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Nor was it, technically, the Academy’s.

It was the aircraft that Sam had seen at Duke’s farmhouse back in Texas when Tobias had acquired it from Stella.

Nice. Still, she’d taken it from the Enterprise, and what’s left of the Enterprise have sided with us, so I suppose it does belong to us after all
.

“You OK?” Lora asked Sam, noticing him lost in his thoughts.

“Yeah, fine,” he said, pulling up his collar against the crisp morning air.

Cold? This ain’t nothing—it’s going to be freezing soon
.

“Just thinking about this plane. About the last time I saw it … about Tobias.”

“I know,” Lora said. “He would want this, Sam, you know that. He’d want you to go on, to see this through and finish it. He’d have loved to have been out here right now with you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam said, smiling.

They watched the flight crew prepare the aircraft. The powerful motors hummed to life.

Jabari gave a thumbs-up that everything was ready for takeoff.

“You guys coming?” Eva asked them as she waited at the bottom of the aircraft’s stairs, Arianna and Gabriella already aboard.

“C’mon, let’s roll,” Lora said, smiling and giving Sam a nudge toward the stairs.

“OK,” Lora said, coming down the aisle to stand next to Sam. She produced a satellite phone. “I’ve got the Professor and Jedi on a secure communications link. We need to analyze your dream together and see what we can learn. We need to go over every detail so that we can stay ahead of the others.”

Sam suddenly thought about what Lora was saying—
every detail
—and realized that, although he’d explained how there had been a “complication” with Alex, he hadn’t fully described the scene he remembered from his dream. A wave of shame rippled over him.

It was only a dream. I can change things …

“OK,” Sam said, taking a deep breath before speaking into the handset. “Hey, guys.”

“Sam!” Jedi’s excited voice came over the phone’s speaker. “Dude, I think we should probably start with what you did to Alex … tell me everything.”

The plans for their Antarctic voyage had been decided and gone over, and everyone was ready. They seemed to take the situation with Alex in their stride, not judging Sam for what he did in his dream.

Sam looked out the window. The supersonic aircraft was getting them there in a hurry.

We’ll be in Antarctica soon
.

Sam thought he could make out drift ice and icebergs floating in the dark sea.

That’s an amazing sight. I really have been all over the world now
.

What an incredible ride
.

I wonder where it will all end?

Lora came back from the cockpit and sat down in the empty seat beside Sam. “Another hour until we touch down. Remember, where we’re landing, they don’t know the real reason why we’re there.”

Sam could see her hesitate, as though there was something else she needed to share but was hanging onto it.

“Lora?” he asked.

She showed them her tablet computer.

“The weather,” Lora said. “It’s going to get worse, and soon. We don’t have much time on the ground to find Alex.”

“How long?” Sam asked.

“Six hours, maybe a little more, at the most.”

“And what will happen out there in six hours?” Eva asked.

“We can’t be there,” Lora said. “It’s two polar vortexes converging to form a supercell. Half the continent will be in cyclonic blizzard conditions. Worst case, if we get caught out, we head for the closest station from Alex’s last known location. Here.” She tapped the map.

“The Chilean station?” Eva said. “OK.”

“So,” Sam said, “when we touch down, we have only six hours to find Alex
and
the Gear?”

Lora nodded. Eva looked ill at the thought of what was to come. The other two girls were sleeping. The Guardians and Agents were huddled at the end of the cabin, busy checking over their equipment and weapons.

Sam worried about Alex. If he had any locator device with him, he either hadn’t activated it or it wasn’t giving out enough of a signal.

Sam pulled out his phone, uselessly typing a text message to Alex. He looked at it for a long time before slowly hitting the delete button over and over, erasing the message.

Nope, it really is time for us to meet face to face
.

“How far away do you think Alex is?” Eva asked.

Sam was silent, then he looked to her and Lora and saw that they expected him to know.

“Oh, me?” he said, looking at a map of Antarctica. “Well, ah, he’s probably not far. I mean, I saw that mountain range in my dream, to the east. So near there?”

“OK,” Lora said. “That’s a pretty big search area. It could take days to cover.”

“But we don’t have days,” Sam said, distractedly. “We’ll find him. Unless he …”

“What?” Eva said to him. “Unless he what?”

“Sam?” Lora prompted.

Sam looked up and saw that his two friends were looking at him, eyes wide.

“Well?” Eva said.

“Unless … you see, my worry is,” Sam began, pausing before carrying on, “well, how do you find a Dreamer if he doesn’t want to be found—because he’s not on our side anymore?”

XAVIER

Xavier frowned.

The Professor’s not coming?
W
here would he have to be that was more important than this?

Xavier looked at his friends’ faces, wondering how they would cope in Egypt, if—no,
when
—things got complicated.

“What if we’re not ready?” Maria asked, apparently having the same thought.

