3

by James Phelan

  And no one recognizes us, despite being front page in the local newspapers.

  Sam smiled.

  Lora’s disguises worked.

  “What is it?” Eva asked, now coming over to stand next to him.

  Sam turned to look at her, but noticed Lora’s parents, Catherine and Ian, taking photos of the iconic Opera House. And then another figure, cutting a swathe through a throng of Chinese tourists. A big man, tall and dark.

  Jabari.

  “We’re changing things around,” Sam said.

  “What?” Eva said.

  “I had an idea, on the plane,” Sam said to Eva, “and made a call.”

  “When?”

  “On the flight, not long after we took off, when you were asleep.”

  “Why?” Eva said.

  “So that he could tell me to come here,” Jabari said in his deep voice.

  Eva turned to face him.

  “And, Sam,” Jabari said with a smile, “I think this is a good idea.”

  “But—how’d you get here so fast?” Eva asked. “We only landed a couple of hours ago.”

  “Dr. Dark’s jet,” Jabari replied. “We’d just touched down in the Ukraine when the call came in. I took off again straightaway, leaving Lora there to head things up. And I came here.”

  “But, why?” Eva said. “To protect us?”

  “To protect you,” Sam said.

  Eva’s eyes searched his and he could see then that she knew. “We’re splitting up,” she said.

  “We need to make different decisions to alter our future.”

  “If we change things like this—if we separate—we might not get there. We may not find the Gear,” Eva said.

  “This is a sound plan,” Jabari said. “Lora, Dark, they all agree.”

  “Separating is a sound plan?” Eva said to them. “Change it another way.”

  “Think of it like this,” Sam said. “Solaris can see into our dreams, right? I mean, right now, he’s here already, somewhere in Australia, ready to pounce. That much we know for sure. So, how about we do this—I go to where you dreamed first. That’ll change things up, long enough for us to get ahead.”

  “So that way Solaris will be confused,” Eva said, the idea seeming to crystallize in her mind as a viable plan. “He’ll be chasing an old dream and playing catch-up to the new version.”

  Sam nodded. “And Jabari will go with you,” he said.

  “I swear I will protect you with my life, Eva,” Jabari said.

  She motioned over to Lora’s parents.

  “What about them?” Eva said, looking over at Catherine and Ian, who started to walk over, concern etched on their faces now.

  “Why don’t we leave them out of it? We’ve got a world to save,” Sam said.

  “Solaris doesn’t yet know we are changing things,” Jabari replied. “We have the upper hand now.”

  “Right,” Sam said. “But he might see our changed intentions through any dreams we have now, find out who’s with us and what we’ve changed.”

  “That’s still a possibility, so we must make different decisions at every turn,” Jabari said.

  Lora’s parents were reluctant to let Sam and Eva go, but could see the sense in their new plan. With promises to wait in Sydney in case they were needed, Lora’s parents said their goodbyes.

  “Right,” Jabari said turning to Eva, “where to?”

  “Into the middle of Australia,” she replied. “That’s where the Gear is.”

  “You said we rent camels to get there, right?” Sam said, laughing.

  “No,” Eva replied.

  “Come on, you two,” Jabari said. “Let’s go save the world.”

  The last Sam saw of Eva, she and Jabari were boarding a ferry and heading for Dr. Dark’s jet at a private airport, where they’d be travelling as fast as it could fly to the town of Alice Springs in Central Australia.

  Sam flagged a cab and headed back to the main airport. He was headed north, to a group of islands above the mainland that, according to the map on his phone, were tiny specks in the sea—the Wessel Islands.

  His phone bleeped with a message. Sam looked at the screen, seeing a number he didn’t know.

  Sam, it’s Alex.

  I dreamed about you last night. We were together, near a coast, running from a tsunami.

  Be careful. I think something bad is coming.

  Sam replied.

  Thanks for the heads up.

  Hope you’re safe.

  Where are you?

  18

  ALEX

  Alex typed back.

