by R A Baxter
“Secrets!” Jack’s anger lent him enough strength to pull himself up on wobbly legs. He raised his fist. “That’s all you care about! It never occurs to you that no one cares about your stupid secrets! I just want to be left alone!”
Fenton stepped to the ledge, his face rigid and frowning. “If you weren’t so certain you were such a genius, Mr. Park, we could’ve explained reality to you. What do you think would happen if everyone on earth knew they were sharing dreams with everyone else? I’ll give you a hint. There’d be no privacy. No personal secrets. No escape from unwanted harassments, stalking, spying, exhibitionism. Every witless kook would learn all your passwords, your bank account numbers, locker combinations, your social security number. You wouldn’t be able to hide anything, anywhere, ever. It would be chaos! Intershroud is the only thing protecting this world from falling into complete and utter anarchy.”
Katie stepped forward. “And who is protecting the world from you?”
“It’s the lesser of two evils, so what of it?” Lynch said. “You can have a relatively peaceful dream world controlled by those of us who understand it, or you can have a disastrous, chaotic dystopia where the strong devour the weak. There is no real choice.”
“The people with the power always say things like that,” Clara said. “My mom used to tell me that. The people with power always say it’s either their way or the end of the world.”
Lynch rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I see I’m wasting time.”
“Then stop wasting it,” Jack said. “Why are you harassing us in the first place? You admitted you think we’re about to die.”
“Who told you I wanted to capture you? I’m only here to make sure you’ve had no contact with the outside world. I wasn’t interested in capturing you.” He glanced at Fenton Murdock.
Katie’s eyebrows furrowed. “Mr. Murdock? Why? You’re my dad’s best friend. He trusted you!”
“Exactly,” Murdock shook his index finger at Jack. “That little vermin, that gutter rat, murdered you, the child of my best friend. He just about killed Damien! I can’t allow him to escape payment for that.”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Jack said.
“Don’t lie to me! Damien told me everything. You knew about the explosives in that mine and you lit a flame anyway. It was fire from your lighter that blew up that mine! Damien’s in the hospital. They’re saying he may lose an eye. It’ll be months, maybe years, before we’ll be able to dig out your bodies, and the bodies of the two staffers you killed. I had to inform Katie’s father of her death myself. He’s devastated.”
Murdock turned to Lynch. “Now, can I get on with it?”
Lynch grinned and nodded, whispering something to Derek. A dark cloud appeared and revolved around Lynch’s legs, condensing and shaping into a cozy brown leather lounge chair. The old man leaned back in his chair, propped his feet up, and sipped from a cocktail glass that had appeared in his hand.
Fenton turned toward the concrete wall to his right. The deep rumble of crumbling concrete echoed throughout the yard and a nebulous car-sized chunk of concrete scraped and separated from the wall. It hovered in the air, twisted brown rebar protruding from its ragged edges at odd angles. Mr. Murdock waved his fingers and the massive broken slab glided through the air, rocks and bits of concrete sloughing from its surfaces and pelting the earth below. The slab stopped, centered above the old monk’s head. Fenton lowered his fingers. Clara screamed. The hunk of concrete crashed on top of the monk with a sickening crunch. The monk rolled over the ledge and plopped in the dirt with a thud. Jack’s hero Archetype was gone.
Jack flopped to his knees and rolled onto his side. He forgot who he was, where he was. His mind filled with darkness, despair, unbridled fear.
“You’re monsters!” Clara ran and kneeled next to Jack, her chin quivering.
Katie dashed to his other side, stooped down, and caressed his hand. “That monk was only an image you created. Remember what Marina said; you don’t need to be saved. You’re your own hero. Embrace who you are. Your hero isn’t dead. He’s always inside you. He is you.”
“How can you side with that jerk?” Damien stood at the wall edge, snarling. “He killed you! He doesn’t deserve your sympathy.”
Katie stood and put all her weight into pulling Jack onto his knees. Jack looked up at her through vacant, moistened eyes. Her words had resonated within him. She was right, he had created his Shadow. He could create him again. But maybe he didn’t need to be saved anymore. Maybe it was time for him to step up to that role. If there was any time to face his fear, it was now.
