The Nightmare Virus, page 28
Seven grown men with weapons against a dozen unarmed children and three weak adults.
“Gather together!” Erik hollers to the kids.
“No!” Stranna shouts. “Spread out and drop low in the grass. Make yourself as small as possible!” The sword at her side unsheathes itself as she spins toward the oncoming attack, not watching to see if the kids obey.
But they do. A couple of them still group together, driven more by fear than survival instincts. I know what it’s like to not want to die alone. But she’s right—if they spread out, they’ll be harder to hit.
I pull out my kris dagger. It’s not going to accomplish anything. I can’t even deflect a spear with it. So I channel my focus inward, willing up emotions, trying to convince them to overwhelm me. But I’m strangely collected. Calm. In an eerie way. I’ve accepted that I’ll deteriorate and die within the next couple days, and there’s a freedom in having chosen which side I’m on.
The nightmist doesn’t come. I can’t even sense it. If nightbeasts can’t enter here, then I certainly can’t create one in here. How did I make those cardinals? They were a complete accident, but they were also different, solid.
I don’t have time to find out.
The first tiro spear flies our way. It lands within two feet of a little boy. He stares at it with wide eyes but doesn’t make a peep. There’s no telling if the tiro knew this boy was there or not. But that’s too close.
The kids need to get to safety. I’ve brought them to a graveyard.
More spears fly and stick in the ground. Some children hold their place, while others jump up and run in circles. Nowhere to go. I spin, scanning for something—anything. And then I see the flash of red. Another. First I think they’re arrows, but then I see wings. They’re my cardinals.
And they’re flittering and flying on the other side of the mysterious veil.
I sprint to the border of the Nightmare. The Draftsman in me tells me it’s no use. A dreamscape has its boundaries, and no one can change them except through programming in the Real World. But if there’s anything I’ve learned about this place, it’s that it defies all the rules I originally understood about dreamscapes.
If the cardinals were able to get through, that means there’s a way. Heidi entered Tenebra through this transparent wall. Maybe all the kids did. They must be able to go through it too.
I press a hand against the wall, but it’s as firm as glass. I knock the hilt of the kris dagger against it to see if it shatters. It wavers a bit, now acting like a thick plastic. One of the children hunkers down in the wheat a few yards or so from me. It’s Heidi. I give her a smile, and she relaxes a little bit.
“Come put your hand on this,” I whisper. “Can you push through it?”
She lifts her palm and presses it against the barrier. Nothing changes. It remains firm and impassable. She looks back at me, as if to check that she did it right. I nod.
“Thanks, Heidi.” She manages a smile.
My heart thunders.
The cries and shouts increase. Arrows have joined the spears coming from above. No lightning bolt yet. No one fights back. Stranna and Erik stare limply at the onslaught. It riles me, not because of their inaction, but because I understand their inaction. What can we do?
“Kids!” I holler. “Get over here!”
Surprisingly, they jump up and run my way. Trusting me. Trusting that I have some sort of answer. An arrow strikes a boy in the calf. He screams and tumbles to the ground, but Erik swoops him up. The tirones circle the border of the wheat field now, dropping lower and lower. They’ll dismount any moment.
Luc keeps his distance and watches.
“Everyone, push on this wall at the same time,” I instruct, desperation building in my chest.
Arrows ping off the translucent barrier. Any moment now I expect one in my back or in the back of a child. “Get in front of us adults!”
The children scramble to pile in front of me, Stranna, and Erik. They don’t all fit, but I feel a little better about being a shield.
“Push as hard as you can!”
They all diligently press their palms, shoulders, and bodies against the barriers and push, straining. Stranna exclaims as an arrow skims her ear, leaving a streak of blood. But she stays at the wall. Not questioning me.
She thinks I know something. I don’t correct her. Let her hope.
Tirones drop to the ground from their nightbeast mounts and run for the wheat field. A nightbeast snaps the ankle of one tiro midair and drags him to the ground for a meal.
