"How many times have you died?" He asked.
"Once,"
"Can you be certain?"
"Yes," I said.
"Then you know exactly how many lives you have left?" I knew the answer. One. I had one life. Just as I always had.
“Do you ever see your parents?” he asked.
“”No,” I answered.
“Even most people visit their parents at least once a few months. What was your problem?"
I began to feel angry. Why was this man attacking me? I knew I wanted him to be straight with me but every word out of his mouth seemed like he wanted nothing but to tear me apart. I felt a fear when speaking to him. Like I was on the opposite end of a bad debate. I wanted to scream at him. I didn’t. I was here seeking help.
“I guess I just never thought about it... I don't see how this is helping me with my dreams." I finally get straight to the point. "Can you help me or not?" I say in my most direct tone.
Dr. Leer smiles. "Help you I can."
I tell him everything. I'm not sure why. One minute I felt so angry at this cripple I was ready to walk out and the next I'm spilling my guts, things I wouldn't even tell you. I tell him about our first night. The date at the park. I tell him about how I dream that you are asleep. That I have powers. That there are superheroes and zombies. I tell him about waking up every night at 3:27 am. I tell him about my family, my friends, what I studied in college, the music I like, the cars I've owned. The next thing I know I've been talking for two hours. Then as I begin to talk about the Perseverance and the daemons. It hits me. I just spilled my guts to this man but I still know so very little about him. So I look up from my chair. I stare Dr. Leer straight in the eyes. I am silent for about a minute. He doesn't say anything either, he just stares back at me. I can't read him. I feel like I am staring into a mirror. I ask him the only thing that matters. “I don’t remember saying anything about daemons on the phone.”
He smiles. I swear I've only ever seen Leer smile or stare.
"Now who told you that?" I asked. The question puzzled me because I should have known it was you that told him all the things he knew. It easily could have been you. My mind wouldn’t accept it. I felt confused. I knew you wouldn't call ahead. It wasn’t your style. You gave me Leer’s number to help me. You said that he helped you. That I needed to go in blind.
"O yes, Vee. She is a good friend. Your girlfriend. You better take best care of her..."
"Your avoiding the question" I cut in.
"Sorry. Well... thing is you are dying again.”
I was puzzled.
"You are born, The older you get the more stuck in it gets. Some people have tried genetically altering themselves through chemicals... paralyzed or killed themselves in the process of course. Even heard some mutated into monsters. Others have only received brain damage. Poor fuckers can't tell what's real and what's make believe. You can't remove death - death is every part of you. You are only human after all. You are bred to die. Bred to go to war. To fuck. To fight. To lose.”
Leer had my attention now.
“Is this what you said to Vee?”
"And myself, and many others. You see. The human part of you is the cause of your bad dreams."
I exclaimed, "but then if you die you are dead for good!”
Leer quickly replies, "What makes you think you didn't really die for good before. You were lost... Eleven seconds. So for eleven seconds where were you, were you alive, were you thinking, were you dreaming?" I feel like I'm in debate class again, arguing philosophy with my teachers and peers.
"You were born in a tub, you spent 25-26 years living off crumbs…” Leer paused. I felt it again. I felt like snapping his neck. "The other you, born from the womb, lives it's life and dies a horrible painful death. Then three days later no food, no water, the doctors drain you of fluid and fill you with another fluid so that your body doesn’t rot away. Long enough your family can see you,” Leer says.
"How does this stop the nightmares, what do they mean?” I ask.
“Faults. Our own mistakes. Sorry about that. Pieces we couldn’t flesh out. You see. Like I said. You are dying. Right now. Those nightmares are real. You came to this world naked, bleeding, screaming and then you found yourself falling inside another. Our world. Our home. We have a gift for you Jake. You love Vee. She is the one that sent you to me. She is the one in the dreaming,” Leer said. Click Click Click. I knew where I was. This had already happened before. The daemons were attacking my mind again as we began our descent into the fissure.
“We can unite you and her, you can join us. You can be together forever here as a part of us,” Leer said.
I want the nightmares to stop. I want to spend the rest of my life however long it is with you. The world be damned.
"Does it hurt." I ask.
"Hurts like hell, but you won't remember it once it's finished."
Leer stood up.
I nod my head, "Like a phoenix rising from the ashes."
Leer walked over to the wall of his office. There is small desk there with a few drawers. It's satin black and blends well with the rest of the room. It's all very professional, very clean. I watch as he quietly and calmly opens a drawer.
"Does Veer know you are a daemon?” I ask.
"No," Leer replies.
“She thinks she has just been waiting. Her life is and endless loop. She is dreaming of you, Michael, everyone she has ever known. She is sitting in a room in a chair waiting for you to return,” he says pointing a small 9mm pistol at me he pulls the trigger before even finishing the sentence.
"You have to die again first."
The bullet enters my eye. I can feel the blood running down my face. The first shot didn't kill me. I scream. Second shot. Silence.