Jack tightened his grip on Katie’s hand and pulled himself to his feet.
Fenton sneered and pointed at the same chunk of concrete he’d used to destroy Jack’s Shadow. He gnashed his teeth and flicked his wrist, sending the mass of concrete and steel flying at Jack. Katie and Clara jumped out of the way, each screaming Jack’s name, but it was too late for him.
Jack threw his hands up to protect his face as the concrete mass pounded into his chest, lifting him off his feet and carrying him through the air. He slammed into a solid wall, concrete cracking and crumbling into dozens of small chunks, raining down around his arms and legs. He opened his eyes and found himself buried two feet into the wall surface. Two screaming Intershroud operatives fell past him, hit the ground, and vanished on each side of his legs.
Jack surveyed the crumbled rubble, wondering how he’d survived. The dreamed-up concrete looked solid, but it felt as though a mere gale-force wind had picked him up and pressed him against an equally strong windstorm blowing in the opposite direction. Regardless, his ears rang, and his back, chest, legs, and arms ached with every movement.
He couldn’t, however, just leave Katie and Clara to the mercy of Lynch and Murdock. He took a deep breath and, with a little moaning, stood and brushed cement dust from his pant legs and torn shirt. He glanced around and found all eyes wide and fixed on him.
Jack took three steps before another mass of concrete came flying his way. Murdock stood far enough away that Jack easily leaped aside, letting the six-foot slab crash with a deafening crack through the wall behind him. He dodged another one, the slab passing him on his right.
Clara and Katie ran toward him and he attempted to run to meet them, but the pain in his legs made him wobbly and off balance.
Fenton stood ready to yank another swath of concrete from the walls when Lynch grabbed his arm and lowered it. “Perhaps we’re being too hasty. This boy shows exceptional invulnerability. He could be useful.”
“He’s worthless.” Fenton gritted his teeth and stretched out his hands to his left, tearing away a bus-sized section of wall, giving no heed to the two female agents standing on it. They fell screaming and cursing into a twelve-foot gap, then journeyed back to the awakened world.
“I checked his background.” Fenton let the chunk of concrete hang in the air. “Some superstitious crackpot thinks Park is destined to save the world. She’s part of some odd dream cult in Korea. She found Farley and the fool promised he’d enlighten the kid. Park shouldn’t have been invited to the camp at all.”
Fenton faced Jack, his jaw rigid, and sent the concrete hovering over Jack’s head with a brisk flip of his wrist. Twisted steel bars clung from it like vines. Jack slipped aside to dodge the rocks and small chunks of concrete raining all around him.
“I’m curious,” Lynch said. “I’ve never seen a coma victim endure an attack like this.”
“They can’t be ghosts,” Fenton said. “There’s no wild threats. No demands for revenge.”
“Dad,” Damien said, “Katie’s running to help him. You better take him out before gets there.”
“We have to face the truth, Damien. Their bodies will expire any minute now, and Jack has poisoned those girls against you. This is their final dream. There’s no point in prolonging it.”
“Dad! No!”
Fenton raised his hands a few inches and rocketed the concrete slab upward
another twenty feet. Clara and Katie reached Jack and wrapped their arms around him.
“Get back!” Jack pushed their arms away. “He’s going to drop that wall on us.”
“Katie, get away from him!” Damien teetered at the edge of the wall.
Fenton showed no mercy. The shadow of the concrete widened around Jack and the girls, and the enormous mass dropped and pounded them into the earth.
Jack cracked open his eyes and stared into an inky blackness. He would’ve believed he’d really died this time, if not for the throbbing aches emanating from every surface of his body. He wanted to lay there for the rest of time, but he could hear Clara wheezing and Katie coughing.
