Mystics 3-Book Collection (85 page)

“We’ll have more live tissue samples—” He
held his breath, “We can finally perform the Dream Purge!”

Zoey shared a nervous look with Tristan and
Simon.

Doctor Three smiled even more widely and
spoke with a lisp.

“We should do it while they’re still alive!”
His green tongue rolled over his skull-like teeth. “I want to see
the life go out in their eyes. It’s so . . . invigorating!”

Doctor Two nodded, opened his tiny mouth,
and said, “Miut, mit, miut, mit.”

Doctor Three smacked him on the back. “What?
Speak up? We can’t hear you.”

The tree-like doctor frowned.

Doctor Three shrugged and then smiled
happily. “Doctor Two agrees. Strap them into the Dream Purge chair,
and we can begin immediately.”

“Yes, of course, Doctor Three,” said Doctor
One.

He turned towards Zoey and smiled. “Ladies
first.”

He pointed to a dentist-like chair with
leather restraints for the feet and arms. A metal ring with tubes
and wires like a helmet was mounted just above the headrest. The
chair had once been white, but now red marks stained its dirty gray
upholstery.

Zoey felt sick.

“Move!” bellowed Doctor One as he threated
Zoey with the remote control.

But Zoey couldn’t move. She just stared at
the bloody chair.

Doctor One moved to press the remote
control, but Tristan charged forward and knocked him down.

“Leave her alone!” yelled Tristan through
gritted teeth. “I swear, once this collar is off, I’m going to kill
you—”

The rest of his threat died in his throat,
and he fell to his knees. He rolled on the ground, twisting and
crying out in agonizing pain.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

Doctor One got to his feet and pointed his
remote at Tristan. His expression changed from anger to delight at
the sight of blood pouring from Tristan’s nose and ears as he
convulsed in pain on the ground.

“STOP!” cried Zoey. She made her way to the
chair.

“I’m going—see? Please
stop
.” She
knew she wasn’t allowed to speak, but it worked.

Doctor One released his finger on the
trigger and stepped over Tristan’s body.

“Get on the chair,” repeated the doctor as
he made his way towards her.

Tristan staggered to his feet and moved next
to Simon. His face was swollen, and his nose and ears were still
bleeding, but at least he was alive and standing on his own. Their
eyes met, and she knew he’d give anything to trade places with
her.

Simon’s wet eyes said it all. He was scared.
They were all scared.

Zoey stood next to the long chair. Doctor
Three was waiting for her. He patted the chair invitingly. His
pale, wet, and scabby skin looked like melted cheese up close.
Doctor Two sat at a table behind the chair and typed on a
keyboard.

Zoey managed to haul herself up onto the
chair. Her heart pounded like a machine gun.

“Lie down all the way please,” said Doctor
Three.

He moved towards the head of the chair.

Zoey did as he asked and rested her head on
the headrest. The chair reminded her of her visits to the dreaded
dentist, but now she wished it
were
a dentist
appointment.

The doctors didn’t bother tying the
restraints around her arms and legs, probably because she already
wore the collar and handcuffs. And she could use that to her
advantage . . . .

Click!

The heavy cold metal hat dropped around her
temples, and a piercing pain that felt like a ring of needles had
just punctured her skull blinded her momentarily. She reached up to
touch her head, but Doctor Three slapped her hands away.

“Don’t move,” he barked. He moved around the
chair so that Zoey could see him clearly.

“Just try to relax. It never works well when
the subject is stressed—the dreams turn out to be nightmares. We
don’t
want nightmares.”

Zoey frowned. What was he talking about?

Doctor One shoved Tristan and Simon forward
until they all stood near the edge of her chair. He waved his
remote control like it was a gun. He was close now. She could
almost reach the remote with the tip of her shoe—

Doctor One moved over and stood next to
Doctor Three.

Zoey took a chance and spoke up, enunciating
her words very quickly, “What are you going to do to me?”

Doctor Three leaned over Zoey. His face was
so close that she could smell his rancid breath and could count the
sores and zits on his face. Where his eyes should have been, she
could only see blistered and flaky skin.

