by James Phelan
“She won’t hurt them,” Sam said, looking around the table at the faces of all his friends. He could see Gabriella was nodding, as she believed it too. “They’re both too valuable. She’ll be keeping them to trade with us.”
“Trade?” Arianna asked.
“For something they need,” Sam said. “The Gears, maybe.”
“Or one of us,” Xavier said.
The table fell silent.
Sam felt a presence behind him and turned around.
It was Lora.
“Sam, are you finished? Can you please accompany me to the Professor’s office?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Eva, you too.”
“Of course, yes,” Eva said, and they left the dining hall and its buzz of activity behind. Sam glanced back over his shoulder. He’d made some friends here, and he liked the atmosphere, the feeling of being around them. When he was here, with the other Dreamers, he felt he truly belonged. And that feeling was far removed from all that he had in the race—always running, hiding, trying to get to the next Dreamer and Gear before anyone else did. Here, he could just be himself.
Now that I know Issey is number nine, really it’s just four more dreams. Four more dreams and we’ll have found all 13 Dreamers and then this will be over … one way or another.
07
“Man,” Eva said once they were out in the corridor, “that was intense. It’s like you’re a celebrity. Gabriella will get jealous!”
Lora laughed. “They were worried about Sam,” she said. “It’s been so long since he was last here, many were preparing themselves for the worst news.”
“What,” Sam said, “that I beat Solaris all on my own and everyone else missed out on the action?”
They laughed as they walked along the dimly lit corridors through the old school building.
“How about you guys?” Sam said, thinking about what Lora had said. “Did you think I was toast? Or that I’d become some kind of radioactive superhero?”
“Never,” Eva said.
“Ah, that’s my Dream Girl!” Sam said to Eva, getting her in a playful headlock. “Always confident that I’ll be there to fight another day.”
“No, I meant that I didn’t think you’d ever be a superhero!” Eva replied. She easily wriggled out of the headlock and swiftly put Sam into one of her own.
“I see someone’s been upping their combat skills since I’ve been gone,” Sam said, tapping out as she messed up his hair and let him go.
“I’ve been going to jujitsu classes,” Eva said. “And studying up a bit—Combating Nightmares, How to Steer Your Unconscious Mind and all that. I had to do something while I was here or I would have gone crazy.”
“She’s turned out to be quite the stellar student,” Lora said to Sam, opening the door to the Professor’s office. “You’ve got some catching up to do, Sam.”
“Yeah, I figured,” Sam said. “Though it’s hardly like I’ve been sitting on a couch in front of the TV all this time, either.”
“Yes, we know, you’re running around, saving the world,” Eva said, and the three of them sat in the Professor’s empty office. “Hey, what’s with your hair? It’s like you’ve had a big chunk of it shaved off at the back.”
“Oh, this?” Sam said, touching where the Hypnos had prepped him for his dream chip implant. “It’s nothing, just a close encounter with a ‘Dream Ghoul.’”
“A what?”
“I’m surprised you haven’t read about them, what with all your studying,” Sam teased. “Lora, you know all about them, right?”
“Oh, sure,” Lora said with a barely concealed smirk, “Dream Ghouls, very nasty business. Especially when they scream.”
“They scream?” Eva said, shifting in her seat.
“The one that did this to me was the worst kind too,” Sam said. “Lucky escape.”
Eva’s face creased with concern.
Then Sam and Lora cracked up laughing.
“No, not really!” Sam admitted, and Eva tried to wrestle him into another headlock. Sam was ready this time and got free easily. “I had you going for a minute, though, didn’t I?”
Eva pulled a face at him. “Stop clowning around! How did you get that shaved patch on the back of your head, then?”
Sam felt at the spiky crop of shaved hair and remembered back to when Hans and the Hypnos had drugged him. “Some mad Russian scientist shaved it,” he said.
“Why would he do that?”
“Prepping me for an operation, I think. He was working for Hans. They were going to plant a chip in my brain, to steal my dreams.”
