Neverwake

by Amy Plum

  The insects reach Brett. Even though his body doesn’t seem to be solid, they start climbing him too, and he flails in the same way the piano player did before it toppled over to lie thrashing on the ground.

  “They climb!” I scream, as the insects reach my bed and begin scaling the metal posts. They pour across the mattress and swarm over my feet, moving up my bare legs, scratching my skin as they surge up my shorts, under my shirt, up my neck. I cup my hands together and seal them over my nose and mouth, squeezing my eyes shut.

  The bugs squirm up under my earflaps and into my ears, and I let go of my nose and mouth to scoop them out. My face is covered in an instant and now I too am flailing, swatting at my head . . . slumping down to the mattress as I hear the others’ terrified screams through the deafening scuttling noise.

  My chest is pushing this muffled shriek through my windpipe as I fight to breathe through blocked nostrils and pursed lips, when a crashing boom comes from all around.

  The cockroaches pause, as if they are all linked by a collective mind. I use the precious seconds to knock them off my face and shovel them away from my eyes.

  I look around and see Cata and Sinclair cowering on the bed on either side of Fergus. It looks like they’re on a life raft floating in a heaving sea of shiny brown.

  On my other side, Remi has scaled the window, positioning himself just above where the cockroaches have risen halfway up the wall. He rubs his palm across the pane next to his face, peering out through the grimy glass. “The Wall!” he yells. “It’s just outside the windows!”

  The cockroaches suddenly spring into action, retreating down everything they’ve scaled, and rush toward the far door. They drop off me like I’m a magnet that has suddenly lost its pull. I turn to see Brett in his corpse state, cockroach-free, and buzzing with static as if nothing happened. The rotting unicorn-in-a-nightgown is on the floor, unmoving.

  The bugs clear away like they know something bad’s about to happen, crowding under the far door so fast that they create a writhing mound, trying to squeeze its bulk through far too small of a space.

  That’s when everything starts to melt.

  It begins with the mirrors, which drip like they’re from one of those surreal Salvador Dalí paintings. Mirror Brett is pretending to drive now, hands on an invisible steering wheel, eyes empty, mouth gaping slightly open as his image stretches and begins to leak onto the floor.

  Then, with an earsplitting grinding noise, the wooden floors at both of the doors begin to cave in. Beneath is a black pit that swallows the mountain of cockroaches, along with the door they were trying to squeeze through. On the other end of the room, the piano crashes with a splintering noise through the floorboards, and the unicorn disappears into the gaping hole so quickly that it looks like it was sucked down by a giant vacuum. Inch by inch, the floorboards disappear, the black hole spreading inward toward us.

  Remi has jumped down and is trying to wrench the window open. He steps onto the lower sill and feels up above his head for some sort of catch or lock. “I don’t know how to open it!” he yells, running to the next window and searching futilely for its nonexistent lock before banging on the place where the upper and lower sill meet, trying to unstick them. I run over to help him and, grabbing the brass handles at the bottom of the sill, we struggle to lift, but the window won’t budge.

  Another deafening knock shakes the room so violently that the hanging lamps swing back and forth. The black hole forming on either side of the room has swallowed up half of the beds and is closing in on us.

  A roar comes from behind me. It’s Sinclair, who has flung himself off the lifeboat bed. Scooping up the old rusty ladder he and Cata used to carry Fergus, he yells, “I’m not dying in a psycho’s nightmare!” And lunging toward a window, he rams the unwieldy ladder through the glass.

  The window, wooden frame and all, explodes under the pressure. It bursts into the air in a million diamond fragments, spraying out around Sinclair as he pitches himself through the hole in the jagged glass. Mid-jump, he disappears. Remi was right: the Wall is just outside the windows.

  “He left us!” Cata exclaims. She looks down at Fergus and then back at the window. The grinding noise of the disintegrating floors almost drown out her words. “Come help me carry Fergus!” she yells, eyes flitting from Remi to me.

  “Leave him!” Remi shouts back, positioning himself in front of the broken window. “He could be gone for good. But we’re still alive!”

