by James Phelan
“Hai … good idea.”
Issey’s silence lasted a minute before he said, “You really think I will dream of the Gear?”
Sam turned over. They were in little roll-out beds on opposite sides of the room.
“Probably,” Sam said. “With the other Dreamers, they had their Gear dream within one or two days of my dream of them, usually before, but hey, a pattern can always change. But I’m sure it’ll be one or two days at the most.”
“Now is a day?”
“Not even yet, so try and relax, OK?”
“OK.”
“I mean it.”
“Yes.”
Sam lay in silence, Issey too. Nearly an hour had passed by the time Sam heard the newest Dreamer sleeping. At first, Issey was silent, then he started sleeptalking, which kept Sam awake. Issey spoke in Japanese, with lots of laughter, and then came some English.
“Look out, Solaris—I am Samurai warrior! I am Ronin, now I kick your butt, hahaha!”
After that the snoring resumed.
Great. No sleep for me tonight.
Sam looked up out of the little window above his bed, where clouds were scattered in the night, lit from underneath by the city lights.
Tobias is out there somewhere, leading the chase away from us. He and the Guardians are out there fighting and running and chasing, and—
Sam’s mind went blank. All his concentration went to his senses—to listening.
He heard it again. A creaking sound from downstairs.
The front door?
Sam knew that he’d seen Kaga go to bed when they did, in the room down the hall at the top of the stairs.
So unless he silently walked down the stairs and decided to go for a midnight stroll, it’s not likely to be him.
And there was no one else in the house.
Sam slipped out of bed and moved silently to their door. As he moved, he changed his Stealth Suit to black, melting into the shadows and staying there.
He peered down the hallway, lit by the grey light coming in through the glass wall that bordered the courtyard.
He saw no movement.
But he heard it. A wary footfall downstairs—someone trying to move around stealthily in an unfamiliar space.
Someone’s definitely in the house.
Movement caught his eye—down the hall, Kaga opened his door. He was pulling on a silver metal suit with a helmet and mask, like firefighters used to walk into fires. He motioned with his hands for Sam to get Issey and to escape another way.
Through the window?
Sam hesitated a moment but then nodded. The old man finished off his suit, pulling on silver gloves, and picking up a fire extinguisher in one hand and a long wooden pole in the other before making for the stairs.
It was then that Sam realized Kaga knew who was downstairs. He choked on the realization.
Solaris.
How Kaga had known Solaris would one day show up here, and how and why he prepared for this moment, Sam would never know. But he knew that the old man was sacrificing himself so that the two Dreamers could escape.
It will not be for nothing.
Sam crept back into their room and shook Issey awake. “We have to get out of here,” he whispered, dragging Issey out of bed and throwing his clothes to him.
“What?” Issey was dazed, trying to comprehend what Sam was saying.
“Shh, we have to leave, now!”
“But Grandfather—” Issey protested.
“He is staying here. Hurry,” Sam urged. He pulled Issey to the window and opened it. Outside was the sloping roof, high above the ground.
“Why can’t we just—”
The room lit up in bright orange as fire roared up the staircase and spilled down the hall.
Sam and Issey both looked back through the open bedroom doorway to see Kaga at the top of the stairs, fire engulfing him. Slowly, the old man descended, one deliberate step at a time, an occasional blast of foam from the fire extinguisher gushing out before him.
The suit is fireproof!
Kaga twirled the wooden staff in his other hand—a samurai, walking into battle.
“OK,” Issey said, and then rushed out the window.
Sam was frozen on the spot for a moment, the image of a man walking into the fire forever burned into his mind. He shook it off, and followed Issey out onto the roof.
Sam slipped almost immediately.
Oh man … come on, Sam, concentrate.
Fire lit up the house again. Sam clung tight to a handhold and kept up with Issey. A fall to the cobbled street below would be bone breaking, and the ledge that they had to scale across to get to the next house’s roof was no more than two centimetres wide.
Sam followed Issey’s movements, shuffling sideways, clinging to the wall, and as they neared the edge of Kaga’s house, the roof descended to the point where they could now hold onto the eaves overhead.
“We have to use the roof!” Sam called. Issey understood, letting his feet dangle free and hanging on just with his hands. He shimmied along the last couple of metres to the edge of the roof that slightly overhung its neighbour. “Now swing over!” Sam urged.
Issey started to rock his legs back and forth, building up momentum, then letting go as his feet dangled over the next roof. He landed with a thud, grabbing onto the roof tiles so as not to slip. He turned onto his back and motioned Sam over.
Sam made the same movements, kicking off the wall with his feet and using his hands over his head to carry his weight along the edge of the eaves. He was almost at the far edge of the roof when the window below him shattered and fire swept out with immense heat.
He lifted his feet as another jet shot out. The heat was so close, Sam could feel it searing into the cold night air.
A whooshing noise rippled out and white foam erupted from the window, followed by noises of a struggle. Through the window, Sam could see Solaris and Kaga engaged in a hand-to-hand fight. The short man in his shiny silver suit was tackling the tall black-clad figure. Solaris was blocking Kaga’s blows with his forearms and then kicking and punching in retaliation.