“Sam, I said stop clowning around!” Eva said, exasperated.
Sam grimaced. “Actually, that time I wasn’t. That’s the truth.”
“Oh, right. Sorry,” Eva said. “Well, you need a haircut. It looks weird like that.”
Sam laughed. “I’ll put it on my list.” Sam leaned over the arm of his chair and asked, “So, tell me, what have you been doing apart from all those classes?”
“Well, I wasn’t here the whole time. Lora and I nearly caught up with you in Colorado, but we were turned back from the airport as it was being evacuated.”
Sam was quiet for a moment. “You were there?”
“Yes,” Lora said. “Scary stuff.”
“You got out in an escape pod—do you think Solaris might have too?” Eva said.
“Maybe,” Sam said. “Who knows?”
The door swung open.
“I’m here,” the Professor said, entering his office in a hurry. “Sorry for the delay, had to put out a few fires.”
“Fires?” Sam said, shifting in his seat.
“Yes, metaphorically speaking, our world of dreams has gone, as you might say, nuts,” the Professor replied.
“I do believe that ‘nuts’ is the technical term that we use,” Sam said sagely.
The Professor chuckled. “Anyway, there are problems of nightmarish proportions breaking out all over the world. But it is good to see you, Sam, safe and well—apart from the haircut.”
“Yeah, I’m working on that.”
“As you can see, it’s a chaotic time,” the Professor said, hanging his jacket and hat and sitting behind his desk. He seemed older to Sam, even though it was only a matter of weeks since he’d seen him last. Papers covered the Professor’s desk, stacked high and haphazardly, a state of chaos that reminded Sam of his own desk back home, overflowing with schoolwork.
The Professor switched on a TV screen on the wall, leaving the volume turned down. A news channel was flicking between scenes of destruction in China, Spain and Greece. “I’m sure you’re already aware, Sam, that the world is falling to pieces with violence erupting everywhere, all sorts of extreme and unpredictable weather …”
“And it’s because of the Dreamscape?” Sam said, watching the images on the screens. “All this chaos?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” the Professor replied. “The more that the population of the world suffers subconsciously in the realm of dreams, the more we will see unrest in waking life. Nowhere in the world is immune. There are reports of riots in East Asia and Europe, marches here in London that turned violent, wars breaking out across Africa, civil unrest throughout Argentina and Chile, chaos in Los Angeles …”
“The world’s gone psycho …” Sam said, transfixed by the images on the screen. “How can we fix it? Can we fix it?”
“Only by getting to the Dream Gate as quickly as we can,” the Professor said. “Unlocking the power beyond is the only way to restore balance.”
“OK, well, we’re back in the race,” Sam said, shifting forward in his seat, “With Arianna’s help, we’ve gotten back the Gears from Hans.”
“And Lora tells me that you have had your next dream,” the Professor said.
“Yes, the next Dreamer is called Issey. He’s in Japan.”
“We’ve got all Issey’s details,” Lora explained to the Professor, passing over a tablet computer. “I had J
edi compile it when we were on the flight here.”
“Excellent,” the Professor said, scrolling through the information.
“We have a team of local Guardians secretly watching over him now,” Lora said. “And Sam and I will leave for Tokyo tomorrow.”
The Professor nodded. “Good. In the meantime, let us catch up on everything and prepare for what is next. I want no more surprises, and no more situations like Denver.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Sam said.
08
EVA
That night Eva could not sleep. Gabriella was now bunking with Zara since Gabriella could speak French and the two had bonded.
Fine with me.
Arianna was Eva’s new roommate and she was talking in her sleep.
Clearly having a fun dream though, not a nightmare.
As if to confirm that thought, Arianna laughed on cue, then snorted, breathed heavily, rolled onto her side and finally fell quiet.
Maybe now I can get some sleep.
