Borderlands (The Dreams of Reality Book 5)

by Gareth Otton

  However, for the second time this week, fate intervened to keep her safe. A runaway truck crashed into her shoulder, knocking her from her feet and landing on top of her, or at least that was what it felt like. She collapsed to the floor, grunting in agony as stones dug into her side and the heavy weight crushed her. All the air rushed from her lungs and her ribs groaned like they might break, but then the weight was gone and there was a deafening crack as a gun fired next to her head.

  She looked up to find Trevors kneeling over her, gun raised as he looked down the sights and fired off another burst of bullets that took the last of the eidolon down. Lizzie couldn’t help but stare at the bulging muscles of the man, his solid pose and refusal to flinch as he fired off that terrifying weapon. Everything about Trevors screamed of the warrior that he was, and Lizzie had never felt more out of place in her life.

  Seeing the last of the eidolon wasn’t getting up, he turned on Lizzie and growled at her.

  “What the hell were you thinking? You were supposed to be inside.”

  “You’re letting him get away though,” she hissed, pointing over into the far corner of the carpark where Deo was making his escape. It hadn’t been that long and he shouldn’t have gotten far, but she couldn’t see anything of the man. She thought she detected movement among the hedgerow, but a moment later she lost sight of it and realised he was gone. That creepy trick he had of blending with his surroundings and tricking people’s minds had allowed him to vanish into the countryside.

  “No, he’ll get away,” Lizzie groaned, horrified that this might happen again.

  “You need to get out of here,” Trevors said. “This isn’t over.”

  Despite his words, it sure felt like it was. The sound of gunfire had ceased, and the only people still standing were Dream Team members. Seeing Leon unharmed lifted a weight from Lizzie that she didn’t realise she had been carrying, and she was glad he hadn’t succumbed to the same fate as so many of these other poor men.

  “So much for taking people alive,” she muttered to herself. Trevors glared at her while she blushed and looked away.

  Luckily she didn’t have to hear his reply, as there was the screeching sound of tearing metal and the tinkling of broken glass that caught all of their attention. They turned toward the ruin of Lizzie’s car in time to see the giant man Leon had thrown into it climb free, having bent the steel out of the way.

  “That the best you got?” he taunted Leon, grinning as he wiped a trickle of blood away from the corner of his mouth. “I expected more from you.”

  Trevors raised his gun, but Leon waved him off.

  “Don’t bother, it won’t do anything but annoy him. He’s a Tough. He’s specialised in cultivating belief in how resilient he is and it’s made him nearly invulnerable to harm.”

  “Bullshit,” Trevors spat. “I saw him bleed, he’s not invulnerable.”

  “I said, nearly,” Leon pointed out. “And he heals faster than you’d believe. We need to come at this another way.”

  Even as he was talking, he squared off with the giant who was grinning and rolling up his sleeves while shaking off his limbs like he was readying himself for a fight. He looked eager for this, like he no longer cared about anything but Leon. In stark contrast, Leon didn’t look pleased at all.

  “So how do we take him down?” Trevors asked.

  “We don’t,” Leon answered. “I do. We can’t do this with bullets, we’ll have to use something that hits a little harder.”

  Before Trevors could ask another question, Leon attacked.

  If Lizzie thought he had blurred with speed earlier, she realised she hadn’t seen anything yet. One instant Leon was standing by Trevor’s side, the next he was right next to the giant, covering ten feet in a heartbeat and thundering a right hook into the giant’s jaw. The sound of the impact wasn’t flesh striking flesh, it was a baseball bat striking a home run. The blow was so strong it lifted the giant from his feet, sending him crashing back into the car. Lizzie was surprised his head hadn’t come off. Surely no one could survive a punch like that.

  But the giant climbed back to his feet, stretching out his neck and eliciting a few pops, but otherwise not showing much discomfort from the blow. Instead he grinned at Leon, showing off a mouth filled with blood covered teeth and said, “That’s better.”

