The brightness of the day vanishes, and darkness consumes me. I made it through the transition. I reach out for Jake and find his solid form beside me. He clasps hold of my hand so we won't get lost.
Then the dream transforms and suddenly, we're standing on solid pavement in the center of a city. A mist coats the street, and it's filled with city-goers rushing about, intent on getting to their destination. The sounds of beeping and people yelling push through the silence.
"Where are we?" I wonder.
"I think we're still in Macau." Jake points ahead. "Look. There's the Casino Kam Pek Paradise."
He's right. At the end of the street, the flashing lights of the casino cut through the mist. People are running up the steps of the casino, holding wads of money and handing it to attendants before entering. I spin in a circle, searching the throngs for the president.
"She's gone," Jake says. "We lost her."
"No. She has to be somewhere close by for us to still be in the dream." I notice that the one end of the street where the casino rests hangs in a fuzzy haze as if it's on the verge of fading. Meanwhile, the other end is sharper and clearer.
"She's headed that way." I nod to the clear stretch to our right.
We take off in a sprint, weaving in and out of people, trying to keep up with Lau until we nearly catch up with her. I smash into one person, but they don't seem to notice me, instead they merely move forward, faces blurred. I hurdle a crate filled with vegetables and duck around a cart selling umbrellas with Jake right at my heels. Slowly, we are gaining on her, but it's not enough and I have to know the truth before she wakes up.
"Where is he?" I scream at her. "What did you do with my dad, Dr. Hale?"
"What?" Lau faces me, suddenly alarmed. "Your father is Dr. Hale?"
The dream skews into disarray. The sky presses down on me and the pavement at my feet buckles. I wobble, trying to remain upright. This is why it's risky to talk to the dreamers. Sometimes it can disrupt everything and even wake the dreamer.
Suddenly the ground at my feet drops away and with a scream, I fall. My fingers scrape over the pavement until I catch the jagged edge of the sidewalk. My feet dangle over nothingness. She stamps her heel on my knuckles and I cry out in pain. Then she strides away, laughing hysterically. Meanwhile, Jake runs over to me and helps me crawl out.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
I don't bother responding but chase after Lau. Blasts of fire block our path, throwing us backward. I cover my hands over my face to ward off the intense heat. The area behind us is fading away and that's when I realize we're about to get kicked out of the dream.
"She's getting away," I say.
"Then we have to keep moving and catch up with her," Jake says. "The dream is fading."
"Which means we have to go through the fire." I breathe in deeply, trying to force my terror under my control. "It'll be okay. It's not real."
"Woah. You sure this is a good idea?"
"You have to believe it's not real," I explain, but it's more for myself than him. "Like what we did jumping off the cliff. You stay and fade. I'll see you when I wake up."
Then, pumping my arms, I sprint into the flames, ignoring the heat and the screaming sensation of burning as flames lick my skin.
After I stumble out on the other side of the fire, I glance down at myself. The burning sensation has vanished and even my clothes don't look charred. Jake emerges at my side, hunched over, panting.
"That was beyond weird," he says.
"I told you to stay behind," I lecture, worry tightening my chest.
But there isn't time to ponder all of this though because Lau is already striding into a restaurant. We rush after her, but the moment we step inside, everyone in the restaurant turns to stare at us. The clatter of silverware evaporates and the music that once was playing vanishes. The tables are lined with linen and candles are on top of them, flickering long shadows across the faces of the guests.
"Everyone is staring at us," Jake whispers. "It's super creepy."
"No kidding."
I stalk toward Lau who is sitting at one of the tables on a raised platform. As I grow closer, the tables around me vanish so it's just Lau and myself. Reigning my fury within so I can think and act sensibly, I sit at the table and clasp my hands before me. It won't do Dad any good for me to lose my cool at this stage.
"Tell me what you've done with my father," I say.
"I sold him." She lifts her chopsticks and takes a delicate bite of a wiggling octopus. "He's quite valuable, you know."
My heart sinks. "Sold him? Whatever for?"
"I heard you were quite smart," she says. "Apparently the rumors were wrong."
"Where is he?" I pound my fist on the table.
Nothing even moves or makes a sound. She takes another bite of food. "You two are rather annoying."
"What about the money?" Jake adds, coming to my side. "You need to return that. We've caught you. I entered your accounts and discovered an uncomfortable amount of funds deposited into them. If you don't wire the money back tonight, I'll leak out what you've done. Your casinos will be put out of business and you'll lose more than you could've gained."
