“Richard Utherwise, your father, was Adam’s mentor. He was personally responsible for training and guiding the Project’s best dreamwalker, and he spent a lot of time working closely with Adam. Security thought this would upset you and cloud your judgment. The professor agreed. I’m sorry.”
David looked at the photo again and felt sick.
“If my father wasn’t a soldier,” he said after a long silence, “how did he die?”
Petra stared at her feet.
“An accident. He fell down some stairs in the base. Just a stupid accident.”
David looked at the picture again, then threw it across the room. It shattered against the wall.
“I want to get out of here.”
Petra said nothing as she took the flashlight and led the way back down the corridor. David followed her in silence. All he could think of was the fact that his father had spent far more time with Adam than he had with his own son. And no hero ever dies just falling down the stairs.
No hero at all.
They reached the top of the steps but David was too lost in his own thoughts to notice what was happening. Then, as he took the first step, he saw that Petra had gone, and the flashlight beam was nowhere to be seen. He froze.
“Petra?”
Nothing.
He looked back down the corridor to where they had been. It was dark, easily dark enough to hide someone. And David thought he could see a shape in the gloom, but there was no way it could be Petra. A sudden wave of panic chased away the misery over his father’s betrayal, and he ran down the stairs to the hall.
“Petra! Where are you?”
Without the flashlight, the dark closed around him. Desperate to get out, he made straight for the front door where the last of the evening light was still coming through the glass. He grabbed the door handle.
Something dark and man-shaped stepped across the outside of the door. David staggered back and turned.
A head suddenly appeared in a blaze of light right in front of him. David let out a whimper.
“Boo,” said the unsmiling, flashlight-shadowed face of Roman.
Lights came on and David saw that he was surrounded by armed security men.
He was actually relieved.
The walk back to Unsleep House was humiliating. David’s hands were handcuffed behind him, a gesture of utter pointlessness that David found hard to take seriously. Then he was marched through the cellar of the château and paraded around the base like a prize. As he passed, people stopped and stared, but no one challenged Roman, and David was taken down to the security wing and straight to a cell. There his handcuffs were removed, and he was shoved inside. Roman stepped in behind him.
David had remained silent up till then but he turned on the commander the moment they were alone.
“This is so stupid!” he shouted. “You’ll regret this when you hear what I’ve just found. And I have rights — you can’t just keep me here!”
“Keep you here?” said Roman, his anger making his accent much stronger than normal. “I have no intention of keeping you here. We have kept you long enough.”
David wasn’t expecting this.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said, still shouting.
“We are sending you back to London. There is a plane leaving in the morning. You are going to be set free.”
“Set free!” David said. “I’m not an animal.” But then he remembered that his life was supposed to be in danger in London. “Wait, does the professor know about this? I thought someone was trying to kill me!”
“Don’t worry,” said Roman with a sneer. “Your precious self will be looked after. Personally I think your usefulness has been exaggerated all along, but we will hold you in our London sub-branch for a few days, just until the security risk can be assessed. Then you are on your own.”
David found his anger subsiding, but this new development confused him. After all, he was being given what he’d wanted so badly just a short time before: the chance to go home. But at the same time he was too involved with the events at Unsleep House to want to leave now.
“You’ve always had it in for me,” he said to Roman. “What’s your problem anyway?”
“My problem?” Roman came and stood right over David. “My ‘problem’ is with little kids who don’t understand, who don’t care. Kids like you, shouting about rights and laughing at the rules. You don’t understand dreamwalking, you don’t … deserve it.” He took a deep breath. “It is a miracle, boy. And no miracle should be left in the hands of children.”
“Yes, you were a dreamwalker too.” David rolled his eyes. “I do know.”
“You know nothing!” Roman grabbed David. “Nothing!” He twisted him roughly, pointing to the logo on David’s back: the image of the sleeping face with a third eye open in the forehead. “Now you have the gift, boy. Now! But one day you will know how it feels when this third eye closes. Then maybe we will speak again.”
And with that he dropped David and strode out of the room.
“Wait!” David called. “I found something. I think I might know how to find Eddie.”
Roman waved this away with one enormous hand and swung the door shut. Electronics whirred as the heavy bolts slid home.
David kicked the door in fury, raging at how powerless he was, and at how easily he had been caught up in these dangerous events only to be just as easily flung out of them. What would happen to Eddie now? And where was Petra? Perhaps they would listen to her. Perhaps a dreamwalker could still talk to the girl named Kat and find Eddie. It might still be okay. But David was desperate to be part of it. He sat down on the fold-out bed and felt frustrated, miserable, and alone.
He was left with his thoughts for a long time before he finally fell into a fitful sleep. It was only his second night in the base, but he’d been through so much during this short time at Unsleep House that his body was exhausted. He eventually awoke to the sound of the bolts flipping back and the door reopening. He stood up, half hoping that the professor had come to get him out, but it was two security men. One of them handed David a small suitcase.
“Your things,” the man said. “You can get changed on the plane. It’s time to go.”