“You will be,” the Professor replied. “All of you. Every dream you’ve ever had has prepared you for what will be coming.”

Xavier looked at the floor.

What if I’m not ready
 …?

“You’ll be ready too, Xavier,” the Professor said. “Self-doubt is natural. Believe in yourself, in your part of the prophecy.”

The students left in a tight group, talking quietly but animatedly, a spring and purpose in their step as they left to pack—but Xavier hung back.

“Professor …”

“Yes, Xavier?” The Professor looked up wearily from where he stood at his desk.

“I’m not sure about this,” Xavier said, looking back down the hall and watching his friends depart. “I mean, I’ve had a dream—a dream I’ve had all week. It’s always the same but each time I see more and more. And it was, well … it was dangerous.”

“And in these dreams you were in Egypt?”

“That’s right.”

“I know,” the Professor said. “It was the same in my dream too. But don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”

“Have you seen the end—right up to the Dream Gate?” Xavier asked, hope in his voice at the prospect of knowing the future.

“No, I’ve only seen small glimpses, of us in Egypt, of the sun rising and setting. Of thirteen figures in the shadows, all coming together. After that, nothing.”

“And you’re staying here?” Xavier’s eyes searched the Professor’s for some sign of apprehension, but he saw none. It made Xavier feel better, seeing that the Professor’s expression was certain.

“For the moment. This is how it is destined to be, Xavier,” the Professor said. “Those here, those working with us, those working against us, we all have unique parts to play. Like gears in a machine, you might say.”

“Even Solaris?” Xavier said. “He has a part to play?”

“Even Solaris. Think of it as Yin and Yang, light and dark, day and night.”

“Like dreams and nightmares,” Xavier said, “they’re both always there?”

“That’s right,” the Professor said. “For Dreamers, nightmares are important too—they show us events that may happen and we can strive to prevent them, or at least prepare for them.”

“So, they’re a blessing
and
a curse.”

“Exactly!” the Professor said, smiling. “And for the rest of the world, the seven billion souls around the globe that sleep every night, their nightmares show them that there are ways to do things, ways to change. Perhaps even ways to prepare.”

“So it’s the same for all of us.”

“The whole world is connected by dreams. It is just that Dreamers are aware of it, at the front lines if you will, driving the dreamwave for the rest.”

“We learned that in class,” Xavier said. “I remember learning about changing the endings of nightmares. How when we have recurring nightmares, we can change what happens—like, we can beat what’s terrifying us.”

“That’s right. Have you tried it, with your own nightmares?”

“Yes,” Xavier said. “I’ve come up with different endings. I’ve rehearsed them, awake and then just before I sleep, just like we were taught, to remind myself that I don’t have to have that ending, preparing should the nightmare occur again.”

“How has it worked for you?”

Xavier shook his head. “I’ve tried everything, but I can’t change it.”

The Professor paused. “This is the dream of your father dying?” he asked in a quiet voice.

Xavier nodded.

“There’s still time, Xavier,” the Professor said. “There’s still time for another ending.”

SAM

“Remember!” Lora said loudly to be heard over the engines as their aircraft turned in the air for the landing approach. “No one down there knows our real purpose, so keep to yourselves.”

“It’s just a ‘rescue mission,’” Sam replied across the aisle with a thumbs-up. “Got it. And whatever we do, don’t mention the Gear that forms part of a machine that will lead to the Dream Gate and help us save the world.”

Gabriella laughed, Arianna was tight-lipped. Sam wondered if the Russian was pleased to be back among so much snow. Outside Sam’s window, he saw what would be their base of operations: Crawley Station.

It was doughnut-shaped, with a central structure in the middle and two outer rings, connected by corridors at each point of the compass. From the air it looked small, but, as they neared, it grew to be a complex that could easily house fifty researchers. There were some outer buildings too, domes poking up into the air, a large one next to the icy runway.

Two figures were standing out in the cold, dressed in bright red snowsuits. They had orange burning flares in their hands, using them to direct the pilots. The jet touched down and they taxied to the largest of two cigar-shaped buildings, which looked like it served as an aircraft hangar. The engines died down as soon as the jet was inside.

“Wow,” Sam said as he alighted the aircraft, walking down the fold-down stairs at the back of the jet between the undercarriage, pulling his Stealth Suit up around his face as he moved. Like the rest of his friends, he also had a yellow snowsuit over the top. But the wind still shocked the senses, blowing snow and ice through the air as it blasted through the huge hangar doors.

The aircraft’s engines had wound down and four station crew emerged from the hangar and went about running a fuel line. Sam figured that in this environment, there was no way a vehicle could stay idle for long and still be expected to work. The large building was full of equipment. Through an open door, Sam could just make out a helicopter, wrapped up against the cold, and several large red snowcats—boxy reinforced vans with thick tank treads instead of tires.