Those who make it into the field waste no time. They sprint toward us.
“Cain!” Stranna shouts. “Whatever you’re doing, do it!”
Nothing. I’m doing nothing. I feel a sudden burn behind my eyes as the finality of the realization hits me. We’re going to be cut down. All of us. All these children.
All because I brought us here with no escape.
Stranna must read the despair on my face because her own expression turns grim, and she nods. “It’s okay.”
She turns toward the tirones. Beside her, Erik does the same.
The kids keep pushing on the barrier, and I let them. Best to keep them distracted before their deaths. I pound the barrier with my fist to a hollow echo. I slam my kris dagger against it, and the dagger shatters, falling to the earth in pieces of smoke that disappear.
Even my weapon doesn’t work for another purpose in this place.
Here I thought we were coming to a place of safety. Reprieve. But it’s a trap—everything in this Nightmare is.
A tiro nears me and lifts his gladius. Weaponless, I grab Stranna’s magical sword from the air with one hand and throw it up to block the tiro’s blow.
“No, Cain! It’s not for that!” Stranna manages to cry as she wrestles with another tiro since she has no other weapon.
The words are barely out of her mouth when my hand starts to burn. The hilt turns to fire. I move to release it, but it doesn’t fall from my grasp. It stays, holding my fingers to it. Burning them.
I yell.
The tiro in front of me startles and backs away, turning his focus on the kids who still push on the wall. He lunges after the nearest one. Heidi.
I shove myself at him, and shoulder him into the grass. Then I lift Stranna’s sword, but instead of stabbing the tiro, I strike at the wall.
The burning blade cuts through the barrier like a razor through plastic wrap. A burst of light comes through, clinging to the outline of the split curtain flapping before us. The sword falls from my scalded hand, taking pieces of flesh with it.
The children need no urging. They bolt through the flapping curtain into the dim shadow world. Those who trip are helped by older kids.
Stranna and Erik haul me up and toss me through. Then they’re through too.
As though knowing the mission was accomplished, the barrier seals itself back up, leaving Luc and his tirones dumbfounded on the other side.
Leaving us trapped on this side.
For once, I don’t mind being caged.
“We’re back in the gray soup!” a kid chirps, plopping himself on a rock.
It looks that way. Rubble and rocks, broken concrete, and everything gray and colorless. No form, no reason to the place. It’s like the junkyard where Tenebra’s Draftsman threw all the waste and excess. The only difference is that this place is cold, like the beginning whispers of winter. Not cold enough to freeze, but enough to warrant jackets.
The coliseum and surrounding areas were always the same temperature, something neutral and tolerable. Why is it different here?
I thought in passing through the barrier we’d wake up. Another rule broken.
“Who’s injured?” Stranna asks, completely tuning out the shouts and bangs from the tirones on the other side of the barrier. Perhaps she concluded as well as I did that they can’t get through. Not without one of the magical Adelphoi blades.
A few children amble her way for her to inspect their injuries. At least they’re all walking.
I look back at the scene—it’s like staring through a rippling waterfall on pause. Not quite as clear, but I see Luc gesturing from atop his stingray, and the tirones retreat. He’s not going to give up.
“It’s only a matter of time before they’re back,” Erik mutters to me. “With a plan, this time.”
“He won’t be able to get in,” Stranna says with little conviction.
“His father created this place,” I tell them. “He’ll find a loophole.”
“Hex Galilei has no more power here,” Stranna says. She believes Galilei is dying in the high-rise.
“Because you killed him?” The question comes out before I can think through the wisdom or foolishness of asking it. I plunge on. “I thought Adelphoi didn’t kill—you only die.”
“Not all of us hold to that conviction,” Stranna says quietly. “Our friend, Jeremy, attacked the high-rise.” She says this like an apology. “He hoped by killing Galilei the Nightmare world would collapse.”
“I don’t think it works that way,” I say.