  Still on the Ra, headed south—to Antarctica!

  Will update you when I can.

  Good luck and be careful out there.

  He hit “send.”

  He was curled up with a quilt around him. The sea was rough—the roughest he’d ever encountered, and the seasickness tablet he’d had that morning didn’t seem to be working. The port window in his cabin was crusted over with ice on the outside and condensation inside. It was a grey sky out there, angry foaming waves smashing against the Ra’s rocking hull as they sped south.

  His phone bleeped again.

  You be careful too!

  Be wary of who you trust. And stay in touch.

  Alex replied.

  Will do.

  And right back at ya.

  He hid his phone under his pillow and went to the galley to find some different antinausea medicine that he’d seen there before.

  “Ah, caught me red-handed,” Hans said, fixing himself a towering sandwich. “Hungry?”

  “No—no way, thanks though,” Alex said, pulling a face at the food and turning a shade of green. “I’m seasick. I just came looking for something to settle my stomach.”

  “Ah, here, take this,” Hans said, shuffling across the moving deck, rummaging through a medical cabinet and tossing Alex a bottle of motion sickness pills. “Extra strength. I used to be like that too, when I was about your age. A few years in the navy soon fixed that.”

  “You were in the navy?” Alex said.

  “The German navy, just like my forebears,” Hans said, slicing the massive sandwich and then picking up a piece. “I thought it the right thing to do, at the time. Turned out that was not the life that was destined for me.”

  “Because you were a Dreamer?”

  “Yes, in a sense,” Hans said through a mouthful. “Though I was a lousy one, I discovered. I went to the Academy, the same Swiss campus that you were at, but it did not work out for me. I was too disbelieving, too rebellious. So instead I became what I figured was the next best thing to being a trained Dreamer.”

  “A Guardian?” Alex asked.

  “Ha!” Hans snorted and Alex turned his eyes away from his gaping mouth. “Good lord, no. I went into business for myself! An entrepreneur, using my Dreamer advantage to the hilt, of course.”

  “So that’s how you got so rich?” Alex said.

  “My family, as Dreamers, never really, shall we say, played by the rules,” Hans said. “The Academy teaches students to use their dreaming skills for the benefit of all. You know, like creating new vaccines, improving how we get power—like splitting the atom.”

  “That was not exactly a benefit, was it? I mean, not purely a benefit.”

  “Not in the sense of it then leading to the creation of nuclear weapons, no,” Hans said. “But you get my point, yes?”

  “Einstein’s work can be seen as a benefit if you consider nuclear energy as a relatively clean source of energy,” Alex said, “but it’s a double-edged sword.”

  “Yes.” Hans moved onto the second half of his sandwich. “For me, such Dreamers showed what we could do, if we were driven. It became clear to me, Alex, what I could do—and what I should do.”

  “Make your family even richer? Become a ruthless treasure hunter?”

  Hans chuckled. “My family owns many patents on inventions and ideas and discoveries made over the centuries. I simply continued that proc
ess. Sure, we made a lot of money along the way, I’m not ashamed of that.”

  “Then what’s in this race for you?” Alex asked. “You don’t need any money that will come with finding the Dream Gate—or power. With all the money you have, you can buy any power you want.”

  “No, I do not need money. Nor the power that money can buy.”

  “But you’re doing this, on your own. You betrayed your friend, Dr. Dark, right? Why are you not working with the others?”

  “The others? Like those at the Academy? Like those at the Enterprise? Dark? Solaris?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “We all want our own destinies to play out, Alex,” Hans said. “I believe that it is my destiny to be the one to open the Dream Gate. I’ve worked my whole life to have a chance in this race. Even if that cost me a few friends, like Dark, along the way.” Hans paused. “I want to be there at the end. I want to see with my own eyes what this so-called ‘ultimate power’ is.”

  “We all do,” Alex said. “We all want to be there. To see it firsthand, to experience it.”