Eva closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep. Five minutes passed. Then ten, fifteen. Try as she might, her mind was too busy, racing with thoughts about Alex, about the dream coils, about the fruitless trip she’d taken last week with Dr. Dark in search of the mysterious zodiac she had dreamed of.
My dream showed us that weird thirteen-symbol zodiac, but we couldn’t find out anything more about it … maybe we were looking in the wrong place …
At least the trip had cleared up the confusion about Dr. Kader. At the time, on the plane, Eva had been so angry to see Xavier’s godfather, she’d even drawn a gun on him.
Who could blame me? Last I heard, he betrayed Sam in Denver.
But Dr. Dark had explained that Ahmed had been working for them all along, winning Mac’s trust and finding out what he knew.
And Dr. Dark wouldn’t welcome a traitor back. He must have been a spy for Dr. Dark and the Academy all along.
Eva let out a sigh and rolled out of bed. Thinking about who they could trust, who was on whose side, only made her mind race even more. She figured if she was going to be awake, she might as well use the time to do something.
Maybe then I’ll feel like sleeping …
She changed from her pajamas to her Stealth Suit and tiptoed out of the room and down the hallway.
Outside the dorm building she ran through the crisp night, the moon and stars hidden by low clouds. She knew that a large contingent of the Guardians protecting the Academy’s London campus would be patrolling the grounds and buildings, and wouldn’t be happy to find her sneaking around so late. She moved quickly and silently across the dewy grass to visit her friend.
Jedi’s lab was underneath the boathouse, and as Eva crept down the stairs, she smiled. He was playing music, which meant that he was still wide awake and probably working.
“Hey, Eva,” Jedi said, not even turning around in his high-backed chair to see that it was her.
“How did you … how’d you know it was me?” Eva asked.
“This,” he said.
Eva stood by his side, and he was pointing at one of several large screens on his desk. Each screen was divided into several sections, each showing a different place around the campus.
“New advanced security system. The campus CCTV cameras are tiny—completely unnoticeable,” Jedi explained. “Seems like we’re not the only ones who can’t sleep. Sam’s currently in the dojo,” he continued, pointing to a square on one screen. “And over here, we can see that the Professor’s still working in his study—he likes to pace back and forth when he’s thinking. And six students, here,” he tapped another screen, “seem to be having a bit of a party in their common room.”
“Looks like there’s a lot of insomnia going around. Huh,” Eva muttered.
Jedi tapped a few keys and the screens changed, now showing hundreds of dots scattered over a graphic. The graphic was divided by wavy lines criss-crossing one another. When Jedi tapped on a particular dot, a student’s name appeared, along with other numerical data.
“What’s that?”
“The dream waves on the campus. Kinda like our own mini Dreamscape.”
“Everyone’s dream waves are being read via these?” Eva asked, holding her dream catcher.
“Yep,” Jedi replied, “Nifty, huh?”
“What’s with the different colours of the dots?”
“Ah, OK, look here,” Jedi said, pointing to a cluster in the senior wing of the dorm. “See the aura colours of their dream states?”
Eva looked at the colours. They were dark red, a couple almost black.
“They’re asleep,” Jedi said, “and they’re having nightmares. Bad ones, by the colour coding. It’s similar to what I see when we’ve done recent scans of a wider area Dreamscape—towns and cities at night—the general populace can’t control or steer dreams at all, so they’re having terrible nightmares.”
“What do the last 13 Dreamers look like when they sleep?”
Jedi smiled and brought up the schematic diagrams of the dots labelled: Zara, Gabriella, Xavier, Rapha, Maria, Cody and Arianna. Their dream colours were a cool white-blue, reminding Eva of the summer skies over her home town of Seattle.
“Identical,” Eva noticed.
“They are—here,” Jedi said.
“What do you mean?” Eva asked.
“Aural spectrums can be influenced by certain factors. In this case, it’s the Gears. Of course, we are researching this more as we go, but from looking at the last 13 Dreamers, we got lucky and realized that their aura colours and dream wave patterns become the same when they’re dreaming close to a Gear.”