I woke up on the ground. The dropship was banged up half buried in the field that surrounded me. Michael was still unconscious. Everyone else was either waking up or standing up looking out over the horizon. It looked like we had crash landed back on Earth. The middle of a field filled with ancient stone ruins. Even the sky was blue and filled with white fluffy clouds. The world’s delicate grip of hope had somehow held against the odds.
We were going to survive.
Unearthed
“Eat something before you get sick,” I said passing a protein bar to Michael who had finally woken up.
“Any strange dreams?” I asked.
“No, nothing, last thing I remember is we were firing out the back hatch of the ship, I think we killed two maybe three daemons?” he said.
“Sounds about right, same for me,” I said.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“It seems once we made it through the fissure somehow we were transported here. This world,” I said pointing around.
“Daemons homeworld? Inside their ship?” he asked.
“We’re not sure, we’re not really sure how this is possible. Lt. Barker took Jackson, Todd, and Nate to investigate. Emily, Cassandra and I stayed here with the ship until you came too,” I said.
“Any sign of the daemons since we landed?” he asked.
“Crashed. And no. No sign of any life whatsoever,” I said.
“What about the feed? Are we still streaming?”
“No, all communication with Earth is lost.”
Paradise Lost
The ruins looked like they had once been a part of a larger city. This place could have once looked like paradise. Some of the foundations were made of stone or perhaps some kind of concrete while others looked like pillars of metal that had eroded away. They were as smooth as the pyramids of Earth and yet certain places they were cracked. I felt like I was standing in the middle of an old Greek Temple. There were no languages, no hieroglyphs or symbols to try and understand just an endless sea of something that once was and never will be again. Even when we stood there and checked out our compass the dial seemed only to spin like every direction was now n
orth. This was unlike anything we could have dreamt. I began to wonder if I had fallen asleep. Was this a nightmare? When you fall asleep with a head full of images there is something there that burns in your mind. Something that haunts your dreams. Sometimes it can be the smallest thing. A stranger you met while at work or out to dinner. It could be your best friend, your family, your pet. An image of something or someone that creates an osmosis, that you feel you are sharing something with someone that doesn’t exist. I pinched myself. It hurt. I was thinking a lot at that time.
As time passed or it seemed time didn’t pass. I felt as though every instant was a capsule, a drug of sensation wrapped around me to the point I was paralyzed. I couldn’t believe the daemons had come from such a beautiful world. It was impossible anything so evil could survive here. Perhaps they had destroyed it and taken whatever this world was for their own.
We made cover behind some of the ruins near the crashed dropship. It was there in the distance we noticed the jungle that seemed to appear out of nowhere. I stood up, wondering how and why it seemed I couldn’t get my eyes to concentrate. I felt there was movement. Perhaps that had been were the others had wandered.
“They were suppose to stay in radio contact but the signal seems to come and go like there is something blocking it,” said Michael noticing my squinting eyes.
“Was that treelike always there?” I asked.
“Yes, Your eyes are adjusting,” he said, “something about this place messed with the body, messes with your senses, it’s like a ghost town.
“That doesn’t make sense?” I said.
“It’s like waking up inside a dark room with only a small keyhole. Slowly over time your eyes will dilate and you will pick up on the light shining through and you’ll start to see around the room. Your eyes and body are adjusting, even the air is denser here while gravity is slightly less than that of Earth and even the starships, like I said this place ain’t right,” he said.
“Do you think we’re in hell?” Emily asked.
“Like we all died on that ship and came to Purgatory. At this point I wouldn’t not believe it, this doesn’t feel how I imagine hell,” said Michael.
“How do you imagine hell? Fire and brimstone?” said Cassandra.
“As a matter of fact, exactly, a place of torment and pain,” he said.
“How do you know they aren’t just trying to catch us off guard?” I said.
“I don’t but I do know we all have our weapons so we might as well shut up and make camp. Barker and the rest will be back soon, they only planned to trek for a few hours so we should see them anytime,” Michael said.
Without Lt. Barker the rest of us were all the same rank. Michael was a natural born leader. We didn’t have to vote or say a word we followed his like he was our commanding officer. Out of all of us he was also the eldest of the group.
“I miss breakfast, my house, my car, my dog, my…” began Cassandra.
“Shut up,” Michael interrupted her.
“Why should I?” she said.
“Something is coming out of the treelike, look,” he said pointing.
It was Lt. Barker and the others riding what looked like some kind of convertible floating in the air, a hover craft made to carry a team of four to six people with mounted machine guns. They were being chased by a massive beast. A daemon that looked like a yokai, a feral grunt only larger and covered in several bleeding scars. It still wore similar armor and it seemed to have some kind of saddle and satchel attached to it’s side. They were firing at it but it wasn’t slowing down. They were heading back towards us.
“Everyone take aim, try to hit between it’s armor,” said Michael.
We all took aim as Lt. Barker drove the hover craft towards us making a wide right turn towards the ruins. He was leading it for us. Leading the yokai into an ambush of his making.
“He made a very good guess were we are,” I said.
“Our guns all have trackers placed inside them, he was probably looking right at us on his wrist tablet,” said Emily.
