“Amelia, what are you doing?” Joe called out. “I’m coming with you.”
Joe pushed through the two men and ran to reach us, but as he did a guard stepped forward, pushing the barrel of his weapon into Joe’s chest. Janine and I took a step towards him with a gasp.
“You’re not invited. These two only.”
“Amelia…” Joe’s desperate voice pleaded for me to fight.
I shook my head at him, warning him to stay back. I could see the struggle in his eyes, pleading for me to change my mind, but I knew it was too late. The MMC wanted to know our secrets, and they knew we were the way to get them.
I kept my eyes on Joe as we were prodded inside with the barrel of their guns. Flanked by the remaining two guards, I continued to stare at him until the doors slid closed, encasing us in its metal walls.
As the lift began to move, tears threatened to spill over my cheeks. I was thankful to feel Janine’s hand slide into mine and squeeze it. I squeezed back, too scared to look her in the eyes. The MMC had us again. And I had no idea how I was going to escape this time, or if I’d even get the chance. I could only hope the guards were taking us to the Manager and not to a cell.
Three floors up, we were led down stark white corridors bright with fluorescent lighting. At the end of the hallway, the guards pushed Janine into a small white room before forcing me into a white room of my own one door over. Both doors slid closed and we were locked in an MMC cell once again. My small prison was empty except for the single bench seat along its wall. I walked over to sit on it, unsure what else I could do. All I could hope was that the people downstairs, along with Joe, were making their way out of the building at that moment, safe.
Through the bright white wall to my left I could hear the muffled sobs of Janine as she broke into tears. I wished I could climb through the wall and wrap my arms around her to comfort her.
“Janine, it’s going to be okay,” I called out to her, placing both my hands flat against the wall between us. Although I had no way of knowing if it was the truth. I didn’t know what else to say.
“I can’t do this again, Amelia, I can’t. They’re going to kill me. I know it.”
Before I could answer, my door slid open and a lady walked through it wearing a surgical mask. She reminded me of Kaelee before I’d realised she was my torturer.
She spoke to me with her muffled voice. “Don’t even consider doing anything stupid. The guards are outside the door. I have to search you before we continue. Stand,” she instructed.
I rose from the bench and stepped towards her into the middle of the tiny room. She patted me down, asking me to open my mouth so she could check under my tongue, and looking in my nose and ears. What she thought I was hiding, I had no idea, but it showed that they were scared of what we might be capable of.
“We’re good to go,” she spoke into the air.
The door slid open again, and two men wheeled in a dentist’s chair, the same chair they’d used to torture me at their other facility.
“No way. I’m not getting on that.” I backed away towards the bench.
“Get on the chair. Now!”
“No.” Fear pushed adrenalin rushing through my veins and I ran towards her, barging into her and sending her flying towards the wall.
The guards approached me, and I kicked at their shins and punched at their faces. They had me under control within seconds when one of the men wrapped his arm around my neck. He squeezed tighter and tighter and I clawed at his arms, desperate to draw in a breath.
I could hear Janine’s screams through the wall. “What are they doing to you? Amelia!”
My throat was being crushed, and my head was throbbing from the blood pooling up inside of it. Sparkles scattered across my vision, and then the world faded to black.
A splash of water over my face woke me with a start. My arms automatically went to cover my face, but I found they were bound beside me, as were my feet and chest. They’d strapped me onto the chair.
“No, no.” I shook my head, thrashing against my bindings.
It was no use. I couldn’t break free.
My body contorted, burned, and stung as electricity coursed through it. I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting the pain until it disappeared and my body relaxed, exhausted.
“Great to see you again, Miss Bailey,” a man’s voice echoed through the room.
It was the voice of the man who’d given the orders downstairs, the man who’d given the orders for my torture at the other MMC facility in the bush.
“You coward. Bet you feel tough sitting up there in your fancy office, barking orders over an intercom system. Come and face me,” I spat back at him.
“I don’t think so, Miss Bailey. Unfortunately for you, I call the shots here. And you are in no position to argue.” The smugness in his voice made my lip curl into a snarl.
“Where’s Janine? What’ve you done to her?” I called out.
“She’s safe and sound… for now. I thought she might like to watch the show, you know, now that the two of you are so close.”
As he finished speaking, a piece of the wall slid open, revealing a window. Janine’s face soon appeared in it. Her eyes were wide, reddened with tears. She reached up and touched the glass, shaking her head.
“Now, Miss Bailey, how did you cure everyone down stairs from the virus?”
I lay back and relaxed, vowing to myself I wouldn’t reveal anything to him, no matter what he did to me. They’d almost killed me before, and I hadn’t given him anything. What made him think this time would be any different?
Electricity spread burning through my limbs again, my body tensing up painfully before relaxing when the current was gone. It left me panting and sweating. Janine screamed out, banging against the window.
“I can do this all day, Miss Bailey,” said the man.
“So can I.”
“Oh, I doubt that. And when you die from electrocution, I guess I’ll just have to start on Janine. And then, if I don’t get anything from her, I’ll move on to the rest of your friends. Someone will eventually give us what we need.”