Jedi called up recorded data to show her.
“Cool.”
Jedi made a few adjustments and little graphs came up next to each of the last 13. “And this shows in greater detail the colours and what they represent, as well as the sleep patterns, length of REM sleep, whether they’re in a lucid dream, that kind of thing,” Jedi said. “It gives an overall number that we call a Dream Aura Count. See here?”
He zoomed in.
“They’re all in the nineties,” Eva said. “Is that good?”
“Yep. Only the Professor gets close to that and he’s at about eighty-three or eighty-four. Lora’s at seventy-five, Tobias too. Most teachers, including me, are in the high sixties.”
“Students?”
“Well, the base worldwide population is anywhere between one and ten, so when juniors arrive at the Academy they are not much above that, usually in the twenties. And the highest senior we ever had graduated at sixty-five, and that was Lora.”
“Wow.”
“There was only one other who came close to her Dream Aura Count,” Jedi said, leaning back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling, his hands cupped behind his head. “Yeah … according to the data I inherited, Sebastian’s count was abnormally high too.”
“Well, I guess he’d have a natural advantage being the Professor’s son, huh?”
Jedi nodded. “What a waste to lose someone so gifted—especially now.”
Eva paused, not quite knowing what to say next. After a long moment she asked, “So, what does my aura look like at night?”
“Oh, yours is the same,” Jedi replied casually.
“What?”
Same as … does he mean …?
Jedi clicked through several screens and opened a file, bringing up Eva’s archived dream data.
Eva stared. “But how …? Hang on, it says there that my Dream Aura Count is in the nineties too …”
Jedi smiled. “Mm-hmm.”
“But, that would mean … what are you saying exactly?” Eva’s heart started thudding in her chest and she could feel blood rushing to her face.
“It means …” Jedi said, touching the screen to zoom in on her data as a loud beep rang out, making Eva jump. Jedi hurriedly turned back to the first screen, frantically tapping away at his keyboard. “Oh … oh no, you don’t …”
“Jedi? What is it?�
�
“My system,” Jedi said, rolling cross the floor to another terminal and punching in commands. “It’s another hacking attempt!”
“Matrix?”
“Yep.”
“Can I help?”
“Yeah, actually you can. Get on that console there,” he said, pointing, “and do exactly what I say!”
09
SAM
Sam couldn’t sleep. Not even after a midnight training session.
After dinner he’d had a haircut—a short buzz cut, thanks to one of the senior boys—and gotten himself a new generation Stealth Suit, specially provided for him by the tech-heads in the Advance Science department at the Enterprise. According to them, this new Suit could function in a sub-zero environment and had enough power to last twenty-four hours while completely immobile. Then it would need at least an hour’s worth of constant motion or body warmth to recharge.
Never want to test that particular limit.
Now it resembled casual gym wear as he rested in his bedroom. The room was small but it felt safe. Where there had once been Academy merchandise in this would-be storeroom, there was now a single bed, a small desk, a wardrobe and bookshelves. The old sash window had heavy curtains to keep out the London winters.
Sam sat at the desk and stared outside. In the midnight shadows of the moon, he made out teams of Guardians patrolling the grounds, serious-looking people with serious-looking guns.
He stood up and moved across the small room to sit on his bed. His bedside lamp remained on, and he sat there, motionless.
Waiting.
For what?
He did not feel sleepy at all.
So what now? Am I just going to sit here, waiting, until dawn breaks?
He picked up a book and opened it. It was something about Egyptian gods. He was leafing through the pages but not taking anything in.
Unease was setting in. Sleep was definitely a long way off now. He decided to head back down to the dojo to spend another hour working on his throwing and grappling moves.
He took the spiral staircase all the way down to the basement gymnasium where the combat classes were held. He went through his warm-up routine of five minutes on the skipping rope, a series of stretches and fifty push-ups.