“More tech and weapons than an entire army and we’re stranded in some damn alien world,” I said.
“We aren’t stranded, we’ll figure something out,” said Michael.
We took aim behind the ruins and fired.
The beast went down after several strategic hits.
“My first daemon kill,” I said smiling.
“Mine too,” said Emily and Cassandra at nearly the same time.
“Not mine, I’ve had some practice,” said Michael as both Emily and Cassandra looked over towards him.
“Chicago, the day of the invasion,” I said as Michael stood there silently.
Lt.Barker had a broken nose. He had done his best to cover it with a bandage and some medical tape but it was still bruised around his eyes and there was still blood around his lips. He watched the gray clouds move over our heads. Standing on the flat stone summit of our new camp he looked resentfully around all of us and towards the forest and the fallen beast.
“I’m sorry, all of you, we shouldn’t have come here,” he said.
“What happened out there?” I asked.
“We found the moon rabbit, most of it was intact but the crew had been slaughtered by daemons. There was no sign of them but we managed to download half the records from the ship and began to make our way out we ran through the hangar. That was were we found the yokai feasting on several members of the crew. We did our best to save them but we only attracted it’s attention. We grabbed the hover craft and began making our way back. The yokai chased us all the way. Lt. Barker is reviewing the logs of the moon rabbit now,” said Todd.
“We saw the moon rabbit get destroyed?” I said.
“Apparently not, that’s all I know, what we saw was some kind of illusion. It crashed but not out there against the daemon’s hull like we thought. It crashed on this world,” he answered.
As quickly as he spoke to us Lt. Barker turned and left our view limping his way towards the crashed dropship and kicking his way through the grass. Cassandra ran after him. From what I gathered the two had some kind of previous relationship. Not that kind. Lt. Barker had been a father figure to her after the first invasion. She was originally once a member of his team and he was working with her to help her better understand her powers. I heard that she was found not long after the withered appeared. Found inside an old school building that was being used as a safe haven for sleepers. It was overrun. So many had less luck than Michael and I. When they found her she was trying to heal both the withered and the sleepers. Something that couldn’t be done. They kept attacking her and somehow yet she was still alive draining the life force from all of those around her without her knowledge. Draining the life force of the sleepers and the living. When the U.E.D made it inside and cleared a path to her she was surrounded by the dead only she was in so much shock she had no idea what it was she had done. Several of the sleepers had been her own family members.
The dropship was a hundred yards away at this point. We had moved so far into the ruins and taken so much gear we all knew we were planning to stay awhile.
For awhile no one said a word.
Michael picked up his rifle for the fifth or sixth time in a row and inspected it. The beauty of it made him want to cry. The wind blew. The grass swayed in the wind. Cassandra returned to us.
“Were are we?” I asked looking towards Nate.
“I haven’t quite enough information to say,” he responded.
“Give me a guess,” I said.
“A guess wouldn’t be good enough, I could be totally wrong, I’m working on a few ideas now though,” he said.
“Do you know how we are going to get home?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“How?” I responded feeling for a moment hope. Hope that I would at least make it back to the Perseverance, that somehow the dropship would repair itself and we would be able to take off into the sky.
Somehow maybe Earth forces, the U.E.D had fit the ship with some kind of self repair facility without telling any of us. Another form of experimental technology I imagined would be based around Todd’s powers. Perhaps even that Todd could fix the ship himself.
“In body bags,” he said.
Michael punched him straight in the jaw. I grabbed him holding him back but at the same time I wanted nothing more then to do the same. Nate had turned on us. He might have been the smartest in our group but he was a nihilist through and through. Since the beginning he never seemed to have any hope that any of us would survive.
“Why are you here,” Emily asked him.
“Not that it’s important but my mother, she’s in the dreaming, I thought that if we defeated the daemons she would wake up, that even if we put up a large enough fight then they would turn tail and run, I was wrong,” he said.
“What do you mean you are wrong?” she asked.
“Have you not looked around you?” he said.
“What about it?” she asked again.
“We’re on another planet. Another place in time, the sun is starting to set have any of you looked up yet?” he said.
At that point we did. It felt like you could see all the way into space.
There were no planets, no stars.
“How ironic we end up in a place like this when we have flown farther into the stars then any human ever has,” said Nate.
“Not by chance. You said you were working on some ideas, if not about how to get out of here then what is it that you are putting all that time wasted thinking about?” I said.
“I think we are inside a prison,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said unenthusiastically. I placed my elbow on my knee, my chin in my hands and looked over towards the yokai daemon creature that had fallen.
“Why would they keep us alive?” asked Michael.
“Study us, keep us as pets, I’m not sure, all I know is that we are stranded on some alien world or inside some kind of weird inter dimensional pocket, a small universe within our own, a gravity well of some kind must have pulled us in and somehow the daemons have technology to keep us kicking. Just look at this place. If this isn’t what they plan to do to our world then I don’t know what the hell they are doing,” said Nate.
Sleepers (Convergence Book 1) Page 8