“You made it.”
Ben whirled around to see Sejal. His dark hair was tousled, and his pale blue eyes looked tired in his brown face. He seemed far older than sixteen.
“Kendi’s in there,” Sejal said, gesturing at the block. “I have to get back to Katsu.” And with that, he vanished.
“Wait!” Ben shouted. “What do I do? Who’s Katsu? How do I get back?”
But he was talking to empty air.
Ben licked his lips, trying to remember everything he had heard about the Dream and how it worked. Reality was supposed to shape itself around him, becoming whatever he expected it to be. Sejal said Kendi was trapped inside the stone block. Since there were no other Silent around, that could only mean that Kendi himself had, for some reason, created the thing and he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—come out. But why had he created it in the first place? Ben had no idea.
Best to get him out, then, and ask.
Ben put a palm on the stone. Like a sudden jolt, he felt Kendi inside. It was almost the reverse of the terrible loneliness he had felt back on Bellerophon. Kendi was
there
in a way that Ben had never felt before, even if Ben couldn’t see or touch him.
Kendi was also terrified right down to his bones.
Even more worried now, Ben pushed on the stone. It was thoroughly solid. Ben paused and imagined his hand going through the rock. That was the way the Dream worked—if you imagined it, it was so. But Ben’s hand remained stubbornly on the surface of the block.
“Kendi!” he shouted. “Kendi, let me in!”
No response. The falcon continued to circle overhead. Kendi had mentioned his animal friend, a fragment of Kendi’s own mind, but Ben didn’t see how knowing this could help.
Time for more desperate measures. Ben closed his eyes and imagined a laser pistol. When he closed his hand, he would feel it, smooth and heavy, in his palm. One...two...three. Ben closed his hand.
It remained empty. Ben puffed out his cheeks. He had no experience—or, apparently, talent—at this. His mother could have probably whipped up a jackhammer or just imagined herself inside the block, and so it would be. But Ben was stuck here by himself, abandoned by Sejal, Kendi, even his mother. Not even entering the Dream had changed that about his—
No. That was the wrong way to think. Kendi was
here.
Ben could feel him. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to the block.
Kendi,
he thought.
Tell me how to reach you. I’m all alone out here just like you’re all alone in there.
A faint whisper of movement. Had the block shifted? Ben didn’t move. Instead he thought about Kendi, his jokes, his eyes, his laugh, how much Ben missed him.
Come on, Kendi. Let me in. I’m here for you now. I’ll always be here for you, even in the Dream.
The rock definitely shifted.
Kendi. Let me in the way I never let you in. I’m sorry I didn’t. Come on, Kendi. Dammit, Kendi, I love you. Now let me in!
The block opened. Ben stumbled forward in surprise, and his eyes popped open. Behind him, the block sealed itself shut, leaving a blank wall. Ben found himself in a dank, dimly-lit corridor. Barred prison cells lined the walls, and people moaned and muttered from their depths. Ben was wearing the black and scarlet uniform of the Unity guard, right down to boots and holstered pistol.
And then Ben knew what was going on. It should have been so obvious. Why hadn’t he seen it sooner?
Astonished and uncertain, Ben walked slowly down the corridor, peering into each cell as he went. The people inside were ill-defined, barely more than shades. Where was Kendi? He had to be here someplace.
A horrible scream chilled every drop of Ben’s blood. He ran toward the sound, boots thudding on the corridor floor, until he came to the final cell. When he peered inside, his gorge came up and he had to swallow hard. A transparent man was standing over the body of an equally transparent woman. The knife in his hand dripped scarlet blood. The woman was—had been—pregnant, but her belly had been slashed open. The baby lay on stone floor next to its mother, bleeding, dying. Ben involuntarily backed up a step.
“Keeennnddiiii,” the man with the knife said. “Want me to do you next?”
Kendi huddled on the floor against the bars, his back to Ben, and Ben realized that to Kendi the entire scene was real. The Silent did not—could not—create people in the Dream. Sentient behavior was too complex for even the subconscious mind to create and control. But shades like these were two-dimensional. Kendi, trapped in his own nightmare, didn’t seem to notice.
The man with the knife advanced a step. Before Ben could react, Kendi suddenly moved. With lightning speed, his hand flashed forward and dipped into the puddle of blood. He flicked it like water at the man, then smeared some on his own forehead. With a manic grin, he threw back his head and howled at the roof. The sound sent a chill down Ben’s back.
