Rise of the Dreamer

by L. J. Higgins

  I stared ahead, feeling Sarah’s eyes burning into the side of my face. “Amelia, no,” she whispered.

  “Amelia has asked to be the one to destroy the MMC,” announced Harper.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Sarah’s voice wobbled as she whispered.

  Rose sat shaking her head back and forth, one hand over her mouth, the other over her heart.

  “I know this will come as a shock to some of you. I’ll let you go and wrap your heads around what’s going to happen, and this afternoon Janine, Joe, Amelia, and I will start to work on a plan. The rest of you are welcome to join us if you want to.” Harper turned her sad eyes towards me before starting a conversation with Kaelee.

  As I stood, Sarah grabbed my shoulders to face her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I knew you’d react like this. And I didn’t want you to waste your breath trying to talk me out of it,” I replied

  “Is this because of Cameron? Because you think we moved on while you were gone? We love you, Amelia, and going in there to possibly kill yourself isn’t going to bring him back.”

  “I know. That isn’t the reason I’m doing it. I think this is my chance to finally get rid of them, get rid of the people who’ve hurt so many people I love. I don’t know why I have to keep explaining myself to everyone. You know how much they’ve hurt and changed me.” Arms crossed against my chest, my eyes dared her to argue the point.

  She nodded. “You’re such a pain in the butt, you know. All these years I’ve wanted you to be confident and stand up for yourself. Now you are and I’m not sure if I like it.”

  “You better get used to it, because I’m not backing down.”

  Sarah let out an exasperated breath.

  “So you’ll let me go without a fight?” I asked.

  “I don’t think I have much of a choice, do I? But don’t think I’m not coming with you to make sure you get out alive and in one piece,” she said.

  “Have you been talking to Joe? He said exactly the same thing.”

  “That’s because we both love and care about you.”

  Things moved much more slowly than I thought they would. It seemed as though blowing up the MMC was all they’d planned. No-one had worked out how to get into the facility in the first place, let alone where to plant the bomb. Then, of course, we had to work out how to give me, the person pressing the detonator, the best chance of getting out alive. Maybe they didn’t expect someone to be foolish enough to put their hand up.

  I hated to admit it, but it turned out we were lucky to have dragged Kaelee along with us, and even more so that I’d been placed in a cell with Janine. Their knowledge of the building and its security was essential when it came to formulating our plan. It helped me tolerate having Kaelee around, even if I was sure I wouldn’t ever get over what she’d done to me.

  After two weeks of preparation, we’d ironed out the creases in our strategy and were ready to carry it out. Harper decided to call a meeting to let the group know what would be happening.

  “Tomorrow, Amelia, Joe, Janine and Sarah will drive to the outskirts of Rollington, where they’ll rendezvous with my acquaintance, Thomas,” she began. “He’ll instruct them on how to use the bomb he built. This is no military weapon, just so you know. It was handmade in a backyard shed, so it’s dangerous and unpredictable, and they must take care and listen to his instructions. After meeting with Thomas, the team will make their way to the bushland surrounding the MMC’s facility. Janine has used her contacts to obtain a security tag for both Amelia and Joe, and her contact will meet them at this point. From there, Joe will take Amelia through the bush towards the entry point where they’ll await a bus full of workers. When the bus arrives, they’ll blend in with the crowd of MMC employees to scan their way through the entry gate and into the building. Kaelee and Janine both agree the third floor is the best location to place the bomb, so this is where they’ll hide it in a cleaner’s closet. They’ll need to arm the bomb and get out as quick as they can.”

  I kept my stare straight and my expression stern, trying to show them I was serious, and that I wasn’t afraid. But in the corner of my sight, I could see Laina with her arms crossed and tears welling in her eyes. I couldn’t help myself and looked across to Joe who was looking at his feet. Had he told her what he’d volunteered to do? That he was going to help me. I had nothing to lose, but he did. Why was he putting himself in danger when he had Laina? Her sadness changed to anger as she turned her gaze to me and narrowed her glare. Taken aback, I looked over the top of everyone’s heads towards the tree line of the rainforest.