“You two okay?” Jack shoved up a slab of rubble with his hands, ignoring the pain, and heaved it upward. Ragged strips of light peeked through fissures in the crumbled slab above him. He gave the wreckage another quick push and a large chunk of concrete rolled aside, allowing the cloudy sky to bathe him in light. He choked on cement dust for a few seconds, then grabbed onto two strands of bent rebar above his head. He yanked them down and pulled himself up and out of the debris. He searched for the girls in the crumbled waste around him, through dim and dusty air.
“I think I’m okay,” Clara’s muffled voice said. “I got the wind knocked out of me.”
“I twisted my arm,” Katie said.
Jack guessed where the voices were coming from and reached around the edge of a rough six-foot-wide slab, hefted it, and gave it a shove, letting it slide ten feet away down a shallow slope of rubble.
Katie and Clara sat up, reached a hand to Jack, and let him pull them both to their feet.
The dust settled and the men on the wall came back into view.
“Unbelievable.” Damien smiled and looked at his father.
Lynch handed his glass to Damien, kicked down his footrest, and arose from his lounge chair.
Jack found that the chunk of concrete had landed with such force, the concrete wall to his left had split from top to bottom in two locations. Only three Intershroud operatives remained stationed along the wall, each staring at Jack and the girls with their mouths agape.
Katie and Clara shoved aside crumbled concrete, kicked away a few twisted strands of rebar, and climbed out of the three-foot-deep crater.
Lynch laughed. “Such resilience! I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“You think you’re so brave way up there on that wall?” Jack choked again on the dust, then rubbed his bruised ribs. “Why don’t you come down here for a fair fight?”
“Are you kidding?” Damien grinned and folded his arms. “We just saw what you can do. Besides, who said this had to be a fair fight? There’s nothing fair about a dream."
Jack fumed. All he could think about was how unfair it was for them to stand up there in the safety of that wall, throwing things at him and the girls. It wasn’t right. He clenched his teeth and glared at the four men on the wall—then something happened that surprised even him.
Damien, Fenton, Derek, and Lynch vanished from the wall top and reappeared on the uneven ground six feet in front to Jack. Each man looked around with a blank expression. Damien’s eyes widened, and he dived toward Lynch and Fenton, placing one hand on Lynch’s shoulder and the other on Fenton’s back. He squinted and tensed his arms, waiting three, four, five seconds before he relaxed and lowered them.
“What did you do to my powers?” Damien glared at Jack.
Before he could answer, Katie stepped up and punched Damien in the face. He vanished.
Lynch grinned and froze for a half second, then disappeared.
Derek took ten steps backward, tripping twice over small stones on the ground, and darted behind Fenton.
Fenton stepped backward at a steady pace and looked up at the three agents still standing on narrow sections of cracked and broken concrete wall. “You haven’t won yet, boy. Fire all missiles!”
The loud whoosh of igniting rocket fuel descended from above. Jack caught sight of a spiraling missile flying at him and he ducked, wincing at the hot flame whizzing past his neck. He cringed again as the rocket exploded at the base of the wall twenty feet to his left. A force connected with his right side and spun him around, inflicting a sharp pain on his right hip. Another sensation of pressure from a nearby explosion sent his hands to his ears and he found himself flying ten feet forward and hitting the ground rolling. The world spun around him until his back flattened against concrete.
Katie and Clara yelled, but their voices couldn’t compete with the ringing in his ears. Another explosion sounded to his left and a force of hot air, mixed with rocks and clods of dirt, sent his world spinning again. He stopped rolling, squinting through moistened eyes. The metallic odor of blood filled his nostrils. Fenton stood ten feet away, watching him and sneering.
Jack couldn’t move. Katie and Clara attempted to run to him, but the earth below their feet heaved and flowed like a sheet in the wind. The girls teetered back and forth and up and down, until they fell onto their knees. They crawled forward, making slow progress.
“Enough of this!” Lynch’s voice spoke. “The boy clearly cannot be killed with brute force.”
Jack took a painful look around but couldn’t see Lynch anywhere, then remembered that the man had the ability to shade, to turn invisible.