Another transparent man advanced out of the shadows of the cell. He put a restraining hand on the man with the knife.
“Leave him alone,” he said in a raspy voice. “He’s a lunatic. You attack him, he’ll go nuts. You stab a guy like that, he only gets madder.”
Kendi howled again as the two men retreated into the darkness of the cell. Then Kendi slumped to the floor to huddle once again against the bars.
Ben stepped closer and opened his mouth to speak. But before he could make a sound, the scene in the cell flickered like a hologram. The two corpses, one woman and one baby, vanished. In their place stood the woman, alive and pregnant but still transparent. The man brandished his knife. The woman screamed as he brought it down in a flashing arc. Blood flowed and the woman collapsed to the cell floor.
“Keeennndiii,” the knife man said. “Want me to do you next?”
Ben watched the entire scene play out again in exact, gruesome detail. At the end, Kendi gave his chilling howl and slumped back against the bars.
How many times has he replayed this?
Ben thought in horror, even as his heart wrenched in sympathy and pain. How had Kendi survived this? How was he surviving it now?
Ben put a hand through the bars and grabbed Kendi’s shoulder before the scene could reset itself. Kendi let out a snarl and twisted like a cat.
“Kendi, it’s all right,” Ben soothed. “It’s me. Ben.”
Kendi blinked owlishly up at him. “Ben? All life—Ben you have to get out! They’ll catch you.”
He really thinks he’s in the Unity prison again,
Ben thought. “I’ve come to get
you
out. Kendi, come on. You can do it.”
“Run, Ben,” Kendi pleaded hoarsely, his hands grasping the bars. “Run before they—”
“Keeeennnndiiii,” the knife man rasped. “Who’s your friend, Keeeennnddiiii?”
The scene hadn’t reset this time. The knife man stepped over his victims, ignoring the advice of his friend. Ben’s heart leaped into his mouth. If the man stabbed Kendi in the Dream, his real body would die as well.
“Kendi, come with me,” Ben said urgently. “This prison isn’t real. You can walk out anytime you want.”
“Run, Ben,” Kendi said. “Please! Don’t let them get you, too.”
The man loomed behind Kendi and raised the knife. Ben reacted. He yanked out the laser pistol holstered at his side, the one Kendi had unwittingly created for him, and fired into the cell. The knife man dropped his blade and fell to the floor, twitching and writhing in pain. Kendi stared with wide eyes. Blood was still smeared on his forehead.
Ben met Kendi’s gaze and held out his hand. “Come with me, Kendi.”
Kendi looked at Ben’s hand. “I can’t, Ben. I don’t deserve it.”
“No one deserves this, Kendi,” Ben told him. “Come with me.”
“I didn’t do anything to stop him,” Kendi whispered. “All life, I didn’t do a damn
thing.”
“There wasn’t anything you could do,” Ben replied. “If you had, you would both have been dead instead of just her.”
“And the baby,” Kendi said. “I dipped my finger in the baby’s blood.”
“You did it to save yourself,” Ben said. “To make them think you were insane so they’d leave you alone. But that’s over now, Kendi. Come with me.”
But Kendi refused Ben’s hand. “I can’t.”
“Kendi,” Ben said in sudden inspiration. “I forgive you.”
Kendi continued to look at him.
“I forgive you,” Ben repeated.
“That’s not enough,” Kendi said.
“It’ll do,” Ben replied, “until you can forgive yourself. Come out of the cell, Kendi. Come out of the cell for me.”
With a low cry, Kendi snatched Ben’s hand. The bars vanished and the stone walls melted away, leaving Ben and Kendi alone on the empty plain. Kendi dropped to the ground, dragging Ben with him. Then he buried his face in Ben’s shoulder. He cried for what felt like a long time, great shuddering tears of relief. Ben just held him until the storm subsided. When it finally did, Kendi pushed himself upright.
“Wait a minute,” he said, sniffling. “What the hell are you doing here? How did you get in?”
Ben gave him a rakish grin. “Present from Sejal.”
A shuddering boom thundered through earth and air. As one, Ben and Kendi twisted around to look at the dark place just in time to see the darkness splinter and shatter into a thousand pieces.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE DREAM
When dinosaurs fight, it is the grass that suffers.
