by Gareth Otton
Getting to Cardiff Bay was part one of their new plan. Part two was seeing up close what they were up against.
Peaking around the wall, Jen soon realised this was not the ideal spot for scouting, as she couldn’t see much thanks to the building’s elevated position. However, she did see the two men standing near the entrance, smoking cigarettes and talking amongst themselves. Another man patrolled the second level, and a woman patrolled the ground floor. However, there could be huge groups of people just out of sight for all Jen could see.
The other thing she noticed were the giant dreamcatchers that were placed in the windows. She saw from the video footage earlier that they had been dismantled, but they had been reassembled again. Jen suspected it was to effort to lock the building down against unfriendly dreamwalkers and the Dream Team. Now whoever was coming would be forced to use one of the exits.
That didn’t change Jen’s plans as she didn’t expect to simply dreamwalk into the building. She had to somehow lure the guards away so she could slip inside.
Turning to Hawk, she whispered, “Time to play.”
Hawk’s tail wagged, and he chuffed in excitement before disappearing. Jen turned again, focusing on the building just in time to see Hawk reappear at the top of the steps in front of the two guards. The look on their faces would have made Jen laugh had the situation not been so serious. Instead, she just watched and willed the guards to take the bait. It took them a moment to get over the shock, but when they reacted to Hawk’s presence, they started shouting at the dog and chased after him.
As he was supposed to in that scenario, Hawk vanished, reappearing a moment later behind them, then running inside the building, drawing the attention of the other guards as well. What followed was like something from a Scooby Doo cartoon. Hawk would appear just long enough to get their interest and make them chase him, then he would vanish again to appear somewhere else. Jen let him have his fun for a few minutes until she was confident he had every guard’s attention, then it was her turn to move.
Hawk’s constant dreamwalking had a purpose beyond just drawing their attention, it blinded them to the use of Dream in their vicinity. Their ability to detect her dreamwalking would be explained as Hawk dreamwalking, which allowed Jen to appear at the top of the steps.
She fell into a crouch so she wouldn’t be spotted and kept her head just high enough that she could look inside from a better angle. Through the giant glass windows she could see the guards dreamwalking from side to side of the building, trying to catch the giant dog that was leading them on a merry chase. Jen analysed the space, looking for a place where she could dreamwalk once inside. She saw that most of the chase was happening on the first floor and thanked Hawk for that. Once again he had shown his intelligence by understanding her plan and knowing that she would need space to dreamwalk inside without being noticed.
Staying low, she moved towards the entrance that was unlocked thanks to the two guards who had been outside, and stepped past the influence of the dreamcatchers. Once inside she took one last look to make sure no one was watching, then focused on the stairs in front of her, the ones that lead down to the lower levels of the building. With a quick thought, she changed the channel and willed herself to that new location.
She tensed up as soon as she arrived, looking around with wide, frightened eyes as her heart beat a thousand beats a minute and she readied herself as best she could for a fight. However, the hallway was empty as Hawk had done his job well.
Thank God for that, Jen thought to herself, relieved that she wouldn’t have to do anything drastic. She only now realised just how much she didn’t want to fight anyone. She had come a long way from the person she was twelve months earlier.
Jen only took a moment to enjoy her relief before she started moving down the corridor, wondering just where she should go next. Once again she was struck by an eerie sensation as she travelled the abandoned corridor. There was something about moving through an empty space that should be teaming with people that gave Jen the creeps. That ominous feeling kept her on edge, kept her senses alert, and had her checking over her shoulder to make sure she was still alone.
She jumped out of her skin when she heard someone speak. It was a quiet voice, muffled by a door between them, but in Jen’s emotional state it might as well have been someone standing right next to her.
Taking a moment to compose herself and waiting for her heart to quit beating so loudly so she could concentrate on the sound, Jen focused on the voice and tried to make out the words.
She had no luck. About the most she could make out was that there was more than one voice speaking, but whether they were hostages or dreamwalkers she couldn’t tell. She was so focused on trying to figure that out that she almost missed the sound of footsteps until it was too late. Luckily, Amber was paying attention from within Jen’s mind and she gave Jen a mental shove.
Panicked, Jen looked up in time to see feet descending the stairs and realised she had run out of time. Looking back to the door in front of her, she tried to figure out what to do next. If she waited in this corridor, she was going to have to do something about the dreamwalker coming down the stairs, but if she stepped into that room she might get herself into an even bigger mess.
For a moment she was frozen with indecision, and in that moment the person descending the steps came further into view. One second longer and they’d be able to see Jen. She was out of time.
She snatched the door handle and turned it.
Nothing happened.
The door was locked.
Jen’s panic deepened, and it forced her do something she had never done before; she dreamwalked without knowing where she was going.
Since they first started dreamwalking, she and Tad had wondered what would happen if you dreamwalked somewhere without a good idea of what was waiting. Always in the past they had a firm location in their head and could picture what they would step into. But dreamwalking blind would leave them open to things like dreamwalking into a space already occupied by a piece of furniture, or maybe even another person. Both of them wondered if Dream would even let them do that, but neither wanted to test it.