I bit the inside of my mouth, my eyes widening slightly. Joe and Sarah. Did he really know who they were? Joe would give himself up willingly if he thought he could save me. I couldn’t let that happen. I needed to think…
“I know I’m not in a position to negotiate. You’ve made that quite clear. But if it’s the last thing I see, I want to know who you are. I want to see the face of the man who was able to beat me,” I said.
He was silent for a moment. I could only hope stroking his ego with my comment about him beating me would sway him to want to see me face-to-face, even if it was simply to gloat. I needed to get into his office, to get to the man behind the MultiMind Corporation. I needed to kill him.
“What? You don’t want to look me in the eye? I’ll tell you everything you want to know,” I called out.
“Very well, Miss Bailey. I’ll grant you this one last wish. Don’t think for one minute that I trust you. But I will say that I look forward to looking you in the eye and telling you that you’ve lost your fight. Doctor Sulley, please release our friends. I will send the guards to bring them to my office.”
Doctor Sulley nodded before unstrapping me from the chair. I sat up, holding onto it until the dizziness in my head passed. My body ached, but the adrenaline that had beginning coursing through my veins was starting to drown it out.
I did my best to hide the grin threatening to spread across my face. They were going to take me right where I wanted to be. The door slid open and a guard stepped through. He grabbed my hands and put them behind my back before securing them in cuffs, before marching me out the doorway. Janine stood outside her room, a guard having cuffed her hands as well.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I nodded in response before the guards nudged us up the hallway.
As we made our way up the corridor, I tried to remember which way we were going. We’d come up the s
ame lift I’d escaped from when I’d snuck out of the Psychiatric Ward. Two left turns and a right and we stopped in front of a large metal door. Much different from any door I’d seen before in the MMC’s buildings. Across the front of it was embossed, MR. MICHAELS and underneath it read MANAGER in black.
One of the men pressed a button on the side of the door. “Miss Muller and Miss Bailey here to see you, Mr. Michaels.”
“Mr. Michaels will see them now,” a woman’s voice answered and the door slid open.
The guards pushed us through the doorway to the front of a large wooden desk and took posts in either corner of the office. Behind the desk sat a scrawny man with a receding hairline and a sparse beard. Nothing like the intimidating man I’d imagined. But when he spoke, I recognised his voice instantly. It was his voice that held all of his authority.
“Miss Muller, so good to see you again.”
“Wish I could say the same, Geoff,” Janine hissed back at him.
He smiled in amusement. “And Miss Bailey, I have missed our little talks. By the look on your face, you recognise my voice.”
I sharpened my glare and stood in silence.
“Well, you wanted to meet me, Miss Bailey, and here I am. I’m Geoff Michaels, the man behind the MultiMind Corporation. It was me who brought the five leading companies from around the world and invited them to learn how we could profit from the naivety of the people around us.” The proud, smug smile spread across his face made me feel sick. “You put on quite a show downstairs. It really was a beautiful speech. Now I’ve granted your last wish, would you like to entertain me by explaining what you were trying to achieve?”
Janine and I exchanged glances and I took a step forward, followed by one of the guards. Mr. Michaels held his hand up and the guard stepped back to his post.
“What are you afraid of? You’ve had us cuffed because you’re so scared of us. What could two ladies possibly do to you?” I taunted him.
“Miss Bailey, I’ve seen enough of both you and Miss Muller to know you’re far from shrinking violets. But I’m not scared of you or your Dreamer friends in the least. Guards, remove their cuffs. I have no reason to fear them with both of you standing there. I want Miss Bailey to realise the only scared person in this room is Miss Muller.”
Janine growled at him as the two guards stepped forward and removed our cuffs. I rubbed at my wrists and stretched my arms out in front of me. At least he knew I wasn’t scared of him.
“Now, where were we? Oh, that’s right, you were going to tell me how you cured the virus.”
“There is no way I’ll tell you. And my friends will never tell you either.”
“I upheld my end of the bargain. But I’m sure if you don’t tell me what I want to know, one of your friends will break. Someone always does.”
“Face it, Mr. Michaels. Your game is up.” I tried my best to use the same condescending tone he’d used while questioning and torturing me.
“Is that so? And what do you mean by that, exactly?”
“We’ve released an anti-virus which is attacking the Cambiar virus and its controlling properties as we speak. Over the next few hours, everyone across every major city and town will be cured, and you won’t be able to control them anymore.”
His confidence wavered for a moment before he found his composure once again. “I find that hard to believe. There aren’t many of you Dreamers left.” He spat out the word Dreamers as though it disgusted him just to say it.
“There are more of us than you think. And you can see downstairs, people are being cured as we speak.”
Mr. Michaels looked at the computer screen in front of him, turning it for Janine and me to see. Guards had everyone down on their knees, guns pointed at them, most of them still coughing and spluttering. I could just make out Joe before he turned the screen back around.
“Your cured people hardly have the upper hand. And there’s only forty people or so. That’s not every city or town.”
“We have Dreamer rebels across the country. We released the anti-virus at exactly the same time. This is over, Mr. Michaels. You and your money hungry friends can’t control us anymore.”