—Bellerophon proverb
The children were angrier than Sejal thought possible. They howled and shrieked and swirled around Sejal and Katsu. A shadow grabbed Sejal’s arm in an icy grip, and he gave a hard, instinctive shove with his mind. The child released him with a screech that almost split Sejal’s skull. Another swiped at Katsu’s head, but she ducked away. Sejal spun around, trying to look in all directions at once. Angry red gashes swirled through the blackness like blood in a whirlpool.
“They’re angry because Father and Mother are taking them out of the Dream!” Katsu shouted at him. “My dancing does nothing now. They will devour the people on Ru—”
Another swipe. Katsu flung herself sideways just as something cold and hungry landed on Sejal’s back. He yelled and clawed at his back. It felt as if someone had thrown a bucket of icy slime on him.
“Get off me!” he snarled, and thrust backward hard. A slashing pain tore at the side of his neck. Then the icy slime vanished. Sejal whirled, neck throbbing, but the child had skittered back into the darkness. Another hand grabbed at him, and another and another. The children gibbered and laughed at him, clawing at him like a dozen grabby jobbers. Pressure built up in his head and he put his hands over his ears to shut out their noise.
“Get out of here!” he screamed.
The darkness shattered like glass. Over two dozen shadows raced howling away, leaving Sejal and Katsu alone on the Dream’s empty plain. Katsu stared at him, wild-eyed and panting. In the new silence he could hear her heart beating.
“What happened?” Sejal croaked.
“Look!” she replied, pointing upward.
Sejal obeyed and saw the darkness hadn’t vanished after all. From horizon to horizon, the entire sky had gone black. Thunder rumbled hungrily. The sky began to descend and he resisted the urge to fling himself flat.
“They’ve begun,” Katsu said. “They’re going to devour every mind in the Dream.”
“Mom will—” Sejal began.
“Not quickly enough,” Katsu interrupted. “There are thirty—no, twenty-nine—of them left, and look how easily they cover the sky. They will devour Rust, and our parents will lose interest in the cryo-units.”
Not far away, a thick pillar of black dropped down from the sky like a finger as big as a city. The ground shifted and bucked where it landed. Uncountable minds cried out in despair.
“They’ve taken a planet,” Katsu said.
Another pillar dropped near the first, and the ground shifted again. More cries like an ocean wave. Tears ran Sejal’s face in sympathy.
“We have to stop them!” he cried. “All those people—”
“We aren’t strong enough,” Katsu said dispiritedly. “I can’t force them, only persuade them. You are able to push them, but only a little.”
Thunder rumbled, a demon clearing its throat. Another pillar crashed down. There was a feeling of horrible exultation in the gesture.
Sejal grabbed Katsu’s arm. “We need help.”
“Who? There aren’t many Silent in the Dream right now, and we’d probably need—”
“—all of them?” Sejal said in an odd voice.
Katsu looked at him. “Can you do that?”
“We’ll find out.”
“There must be a faster way,” Vidya puffed. Sweat plastered hair and clothes to her body and her muscles felt shaky. There were still twenty-eight more children to go.
Prasad stabbed the controls and the lid on the cryo-unit slid shut over the squirming child. The viewplate fogged over. Without speaking, he moved to the next bed.
“Sedatives?” Vidya said, moving next to him and disconnecting tubes.
“I don’t know where they would be,” Prasad told her, “and I wouldn’t know the dosage. I’d be just as likely to kill them.”
Vidya swiftly removed the last tube. “Perhaps, my husband, that would be the best choice.”
“No.” There was iron in Prasad’s voice as he slid the cryo-unit from under the bed and undid the child’s restrains. “They are
my
sons and daughters. They cannot help who they are and what they are doing.”
They wrestled the child into the unit. An arm cracked Vidya in the face. Pain exploded and for a moment she saw stars. She forced her hands to keep moving, however, until the cryo-unit slid shut and condensation gathered on the viewplate. Then they moved to the next bed, and the next. Vidya moved in a sort of fog, losing all track of time. Twenty-six left. Twenty-five. Twenty-four. Twenty. Her exhausted muscles were shaking so badly she fumbled at the tubes. Her aching body was covered in bruises from the hard hands and heels that struggled against her. Nineteen left. Eighteen. Now they were in the final Nursery. Sixteen left. Fifteen.