Lau laughs. Beside me Jake falls to the ground, grabbing his stomach, his face wrenched in agony.
"What are you doing to him?" I leap to his side, holding his body to mine. "Stop this!"
Instantly Jake's body goes rigid as if he's frozen.
I snatch her plate of octopus away. "Tell me who you sold my father to," I demand.
"Never!" she screams.
But as her words echo around us, it's as if her thoughts betray her, and we're whisked away once again, this time we're standing inside an old warehouse. The hallway rises up around us appears to be forgotten, littered with garbage. The walls are pocked and painted with graffiti. An opening at the far end catches my attention. A wedge of white light spills into the hall as if beckoning me to look inside.
"Don't go in there." Lau suddenly blocks my path. "You will not like what's in that room."
I glance around. Jake isn't with me, I realize. I just hope he wakes up with a clear mind and with no headaches. Lau doesn't move. I know I won't get far without fading if she doesn't come with me, so I grab a hold of her and push her down the hall.
Tackling the dreamer or kidnapping them in their own dream would be an automatic disciplinary action at MaxLife. But we're not at MaxLife. We're in a thief and kidnapper's dream. I drag her down the hall. She claws and resists me. Her fist smashes into my cheek and the impact sends me flying backward and smashing into the wall. Searing pain wracks through me.
"It's not real," I tell myself. Pain trickles through my body, but I climb back to my feet.
Her eyes widen and she comes at me again. This time with some type of wild Kung Fu kick. Her foot smashes into my stomach and then another foot snaps across my face, whipping my neck sideways. My neck bone snaps and I crumble to the ground. There's a wetness dripping down my cheek. I wipe it off with the back of my hand.
My hand is smeared with blood. I frown. I'm bleeding. How is that possible? I've never bled in a dream before unless this is what Lau wants.
She backs away, a smug look on her face. I watch, useless, as she preps to kick me again. Gritting my teeth, I roll to the left and race toward the open doorway. But as I do, a line of guards holding massive machine guns form a barricade in front of me.
What is this? I've never experienced a dream where the dreamer was actively trying to kill me.
"Shoot her!" Lau screams from behind me.
Bullets blast across the small space between the door and me. Explosions of pain erupt all across my body as the bullets hit my chest, leg, arm, neck. Everywhere. My body is pushed back from the force of the bullets, and I fall to the ground.
"This is not real," I tell myself, aching and panting. "Because if it was, there's no way I'd still be alive."
I drag my battered body back to standing and begin hobbling down the hall. Deliberately, I block out the guards and their guns from my mind and focus on the door. I just need a peek inside to see if Dad is in there.
Bullets shoot past me. The walls erupt, sending plaster, wood, and concrete raining down on my body like snowflakes. Lau is screaming something in Mandarin.
I keep walking.
The moment my foot crosses the door's threshold, the world shifts once again. I'm in a laboratory. I recognize what looks like makeshift sleep pods, but these aren't as fancy as those we have at MaxLife, just a gurney with a hard shell to block out the light.
Every gurney has people sleeping on them, motionless. Unlike the simple heart monitors that we have, these people have all sorts of wires connected to them that snake about the room to one large computer.
I don't see Lau. Which is odd. She has to be nearby for me to still be in her dream. I'm so confused.
A man wearing a lab coat turns around from a computer monitor. His wild gray hair sticks out like he stuck his finger in a socket. It's when he picks up a tablet and begins making notes that I recognize him.
Dr. Reasner.
Dad's competitor. I had underestimated him back at the resort when I actually should have listened to all of those alerts that first went off in my head about Reasner. From the looks of things, he is trying to mimic Dad's work.
Then sitting in a chair beside Reasner is a girl with long red hair. She lifts her head and stares directly at me. My legs buckle because the girl is me, sitting there, handcuffed to the seat. I'm wearing a sensory cap just like the one Dad used to put on my head when I was twelve. Lights blink around the perimeter of the cap, which tells me this mad scientist is downloading my brain construction onto his computer.
"Run!" my chained self yells at me.
I'm so startled. So confused that my feet balk. Where do I go? What should I do?
"Where's Dad?" I ask.
"It's a trap!" myself says again.
The ground at my feet pixilates. The room vanishes piece by piece until darkness reigns.