“Sam, jump!”
Sam looked across to Issey. He swung his legs back and forth in a pendulum motion, mimicking what he had been taught more than a decade before by his parents on the swing at their local park as a young boy. When the angle seemed right, he let go, swinging through the air legs-first, his feet hitting the edge of the roof tiles—
The tiles slipped out from under his feet, clattering to the ground more than ten metres below.
Oh no!
There was an odd moment when Sam felt he was done for, in a kind of freefall as his feet moved on a never-ending treadmill of tiles that disappeared from under him, and that he was slowly tilting back, destined to fall backwards—
“Argh!” Sam shifted his weight forward.
“Here!” Issey said as he grabbed onto Sam’s wrist, but he pulled Issey down too.
“Hang onto something!” Sam cried out as they began sliding down the roof, the ceramic tiles smashing in the street below as fire continued to spill from next door.
Issey turned and grabbed onto the roof, pulling Sam forward enough so that together they could scramble up to the ridge where they settled and looked back at Kaga’s house.
“We have to go back and help Grandfather!” Issey said.
“No,” Sam replied, watching as bursts of flames erupted from the top-floor windows. “He’s fighting so that you can escape. We have to get out of here.”
“I can’t leave him in there.”
“You can, and you have to,” Sam said, his voice definite, and Issey looked him in the eyes. “You have to fulfill your destiny, as Kaga said. If we wait any longer here, it will be too late—for you, for me, for everyone.”
Issey wavered for a moment, looking back at the house, then turned and started moving away, over the ridge and to the next house, fast, and Sam followed. In just two minutes they’d jumped from roof to roof to g
et to the end of the block, where they took a rainwater pipe down to the ground like it was a fireman’s pole.
The intersection here was as quiet as the rest of the neighbourhood, but there was the far-off sound of fire engines.
“Issey, we have to keep moving,” Sam said, seeing that Issey was looking down the street to the red-orange glow. “Issey?”
“Yes. Yes.” He looked at Sam with a new determination. “Sam, I had my dream.”
“Of the Gear?”
“Yes.”
“You know where it is?”
“I think so. I need to think about it—to sit and think.”
“We’ll find somewhere quiet and safe, and we’ll sort out our next step.”
Issey nodded, looking up and down the street. “He’s going to pay,” he said. “This Solaris guy, he’s going to pay.”
21
EVA
Eva sat in a small classroom with the last 13—Gabriella, Xavier, Zara, Rapha, Maria, Cody and Arianna.
“Usually the Dreamer Doors competition has teams of three students from each of the four Academies, competing in the previous champion’s dream to find a prize,” Lora said. “This year will be different—your team, under the guise of the competition, will use the constructed Dreamscape to try to find the Gears that have fallen into the wrong hands.”
“How do we do that?” Xavier asked.
“The Dreamscape that is created will feel like ordinary, waking life, and you will all share in it. The very nature of the constructed dream will assist you in your search for the Gears. Having those connected minds all together in there will magnify your dream waves and hopefully draw you to the Gears in a way you would struggle to do in real life.”
“Sounds good!” Rapha said.
“So it’ll feel like we’re in another reality?” Eva said.
“Yes. You’ll be aware it’s a dream, but it will feel completely real,” Lora said, “like the lucid dreams that you have been having in my classes. There is one important extra element, though.”
Lora brought up a digital image onto the screen at the front of the classroom.
“These doors are scattered throughout the construct world,” she explained, pointing to the images of a white door and a black door at different locations. “The white doors will take you where you want to go.”
“Whoa, hang on …” Xavier said. “Anywhere?”
“Almost, although you must have your destination clear in your mind. But for argument’s sake, if you need to get from this door to say, a door nearest the Opera House in Sydney, then you picture it in your mind as you open the door and go through.”
“And if we don’t have a clear mental picture?” Eva said. “Or if we just run through without an idea?”
“Then you will end up at any one of the thousands of doors around the world,” Lora said. “And the disorientation may cause you to go back through the door, only to find yourself at another location, and so on. So it’s of the utmost importance to be focused and calm when using the white doors.”
“What about the black doors?” Gabriella asked.
Lora nodded and zoomed in on the picture of the black door. “They number less, about five thousand all up, scattered around the world,” she said. “Again, you must concentrate, but they do one of two things.”
Eva sat on the edge of her chair, waiting.
“First, they can bring you back to your waking life, and you will be out of the competition. For instance, if you manage to find the location of a Gear, you can use a black door to immediately come out of the construct. And if, for whatever reason, you feel you can go no further in the game, you can come back, there is no harm in that.”
“How long does each tournament last?”
“Until the Dreamer prize is found and brought back through a black door,” Lora explained, showing a picture of some past prizes—a compass, a large, ornate book and a miniature die-cast car.
“Funny prizes,” Zara said.
“I don’t understand the toy car,” Maria said.
“The prize is to win the game—the actual object is not the aim. It could be anything, and it’ll be something different this year,” Lora explained. “The trick is that with each of the three rounds, the number of white doors decreases by half. The record in over a hundred years of the Dreamer Doors is five days in the construct.”