  “Amelia and Joe are risking a lot for us to have the chance at freedom, for those who don’t understand why their loved ones are dying, and for Dreamers,” concluded Harper.

  Byron rose to his feet, tears dancing in his eyes. “Thank you.” He approached me and wrapped me in a hug.

  He was followed by the rest of our group who’d be staying behind, each of them thanking our team and embracing me before leaving the meeting. Their small gesture meant so much to me, and I knew what I was going to do meant so much to them. It meant they could go home to their loved ones and go back to the lives they were living before the MMC had torn their worlds apart.

  Chapter Nine

  As we cruised along the highway, I laid my head back, attempting to rest. My eyes were grainy and heavy from getting next to no sleep the night before, but my mind couldn’t stop reeling long enough for me to doze off. It also didn’t help having Joe constantly looking my way to see if my eyes were closed. To stop him from worrying, I relaxed my shoulders and pretended. I hadn’t grown the courage to ask why he was risking his relationship with Laina to help me. I think I was scared if I brought it up, he might come to his senses and decide to let me go alone. Although I knew it was my decision to detonate the bomb, it comforted me to know I wouldn’t be alone. It was selfish, but I wasn’t sure I’d have the strength were it not for having my friends around me. Soon I found myself drifting in and out of nightmares. I couldn’t tell if they were warnings, premonitions, or my new-found fears parading through my dreams. Cameron dying, the bombs loud explosion, being thrown across the room, blood, so much blood, Laina’s tears. The world faded from me.

  A hand grabbed my leg and I woke with a jolt.

  “Sorry, Amelia, we’re here. I’m glad you got some sleep,” said Joe.

  I wasn’t sure if I’d managed to rest at all. My body and head felt worse than they had before I’d closed my eyes, as though a truck had run over the car while I’d been sleeping.

  “There’s a white car over there. Wonder if that’s Thomas?” asked Sarah.

  “I’ll go find out. You three stay here.” Joe climbed out of the car.

  I rubbed my temples and stretched my neck, moving my head from side to side.

  “You okay?” asked Janine, pressing her palm to my forehead.

  “Yeah, it’s a bit hard to sleep when you know you might die in the next twenty-four hours,” I replied, squeezing my eyes shut and opening them again.

  “Don’t say that.” Sarah punched me in the shoulder. “I’ll run in there and drag you out if I have to.”

  “So will I. You’ve gone through too much not to make it out of there,” said Janine.

  I was surprised at Janine’s kind words and the genuine way she spoke them. They wanted to convince themselves everything would be okay, but they had no control over what would happen once I was inside the facility. The fate of our plan rested solely on mine and Joe’s shoulders.

  Joe approached our car again. “It’s him. He’s anxious to get this over and done with, so I suggest you get over here before he freaks out and leaves.”

  As I turned to look at Sarah for reassurance, she placed her hand on my shoulder. Janine nodded in encouragement, and I climbed out of the car and crossed the road towards Thomas. Thomas looked up and down the road, and then across mine and Joe’s faces. His greasy hair hung limp around his face and he hunched his sho
ulders forward, reminding me of Quasimodo in his bell tower.

  “Hey, I’m Amelia. Harper said you’d explain everything to me?”

  His eyes darted between Joe, me, and the car across the road once again.

  He nodded to himself for a moment before answering in quick bursts of words. “You need to be careful with it. No sudden movements. Nice and gentle.”

  He stared at me as though he expected an answer, so I nodded, which prompted him to head to the front of his car. Joe and I followed him after a quick glance at each other. This guy was nuts. Harper said we could trust him, but what was she doing dealing with guys like this?

  Thomas opened the passenger-side door and pulled out a thick blanket before stepping back to let us peer in. I’m not sure what I expected the bomb to look like. Perhaps a beeping flashing contraption with a countdown timer, similar to the ones I’d seen in movies. Instead there was a single item resting on the seat; a black laptop bag.