“Then I’ll smother him!” Fenton Murdock reached his hands out in front of himself, palms up. He gritted his teeth and raised his quivering hands upward, and a ten-foot-wide circle of earth rumbled and arose from the ground. Severed tree roots dangled from the six-foot deep mass of moist, black, rocky soil. It rose up twenty feet and hovered sideways until it hung over Jack’s body, showering him with loose dirt and small stones.
The terrain around Katie and Clara stopped moving, allowing the girls to stand and run toward him. Hundreds of chrome spikes shot out of the earth at random angles in a line in front of them, stopping them cold. Eight-foot-long sharp-tipped rods, thick as flagpoles at their bases, blocked their path. They grabbed them and shook them in aggravation. Clara grinned when one of the cylindrical rods snapped in two in her hands, ringing with a loud clang. Following Clara’s lead, Katie snapped one in half, too.
A clod of dirt slammed into Jack’s head and the thought of being buried alive provided him all the adrenaline he needed to roll onto his hands and knees and crawl with every ounce of energy remaining in his body. He scuttled toward the girls over fist-size rocks and shallow mounds of soft, moist soil, facing downward so he could breathe amidst the dust.
He glanced up again and watched Katie and Clara kick down four of the chrome spikes and step over them. Katie glared at Mr. Murdock and swung a broken spike toward him with all her strength, yelling out and letting the glimmering rod fly.
Fenton’s eyebrows rose, and he started to duck, but the spike found him, penetrating his chest. He disappeared, and the chrome rod in his chest dropped and clanked against the rocky terrain.
The soil hovering over Jack now loosened and fell, turning his world dark in mere seconds. The weight of the soil pressed him flat on his stomach and he couldn’t move. The musty odor of moist earth assaulted his nose and air stopped flowing from his lungs. His mind screamed for a quick merciful death.
The weight, however, lifted from his back and light again appeared. He sucked in air, choking on the dirt that came with it. The mountain of soil rolled to his left and dropped into the hole from which it had come. Jack laid there and moaned, vowing never to take a breath of air for granted again. He heard the crunching of feet on rocky ground and rolled himself onto his back.
Katie and Clara stood near him, each wielding a chrome rod. Katie swung her post and let it fly toward Derek. He jumped aside, and it crashed with a loud clang against a far concrete wall, cracking and collapsing a three-foot-wide section of it in a cloud of dust. An Intershroud operative teetered and fell, awakening within the crevasse.
Derek waved his arms around, forming rectangular clouds that densified into blocks of gra
nite as large as cars. He situated them along the ground between himself and the girls.
“I just saved Jack from a horrible experience!” Derek said. “Don’t blame me for this. I’m not your enemy. You know I can’t go against Lynch and Murdock. I’ve been playing defense this whole time.”
Clara snarled and threw her chrome rod at Derek and it tumbled through the air, missing him by a good ten feet, yet it still penetrated six inches into the concrete wall behind him.
“Three comatose Aspects with unprecedented super strength.” Lynch’s voice seemed to be everywhere. “It’s unheard of. Unless…”
“Unless what?” Derek stretched out his arms and twenty grey clouds appeared in three rows along the ground in front of him, each densifying into blockades of granite blocks, stacked to the height of Derek’s chest.
“Unless, they’re Dream Running.”
“What?” Derek looked around. “They can’t be. Everyone knows that’s folklore.”
“Not true. It’s happened before, and nothing else explains their unusual strength.”
Jack gritted his teeth and started to pull himself to his feet. Clara ran to lend him her shoulder for support. Derek form more stone block walls on each side of himself.
“They’re scared of us,” Jack said.
Katie looked at Jack and gave a wry smile. She stepped up to a stone block, placed a hand on each side of it, and lifted it up. She raised it over her head and let it fly toward the concrete border wall, below the last two remaining Intershroud operatives. The block crashed into the concrete with a deafening crack and a twelve-foot-wide section of wall collapsed. Vast chunks of slab twisted and tipped over, slamming into the pine trees on the other side of the wall. The two female agents, in their flashy red business dresses, vanished in clouds of cement dust.