  It was his turn to blur as he rushed at Leon. He wasn’t as fast as Leon, but he was far quicker than anything Lizzie was prepared for. He also didn’t hit anywhere near as hard as Leon, but once again it was much stronger than human normal. She knew she would have been killed instantly and suspected Trevors’ men wouldn’t have fared any better. However, Leon blocked the blow and knocked it aside. He then thundered a punch into the giant’s ribs that lifted his feet off the floor a few inches. But again the giant shrugged it off and fired off another punch. This time he connected.

  It caught Leon on the side of the face and there was an audible crack as bones broke. Leon staggered back, brining up his hands to cover his face as the giant swung again. He wasn’t as strong as Leon, or as fast, but Leon didn’t have his durability.

  Lizzie covered her mouth in horror, but couldn’t tear her eyes away as Leon struck back and kicked the giant away. But it was only a temporary reprieve. Leon shook his head as though to clear it, and Lizzie got a good look at him. Half of his face was black, like it was one giant bruise and she couldn’t understand how he was still standing.

  “Fuck this,” Trevors muttered, and Lizzie flinched as a bright light flared to life out the corner of her eye.

  She looked over in time to see Trevors rush forward, almost as fast as Leon. The big eidolon wasn’t expecting an attack from someone near his own size and Trevors’ big fist crunched into his gut with enough strength that even the eidolon’s eyes widened and he doubled over. Trevors didn’t waste a second, driving a punch into the back of the man’s head and driving him into the floor.

  He wasn’t as fast as Leon, but his movements looked more controlled whereas Leon’s looked a little wild. The result of training, Lizzie suspected.

  Trevors’ triumph was short lived as a hand grabbed his ankle and tugged, pulling him from his feet. Trevors yelped in surprise, then grunted in pain as he collided with the floor. He didn’t have chance to recover before the big man stood up, holding Trevors off the ground by the ankle as easy as a man might hold a baby that way. Trevors scrambled for something to hold on to, but the gravel surface provided no purchase and soon he was hanging helpless as the giant recovered and prepared to finish him.

  As he raised his free hand to strike Trevors, Lizzie didn’t doubt for a second that this would be the end of him. However, before the giant could act, his face took on a grimace of pain and it was his turn to leave his feet.

  He looked down in surprise at the hands wrapped around his chest so tightly that he was struggling to breathe. He let Trevors go and used both hands to pry the arms from around his chest as Trevors crashed into the ground. However, these arms were like hydraulic clamps that wouldn’t give. The giant changed tactics and thrashed, trying to strike at whoever was holding him, but he couldn’t get the right angle or leverage with his feet off the floor. All he could do was turn a little, revealing that it was Leon holding the man off his feet.

  Leon’s face was set with determination, but he wasn’t showing much strain, almost like he could do this all day. Meanwhile, the expression on the giant’s face had changed to a look of panic. He couldn’t get his feet on the floor, so he had no leverage for his strength. Leon had already shown he was stronger than him and there was nothing he could do to break his grip. Worse, it looked like Leon was tightening his arms, restricting the giant’s chest and not letting him take a breath. The lack of air made the giant panic. He tried to breathe even harder, but Leon kept squeezing until Lizzie heard a rib in the near-invulnerable man pop.

  The giant would have screamed if he could get the breath, but all he could do was widen his eyes in surprise and gasp like a fish o
ut of water. Those wide eyes were bulging now, going red around the edges as his face was going bright red from the strain. He redoubled his efforts to free himself, but his movements were growing sluggish and no matter what he did, nothing helped.

  Then, all at once, the man fell limp, his head lolling to one side and his arms hanging uselessly as he ceased his struggles and passed out. Leon continued to hold him as though he didn’t trust the man to not be playing dead, but anyone who saw the man’s slack face knew that no one could act this well.

  “Leon, let him go. Let’s try to keep at least one person alive after this mess.”

  At first it didn’t look like Leon heard Trevors, but when Trevors laid a hand on Leon’s shoulder and whispered, “Enough,” Leon finally let go.