  Cata looks hard at Remi and then bends down to grasp Fergus under the arms and starts shifting him sideways. I run over and grab his feet. Between us, we half shove, half yank him off the bed.

  “Come on!” yells Cata, and starts dragging Fergus toward the window. I take his ankles and we careen across the room as the floor disintegrates on either side of us, leaving us nothing but a tiny bridge of floorboards for the last couple of yards. “Help me lift him!” Cata yells.

  I eye the wicked shards of glass lining the lower edge of the window, and shake my head. “That’ll rip him to shreds! Remi, grab a mattress and drape it across the glass!”

  “No time,” Remi says. He had been wavering, waiting to see if we would give up and come with him. But a look of panic has seized his face. “Seriously,” he urges, reaching out as if to grab our hands. “Come on!”

  Cata ignores him and turns to me. “It doesn’t matter if Fergus gets hurt. He’ll be healed in the Void.”

  “Not if it kills him here first!” I argue.

  Cata uses her tennis shoe to kick the biggest shards of glass outward. “That has to be good enough!” she says. But shoving him through the window is more difficult than dragging him across the floor. We struggle with his weight as we try to roll him over the jagged window sill. His body catches on it, and one arm lands heavily on a shard of glass, releasing a spurt of bright red blood.

  “It’s not going to work!” I yell. I want to tap on something so badly I feel nauseous, but I won’t let go of Fergus.

  The third knock comes with a sound like an atomic bomb. Corpse Brett launches himself toward the broken window, and, seeing the rotting flesh lurch toward him, Remi throws himself through, disappearing into the blackness as he clears the window ledge.

  Brett hits the window and rebounds, like an invisible force field suddenly materialized before the yawning gap. He hovers next to it, flailing and ripping out his nonexistent hair with heart-wrenching shrieks.

  A wind rises from nowhere, sucking up the millions of tiny glass shards and hurling them through the air. They spray against my face and sting like a swarm of bees as they lodge into my skin. Cata’s face and arms bloom red as she shrieks and holds her hands up to shield her eyes.

  There’s a look on her face, and I know we’re both thinking the same thing. Should we leave Fergus here and save ourselves? I press my lips together and shake my head no. “Shift him sideways!” I order. Cata takes him under the shoulders and I grab his calves. “Swing him like a hammock!”

  A flash in Cata’s eye tells me she understands. “On three,” she yells. Hefting him up a few inches off the floor, we swing him in toward the room, out toward the window, in and out once more—“Two!” Cata yells—and then, “Three!” With all our strength, we swing him forward, letting the follow-through of the gravitational force lift him through the window. Fergus disappears into the blackness. Cata grabs my hand, and, with a running start, we dive through after him.

  Chapter 4

  Jaime

  A MEDIC ARRIVES AT THE LABORATORY DOOR, carrying a vial and syringe. Zhu takes them and shoots the liquid into Fergus’s feeding tube. The beeping of his machines decelerates to a rhythm that is markedly slower than the others.

  “This drug is propranolol,” Zhou says, glancing at my notebook.

  I pick up my pen and write it down, then take bullet-point notes on her explanation.

  Propranolol = beta-blocker

  Often given after heart attack

  Makes heart beat more slowl
y, lowering blood pressure

  Dose given to Fergus only lasts an hour

  Gives heart a break, reducing chances of another heart attack

  Once I’ve got this down, Zhu asks me to join them in front of their monitors. “I would appreciate it if you could take notes on this conversation, Jaime,” she urges.

  I nod.

  “You saved that boy’s life,” she says, “and, even though it was a rash decision, it was the right one. We will not put you in that dilemma again. We won’t leave you alone in the lab.”

  Vesper’s forehead is beaded with sweat. I realize that, with the amount of stress they’ve been through, he and Zhu must be fighting to keep it together. I’m guessing they’re now running on pure desperation.

  “Subject two’s heart rate is back to normal, but the rest of his feedback is not in tune with the others,” Zhu states.

  “Besides subject seven, of course,” Vesper adds.