David picked up the bag and tested its weight. It contained everything he’d had on him when he was first brought here, including his clothes. He really was being thrown out, then. And for doing what? Breaking the door of his own grandfather’s study?
“I need to see Professor Feldrake,” he said.
One of the men shook his head. The two guards led David out of the cell and through the security wing to a broad spiral staircase he hadn’t seen before. From far above came a loud, cavernous sound, and a cool breeze descended. David was taken up the stairs and out into a vast space. The size of it was hard to fathom in the gloom, but at one end daylight poured through a huge triangular opening. From here a long, narrow strip of artificially flat rock spread out and along the top of a ridge. It was a runway. At the top of a mountain! Despite the circumstances, David was amazed.
Standing in the center of the cavern was a small passenger jet. It was the kind of plane he’d never dreamed he’d ever travel in, the kind only used by rich businessmen or government agencies. It stood, looking sleek and powerful, while several engineers checked it over and its engines whined in readiness.
Waiting by the plane was a small knot of men and women clutching computer bags and briefcases. One woman held an armful of antique scrolls, wrapped in plastic. The people peered at David with curiosity but said nothing as he was led to join them. They must be his fellow passengers, sent to London on Project business that he would never know about. He stood with them, the security men on either side of him, and wondered if he should still try to tell someone about Kat.
As he waited, his hands in his pockets and the bag on the floor between his legs, he heard the sound of feet running on the metal floor. He looked up.
It was Petra.
She was alone, and tho
ugh the two security men looked at her suspiciously, no one stopped her. David walked to meet her, and also to put some space between them and the guards.
“I wanted to see you,” said Petra, glaring back at the guards. “I was worried they might have hurt you.”
“No,” said David, “but they’re kicking me out. What have they done to you? Are you okay?”
“Ah, they shouted at me for a while, nothing new. I heard you were leaving. They don’t trust you. They don’t trust me either, but they need me. They need every dreamwalker they have left.”
“And I don’t count, I know,” David said. “Did you tell them about Kat?”
“I tried, but like I said, they don’t trust me,” Petra said, keeping her voice lower than the engine whine. “Roman has ordered us to give up on trying to find Eddie completely. Now we are being sent in groups of three to hunt Adam down. Roman’s orders are to combine the moment we see him.”
“What is that? Combining?”
“A double mind pulse. When two dreamwalkers merge together.”
“But Adam broke Théo like he was snapping a twig,” said David. “Will even that be enough?”
Petra gave David a resigned look.
“We’ll soon find out. And he can’t get us all. Some of us might survive long enough to hit him hard.”
“What does the professor say?”
“He’s disgusted. He hates all this mind pulse stuff anyway. But they won’t listen to him anymore.”
“Petra, what about the photo, what about Kat? Surely there’s still a chance to find Eddie and avoid all this.”
Petra glanced again at the guards and shrugged.
“I’m dreamwalking again soon with Dishita. With Théo out of action we are just going as a backup team of two. They’ll probably make us babysit Misty, but there will be two other groups in place for when she detects Adam. If she does. They are the ones who will do most of the fighting.”
“This is crazy!” said David. “Now we know about Kat, I’ve got to get back there. Maybe I can dreamwalk tonight from wherever they’re sending me.”
“Maybe,” said Petra, “but you’re going to be held prisoner until this is over.”
“I’m not going to sit in some prison cell and wait to be wiped off the face of history!” cried David. “I should be here, with you.”
“Yes,” Petra hissed under her breath. “Yes, you should be here.” But, glancing over at the guards, she said aloud, “It’s over, David — I’m sorry. Good-bye.”
David looked at her in surprise, but was even more astonished when she rushed forward, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him on the cheek.
“We’ll wait for you, David,” she said in his ear, and before he could reply he felt her fingers push something up into his collar. Then she stepped away and ran off across the vast cavern without once looking back. The guards quickly lost interest in her.
David returned to stand by the other passengers and resisted the temptation to reach for his collar. He was very aware of the place where Petra had kissed him and felt fuzzy and strange. As he waited, the preflight checks were completed and the passengers were finally allowed to climb up the fold-down steps. Inside the plane he was taken to a seat near the back. Both security men were clearly going to take the flight with him.
“What do you think I’m going to do?” David snapped at them. “Jump out with a parachute?”
He sat down by a window and turned his back on the guards. Soon afterward the order came from the pilot to fasten their belts. David did as he was told and felt himself pressed back into the seat as the plane accelerated and rushed out of the dark into the golden light of morning.
In no time at all they were airborne, and he found himself looking down over the Alps, watching the rising sun brush the snow on the peaks. But his mind was buzzing with thoughts of Petra and the small object she had hidden in his collar. What could it be? Ten minutes later, when he had sunk down low in his seat and made sure that no one was watching, he reached behind his neck and drew out a thick square of tightly folded paper.
Glancing at the guards one more time, he turned back toward to the window and carefully opened it. It was the photograph from the study, folded so that Kat’s face wasn’t creased. And rolling around inside were three small yellow tablets.