“Freeze!”
The command startled Vidya out of her trance. A stab of terror went through her chest as she spun to face the door. Prasad straightened from the child they were working on, then took a step forward, placing himself between Vidya and the four armed guard standing at the door to the glassed-in area. The door to the main laboratory stood open behind them. Vidya thought Prasad was being stupidly romantic until he gestured sharply behind his back at the cattle prod dangling from Vidya’s belt. Hiding her motions behind Prasad’s body, she eased it off the loop and slid it into her waistband under her shirt.
“Who are you?” Prasad demanded, though the black-and-scarlet guard uniforms made that obvious. Dr. Say’s emergency alert had done its work. “What do you want?”
“You’re under arrest,” the lead guard snapped.
“What for?” Prasad snapped back.
In answer, the guard fired. Prasad collapsed to the floor.
Sejal closed his eyes. Katsu’s hand was cold in his. All around him, pillars of darkness dropped from the sky in an avalanche of pain and misery. Fully a third of the Dream was gone. Every so often a bit of the darkness would vanish—his parents at work—but that didn’t seem to decrease the children’s power. In the Dream, the Silent were limited only by willpower and self-concept. The twisted children, raised apart from humanity, did not know they were supposed to have limits. Sejal had the sinking feeling that he was dealing with an infinite set, and that one child was just as powerful as a hundred of them.
“Go, Sejal,” Katsu said.
Sejal stretched out his mind. The Dream fabric stretched in all directions around him. Where the pillars touched the ground were great gaping holes. Normal people felt like threads, and here and there were the bright, sharp minds of the Silent. Only a very few were actually in the Dream.
A pillar crashed to the ground.
Swiftly, Sejal sifted through the fabric around him. It felt easy, it felt
right.
Wherever he found a Silent mind, he touched it and
pulled.
A crowd of Silent from dozens of races, hundreds of species, appeared around Sejal, all bound to him by the gleaming Dream fabric. Their bodies milled and overlapped like ghosts and their thoughts crowded his mind with questions, demands, terror, fear.
~Who are you?~ ~What are you doing to me?~ ~How dare you!~ ~Help me!~ ~Leave me alone!~ ~What’s happening to me?~
Their voices rose and fell around him, threatening to engulf him. Katsu squeezed his hand, and he drew serenity from her.
Serene must you ever remain,
he thought.
He found more Silent, and more and more. Padric Sufur’s mind abruptly joined the pack, as did Chin Fen and Dr. Say. And then he felt another mind, a younger one that he didn’t know but who felt a tiny bit familiar, but he couldn’t say why. It was on a planet named Klimkinnar. Then he felt two more, both on a planet called Drim. All three were slaves. Their voices joined in with the rest, rising into a fever pitch.
~No!~ ~Let go of me!~ ~What the hell?~ ~Sejal, you work for me! I order you to—~
Another pillar crashed to the ground. Sejal yanked the Dream fabric with a sharp jerk. The multitude fell silent, and Sejal continued gathering. He felt Ben and Kendi’s minds and ruthlessly added them to the pool.
~Sejal, what—?~
Kendi yelped, but Sejal ignored him. Silent after Silent fell into his pool. He felt swollen with them. Lights sparked around his body. He felt like he was drinking electric water until it threatened to burst out of him. Only a few minds were left, a tiny handful. He reached for them.
“Sejal, look out!” Katsu cried.
Sejal’s eyes snapped open. A black pillar was dropping straight for them. Reflexively, Sejal yanked on the Silent around them, took them into himself, possessed them fully. As one mind, they all reached up with arms suddenly grown god-like in size. The pillar landed on their shoulders. It was cold as winter, heavy as snow. But Sejal had the strength of nearly every Silent in the universe behind him, and he pushed back. His shoulders rose like Atlas, pushing the pillar back to the sky. The children stormed angrily above him, but Sejal held them back. Then he reached out with one giant hand and grabbed one of the pillars that had already reached the ground. With easy strength, he lifted it back to the sky and added it to his burden. A billion minds cleared and a thousand Silent pulled themselves out of the despair of separation. Sejal added them to his strength and reached for another pillar.