  “Yes,” affirms Zhu. “But as you might have read in the test file, subject seven is an exception. He has brain damage that is possibly irreversible. This test was an effort to stabilize him—to halt the progression of his disease long enough to search for a cure. His feedback can not be compared to the rest.”

  “I read his diagnosis: fatal familial insomnia.”

  Zhu nods. “So, ignoring his feedback, up until now the other subjects show very similar heart rates, muscle tension, breathing, and brain waves. We don’t know if this means that subject two is going the way of subject three . . .” She pauses. What she means is if Fergus is going to have a heart attack and die like BethAnn did. But she’s not about to say that out loud. She closes her eyes and breathes in through her nose, then continues. “It’s not clear if this is the eventual risk for all of them. We hope subject two will stabilize, but for the moment, his safety hangs in the balance.”

  She looks at Vesper. He presses a few keys on his keyboard, and a printer begins whirring on a table to his right. Retrieving a sheaf of papers, he hands copies to Zhu and me and keeps one for himself.

  “These charts give a side-by-side overview of the subjects’ feedback during the last couple of hours. Although there are inconsistencies and irregular cycles, it is obvious that the overall feedback is waning. The subjects are declining. Being in a nonwaking state is wearing down their hearts . . . their metabolisms. It’s as if they have been sleep-deprived over the space of several days instead of several hours. If this deterioration continues, they will be in grave danger. Something must be done to stabilize them until we can figure out how to wake them up.”

  He looks meaningfully at Zhu, and then back to me. “Although I was not a fan of the idea in the beginning, I see no other option but to go along with Dr. Zhu’s plan to repeat the initial electroshock waves at a higher level and hope that that will have a stabilizing effect. The goal is for it to facilitate REM sleep and the healing effects it has on a sleep-deprived brain.”

  “What if they’re already dreaming?” I blurt it out before I have time to think. The researchers stare at me, dumbfounded.

  “They aren’t dreaming, Jaime,” says Zhu cautiously. “Look at the brain waves.”

  “What if the monitors are faulty?” I ask. I’ve already stuck my foot in it. I might as well follow through.

  “Why would they be?” Vesper asks. “There is nothing to indicate they are.”

  “Both BethAnn and Fergus spoke to me.”

  Zhu looks puzzled.

  “Like I said, BethAnn’s words were the ravings of a dying brain,” Vesper says, giving Zhu a look that says he’s got this handled.

  “But what if not?” I press on, even though their mood is quickly souring. “Could we reset the monitors, just to be sure?”

  “Even if there was good reason,” Zhu says sharply, “that can only be done by shutting down the electricity in the room. And that’s not going to happen again.”

  Vesper claps his hands once, as if adjourning our meeting. He glances up at the clock on the wall. “It’s already two fifty p.m., and we haven’t taken time for lunch. Why don’t I order something?”

  “I brought my own,” I reply.

  “Well, then why don’t you go eat outside?” Zhu suggests quickly, obviously relieved at the chance of getting rid of me for a little while. “Take a break. This has been hard on us, so I can imagine it has been difficult for you as well. Get some fresh air. Take a half hour. Forty-five minutes if you want. By then, Vesper and I will have been able to check with more colleagues before we come to a decision on a plan of action.” A decision that you will have no part in deciding, she is really saying.

  Fair enough. Who am I to even make a suggestion? I shouldn’t have spoken up. I don’t know why I did. Okay. Yes, I do. It’s this sense of responsibility I feel for the kids in the test. I think of what my mom has counseled me about so many times in the past. “You don’t have to make everyone else’s problems your own, Jaime. You need to learn to care for people without getting emotionally involved each time, or you’ll be carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. And believe me, that can get heavy.”

  I nod, realizing that I could use a break. Some sunlight and fresh air would be good for me, after hours in this hermetically sealed basement lab.

  I walk back to my desk, pick up my satchel, and, with one last look at the sleepers, leave for the outside world.