“We’re going to take your dreams, of
course,” said the eyeless doctor eagerly.

Tristan and Simon both shrugged.

“What do you mean take my dreams? You can’t
take
my dreams. It’s impossible. Dreams happen when you
sleep. It’s a state of mind, a consciousness. It’s not
tangible.”

She knew she was pushing it by speaking
again, but the doctors didn’t seem to mind now that she was already
positioned for their experiment.

Doctor Three adjusted wires around Zoey’s
head. When he was done he licked his lips and said, “The Dream
Purge is a device that
extracts
dreams.” He knocked the top
of Zoey’s head twice, “through these mind wires.”

He moved his hands along the black wires
that went from Zoey’s metal helmet to a rectangular basin filled
with a blue fluid. “We transfer the dreams to this reservoir tank
until they are ready to be extracted.”

Zoey stared at the thick blue fluid. It
looked more like mucus than water.

“But why do you want to do that?”

Doctor Three lost his smile. “Because the
one thing we
desire
above all else in the world we Aneraks
cannot have.”

“And what’s that?” asked Zoey.

“We cannot
dream
.” Doctor Three
hesitated for a moment.

“When we sleep, we experience only
emptiness, a vacuum, nothing. Imagine our surprise when we
experimented on our very first human—”

“We discovered dreams,” interjected Doctor
One. His bulbous eyes rolled around in their sockets like little
whirlwinds. “Thousands of wonderful dreams.”

Doctor Three picked at one of his front
skull teeth, yanked it out, and tossed it on the ground.

“Why should you humans dream and not us?
What makes you so special that your mind produces wonderful
projections while you sleep?”

Zoey wasn’t sure if she should answer, so
she didn’t.

“We purged our first human dreams centuries
ago,” continued the eyeless doctor. “It was the most glorious
feeling, finally to dream! A door of endless possibilities opened
to us. Once we’d glimpsed what it was to dream, we needed to have
it. We needed to dream again.”

He shuffled over to Zoey’s dream-helmet and
began adjusting latches and wires.

“And now we’re going to take your dreams,
agent girl. We’re going to take
all
your dreams. Yours
and
your friends.”

These doctors were completely and utterly
mad
. Whatever this thing was, this dream purge, Zoey knew
she wouldn’t survive. These mad scientists were going to lobotomize
her if they started rummaging around in her brain.

“With
three
new brains, we’ll have
enough dreams to last us for years,” said Doctor One, leering at
Tristan and Simon.

“The dreams of children are much more
potent, innocent, and filled with ingenuity, imagination, and
creativity. They are the source of dreams. This is a
dream
come true.”

He laughed at his own joke. Even Doctor Two
joined in with a mousy kind of laugh that made Zoey want to punch
him in the face.

“What happens after you take our dreams?”
Zoey tried to pull her head away as Doctor Three’s stained lab coat
brushed her face.

“You die, of course,” answered Doctor One.
“But don’t worry, we don’t waste
any
parts. You’ll be glad
to know that your skin and bones will be added to our wall
collection. Your organs, and especially your brain, will be used to
test our new meta-creation theory.”

Zoey didn’t want to know about their new
psychotic theories, she just wanted out of the chair. If only
Doctor One could move a little closer, she could reach the remote
with her foot and maybe kick it over to Tristan. But he was too far
away. She couldn’t reach him . . . .

“Power it up!” Doctor Three backed away.
Even though he didn’t have eyes, Zoey could tell he was thoroughly
excited. He licked his lips eagerly like a snake smelling the
air.

Doctor Two reached over to a large metal box
and flicked a switch.

“Ut, wut, vit!” he called.

The lights flickered and a loud humming
resonated through the chamber like the droning of a giant
refrigerator.

“NO!” screamed Zoey. “STOP! Please, don’t do
this!”

She bucked like a wild horse, but Doctor
Three pressed her legs down hard. His smile made her want to scream
even louder. She tried to move her legs but she couldn’t. The
doctor had the strength of five men.

“Our worlds are collapsing,” she cried
desperately. “Haven’t you noticed? They can’t survive a permanent
portal. We have to shut the portals down, or we’ll all die!”