  Is Hans really all that bad? Is he any different to the rest of us who want to be at the Dream Gate?

  But the question is, if he gets there first, what will he do with all that power?

  Hans smiled. “Exactly, Alex. Exactly.”

  “What I want to know,” Alex said, “is why we’re going to Antarctica? What’s there that’s so vital? Do you really think the Dream Gate is there? What—buried in the ice?”

  “It may be, Alex, it may well be,” Hans said, wiping his mouth. “But we won’t have to wait much longer to find out.”

  19

  EVA’S NIGHTMARE

  The sign before us simply says—THE VAULT.

  “This is it,” Sam says. He goes to a control panel and starts to punch in numbers.

  “How do you know the code?” I ask.

  “I don’t.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. I don’t. You do,” Sam says, entering more numbers. “You gotta trust yourself more.”

  “You’re right,” I smile. “The code relates to a word. The key is knowing which numbers are attached to which letters.”

  “Now you’re getting it.”

  Sam steps aside to let me key in the sequence.

  There is a noise behind us—footfalls on the concrete floor. Someone’s crashing the party and they’re in a hurry.

  “Eva, they’re coming!”

  BRRRRR.

  The digital dial makes a noise and a red flashing light comes on.

  “Argh! Wrong numbers!” I say. “Quick—what are the numbers for ‘thirteen’ if X is one—”

  PANG!

  A dart hits the wall next to my head.

  I turn around to see two of Stella’s rogue Agents rushing down the corridor, their dart guns pointed right at us.

  THUD!

  A dart, fired at my back, hits my raised forearm. The Stealth Suit protects me, the dart hitting the fabric and bouncing off harmlessly, the ceramic barb broken.

  BING!

  “We’re in!” I say.

  The dial is lit up with a green light and the vault door hisses open. We run through and together shove it closed behind us.

  PING! PING!

  Darts bounce off the outside of the door.

  CLONK!

  It’s closed. I turn to Sam.

  “Beat them again,” he says with a smile.

  We turn around.

  My heart skips a beat. I raise my arms to protect myself and close my eyes …

  I open my eyes and see I’m tied to a chair in a dark room.

  Stella is standing across the room. The space around me is dark and cold, and there’s a dull light bulb hanging from the ceiling. It’s swinging slightly on its cord. The swinging light casts weird and scary shadows in the room. There are no windows that I can see, just a single door. There might be other people in here, lurking in the deep shadows.

  All I can see is Stella in front of me.

  And another person, seated. A guy with dark hair, his head slumped down so I can’t see his face.

  But he seems familiar.

  He too is tied to a chair.

  “Tell us where the Gear is, Eva,” Stella says, holding the guy’s hair in her fist so that she forces him to raise his head.

  Sam!

  He has a puffy and bloodied lip like he’s been in a fight. He looks tired, worn out and can hardly focus. His black-framed glasses, part of his disguise, are still on, but one of the lenses is broken.

  “Don’t tell her anything,” Sam manages to say.

  “Ah, still has a little fight in him,” Stella says. “Look, you two are going nowhere until we get what we came for. We know you’ve been in the vault, so where did you hide it?”

  I don’t reply.

  Sam is silent too. His eyes kind of go side to side, as if to say whatever happens, don’t tell Stella a thing.

  “Look, Eva,” Stella says, her voice eerily mean and calm at the same time. “You know we’re not leaving here until we have the Gear, so make this easy on yourself—on Sam. Look at him. He can’t handle much more. Save him, save yourself. It’s just a piece of metal. Tell me where the Gear is.”

  The Gear? We had the Gear?

  A tall man steps from the dark shadows of the wall. I can’t see his face in the swinging light, but he seems familiar and scary.

  His hand rises to Sam. I recognize the black shimmering suit, the flame-shooting apparatus wrapped around his wrist.

  “Turn up the heat,” Stella says.

  Solaris laughs through his mask. He takes aim. A flame lights up the darkness.

  “No!” I scream. “No! Leave him alone!”

