5

by James Phelan

  “Your dad’s friend, the superintendent,” Sam said. “Do you think he turned all the power on when he brought the elevator online for us?”

  Issey seemed confused by the question. “Well, yes. He knew we had to go down here, though I doubt any of these old lamps still work—this place hasn’t really been used for over fifty years.”

  “Then how about you flip that switch?”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes,” Sam said.

  “But the light—it will show them where we are, they will be coming for us,” Issey protested.

  “I don’t think that’s a light switch,” Sam replied.

  Issey, curious, pulled down on the lever.

  The floor moved—down.

  29

  They were standing on top of a massive cargo elevator.

  “How do we know which floor to get off on?” Issey said.

  “We don’t,” Sam said, “but we’ll have—look out!” he ducked, pulling Issey down with him.

  WHOOSH!

  A net blasted from a launcher shot over their heads as they cleared the floor of the main warehouse level, the side doors facing the shaft having been prised open by Stella’s men. They passed a concrete slab that was a metre thick, and then their flashlights revealed a maze of subterranean rooms and corridors. The elevator continued downward.

  “This floor!” Issey said, scrambling on his hands and knees to get off at the next level, Sam rolling out after him.

  “Run!” Sam said. “Follow your gut and run, they’ll be close behind us!”

  Issey’s feet skidded as he ran by a corridor and then did a double take, jogging back to where they’d just been. He stood still for a moment, as though waiting for something.

  “What is it?” Sam asked.

  “A noise … hear that?”

  Sam listened. He heard the thrum of many feet running on the level above. “They’re closing in on us,” Sam said. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “No, it’s not them. It’s water, this way,” Issey said, heading down a corridor that curved around in a huge sweeping arc. Sam shrugged and followed him.

  I’ve got to trust him, otherwise we’ll never find the Gear.

  “Hear it?” Issey said.

  “Yeah, so?” Sam said. “The Gear! We need to find the Gear!”

  “It’s here.”

  “Huh?”

  Issey stopped running. Before him was a series of doors, each labelled in Japanese. The stencilled words were spray-painted on.

  “What do they say?” Sam said.

  “This one is storage—it says it’s from after the Second World War,” Issey said. “And these say they’re from a museum,” he added, pointing at others. “But the Gear is not here, it’s farther up, follow me.”

  Along the corridor, the sound of flowing water grew louder, and at a junction they came to a wall made from criss-crossing metal bars where a torrent of stormwater flowed out to sea on the other side.

  “It’s here!” Issey said, standing by a closed door next to the drain. “But it’s locked.” Issey took a step back and then—

  SMASH!

  He kicked the door and bounced off it, his body rocking in pain.

  “OK, no, I can’t …” Issey said, doubling over.

  “Ah, Issey?” Sam said, turning the handle and the door clicked open. “You were turning it the wrong way.”

  “Oh, right,” he grimaced.

  Inside the room, Sam tried the overhead lights but they blew out in a shower of sparks as soon as he flicked the switch. By the light of their flashlights, they scanned the room. It was filled floor-to-ceiling with wooden crates, each about the size of a family refrigerator, arranged neatly, with military precision. It looked like there were hundreds of them. The walkways between the crates were tight canyons, like a scale model of a city grid.

  “Tell me the Gear isn’t packed away in the far corner and under like six of these crates?” Sam said.

  “Yeah, that would be a pain …” Issey said.

  He ambled forward, and Sam kept checking behind them, a creeping feeling running up his spine that they were being followed.

  “Ah, Issey, wanna hustle it along some?” Sam said.

  “Trying …” Issey said, paused at a crate. It was marked with heavy black Japanese characters.

  “What’s it say?”

  “Military storage,” Issey said. “Doesn’t say what’s in there. They’re old though.”

  “Right. And the Gear?”

  “I think it’s not in here.”

  “But—really?” Sam said, his confidence in Issey starting to waver.

  “I … I don’t know,” Issey said. He looked around the room. Sam could see that he had a pained expression on his face, a look that grew more strained with each passing, panicked second until he clutched at his temples.

  Sam caught him as he slumped to the ground, unconscious.

  Issey!

  30

  EVA

  There was silence for a while. Then the Professor spoke. “If that is true, that she plans to break into the Dreamer Doors construct, then you have alerted us to something very serious.”

  “Shiva, Alex, there should be a team of Agents there for your protection any moment,” the Director said. “Keep the doors barricaded until then.”

  “OK,” Alex said.

  There was noise from somewhere off screen, and Eva saw Agents entering the complex on the closed-circuit camera feed Jedi was streaming alongside the image of Shiva and Alex.

  “Yep,” Alex said. “They’re here now.”

  “And Stella?” the Professor asked. “Do we know her whereabouts?”

  “I’m afraid not,” the Director said. “Not since Tokyo when she chased Sam and Issey. But how about the coils?”

  “It looks like they’ve made real headway,” Shiva said. “This should now be considered a real possibility, and a threat in the wrong hands. Looks like I was right all along,” he smiled.

  “Yes, indeed, Shiva, noted,” the Director smiled back.

  “Are you saying that Tesla’s work really could …?” the Professor asked.