“Wow,” Maria said.
“What is the other thing the black doors do?” Gabriella asked.
“Good question,” Lora said. “If you choose to go through a black door to combat your worst nightmare, you go back through the door to the construct, where you will find the number of white doors has grown a hundred times over. It’s also how you can summon your backup partner, who will then remain with you and your team until the next black door.”
“So it’s kinda like a hack,” Xavier said. “Excellent.”
“No,” Eva said. “Not a hack. It’s a gamble. If you take the chance to face your nightmare, you might end up getting kicked out of the game if you fail. Right, Lora?”
“That’s correct,” Lora said.
“So if you die in the game, if the nightmare beats you, you’re out?” Zara asked.
“You wake up and the team is down to two players, and then perhaps to one.”
“For the rest of the tournament?” Cody asked, tentatively joining in the conversation.
“Yes,” Lora said. “Once you’re dead in the construct, your part in the Dreamer Doors is over.”
“Then we agree not to take unnecessary risks,” Eva said to her teammates. “OK?”
They all nodded in agreement.
“So,” Lora said. “Next up, some geography lessons—and make no mistake, the Eastern Academy is renowned for their speedy use of the white doors, so you’d all better brush up on your major cities, towns and landmarks.”
“Huh,” Gabriella said. “Time for more homework …”
Eva scrolled through the images of landmarks on her laptop and mentally mapped them to the cities they were in and or near to. She felt confident that if chosen to compete in the competition, she would use the white doors well. The others were spread out around the room, each face illuminated by a screen and creased with concentration.
“OK,” Lora said, re-entering the room. “The team has been decided. Xavier, your Gear fell into the hands of Solaris in Germany—”
“Yep, thanks for reminding me,” he interrupted. “Not my finest hour.”
“—so you will be one of our three to compete,” Lora finished.
“Yes!” Xavier stood and pumped his fists into the air. “Here I come, Dreamer Doors!”
“And Zara, your Gear is also with Solaris, as is the Bakhu box itself,” Lora said, “so you will be our second team member.”
“Oui, d’accord. I understand,” Zara said, straightening up in her chair.
“Finally, as the two of you are searching out your Gears, the last team member will need to be going after the prize itself, to make sure the construct stays open long enough for you to find your Gears,” Lora said. “Eva, that will be you.”
Eva felt her face flush red. “Sure, good.”
Xavier gave her a friendly nudge with his shoulder. “In it together, Dream Girl,” he smiled.
“The remainder of you will be the support team,” Lora said, “and may be called upon as backup as each player can call on one assistant to enter and help out during each phase, though for a limited period only.”
“This sounds complicated,” Arianna said.
“It will become clearer,” Lora replied, “I promise. But you should understand that although this is a game, it’s not child’s play. In terms of difficulty and skill, think of it like the Olympics.”
“It’s our Olympics of dreams …” Xavier said.
“We still have a little time to continue to coach you before the first round begins in a few days,” Lora said. “We must make the most of it so you are all as ready as you can be.”
22
SAM
“Someplace quiet” turned out to be a tiny café. Even in the middle of the night, it was filled with about fifty people crammed onto stools or standing in a space that would be a tight squeeze for twenty. Sam texted their location to Tobias and he got a message back almost instantly.
Stay put. Be there in 10.
“What do you remember from your dream?” Sam asked, seated at the end of a bar next to Issey, the two of them trying to drink iced tea while they caught their breath after their frantic escape.
“It is as if I saw a vision of the past,” Issey said, sipping his tea. “The Gear? I think it was part of something for navigating. There was a trading ship, tall with sails, old-fashioned. It docked at an island here in Japan. The whole scene was from another time, hundreds of years ago. Then, the device was left behind, and then … then …”
Sam let Issey take the time to recall the dream, and he couldn’t help but think of the ship he’d seen with Maria.
How many Gears were turned into other devices? And what will we do if it turns out that one is lost on a shipwreck? Sift through five hundred years of silt on the ocean floor?
“Like any dream,” Sam said, “the farther you are from it, the fewer details you can remember. But it will return.”
“Return?”
“Tobias will meet us here, and we’ll go somewhere safe, where we can hook you up to a dream-reading machine.”
“OK—my parents have one,” Issey said, texting on his own phone. “They just pinged me, they’re with Tobias and nearly here now.”
Issey stared into his drink.
“You’re thinking about Kaga,” Sam said.
“Yes,” Issey admitted. “I am. I feel so guilty that we left him, alone, against that—that fire-breathing thing.”
“Kaga knew what he was doing,” Sam said. “He was prepared to face Solaris, you know that. It’s like he knew it was his destiny, his part in this.”
Issey was silent.
“You know I’m right, right?” Sam repeated. “I just met him, but it was obvious he was smart, prepared and he was ready. Maybe he even kicked Solaris’ butt back there, saved us all a big headache. He’ll be knighted, get medals, probably have his face put on postage stamps for the work he did. Or a whole series of manga books celebrating his achievements—computer games, maybe.”