  EVA

  “Eva … Eva!”

  Eva opened her eyes and felt Jabari shaking her shoulder. His face was friendly, his eyes clear and alert.

  “Where are we?” Eva asked, sitting up straighter and stretching out.

  “We’re on Dr. Dark’s jet,” Jabari replied, “and we’ve just landed in Alice Springs.”

  “Already?” Eva looked around.

  “You slept the whole way,” Jabari said.

  “Wow.”

  “Did you dream?”

  “Yes—yes I did.” Eva’s dream started to trickle back into focus. The fog of sleep was still snaking through her mind. Then her expression changed as she realized. “And what we’re doing now will stop that from happening. We’re changing the future!”

  “Good. With any luck, Sam is doing the same, and at the very least we buy enough time to get the Gear and get out of here.”

  Eva nodded.

  “Do you know where we need to go?” Jabari asked.

  Eva looked outside—the heat was visible, shimmering over the tarmac outside, and beyond, the ground of the airport was orange-red earth, a foreign landscape in a foreign land. She turned to look at the Guardian. “Yes, I know where.”

  20

  ALEX

  “It’s called the Osiris,” Hans announced with grandeur. “It’s a deep-ocean research submersible. It can take six people, plus equipment, underwater for up to twelve hours.”

  “It’s awesome!” Alex said, running a hand along the sleek orange hull. There were four thrusters at each end, looking a little like desk fans, but evidently powerful enough to propel the submarine through the water. Floodlights were lined along the sides, interspersed with video cameras and six long mechanical arms—two at the bow, one on each side and two at the stern.

  It looks like a giant bug.

  Each arm had a claw, as well as other attachments.

  A blowtorch? A grappling-hook launcher? This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!

  “It won’t do the Mariana Trench,” Hans said, making way for the crew to attach cables to the crane, “but the Osiris will handle the depths of the ocean floor around Antarctica.”

  “The Mariana Trench,” Alex said, recalling the maps he’d seen in Ahmed’s stateroom,
“is nearly five and a half thousand metres deep.”

  “We don’t need to go down that far,” Hans said with a smile. “In fact, we don’t have to go down far at all. But we do need to travel under the ice sheet. Her hull has a specially reinforced outer casing which will protect us if we bump into the ice.”

  “Why are we anchored here?” Alex looked across at the snow-capped rocky islands, the shores and outcrops pounded by the angry Southern Ocean and littered with fat seals, soaking up the sunlight.

  “Sea trials for the Osiris,” Hans said, giving the go-ahead for the crew to lift the submersible and move it over the water. “I’d much rather we do a final systems check in calm and shallow water here than where we’re going.”

  “This is calm?” Alex said, looking at the waves smashing against the rocky outcrops. He peered over the edge of the ship. The water was so deep it was black. “This is shallow?”

  “Compared to where we are going,” Hans said, “yes.”

  The Osiris touched the water gently, a crew member climbing aboard and detaching all the cables except the tie ropes. Two men went aboard via a ramp.

  “They’re the pilots,” Hans said. “Best in the world.”

  “Cool,” Alex said, watching the submarine bobbing around like a cork.

  Least it’ll be calm under the water, right?

  “Ready?”

  “Ready for what?” Alex looked at Hans.

  “Surely,” Hans said with a smile, “you want to go for a ride?”

  Alex looked back down at the submarine, which now looked tiny next to the superyacht. “Yeah!” he said, clapping his hands together excitedly.

  “Then follow me,” Hans climbed the ladder down to the hatch. “I’ve been waiting to see your sense of adventure.”

  Ahmed was the last aboard the Osiris. The hatch shut and there was a scraping noise as it sealed and the cabin pressurized.

  “We’re ready,” Hans announced. “Commence with sea trials.”

  He, Alex and Ahmed sat in seats that faced the side walls of the sub, which were covered in controls and display screens that showed images from the hull-mounted cameras all around the Osiris.