same black combat fatigues as the other Agents assembled. They carried an assortment of weaponry strapped to their uniforms—dart guns, tasers, stun grenades and handguns.
I guess they have to be prepared to fight fire with fire. I hope it doesn’t come to that.
‘It’s still listed as a restricted military installation,’ the Agent continued, ‘a part of the NATO missile defence shield, but it’s been mothballed all this time. Completely off limits.’
‘No sign of any recent activity?’ Phoebe asked.
‘None,’ the Agent replied. ‘What’s your order?’
‘We sit tight for a while,’ Phoebe said. ‘When we’re sure it’s clear, we go see what’s in there. If Stella approaches, we apprehend her out here, then we go in to see what she’s after inside. Either way, we need to check the site in case there’s a Gear hidden there. It can’t end up in the wrong hands.’
‘I should sneak in there now,’ Alex said. ‘Look around.’
‘After we know for sure that Stella’s not there already,’ his mother countered. ‘Just wait a while.’
‘Look at all the Agents we have,’ Alex said, counting twenty in all. ‘They’re capable of dealing with whatever Stella throws at them.’
Phoebe looked to the lead Agent.
‘Alex is right,’ he said. ‘We’ve got good cover positions out here, and we can send a team with him, a full protective detail. We have full schematics of the underground complex. We can execute this incursion with a high degree of safety and there won’t be anyone else getting in or out as long as we control the high ground.’
Phoebe looked to Alex, his eagerness obvious.
‘OK,’ she said, finally relenting. ‘Set up security out here, put a look-out up on the water tower and we’ll join your team. We go in now.’
19
SAM
Maria looked at Sam, wary. They sat in silence in the cabin of her boat.
‘How do you know all this?’ Maria asked eventually. ‘Only my father and I call that tiger shark Scarface.’
‘Because I’ve been there before,’ Sam said, wondering why she looked so sad at this news, ‘with you, in my dream. You told me about it.’
She shook her head. ‘No. You must have seen my father.’
‘I know it’s hard to believe,’ Sam said. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. And I’ve not seen your father.’
‘But how could you know of Scarface?’ she insisted.
Sam hesitated, weighing up how else he could convince her. Out the window, at the far end of the dock where it met the beach, he could see his friends waiting.
‘Where is your father?’ Sam asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Maria said. ‘My father went missing out there, at sea.’
‘When?’
‘Two weeks ago.’
Sam swallowed hard.
Two weeks … did one of our enemies get here that much ahead of us?
‘I’m still searching for him, every day,’ Maria said. ‘Well, until yesterday, when my boat broke down. Even my mechanic won’t do anymore work since my father owes money to everyone.’
‘Why?’
‘He … he stopped fishing. Stopped taking on charters. He became obsessed with searching.’
‘Searching? What for?’
‘He would never tell me,’ Maria said. ‘He just went out every day, diving and swimming and searching for something on the seabed.’
‘How’d it start? Did something happen that made him start searching? Some event?’
‘Event?’
‘A trigger,’ Sam said. ‘Something must have made him stop working and spend all his time and money looking for something under the sea.’
‘I …’ Maria said, then she just trailed off and stared absently at the boat’s weathered deck.
Sam didn’t know what to say to her.
How can I convince her that she now has to join me in an urgent quest to find a Gear to an ancient machine?
‘… it was nothing really … but he did change after I told him about a dream I had. He was immediately convinced there was something there,’ Maria went on. ‘Some kind of treasure … he spent everything on it, buying new dive gear and equipment, and the last few weeks he sold everything we owned and borrowed money from everyone so that he could put all of his time and effort into searching for it.’
Sam’s jaw dropped as Maria’s words sunk in.
‘Maria,’ he said, slowly and deliberately. ‘In you
r dream—or nightmare—was there something you were looking for?’
She nodded.
Sam swallowed hard.
‘Did you see it?’ Sam asked. ‘In your dream—did you see what it was that you had to get?’
‘It was shiny, made from metal. But …’
‘When?’
‘The night before my father started acting crazy. And then last night. I dreamed it again, it was a little wheel.’
‘Can—can you describe it?’ Sam said, pacing anxiously. ‘Or, wait, can you draw it?’
He took a notepad and pen from his backpack and passed it to Maria. He watched as she sketched what was undeniably a Gear.
‘That’s it!’ Sam said. ‘That’s your Gear!’
‘Gear?’
‘A cog, part of a machine—part of the machine I was telling you about.’
‘Oh. Ohl’
‘That’s why I’m here, Maria, to help you get it. This is the “treasure” your father is seeking. Everyone is. Only you could dream of it. We have to find it, and we can look for clues to find your father too.’
And if Maria’s father knew … others might. We may even be too late now.
‘But how did he know?’ Maria asked, confused.
‘Your father must have known how important your dreams were,’ Sam said, skirting the issue. He didn’t think now was the time to tell Maria that her father was probably a Dreamer who knew about the prophecy and had heard that the race had begun.
We’ll cross that bridge later if we have to …
Sam stood and leaned out of the cabin door, signalling to the others to come down to the marina.
‘Wait, Sam,’ Maria said. ‘If you mean for us to go after him, I’m afraid this boat, the engines … they are not working.’
Sam changed his Stealth Suit to resemble exactly the oil and grime stained overalls of the mechanic before, and Maria gasped at his altered appearance.