  The huge eidolon slumped into a heap on the floor and Trevors motioned to his men.

  “Secure him,” he ordered, pointing at the giant.

  Three men rushed forward, each with dreamcatcher cuffs in their hands. They soon had the wrists secured behind the man’s back, but Trevors wasn’t happy until they had cable ties going all the way up his forearms and had done the same to the man’s legs. They weren’t taking any chances before someone flipped him over and checked for a pulse.

  “He’s still alive,” the man who checked announced.

  “Then get him back to HQ and into one of the new reinforced cells. I want to speak to him when he wakes up. He has a lot to answer for.”

  As he was talking, Trevors looked around the carpark at all the bodies, his eyes lingering on his own men and a strange look crossing his face. On anyone else Lizzie would have called it despair, but Lizzie couldn’t imagine Trevors ever feeling anything so human. Something about the man had always seemed inhuman to her, like the Action Hero that Jen always called him.

  His face soon firmed up into something more familiar as he spun on Leon and demanded, “What the hell was that guy who killed my men?”

  “An Overlooked,” Leon whispered. “At least I think that’s the translation. They’re rare. Most eidolon stand out because of how we look, but every now and again you get one who goes under the radar. They’re usually antisocial types who feel ignored by society and act like they’re not even there. Taken to an extreme, that belief creates an Overlooked.”

  “So they can go invisible?” Lizzie asked. “Why could we see him on the camera?”

  “Because he’s not invisible, it’s more like he tells your mind to ignore him. However, cameras don’t have minds so it doesn’t work on them.”

  “Jesus Christ, now I have to worry about invisible enemies as well,” Trevors asked.

  “I don’t think so. Like I said, they’re rare. Like once in a generation rare. I doubt there’s another one in the world right now.”

  “But you don’t know for sure?” Trevors pressed.

  Leon shook his head. “I don’t know anything for sure,” he answered, even as he grimaced as the shaking of his head aggravated his injuries.

  “Shit, we need to get that seen too. You’re a mess,” Trevors said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  “I’ll take him,” Lizzie offered. “You need to see to your men.”

  Trevors winced and his eyes travelled back over the dead bodies.

  “So many,” he whispered, and Lizzie couldn’t help but agree. After the dreamwalkers attacked the DTHQ a month ago, she knew the Dream Team had pushed hard to recruit for replacements. But they had lost so many men at Todmoryn and then again here. This had to be a huge blow.

  “I’m sorry, Trevors,” she said, but he wasn’t listening. There was a haunted look in his eye that worried Lizzie. However, she didn’t know him well enough to talk to him about it, so she turned to the other man who was worrying her right now.

  Leon was swaying on his feet as the effects of the fight were taking hold. His once handsome face was an absolute mess, and now that she thought about it, she was amazed he was standing. Rushing to his side, she slipped his arm over her shoulders and encouraged him to lean on her. Then, after taking one last look at the carnage outside her studio and having to push aside her horror at what happened here today, she thought of the hospital emergency room and changed the channel.

  Even as she called for help and went through the motions of getting Leon seen to, she couldn’t shake a horrifying thought that kept trying to consume her mind. Deo had escaped yet again, and now she didn’t even have Leon to keep her safe. How long would it be before he came back to finish her off?

  Unable to function while dwelling on that thought, she did her best to push it aside and focus on getting Leon help.

  18

  Wednesday, 28th December 2016

  10:03

  “Trevors and Miles are back,” Denise said after barging into Stella’s office without knocking. That alone was reason to be concerned, but the look on her face told Stella to prepare for the worst.

  “Leon? Lizzie?” Stella asked, rising to her feet and forgetting what she had been working on before being interrupted.

  “Not them… but…” Denise gulped as tears formed in her eyes before she said, “We lost six more people, Stella.”

