I hunker to the ground in the darkness. It's the odd smells I first notice. Diesel and tar. I grope through the inky blackness and touch firm rubber. A tire? The room grows in lightness, just enough that I can make out my surroundings. We're in a warehouse. A metal cross-beamed ceiling stretches above me and to my right are tall shelves filled with boxes. Forklifts are stationed in a line like soldiers on the left. Soon I discover I'm hunched beside a black Cadillac.
Somehow I need to convince our assassin to show me where my dad is. This is new territory for me. Usually, our team just follows or gently guides the dreamer. Never have we made demands or coerced someone to do what we wanted.
Voices spill into the darkness on my right. Three men. One is thin and tall with brown skin, sunglasses, and a crew cut. The other has white skin, about as fair as mine, and he's got light hair, white along the edges. His face is wrinkled and he's heavier set. The third is our dreamer, the assassin.
"Don't take my codes," the light-haired one begs. "I'll be ruined."
"Too late," the dreamer says. "You got what you deserve."
"Are you ready?" Sunglasses asks the dreamer.
Before I have a chance to step out and confront our dreamer, the room shifts, and the dreamer and Sunglasses are in the Cadillac. The car's engine roars to life. Startling, I realize they're about to leave. Without me. I can't let them leave me behind, so I whip open the backseat door and barely slide into the backseat when the car takes off.
"I wondered where you were," Javier says from where he's already sitting in the backseat. He shuts the door just as the car peels out of the warehouse.
"Where's Tony?" I whisper.
"No clue." Javier's eyes are dilated, and I know he's freaking out.
Back in the lab, he had acted so brave and confident, but here in the dream, he knows what I know. Without the trained technicians monitoring the Dreamscape and Debbie keeping an eye on our vitals, anything could go wrong.
Like what happened to Carol two weeks ago. She's a team member I don't usually work with since she usually comes in while Tony and I are at school. But when Tony called in, she covered for him. Our team was following a dreamer through a department store. The place was massive with floor after floor of perfumes and shoes and purses. Carol and I split up, one of us taking down the shoe aisle while the other trailed behind the lady in the purse aisle. I never saw Carol again in the dream.
Then as the rest of our team woke up, Carol continued to sleep. I skipped school to stay by her side. Five hours later, the technicians finally pulled her out of the dream. We had to keep the dreamer asleep all those extra hours to make sure her brain waves weren't interrupted. It can happen if you lose yourself in the dream rather than staying aware that you are in someone else's dream.
The car stops abruptly, pulling me back to the moment. Right away, I notice our surroundings are starting to dissipate.
"We're about to fade," Javier says. "Our dreamer must have left the car."
Panicked, we dive into the front seat, but instead of landing in the front of the car, our bodies drop onto a wooden floor. Totally confused, I take in my new surroundings to discover we're in a room with eight men sitting at a table, knitting with long silver knives. Our assassin is there too in the center of the group. Desperately, I try to make myself look different to not throw him out of the dream. I imagine myself with short, white hair.
I blink. "Okay, so I think this is the weirdest dream I've ever been in."
"I'm telling you," Javier says. "The weird factor never ceases to disappoint."
A tall woman wearing a black business suit with black hair swept up in a fancy bun marches to the table like a sergeant. Every so often, she pulls out a baton and smashes it on the table demanding them to knit faster. The men nearly jump out of their chairs each time, their knives clicking as they obey her command.
Suddenly, she whips around and stares pointedly at Javier and me on the floor.
"What do you think you are doing?" She leers at us, red lips pulled deep into a frown. "Sleeping on the job?"
I shake my head frantically, surprised the dreamer used someone else in the dream to communicate with us. I try to get to my feet, but I can't seem to move.
"Where is Dr. Hale?" I ask the dreamer. He pauses from his knitting, knives jutting up at the ceiling, and frowns at me. "Tell us what you did with him."
"GET UP!" the woman screams. "Whoever produces the best afghan first wins the million dollars. Everyone else dies."