  Chapter 5

  Cata

  BACK TO THE VOID. BACK TO WHITE NOTHINGNESS stretching for so far that I doubt there’s actually an end to it. At least it’s light and not dark like it was the first time we got here. Ant wished there to be light, and as if she were a tween version of God, there it was.

  A circle of couches is off to the side, still here from when Ant thought them out of the nothingness. Sinclair lies sprawled across one of them, arm thrown across his eyes as if he’s blocking the light. Remi sits perched on the edge of another, holding his head in his hands.

  Fergus lies in a heap between Ant and me. As I predicted, he is unhurt, the blood gone, no cuts or scratches from where we dragged him over the broken glass. Ant doesn’t even bother to stand up. She crawls to him, rolls him over, face to ceiling, and once she’s reassured that he is breathing, flops onto her back and closes her eyes.

  Sinclair moans, “We are not going into that crazy dude’s dreams again. Someone tell me that’s not going to happen.”

  I push myself up, stalk over to his couch, and punch him in the shoulder. Hard.

  “Ow!” Sinclair exclaims, glaring up at me. “What was that for?”

  “That was for leaving us to fend for ourselves!”

  “Punch him too, then. He got here right after me.” He gestures at Remi.

  “Brett chased him through the window. He had an excuse. You didn’t.”

  “Ugh,” moans Sinclair, draping the arm back over his eyes. “Roaches. Show-tune unicorns in granny nightgowns. I’ve gotta say, I, for one, am glad Brett’s locked inside the nightmares and can’t drag the contents of his freaky subconscious in here.”

  “Oh my God!” I say. “That’s so coldhearted!”

  “Coldhearted, maybe, but honest. I’m knackered, as the British would say. I just want to lie here like a slug until the next door comes to whip me away.” He pats the couch cushion next to him. “Want to join me?” The dark pools of his eyes and those chiseled cheekbones that make him look like a mischievous god might be enticing to some. But not me. Not any more.

  “You know, Sinclair, I have the feeling that you’re used to girls ignoring your bad behavior and doing whatever you ask. But even if I didn’t hate your guts right now, if Fergus weren’t lying unconscious on the ground, and Remi weren’t holding on to his head like it was about to explode, I’d still say no.”

  He just smiles. “Rain check?” he says, winking.

  Oh my God, the gall. I suppress the urge to punch him in the face this time and walk away. “Remi. Are you okay?”

  “We almost didn’t make it. Again.” He raises
his head from his hands and looks at me. He has the same terrified look he did when we were stuck under the floorboards of his house several dreams ago, when I still barely knew him. Not that I’ve really gotten to know him any better. Up until now, he seemed like a good kid, though cranky and direct. But the fact that he wanted to leave Fergus behind? It makes me trust him a lot less.

  Sure—our survival is important, but at what cost? It feels like one of those ethics exercises where you have to choose between steering a train with a hundred people off a ravine or onto a side track to safety, but running over four children on the way. No . . . we didn’t know if Fergus would ever wake up. But it felt like the right thing to do, to bring him with us. No matter what.

  I hear a groan and turn to see Ant hovering excitedly over Fergus. “He’s waking up!” she exclaims. She touches his shoulder like she’s afraid he’ll give her an electric shock, and he lifts a hand to press his palm against his forehead.

  “Are you okay?” I squat down to look him in the face.

  He squints and moves his head from side to side to peer around me. “The Void,” he rasps.

  “Yep,” I confirm.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Fifty-nine minutes,” Ant says.

  Fergus sits up abruptly. “What?” He presses both hands to his temples. “Ouch. Splitting headache,” he moans. He peers at Ant. “What do you mean fifty-nine minutes? I thought the Void only lasted twenty. Did the dreams stop? Have we been here the whole time?”

  “No,” Sinclair calls. He rolls onto his stomach and, propping himself on his elbows, peers over the arm of the couch. “We most definitely have not been here the whole time. We were in that freak monster Brett’s nightmare, and we brought you with us.”

  Fergus stares at him, confused. “Brett?”

  Ant clarifies. “We thought he was saying red. His name is Brett.”

  Fergus cops on. “The static monster. The missing seventh subject. We were in his dream?”