Anger crossed his face for the first time before a more evil smirk replaced it.
“How many Dreamers are left now, Miss Bailey? Can’t be more than fifty across the entire country. Seems we have at least achieved something. I’m sure we’ll find other ways to terminate the rest of you.”
Without a thought, I leapt over the table at him, wrapping my hands tight around his skinny throat. His chair tipped backwards as my weight pushed him over and we landed hard on the floor. I found myself sitting on his chest, his face turning red. The guards grabbed my arms and pulled me off him, my hands sliding from his throat. My breaths came in deep and short, and my heart thumped hard in my chest.
Mr. Michaels stood, gasping for air, and adjusted his tie attempting to regain some of his authority. He wiped sweat from his forehead before leaning forward on his desk.
“I’ve had enough of your games, Miss Bailey. You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“I know exactly what I’ve done. I’ve stopped the rich from becoming richer. And the powerful from having more power. I’ve given people the freedom to create their own dreams and desires. I’ve given them back what you took from them.” My face twisted into a snarl.
“You won’t get away with this. Do you think a minority group can beat major corporations with more money than you could dream of?”
“Maybe not. But we’ll never stop fighting.”
The marks from my hands shone red around his neck. He took a deep breath as though deep in thought.
“How did you do it? How did you beat the virus?” There was a new anger in his voice.
Janine revelled in his question. “If you must know, I instructed one of your staff members to create it before you had me locked up. He’s been creating it this entire time, and made enough for every major city and town. He stored it in your own vaults and you even had it trucked to us yourself.”
“Cameron. The hijacking,” he whispered to himself. “You and your Dreamer friends have been nothing but a headache. Weeds to be pulled from a garden. You could’ve had the world, Janine, and you threw it away.”
“What good is a world full of mindless zombies? I didn’t want the blood of Dreamers on my hands,” she yelled back.
“You were quite happy to lock them up against their will and convince them they needed to be changed.” He smirked at her.
“You’re right, I was. Because I thought I was helping them. Not killing them. You are nothing but a murderer and your day will come, Mr. Michaels. I’m counting on it.” She glared at him.
“Guards, out!” He paced back and forth behind his desk, rubbing his neck.
Janine took a step towards me, sliding her hand into mine.
“I’ve had enough of you two meddling with our plans. I might not be able to change what you’ve done, but I can make sure you pay for the damage you’ve caused.” He lifted his hand from beneath his desk, pointing a gun at Janine.
“Geoff, please….”
Boom!
The sound rang in my ears and I felt Janine fall to the floor beside me. I held her hand tight, going down with her my throat tight and heart beating wildly in my chest. Mr. Michaels walked around the desk towards me, and I covered Janine with my body like a shield as I bit back tears.
“We did it, Amelia,” Janine whispered in my ear.
I gave her a small smile, tears welling in my eyes. “You did it. Without you, we couldn’t have beaten them.”
She smiled back at me before relaxing to the floor. A surge of anger built up inside me and once again I launched at Mr Michaels with a rage I hadn’t experienced before.
Boom!
Again the sound rang through my ears as I reached for his throat. But my arms didn’t hold the strength they’d had before and he easily pushed me off him and onto the floor. A burning pain shot through my chest
and warmth ran down my side. I reached for the pain, clamping it hard with both hands.
Mr. Michaels kneeled down beside me, whispering into my ear, “How’re you going to fight us now, Miss Bailey?”
“We don’t need to fight. We’ve already won,” I growled back before bright spots began to sprinkle across my vision.
He rose to his feet again and walked out of the room.
Boom! Boom!
Two more shots. He must’ve killed his guards so they’d keep it a secret. No one else knew we were there. No one was coming to save us.
Ignoring my blurred vision, I dragged myself towards Janine. I could hear her breath still labouring, or was it my own? I wasn’t sure, but if I was going to die in this horrible building, I didn’t want to die alone. Janine was proof people could change, and I was devastated she wouldn’t have the chance to show the world who she’d become. As I reached her side, I fell onto my back, breathing in as deeply as I could. The effort had drained me of all of my energy and I wasn’t getting enough air. With one hand pressed to my wound, I wrapped my hand around Janine’s hand and closed my eyes.
The beach I found myself on was beautiful. The warmth of the sand beneath me soaked into my back and legs, and waves lapped gently at the shore. The sky was smeared with the bright oranges and pinks of dusk, and a sense of peace relaxed my muscles.
“Amelia?” The surprised voice sounded next to me and I rolled to my side to find Joe staring back at me. “Where are you?”
“I’m so sorry, Joe.” Sadness filled my words.
“Sorry. Why? Where are you?”
“I’m dying, Joe. If this is a dream and I haven’t died already.”
“Dying? No. You can’t be. I only just got you back!” Desperation filled his voice as tears filled his eyes. “Where are you? I’m coming to get you.”
“It’s too late. Be safe. Look after Sarah and Rose.”
“No, no, please tell me where you are.” For the first time I saw Joe openly sobbing. He gripped my hands tight and leant over me.
Rise of the Dreamer Page 17