"Afghan?" Javier whispers, clearly as confused as I am.
"Let's just go along with this," I say. "Maybe there are clues here that can help us."
Finally, my legs obey me and move. Even still, my legs are sluggish like a knife slicing through butter. Javier and I drop into two empty chairs, joining the other knitters at the table. I pick up the two knives lying before me, trying to figure out what to do with them.
"I'm finished!" the dreamer calls out.
He leaps over the table and produces a few rows of plaited yarn. I'm waiting for her to tell him it isn't an afghan, but she doesn't.
"We have a winner!" she proclaims and lifts the limp patch into the air. "Bring the prisoners to me."
The dreamer hurries to the far wall where long black boxes are stacked up. He lifts the handle of one of the boxes and drags the box to the lady.
"The package is prepped and ready for transportation." The dreamer lifts the lid of the box.
I drop my knives and yarn. A sick feeling slides through me because I think I know what's inside the box. I don't want to look, but I know I have to. Once again, my legs drag as if I'm slogging through a marsh until I make it to the side of the box. I'm terrified to look inside, and yet terrified to not. Swallowing hard, I lean over and take a peek.
My heart stops for the briefest of seconds. Dad is there! He's lying inside, chapped lips closed, face pale, and wearing his lab coat with the MaxLife insignia patch on the upper right-hand corner of his chest. His gray-blond hair is tousled, and there's a streak of fresh blood that trickles down the side of his face. Dark blood stains are smeared over his white lab coat.
I back away from the box. No, not a box. Casket.
"No!" I choke.
My knees buckle, and I desperately claw at the box as if that can somehow fix everything.
"Stay calm, Aria," Javier says, and then he touches my dad's neck. "I feel a pulse. He's alive. They must have him in a deep sleep."
The room shifts again and everything around us vanishes. As my body acclimates, the roar of airplanes rage into my ears, and a warm breeze teases at my hair and tickles my skin.
Planes, a control tower, runways fill up my line of sight. We must be at the airport. The woman and dreamer stand in front of Javier and me, the black box sitting on the ground between them. A plane taxis and stops not far from us, its bright lights blinking through the harsh darkness. Men run up and roll the casket across the runway toward the plane. I try to move to stop them, but it's like my whole body is paralyzed as I watch the ramp lower from the back of the plane and two men haul the box with Dad inside up the ramp and into the belly of the plane.
"This money is yours," the woman is telling our dreamer. I swallow, trying to focus my mind, remembering this is only a dream. The lady flips open the lid to a wicker picnic basket, stacked full of bills. The dreamer goes to take it, but she clamps the lid shut. "It's yours as soon as you terminate the rest of the team."
"I will not fail," the dreamer says.
Enraged, Javier balls up his fists as if it's taking every ounce of his willpower to not throttle her. My head whips back to the plane as the engines roar to life. My knees buckle and it's suddenly hard to breathe. I wheeze in as much air as I can and start crawling to the plane.
"Dad!" I scream out his name, gravel digging into my knees and palms. "Stop the plane."
The Dreamscape shifts and it's as if someone has grabbed my chest, looped a chain around it, and yanked on it full force. I'm pulled backward, arms stretched for the plane. Swirls of gray spiral around me and darkness drags me backward.
My chest squeezes so tightly that I can't breathe. And then bright lights are blaring down on me. I'm in my sleeping pod, curled up in a ball. My mask is gone. It's hard to focus because the Dreamscape still has a hold of some part of my brain. My heart thuds against my chest like I'm sprinting.
I roll onto my back, trying to pull my scattered thoughts and emotions into check when a face looms over mine.
Blue eyes. Blond hair hanging loose. Sharp jaw, clutched grimly.
The face with lips I had dreamed of kissing stares down at me. Anger, rage, and fury has replaced the softness it once held.
"Jake?" I choke out the word.
Not enough air.
Need air.
"You screwed my family and me over." He spits out those words. "You're going to pay for what you've done."