  “Harper said you built this? Can you tell us how it works?” asked Joe.

  “Yes, yes. You don’t need to know the ins and outs. All you need to know is how to arm and detonate it.” He fumbled through a box on the floor of the passenger side. A musty smell wafted out from his car, forcing me to take a step back. He spun around and held a device out towards me. “Here it is. The problem is you have to be in range to arm it. You’ll get five minutes to leave the blast zone.”

  “And how big is the blast zone?” questioned Joe.

  “Oh, a few kilometres at most.”

  I looked Joe in the eyes before turning back towards Thomas. “And how close do you have to be to detonate it?”

  “Within a hundred meters. I did explain it was risky to Harper. Told her the person to detonate possibly wouldn’t make it out. Which one of you is doing it?” he asked with an unsettling grin.

  “Look, are you going to give it to us or what? We need to keep moving if we’re going to get this done,” said Joe.

  “Yes, here you go.” He scrunched up his nose and picked up the bag to hand it to Joe.

  I took a step back. I didn’t want to be close to it until I had to be. The plain black bag held my fate. As ready as I was to destroy the MMC, I wasn’t in a hurry to die unless they were going down with me.

  “To detonate it, you have to flick the cover of this open and press the white button, and then run like your life depends on it… because well, it does.” He sniggered, and I couldn’t wait to be away from him.

  Thomas nodded again before climbing into his car and driving off in a hurry.

  “He was one strange dude,” said Joe.

  “You’d have to be to build bombs,” I replied.

  “Lucky for us, Harper knows some weird dudes. Now we have to make sure we can get out before this thing goes off.”

  We crossed the road and climbed back into the car.

  “How’d it go?” asked Sarah, staring at the black bag as Joe placed it between her and Janine on the back seat.

  “We’ve got it, so let’s just get this done.” I stared at the road ahead of us, ignoring my own internal dialogue so it couldn’t change my mind.

  Janine and Sarah attempted to fill the silence of our trip with pointless chatter. I, however, was unable to focus on anything they were saying, so I stared out the window at the whir of browns and greens as they flew past us. Pressure on my thigh pulled me from my emptiness. It was Joe’s warm hand. I turned to look towards him and realised a tear had escaped over my cheek. He grinned at me, giving my leg a slight squeeze before returning his hand to the steering wheel and his concentration to the road.

  I appreciated his support, and was so grateful he’d chosen to join me in my crazy crusade. I wondered what Laina thought when he’d volunteered to come with me. Did she know of our past? She was a lovely girl, and absolutely gorgeous, but for some reason, I found it hard to be happy for Joe. Maybe part of me thought we’d find our way back to each other one day, make whatever we’d had work. But he was happy with someone else now, and I’d chosen to be with Cameron. I’d chosen him for many reasons. My long standing crush I’d had on him, the way he could look at me and know I was hurting or scared, his piercing blue eyes and gorgeous smile, the way I felt safe whenever he was around. I loved Cameron. He would forever have a special place in my heart. He was my knight in shining armour. Joe would always have a special place too. He was my rock.

  We pulled onto a dirt road, which grew narrower as we drove deeper into the bush. The dull hues of the gums and shrubs around us filled in the landscape, a stark difference from the lush greens of the rainforest from where we’d come. The vegetation grew thicker the deeper we drove until we came to a fork in the road. Joe turned left and slowed down, nudging the car between two shrubs as far as he could.

  “Here we are. We have to go on foot from here. A few kilometres and we’ll be close enough to get ready for tomorrow morning and meet Janine’s friend,” said Joe.

  We each pulled on a backpack and Joe passed Janine a GPS. “Are you okay to use this? I have to carry that thing.” He pointed towards the bomb’s black bag.