“We’ll find out soon enough.” She doesn’t realize I’ve plugged Galilei’s LifeSuPod back in. Undone all of Jeremy’s work. Will it bother her or relieve her?
“Actually . . .” Stranna and Erik look at me. Waiting. I owe it to them to say what I’m about to say, no matter their reactions. “I saved him.” Silence. “Hex Galilei. I got his physical body and LifeSuPod to a source of electricity.”
Stranna looks a bit green. “That’s why you stole our truck? To save the Emperor’s father?” Her voice pitches. “You’re still on his side?”
“Galilei has the cure.” Coming from me, my defense falls flat.
“You think he’d give it to us? Tell us how to deconstruct the empire he built?” As apologetic as she sounded moments ago, she seems irritated that Jeremy’s murder didn’t pan out.
I can understand the internal conflict.
“We’ll demand it.” I spread my arms wide. “Unless you want to stay in this world of darkness.”
“For having created a so-called cure, you’re really not that much of a genius.” She beckons to the boy who has an arrow in his calf. He limps over and sits at her feet. “Neither the Emperor nor his father will give us anything.”
I don’t bother telling her that Luc rescued Galilei from the Tunnel and he’s regaining strength in the very coliseum we fled. “Nole created the cure attempt. I’ve never been the genius. I just figured out the final bits, which didn’t work anyway.”
The kids are silent under our heated discussion. Stranna seems to notice this and takes several calming breaths. “Okay, so Galilei is now getting stronger because you saved his body. We have to prepare for whatever attack he’ll launch.”
“You and Erik need to assemble a plan, because I may be dead by the time we figure out anything.”
“Dead?” Stranna looks up from tending the boy the arrow pierced. He whimpers, but she already has it out and is bandaging his leg with a cut of cloth from her toga. I suppose that’s an advantage of wearing Roman garb: trim off the hem and you have bandages without losing style.
“I have no more Sleeps, and I’m not an Adelphoi. I probably have five more Tenebra days at best.” I don’t meet her eyes. The reason I’m dying is because I betrayed them, stole her truck, and tried to save myself with a LifeSuPod. Had I stayed at the Adelphoi house, I might have had longer.
But they can’t save me now. Not with what’s happening here in the Nightmare. No one is going to wake up and use what’s left of their gas to track me down and find my body in that forest.
And I’m done always trying to rescue myself.
It feels kind of nice existing for someone else now.
Stranna’s voice is thick as she turns back to the boy. “If we go anywhere, Erik will give you a piggyback ride, okay?”
The boy nods.
“Sorry, Cain.” Erik sounds truly bummed and claps a hand on my shoulder. “Thanks for helping us out.”
Heidi sidles up to me. “I’m cold.”
“We should find a place to bunker down,” Erik says.
I inspect the expanse before us. Cold gray rubble, but as I limp around chunks of stone, I catch little threads and tiny blinks of light, like veins of ore. Whenever I look closer, they disappear, but instead of seeing empty destruction, something awakens inside me. It’s the same feeling that drew me to the wheat field. The promise of more. Of something good.
This place isn’t dead.
It’s merely forgotten.
“We don’t need a place to bunker down. We need a place to live.”
“We’ll find one,” Stranna assures me, but her eyes settle on the horizon, like we’ll be traveling for a long time until we do. I admit I’m curious what’s beyond this rippling border wall we cut through, but somehow I know that’s not where my final days need to take me.
“It’s a wasteland.” Erik follows my gaze to the rubble in front of us. “We can’t build anything from this—certainly not in the state we’re in.”
“It’s not a wasteland,” I say. “It’s a blank canvas.” I walk up to the nearest chunk of stone and touch it with my burned and bleeding hand. Warmth fills my body just like it did when I was standing in the wheat field.
The stone shoots up from the ground, stretching and widening and growing like one of those nature videos on time lapse. Each stone multiplying and finding a shape, fitting together like a living puzzle. I stumble back, and the growth stops, but not before a perfectly formed castle turret stands before me with a toothy top for defense. It has windows partway up and is definitely not Roman. It’s much more . . . Harry Potter.