  “Yes,” Alex and Shiva replied at the same time, grinning at each other. “Jinx!”

  “What are we talking about?” Eva asked.

  “If I may,” Lora said, “I believe we’re discussing how Tesla worked on harnessing the energy created by our dream waves. The energy that, legend has it, the Egyptians were the first to harness through their obelisks.”

  “The first and the last,” the Professor said. “Tesla’s machines never worked. He rediscovered the theory, nothing more.”

  “What about at the Washington Monument?” Alex said. “That was to tap into the same thing, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” the Director said. “But it looks like when you stopped Mac’s men, you just stalled the process.”

  “Stalled how?”

  “Let’s go back a step,” the Director said, bringing up images of obelisks. “These are Cleopatra needles, and here are other obelisks—in New York, Rome and Paris. They were the original transponders.”

  “The tallest structures for an age, until they built the pyramids and then their lighthouse in Alexandria,” Shiva added.

  More images flashed up.

  “Exactly. When the lighthouse was dismantled, the Great Pyramid at Giza was the tallest man-made structure until the Eiffel Tower was built.”

  “Which was also a receiver,” Eva added, “above the Council chambers.”

  “Correct,” the Professor said.

  “Later,” the Director said, bringing up the images of the Eiffel Tower, “the Dreamer Council had receiving towers built into newer, taller structures. Those that would have more reach, more capability—”

  Pictures of the Washington Monument, the Empire State Building, and skyscrapers from Shanghai to Abu Dhabi flashed across their shared screens.

  “In more ways than one,” the Professor interjected.

  “
Ah yes,” the Director said. “It’s long been suspected in some circles—”

  “Widely believed by learned minds,” the Professor added.

  “OK, well, believed, that the Ancient Egyptians also had the means to transmit dreams, not just receive them,” the Director said. “What’s really incredible is that if that were true, you’d think that surely we’d be able to do it by now.”

  “But Tesla really was a unique kind of genius,” the Professor said. “You can have all the technology in the world, but if you can’t figure out how to use it …” he shrugged.

  “Well, we’re working on it,” Shiva grinned.

  “Do you really think it could become operational now?” the Professor asked.

  “With the advent of taller and taller skyscrapers, satellite communication, microwave towers, cell phones, the world is now completely connected to the receiving grid,” Shiva said.

  “But that’s receiving,” Alex said, “not transmitting.”

  “Exactly,” the Director said. “But that could all be different now.”

  “Well,” Eva said, “like it or not, it looks like we’re at that point. Ready or not, the world is about to realize who and what we are and what we can do.”

  Five minutes later Eva sat on the edge of Lora’s desk in her temporary office. It was clearly usually a library, crammed wall-to-ceiling with bookshelves overflowing with old leather-bound volumes.

  Lora pointed to the television where the news was replaying a shot of a yellow sports car slinging off a ramp and then smashing down to a park below and two figures running from the scene.

  “I’m so relieved to see Sam and Issey are OK,” Eva said.

  Footage of Stella being arrested from the bank of the pond and being put into the back of a patrol car now played. The news cut to a reporter showing the same cop car smashed into a tree and the officers stunned and dazed as they tried to explain how their suspect had overpowered them and escaped into the night.

  “I can’t believe Stella got away from the cops. And what about Sam?” Eva said.

  “Tobias called in to say they were on their way to retrieve Issey’s Gear,” Lora said. “But I’m worried that …” her voice trailed off, and she turned up the volume on the television. The news showed live footage from Japan.

  “As you can see,” the news anchor said, “from our helicopter in the sky, which we expect to have to ground at any minute due to the worsening weather, there is some kind of battle raging below on what is known locally as Ghost Island.”

  Eva watched wide-eyed as plumes of fire erupted on the island below and tiny figures ran from it. She knew then that Solaris was there. And that Sam was already back in serious danger.

  31

  SAM

  Sam dragged Issey down an aisle and to an exit door at the nearest corner of the warehouse, where he stopped and sucked at the stale underground air.

  He propped Issey up against the wall and could see that he was mumbling and starting to wake up.

  There were voices and movement around them.

  Stella’s Agents.

  Then, more worryingly, another noise.

  A non-human noise.

  It started with a deep, guttural growl. And then another.

  There were two of those beasts.

  “Monsters are only in dreams,” Sam said to himself. “They’re only in dreams …”

  A shrill cry echoed out, then the patter-patter of Stella’s Agents firing fast and blind, seemingly missing most of anything as they made a hasty retreat. Sam could make out the thudding of the darts hitting the wooden crates.

  The beasts gave out a blood-curdling howl.

  People screamed out in the darkness.

  “Sam …” Issey said, his voice hoarse.

  “Issey, what happened? Can you move?” Sam whispered, crouching down to his friend and helping him up to his feet.

  “I’m sorry … panic attack, I can’t control …” he stammered.

  If he was panicked before, we’re in real trouble now. I’ve got to get him out of here.

  “The Gear …” Issey mumbled.

  “Forget it, this is do or die, and we’re not going to get eaten today,” Sam said.