  “Six?” Stella gasped, stunned. “But it was an ambush. We knew where they were and…”

  She let her words trail off as she knew she was directing them at the wrong person. She needed to go speak with Trevors and she was about to rush out and do just that, but forced herself to hesitate and think of the man she was about to go deal with. He hadn’t been the Trevors she first met for a long time. He had changed once already, which put him at odds with her for a few months, but then after he lost nearly half his team in the dreamwalker attack, he had become a new man again. Blaming himself for the deaths of his people, he flitted between throwing himself into his work like a man possessed and bouts of melancholy. Stella had been watching him to make sure he wouldn’t do anything stupid.

  After losing five men in the Todmoryn incident, she feared the worst. This war hadn’t given him the chance for him to do anything, though. Every day they had been swamped with nightmares and dreamcatcher attacks, and he didn’t have time to get caught up in his own thoughts.

  Now though, after losing even more people on what should have been a simple mission… Stella realised she needed more than answers from him about what happened, she needed to make sure that he was still of a sound mind and not about to do something stupid.

  “Where is he now, Denise?” Stella asked as she rushed past Freckles’ bed, waking the dog. Sleepy eyes judged her and he instantly understood that something was going on. He climbed to his feet, alert and ready.

  “He’s downstairs in his office. He said he didn’t want to be disturbed, though. Maybe you should go speak with Miles first,” she suggested.

  Stella shook her head but didn’t take the time to answer. The last thing Trevors needed was time alone. Maybe Stella was over reacting, but she would rather be safe than sorry. She rushed out of her office at a quick walk that turned into a run. By the time she had reached the staircase, she had thrown caution to the wind and was going flat out.

  Thanks to her eidolon heritage, the only one able to keep pace with her was Freckles. That was a good thing because people didn’t automatically jump out of the way of someone as slight as Stella, but something the size of a lion running at you made people hug the walls. The support staff at the DTHQ all but dove out of the way as Stella rushed down the stairs and into the tactical part of the building, clearing a path to Trevors’ office. Just like Denise had a moment ago, she entered without knocking… only she did it at a speed Olympic sprinters would envy.

  The door exploded open, bouncing off the wall with a sound like gunfire and making the lone occupant of the office jump in surprise. Unlike Stella’s office, which was filled with filing cabinets, the endless paperwork that was taking over her life, and chairs for visitors, Trevors’ office was spartan to put it politely. There was a desk, a chair and a computer, but otherwise it might as well have been an emp
ty office.

  The head of her tactical team was still wearing his body armour and had only taken off his helmet. Luckily he had already laid his gun to rest on his desk, or she might have been shot coming in like that. The look of surprise on Trevor’s face made her feel stupid for rushing here, but it only took a second longer to doubt that thought. Most people might have missed it, but Stella recognised a tension around his eyes, a slight trembling in the muscles around his mouth, and an underlying stiffness to how he held himself.

  Waiting for Freckles to enter, Stella forced herself to stay calm and closed the office door gently. Curious faces watched the closing door right up until there wasn’t even a crack to see through, and Stella had another reason to feel stupid about running here. What would people think when the DT Director sprints through the building like there’s someone chasing her? She admonished herself to think more tactically from now on and consider the consequences of her actions. Then she shut those thoughts out and concentrated on Trevors.

  “You heard then?” he asked, his tone dejected. He wasn’t just angry with himself, he sounded resigned to his fate. He thought she was here to shout at him, and he felt like he deserved it.

  “Tell me what happened,” she said, knowing that telling him it wasn’t his fault or some other platitude wouldn’t work.

  “We arrived exactly as to the plan, seven guys on the perimeter, the rest of us inside the barn. The guys on the perimeter were going to draw there attention, and we were going to rush them from behind, take them down before they could do any damage. It didn’t work out that way.”

  He paused as he leaned against his desk, rubbing his face as though weary with the world and waiting long enough before speaking that Stella wondered if he was done. She was about to ask what happened next when he finally told her.

  “There was this man out there that we couldn’t see. Leon called him an Overlooked.”