Stranna gasps. “How did you do that?”
“There was light in the stone.” That’s all that makes sense. Well, maybe it doesn’t make sense, but somehow I knew the light was waiting for direction. I’m merely surprised it listened to me.
“You should try it.” I step forward and touch another stone, holding a mental picture as the warmth floods me again. This one grows like the other one but moves stones aside as it finds its proper place. I laugh in amazement.
It’s absolutely pure creation.
The second tower settles, and in between the two turrets is a tall wooden drawbridge with copper chains. The kids shriek.
“He’s making us a castle!”
They swarm the structure, running around the lone piece of wall and drawbridge, shouting suggestions.
“Keep going!”
“I want my own room!”
“We need a moat!”
“Can we have a pet dragon?”
“It needs a garden . . . and all the princesses need pretty dresses.”
“I don’t want a dress—I want a sword!”
I want to keep going. Keep creating. My mind grows tired, but my body doesn’t. It’s like I’ve worked a full day drafting a dreamscape—my creative well half empty, but the inspiration still going strong.
Stranna gapes at it all. “I don’t understand. You can’t use nightmist in here.”
“It’s not nightmist. It’s . . . something else.” The same thing that made those cardinals. “I think it’s like your phoenix. How did you make her?”
“I didn’t. She was in the wheat field when we found the children the first time.”
That takes me aback. Questions rise, but now’s not the time. I walk around the drawbridge and find more stones with tiny light threads through them, building a scene in my mind before touching each piece. Walls form. More towers with conical roofs and snapping flags of red.
The children cheer, and Heidi runs to the base of a wall and scoops up a handful of stiff gray dirt. Yellow flowers bloom out of it. She squeals and plants them.
Somehow, this makes sense to me. Amid all the confusion of this Nightmare world, I understand this. It’s creation. We’ve broken through Tenebra’s boundaries and walls and found raw unprogrammed ImagiSerum. We’re programming it and directing it from inside the dream . . . with our minds.
Except the power that allows us to do that is not a program. It’s Light. It’s Him. Just like that wheat field is Him.
My mind isn’t the one connecting the dots, my soul is.
The children create an entire garden, complete with three fruit trees and a grape vine that climbs the newly made walls. The grapes are pastel pink and purple. A little girl touches a leaf, and a ladybug forms in the spot her finger touched.
Some of the boys create a small moat, though it’s empty. They send a few turtles down its banks. Erik lowers the drawbridge, laughing the whole time. Stranna still stands dumbfounded.
“Come on, Stranna!” I call to her, running across the drawbridge into a courtyard in desperate need of grass.
She follows, but slowly. “I . . . I can’t.” She tucks her hands in the folds of her toga.
I stop celebrating and walk up to her. “If I can, so can you.”
“How is this even happening?”
“You serve the Creator, right?” She nods but seems anxious. “So create with Him.” It’s like I’ve finally dropped my own walls—let my pride crumble—and accepted the God that Mom and Nole talked so often about.
The knowledge of Him is trickling from my head into my heart and . . . I’m not angry anymore.
Stranna shakes her head. “The Emperor will see all of this when he comes back. He’s going to decimate us.”
“Stop being afraid, Stranna. Fear not, and all that.”
She stares at me. “How can you say that? You’re going to die in a few days. Remember?”
“That’s not in my control,” I tell her. “It never was. So while I’m still alive, I’m going to live.” I grin. “Just try it, okay?”
I take her hand and tug her arm gently toward the ground. I place her palm on the stones that are now cobbled and arranged in an attractive spiral. Nothing happens. She looks up at me.
I raise an eyebrow. “Hiding it under a bushel, are we?”
She huffs. “As if you should talk. Heathen.” She turns her focus back to the ground and her brow furrows. Concentrating. Her body is still tense. I lean over and brush hair out of her face, and she takes a deep breath. She closes her eyes briefly and utters a barely audible prayer.