  “No, it’s here …”

  “Issey, come on,” Sam urged, leading him through the exit, a thin metal door that Sam shut behind them. “Let’s leave while we can. We can fight another day.”

  “I … I saw something from my dream, just then when I blacked out,” Issey said.

  “What?” Sam leaned Issey against the corridor wall, peering around the corners of a cross-intersection before deciding which way to proceed. He saw five of Stella’s guys running—from something.

  Sam ducked around a corner and led Issey another way. “What did you dream?”

  “It’s here,” Issey said. “It’s down one more level.”

  Sam stopped them again at the next corner of the maze of walkways.

  Perhaps it was built this way in case the fort was overrun, so defenders could hold their positions around blind corners.

  Whatever was the case, Sam hated that he just had his little flashlight to lead the way, Issey’s arm over his shoulder for support, all the while facing corner after corner where who-knew-what could be lurking.

  “Issey, you’re not well, we need to be out of here,” Sam said.

  “No, I saw it,” Issey said, sounding a little more alert with each passing second. “I saw him get it.”

  “Who?”

  “That man—that fire-breathing man who fought Kaga.”

  “Solaris. You saw him here?” Sam asked.

  “Yes.”

  A shiver ran down Sam’s spine. He checked behind them and then ahead, then around the corner. All clear.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Down one level?”

  “Yes. One.”

  “And where?”

  “It’s right there, in a command room, an admiral’s office, I think.”

  “And the Gear’s just sitting there?” Sam couldn’t quite believe it.

  “Yes, among a heap of other things, part of a collection of old nautical instruments,” Issey said. “And there’s something else.”

  “What else?”

  “Solaris was not alone. The Gear was given to him, by a woman—short, strong, with a cruel face. The woman from Tokyo, right?”

  “Right. Stella,” Sam said. He checked the dark corridors around them again. Sam had to pan the thin beam of the flashlight side-to-side to see the width of the corridors, and even then he felt he was missing more than he could actually see.

  Still all clear.

  “Come on, Issey, lead us downstairs to this office,” Sam said.

  They turned a corner and Sam stopped, the abrupt halt almost causing Issey to topple them both over.

  It was not all clear.

  In the sweep of the flashlight beam, Sam had seen something, only his mind hadn’t registered it at first because he’d been looking for people chasing them.

  But he had seen something.

  He’d seen eyes.

  Two big green-yellow eyes, looking right at them.

  Hunting them.

  32

  Sam brought the dart gun up in one hand, the flashlight in the other. Both were shaking as the beast charged at him.

  Its jaws opened in a massive snarl, wide enough to wrap around his head. It was all frothing saliva and mad, crazed eyes.

  Sam steadied. Aimed.

  Fired.

  The dart went high.

  He fired again—the beast leaped to the side, the dart zinging through empty air, then it pounced forward with a new surge of speed, lunging at Sam.

  Sam stood still. He focused down the sights of the pistol. At the near end, above his grip, two little white dots were visible in the gloom. Sam struggled to get the little round dot at the front of the barrel to line up in the gap between them. At the last moment, he got all three dots in a row pointe
d steadily at the beast’s large, bobbing head, just a heartbeat away—

  Sam squeezed the trigger.

  WHACK!

  The dart struck the beast in its chest just as it jumped at Sam and its paws hit his shoulders, hard, pounding him down onto the ground and knocking the air out of him.

  “Issey, little … help …” Sam managed to say with the beast lying heavily across him.

  Issey rolled the creature off Sam and helped him up.

  They looked down at the unconscious animal, shocked at the close call.

  “It’s just a dog …” Sam said, incredulous as he looked at the enormous guard dog.

  “Not just a dog,” Issey said, crouched down. “This thing is like a monster … I’ve never seen one so big.”

  “But it’s not some mythical beast,” Sam said, looking around, wary of more dogs coming out of the gloom.

  “I, um,” Issey stood back from it, “think it’s not really out cold.”

  The huge animal started twitching—first its legs, then its eyes were fluttering, its lips drawing back to reveal huge teeth.

  “Maybe dart it again?” Issey suggested.

  Then a terrifying and now-familiar howl rang out through the concrete maze.

  “Another one?” Issey said. “Oh boy …”

  “At least one, maybe more,” Sam said, staring into the dark. “Let’s get out of here!”

  At the next turn in the tunnel, Issey stopped at a set of stone stairs leading to a thick, ornate door.

  “This is it!” Issey said.

  The door was locked.

  “Wait a minute,” Sam said, and he unloaded his dart pistol, turned the range setting to maximum and pointed the barrel point blank at the lock.

  “What are you doing?” Issey said. “It’s not loaded.”

  “I’m hoping the gas charge is enough to blast through the lock. It’s gotta be pretty old,” Sam said. “Hold the flashlight steady and watch out.”

  BANG!

  The force of the gas hitting the lock blew the pistol from his hand.

  “Open sesame!” Sam said, kicking the door.

  He bounced off, falling to the ground.

  Issey helped him up.

  “We’re not having much luck with doors, are we?” Sam grimaced, dusting himself off. The door and its lock were undamaged, and his pistol was now empty of gas and useless.