His brothers and sisters fought back, pressing down with their full weight. Sejal lifted despite their power. A small part of him marveled at what he was doing, relished in the strength. He lifted another pillar clear of the Dream, and another, and another, adding more and more Silent as they were freed. Every mind added to his own made the burden easier and easier to lift. The children howled mindlessly above him, clawed at his back, tore at his face and hair. But they did no damage. Sejal lifted the final pillar and stood with the black sky on his shoulders. Katsu was small and far below.
And then Sejal noticed that no more children had left the Dream. There were still fifteen left, had been for quite some time. Had something happened to Prasad and his mother? A bit of uncertainty wiggled through him and his knees buckled for a moment before he could firm them again.
“Katsu,” he boomed. Below, Katsu flung herself to the ground, her hands over her ears. Wincing, Sejal modulated his voice to a whisper.
“Katsu,” he murmured. “Leave the Dream and go see what—”
A shudder wracked his body and Sejal’s grip on the Dream weakened. A jolt of pain ripped through him. His eyes popped open and he found himself staring into the face of a Unity guard.
Ben snapped awake. He was lying on the bed in Kendi’s quarters aboard the
Post Script.
Actually, he was lying on top of Kendi. He must have fallen sideways when Sejal had taken him into the Dream. Kendi shuddered once beneath him, and Ben sat up. A pounding noise thudded through the cabin. What had happened? One minute he and Kendi had been sitting together in the Dream, and the next he had been dragged into...what? It was like some kind of drug-induced hallucination.
The pounding noise came again. It was the door. Ben called, “Come in,” and the door slid open.
“What is wrong?” Harenn strode into the room. “You would not answer the chime.”
“I’m not sure,” Ben said. He looked down at Kendi, who was still unconscious. Ben put a hand to Kendi’s neck. His pulse was thready, and his skin was clammy. Harenn took one look and her eyes widened above her veil.
“He is going into shock.” She hurried back toward the door. “Elevate his legs with the pillow and put the blanket over him. I’ll get a medical kit.”
Mystified, Ben did as he was ordered. Had the fight done this? But why was it affecting Kendi and not Ben? Ben was on the verge of working himself into a panic when Harenn returned. She slapped a monitor strip on Kendi’s forehead and checked the readout on the medical kit’s display. Her firm, decisive movements calmed Ben down.
“Is he going to be all right?” he asked.
“He is still in shock,” Harenn reported. She racked an ampule into a dermospray and pressed it to Kendi’s arm with a
thump.
. “This should take care of it.”
A few anxious moments later, Kendi’s eyes opened. “What’s going on?” he asked in a blurry voice.
“What do you remember?” Ben asked.
Kendi shook his head on the mattress. “It’s all fuzzy. I can’t focus.”
“Do you remember the fight?”
“What fight?” Harenn said.
“Sort of,” Kendi slurred. “I feel like ‘m...half outside my body. Help me sit up.” They did, though Kendi had to lean heavily on Ben.
“What fight?” Harenn said again. “What happened?”
Ben explained while Kendi took several deep breaths. His head apparently cleared a little, for he sat up straighter, though he left an arm around Ben’s back. Without even realizing he was doing it, Ben pulled Kendi closer while he spoke, as if he were afraid Kendi would disappear. It felt good to hold him.
“So why did you leave the Dream?” Harenn asked when Ben finished. “Did your drugs wear off?”
Ben shook his head. “I didn’t need any. None of us did as long as Sejal held us there.”
Harenn put the dermospray away and reached up to remove the monitor strip from Kendi’s forehead. “What about these children you spoke of?”
“I don’t know,” Ben admitted. “Sejal disappeared. I think that broke the rest of us up.”
“It hurt like hell when he did that,” Kendi put in. “At least, it did me.”
“Can you feel the Dream?” Harenn asked.
Kendi closed his eyes. “Sort of. It’s there, but not there. I’m having a hard time concentrating, though.”
“The question is,” Ben said, “what the hell happened to Sejal?”
Vidya’s terrified mind raced through a dozen options and discarded all of them. She was standing with her hands laced over her head in the Nursery. Prasad lay at her feet. He was breathing, which meant he was merely unconscious, not dead. The four guard had spread into the room, pistols trained on her. They had not searched her yet. They seemed to be waiting for something. The cattle prod pressed against her stomach beneath her shirt. She could probably whip it out and get off a shot, but that would leave three other guard to react.