David spread the photo facedown and flat. Across the back was a drawing: a snaking double line with wavy marks drawn inside. As a Londoner, David recognized it immediately as the River Thames. And there at the center was a detailed little sketch of Tower Bridge. Beside was written an exact date and time: 5 P.M. on the 19th of December, 1940.
A rendezvous? Was Petra telling him where and when to meet her?
He looked at the pills. They had DREAMWALKER PROJECT stamped in tiny letters around the rims. A small voice in the back of his mind whispered poison, but he could never believe that of Petra, not now. So there was only one thing they could be: sleeping pills. Of some special kind, adapted for dreamwalkers?
He took one more look at the map, memorizing the date and time written in Petra’s spiky handwriting, then he swallowed the pills.
He thought again about his friend Eddie, all alone and in danger in a bombed-out city. He thought of his father and his sister and of how their lives were indistinguishably bound up with Eddie’s and his own. He thought of Adam with his black hat and cane, prowling through the ruins of London with murderer Charlie Grinn at his side. He thought of Petra and the others, preparing to fight for their lives.
His thoughts began to merge and break down. His last clear image was of Eddie, scrambling away across the burning rooftop a moment after they’d last spoken.
“Hold on, Eddie,” David murmured. “I’m coming.”
The only answer was the vibration of the plane.
Then David slept.
In the theater attic, Eddie was laying a fire on the thunder sheet. He had drawn a neat diagram of it in the open notebook beside him. Concentrating on the need to combine heat, fuel, and oxygen in a structured way was helping him forget that a few days ago an uncontrolled fire had almost roasted him alive.
Tomkin hadn’t come back the night before, and Eddie could tell Kat was worried. But all he felt was that it was better having Kat to himself. And she would want to be warm when she got back. He picked up two sticks and considered the most efficient place to set them. It was as he was doing this that he suddenly realized he wasn’t alone.
Eddie froze, still holding the sticks. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut.
“Who is it?”
No one answered. The silence was absolute, and yet Eddie knew he wasn’t mistaken. He forced himself to raise his head and slowly open one eye.
Someone was watching him from the shadows of the attic.
Someone who had appeared in absolute silence, without climbing the ladder or entering through the hole in the roof.
Eddie felt a chill grip his spine.
“Who’s there?”
Both of Eddie’s eyes were open now — he couldn’t have turned away even if he’d wanted to. He tried desperately to make the dark shape he could see into some innocent object. The theater attic was full of moldering stage props after all. Could it be a mannequin? A puppet? A costume he hadn’t noticed before?
But it was no use. He knew there really was someone there, and he’d only ever known one other person who could appear in silence like that.
“David?” Eddie swallowed. “Is that you?”
The figure stirred and stepped forward, becoming more visible against the dark. What had seemed to be nothing more than a shadow now revealed itself to be a boy — somewhat older than Eddie — in an extremely sharp suit, with a hat and a cane.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” said the boy.
“The ladder made no noise,” said Eddie, picking up his notebook and rolling it tightly. “When you came up it. It always makes a noise.”
The visitor shrugged.
“As I said, I didn’t mea
n to startle you. I was merely passing. I have to go now. But have no fear, Eddie. Please forget you ever saw me.”
And he moved toward the trap door.
“You know my name?” said Eddie. “How do you know my name?”
The boy stopped and turned, bringing an intense gaze onto Eddie. Eddie looked down, gripping the notebook so tightly in his hand that he almost crushed it.
“You are Edmund Utherwise, aren’t you?” said the boy. “Well, good evening, Eddie. I was told you’d be here, that’s all. By a boy called Tomkin.”
“Tomkin,” Eddie said in an almost-whisper, “didn’t come home last night.”
“It’s fine, Eddie. Tomkin’s just … staying with some friends of mine. There’s nothing for you to worry about. And now I really must go.”
The boy walked again toward the hatchway.
“Just one more thing. These friends of mine, they’ll visit this place shortly. To pick up some things for Tomkin. But you won’t let them worry you, will you, Eddie? Just stay here nice and safe, and you’ll be fine. Agreed?”
Eddie nodded his head, but inside it the voice of his doubt buzzed like a swarm of bees. He wished Kat were there to talk to this strange boy.
“Good,” said the visitor. “And now I really do have to be moving on.” He began to lower himself down the ladder.
“Wait!” Eddie called, more to hear the reassuring sound of his own voice than anything else. Then a question burst out of him, almost of its own accord.
“What’s your name? If you know mine, you should tell me yours. It’s polite.”
The strange boy was almost gone; his head and shoulders alone remained above the floor. He paused and turned his ferocious, dark gaze on Eddie the way a cat would look at a mouse.
“Adam. My name is Adam. And now — finally — good-bye, Edmund Utherwise.”
When Eddie looked again he was gone, without a single creak or groan from the rickety ladder. Eddie was alone again.
With a shaking hand he lit the fire.
David was dreaming.
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