  Janine’s expression turned solemn as she began leading us through the long grass. I was thankful I was wearing jeans and shoes this time round as the grass reached up to my waist. I aimed my heavy boots with each step into the crushed sections made by Janine. How we’d made our way over this terrain in thin pants and with bare feet I had no idea, but it explained the state of our feet when we’d finished.

  We arrived at our campsite as the sun began to fall below the trees, the rays flickering through the branches and leaves making me squint. We each rolled out a thin mattress and sleeping bag, and I lay on my back looking up at the few stars that’d begun dotting the sky.

  “I’m starving,” said Sarah as she dug out a can of spaghetti from her bag. “I can’t remember the last time I ate out of a can.”

  “Have you ever eaten out of a can before?” asked Joe.

  For the first time all day, I found myself smiling and even managed to laugh. Sarah poked her tongue at Joe before looking the can over.

  “Give it here. I’ll open it.” Joe snatched the can from her hands.

  “You better eat too. It’s going to be a big day tomorrow,” suggested Janine as she settled on her bed next to me.

  “For some reason I’m not hungry,” I said.

  “It’s weird being back here, isn’t it? It was only a few weeks ago we were here trying to get away, now we are trying to get back in. Who’d have thought?” She spooned some spaghetti into her mouth.

  “Not me, that’s for sure. You’re the psychologist. Exactly how insane are we right now?” It was one of those half-truth jokes, but the three of them laughed anyway, before the mood turned sombre. “I can’t decide if I’m scared of the possibility of dying tomorrow, or worse, living and being put back into a cell.”

  “We wouldn’t let them put you back in there,” said Sarah, moving closer to my side.

  “There’s no way we’re leaving here without you tomorrow. You’ll get out of there alive, and they won’t know what hit them until we’re well and truly on our way out of here.” Joe was making a promise he may not be able to keep.

  “Thanks guys. I’m so happy to have you all here.”

  “Even me?” asked Janine.

  “Who would’ve thought?” I answered.

  Chapter Ten

  Upon opening my eyes, I found myself wandering the familiar bright white hallways of my nightmares, but for the first time, I felt completely at peace. Running my hand along the cool wall, I strode through the hall.

  “Don’t kill us,” a voice whispered beside me, and I turned my head in its direction.

  Set in the wall was a window, the room behind it packed full of people. They bashed on it with their hands, trying to break free, fear in their eyes and their voices as they called out. “Don’t kill us, don’t kill us.”

  Boom! The sound was so loud it shook the floor beneath me and reverberated thr
ough my body, throwing me back towards the wall behind me. I hit it so hard, it pushed the air from my lungs and I fell gasping to the floor, clutching my chest. The people rapped even harder on the window, their voices growing desperate, and a bright white glow ripped through the room they were trapped in.

  “Amelia, it’s time to wake up,” whispered Sarah as she wiped at a piece of hair matted to my forehead with sweat.

  I squeezed my eyes shut before opening them wide. The bush around me was still dark, but the sun had begun peeking through the trees. Everyone was busy packing up their beds and scarfing down tins of food. My stomach churned, but it wasn’t because it was hungry; the nerves had started already. I quietened it with a few deep breaths and began packing up my own bed.

  “You need to eat. We don’t want you passing out mid-run,” said Joe, who was wearing long white pants and a coat.

  “Where’d you get those?” I asked.

  “Well, sleepy-head, while you were off in dreamland, Janine went to meet her friend. We have two sets of nurse’s outfits and two ID cards-“

  “But there’s a catch,” interrupted Janine.

  Sarah, Joe, and Janine looked among themselves, unsure how to break whatever bad news they were withholding.

  “And the catch is?” I asked.

  “One ID will get one of you to the correct floor. Floor three. The other one will have access to floor one and won’t let the wearer go any further,” said Janine.

  A wave of relief I didn’t expect rolled over me and I let out a small smile.

  “You’re happy?” asked Sarah.

  “She thinks she’s the one going to the third floor, which means I’ll be safe,” said Joe, scowling at me. “But she isn’t, I am.”