Doctor Three laughed. “Shut the portals
down? Now why would we want to do that, silly agent girl? We are
grateful
to Mrs. Dupont for being clever enough to generate
the Great Junction. Because of her, we now have an
endless
supply of humans. An endless supply of dreams!”

Zoey blinked the sweat from her eyes. “You
can’t dream if you’re
dead
. I’ll telling you the
truth
. It’s why we’re here. We need to shut the portals!
Both our worlds will be destroyed if we don’t.”

“Fiddles and sticks.” Doctor One dismissed
her with a wave of his hand.

“It’s not like we haven’t heard
that
one before—the end of the world, blah, blah, blah
. . . .”

He laughed a sick wet laugh.

“The True Eye cult have been preaching the
end of the world for years. But they just try to scare us so that
we will obey them,” continued Doctor One.

He looked at Tristan and Simon with a
sinister smile on his scabby face. “Fear can make us do
anything.”

Zoey caught Tristan’s eye. He looked green.
Simon was more of a purple shade. He looked like he was about to
have a heart attack. She was not persuasive enough. The doctors
didn’t believe her.

Doctor One and Doctor Three exchanged a dark
look, and then Doctor One yelled, “Activate the Dream Purge
sequence!”

Zoey stopped breathing.

“Tat, sot, ich!” called Doctor Two. He
leaned over his keyboard, and with a long, spindly finger he
pressed down on a single key.

The lights flicked. The skulls in the
lighting fixture seemed to move. The humming got louder and louder.
From the corner of her eye Zoey saw small blue and red flashes of
electricity move slowly from the tank to her head.

She tried to move her head, but the metal
helmet dug into her skull. What would happen when the energy
reached her?

Flashes of Tristan appeared in her mind’s
eye.

She thought of her mother.

She had failed everyone . . . .

The terror of what was about to happen
overwhelmed her. She watched helplessly as a surge of electricity
danced around her head like a ring of blue and red light.

It was over.

Just as she was about to close her eyes,
Tristan charged forward.

Doctor One raised the remote—

CRACK!

The power went off.

Chapter 17

D
arkness.

Zoey let out a shaky breath. Had she only
just imagined it, or did their precious machine malfunction?

She blinked repeatedly, trying to adjust her
eyes to the new darkness. She could hear sizzling and smell burnt
rubber. It was just like the smell when one of the computers back
at the Hive had overheated and then fried. Then she heard the
click, click, click of boney fingers hitting a keyboard.

She smiled.

“You idiot! What did you do?” bellowed
Doctor Three.

He let go of Zoey’s legs. She could hear his
feet shuffle across the ground, and then the sound of a fist
hitting something hard.

“Did you connect the wires properly? Did you
check the trans-cranial direct current stimulation before plugging
it into the tank? Why is this always happening? Do I have to do
everything myself!”

“Miet, nut, tah tah,” the voice of Doctor
Two growled in the dark. Even though Zoey couldn’t understand him,
she knew just by his tone that he was angry, too. He clearly didn’t
appreciate being blamed for whatever had happened.

Someone snorted, and she recognized
Simon.

There was some more banging, and then
something fell to the floor.

“There was a surcharge of energy from the
fuse box,” said Doctor One. “It’s fixable, but it’ll take some
time, a few hours at least.”

As her eyes finally adjusted, Zoey could
make out the moving silhouettes of three white lab coats fidgeting
with the tank to her right. She could see Simon’s white teeth
smiling, as though he had used a glow-in-the-dark toothpaste.
Although Tristan’s face was lost in shadow, the whites of his eyes
were on her, and they were smiling, too.

“
Losers
,” whispered Simon. Zoey
stifled a laugh.

Click.

The lights came back, and Zoey blinked away
the white spots from her eyes.

The three Anerak doctors where huddled
together by the tank with confused expressions on their flaky and
diseased faces.

Doctor Three looked up and then shuffled
towards Zoey. He flicked a lever on the wired helmet, and she
immediately felt a sting as the pins that had pierced her skull
retracted. The doctor removed the helmet and placed it gently on a
table nearby.