Jake. Here at MaxLife.
Why is he saying I screwed his family? Nothing makes sense. I must still be dreaming. Maybe Dad isn't captured after all, and I'm in bed sleeping.
"What are you doing?" Tony yells. "You're going to kill her!"
Sleeping mask askew on his face and ropes dangling from his wrists, Tony wobbles over and slams a hard punch to Jake's jaw. Jake stumbles backward and drops to the ground.
"Guess I didn't tie you up well enough," he mutters, spitting out a drop of blood.
Then, still swaying, Tony staggers to my sleep pod where I'm gasping for air. He presses an oxygen mask over my face. The cool air rushes down my throat and I suck it in hungrily.
"She's hyperventilating," Tony lectures. "What kind of moron are you? You can't just rip people out of the Dreamscape!"
"I didn't know!" Blood streams out of Jake's nose, and worry has replaced the rage in his eyes. "Is she going to be okay?"
The room swims into focus. Sun is sitting by the laptop, but her arms are strapped to the back of the chair. To my right, Javier is slowly rising up in his pod. He runs his hands through his hair. His eyes are bloodshot as he lumbers to his feet, looking strung out.
"Who are you?" Javier eyes Jake who is wiping the blood from his nose with the back of his hand.
"His name is Jake Sutherland," Tony says grimly. "He's our dreamer from Wednesday."
I take the oxygen mask off and manage to sit up. The room shifts slightly. "Tony, I'm glad you're okay," I manage to say. My throat is dry. "I didn't see you in the dream."
"I got kicked out right away," Tony explains as he grabs a pair of scissors and cuts through Sun's bindings. "Good thing I did because Jake could've killed us all."
"I didn't know—I had no idea—" Jake shudders, rubbing his hands over his face.
"What are you doing here?" Javier asks. And then to my shock, he pulls out our attacker's gun from his pocket and points it at Jake.
"Woah, man." Jake holds his hands in the air. "I honestly didn't know that waking her would be dangerous. Haven't you already done enough damage to my family? Do you really need to kill me, too?"
"I ask the questions," Javier growls. "You answer them. What are you doing here?"
Jake licks his lips and takes us all in, lowering his hands. I press the oxygen mask back to my mouth, trying to push out the memories from the dream. The memory of the casket and plane. And Dad leaving. Oh, god. My eyes water. If I even think about that, I'll fall apart.
"I found out the truth of what you guys are doing here," Jake says. "I left a thumb drive with all the data I discovered with my mom. So if I go missing, you'll be the first the police come to."
"What kind of coo-coo are you talking about?" Tony asks. "We're not going to kill you. Right, Javier?"
Javier shrugs as if killing Jake doesn't sound like such a bad idea.
"Dude, we're memory and dream specialists," Tony says. "You've got us mixed up with someone else. You should leave."
"No, he can't," Sun says. "He's seen too much."
"Oh, I've seen way more than whatever you're doing to that guy there." Jake points to our attacker still sleeping. "After some digging, I put the pieces together what happened. My dad manages confidential accounts for the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, and they were hacked with codes only he and I knew. Millions of dollars stolen."
"Listen," Javier says. "We have our own troubles, but we're not stealing money."
"How could we steal millions of dollars?" Sun asks. "That's absurd."
"81 million to be exact, and everyone is pointing fingers at my dad for it. He was fired from his job. And get this. It happened the very day after my second visit to your company for headaches. Coincidental? I don't think so. I think you guys are behind it."
"Are you serious?" I drop the mask, shooting him an incredulous look. "Your dad's been fired and you're blaming us? You nearly gave me a heart attack. Like seriously, you are messing with technology you can't possibly understand. This facility isn't a place to play around with like your tech toys back home. We don't play games. Besides, right now my dad has gone missing, and people are dead. So excuse us if we don't care a damn about your dad's job."
Jake's eyes widen and his face pales. "Dead? Your dad is missing? Have you called the police? Why are you lying around sleeping then?"
Sun eyes him warily. "We were just about to before you nearly added to the death count."
"Something isn't adding up." Jake's focus shifts to our captive who has started to stir. Sun jumps up and quickly injects him with another dose of Temazepam. "Wait a sec. You were stealing information from him, just like you did from me, weren't you? Don't tell me you don't do that because I already hacked into your system. I read the files and saw the video footage."
"Steal information?" Tony asks. "Dude, you really don't know anything. We are scientists who help dementia patients retrieve their memories."
"You've got us confused with something else." I shift on my pod because technically we were stealing information from our attacker's mind. Not that he didn't deserve it. "You need to leave. We have to find my dad and sitting around talking to you isn't helping."
"You pretend to help people, but what you really do is steal their data. Who knows! Maybe you steal people's memories, too. Did you ever consider that your father might be in on all of this? Maybe he's not kidnapped. Maybe he took the 81 million and ran."
He didn't just say that!
"Get out!" I scream, rising up out of my pod. "How dare you insinuate my father would do any of that."
I literally launch myself at Jake, but Tony holds me back.
"You know what the crazy thing is?" Jake's face is red, and his hair is sticking up on its ends. "I actually liked you. I thought you were smart and—I don't even know. But now I'm going to make sure my father sues your company's ass off until every last penny is gone."
"You weren't the only person who was wrong about someone," I spit the words back at him. "I always knew you were hiding something. But now I see you for who you truly are."
"You've got it all wrong, Jake," Tony says. "You heard her. Get out or we sue you. How many times do we have to tell you we're scientists, not criminals?"
"Now that's a lie," Jake scoffs. "I was referred to MaxLife for a CT scan to diagnose a headache. Except you know what happened? I fell asleep and dreamt about you four while showing you the codes. Don't you find that a little suspicious? It wasn't until a few hours ago when my mom got a call from the feds saying my dad was under criminal investigation that I started retracing my steps.
"That's when I hacked into your system to discover—low and behold! —you not only go into people's dreams, but you video them. Trust me, I found the video where I showed you the room with boxes. Those were codes to get into the SWIFT system at the Federal Reserve."
I press my fingers to my temples, trying to process what he's saying. I can't deal with all of this.
"Are you even supposed to know those codes?" Javier asks. "That sounds suspicious in itself."
"Why don't you worry about your own business," Jake shoots back. "And I'll worry about mine."
Except what if Jake's telling the truth? After everything I experienced in the last fifteen minutes, I don't know what to believe anymore.
"It doesn't matter," I tell him darkly. "I was just in that man's dream and saw them take my dad away in a casket. So that's all I can think about right now. Besides, we don't read code. Those numbers are totally meaningless to us. For all we know, they were jellybeans. Or flying aliens."
"Jake might be onto something," Sun interjects. She sinks into a chair and clasps her hands over her knees. Her face is a greenish color as if she's come to some horrible conclusion. "What we see is reimaged into the mainframe. Anyone who works the tech or your dad could have seen those numbers and passed or sold them on to someone."
"Exactly!" Jake points at me. If I wasn't so weak, I'd slap him. "That's exactly what happened. Yesterday afternoon, someone transferred 81 million dollars from the Federal Reserve Bank to an unknown account. A crew is trying to follow the money trail as we speak."
"You can say whatever you want." I fist my hips. "But my father would never do anything like that."
"Not your father." Sun nods to our sleeping attacker. "What if he used us to steal the codes so he could steal the millions?"
"But that doesn't explain why they came back here and killed people," Tony said.
"And took my dad," I add.
The room falls silent, and we all turn to the man still sleeping.