However, with Jen a moment away from being caught, she had no choice but to dreamwalk herself to the other side of that door and hope for the best.
Once again the world transformed around her and Jen was met with screams.
Jen appeared on the other side of the door, standing in an open space in a committee chamber, and not inside a table, or worse, another human being.
There was no Hawk to distract people’s attention this time, and she was spotted instantly. Surprised yelps and screams were the natural reaction. However, these weren’t the surprised screams of yet more dreamwalkers, but instead the people she was here to save.
Jen looked around and found she was standing in front of an enormous desk where at least twenty people sat who Jen didn’t recognise. They were all middle-aged or older, and the expressions on their faces had faded from surprise to distrust. Jen didn’t recognise any of them and her attention soon left them and travelled to the children sat on the floor in the room’s corner, huddled around the prone form of the teacher who had been injured upon their arrival at the city.
A tension Jen didn’t realise she had been carrying lifted when she saw her friends were okay, and she ignored the people at the table so she could rush over to them.
“Jen?” Katie asked like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to get you out,” Jen said. “I saw what was happening on the news and couldn’t just leave you. Come on, we need to go. Hawk is providing a distraction, and this is the best chance we have to get out of here.”
“And just why should we trust you?” asked a voice from behind her. Jen turned to find one of the older women at the table staring at her with contempt. “I know who you are, Jennifer Larson. I also know what you are. Why should I believe that someone like you is here to rescue us
? All of this is as much your fault is anyone’s.”
Jen glared at the woman, having never met her before but instantly hating her. She was a stern faced woman with steel grey hair and an expression of superiority that was undeserved, at least from Jen’s perspective.
“Jen Holcroft,” Jen corrected before she turned back to her friends. “Come on, grab your things and let’s get out of here.”
“Don’t ignore me, young lady. Do you know who I am?”
Jen didn’t know, nor did she care. She was only interested in her friends who were also ignoring the woman, much to her chagrin.
“Do you really have a way out of here?” Faye asked, sounding like she didn’t want to get our hopes up.
“I think so. The main thing is to get outside the building and then between me and Hawk we can dreamwalk you away.”
“Why can’t we just dreamwalk from here?” Robert dared to ask. He shied away when Jen shot him in evil glare, having not forgiven him for the incident that got her expelled. However, she was forced to answer his question when her friends waited for her answer.
“There are dreamcatchers in place to stop me doing that. I also won’t be able to dreamwalk everyone at the same time. There are too many of you. When we’re outside, it will be easier to take people in small groups while the rest of you hide. However, from in here I would have to dreamwalk the entrance, then dreamwalk away again. That extra step would alert the guards and I wouldn’t be able to come back for the rest of you.”
“So how are we going to get out of this room and all the way to the entrance if were not going to dreamwalk there?”
Jen turned at the sound of the voice, happy that it wasn’t the angry woman this time, but a thin-faced man who had placed a hand on that woman’s shoulder to calm her. Jen stared at him, put off by his pale skin and drawn expression. There was something familiar about him, and she soon recognised him for who he was. Ashley Evans, the man her dad suspected was a dreamwalker.
“I’m going to use Dream to unlock the door and let you out. I have Hawk out there distracting the guards—”
“You have a Hawk?”
“Not a hawk. My dog, Hawk. He has most of the guard’s attention right now.” She decided not to say anything about the person who had come down the stairs, she would worry about that later. “I’ll let us out and we’ll creep out with his help.”
“That’s the entirety of your plan? First rely on a dog to keep people busy and then rely on a thirteen-year-old girl, a dreamwalker no less, to take the rest of us out of here. Forgive me for not jumping in excitement.”
Again, it was the older woman speaking. Jen glared at her and she wasn’t alone.
“Calm down Marissa, it’s better than any plan we’ve had so far,” Ashley Evans argued.
“We should wait for the army or the police to get here,” the woman persisted, turning her nose up haughtily as though she had just said the most obvious thing in the world.
“We’ve been here all day and there has been no sign of either. We need to take any opportunity that’s available,” Ashley answered before turning to Jen and saying, “I’m with you and I will help in any way I can.”
Something about the way he said that made Jen think he was admitting to being a dreamwalker. She wanted to press the matter, but could tell he didn’t want to expose his secret in front of everybody. So she just nodded and turned back to her friends to tell them to get ready.
Faye was waiting for her to throw another spanner in the works.
“Mr Dwight can’t go anywhere. He too injured to walk,” she said, nodding to the teacher who looked to be in a bad way. The poor man was a mass of red and blistered flesh. Jen shuddered and looked away as she remembered seeing Tad looking like that after the fire nightmare in Swansea. This man needed a hospital and Faye was right, there was no way he was walking out of here.
Jen swore, not sure what to do. She couldn’t leave him behind, but neither could she take him in his state. It limited her options and for a minute she struggled to decide what to do while people whispered things she didn’t quite hear. However, finally an idea came to her, but she wasn’t sure it was a good one.
She forced herself to look at the man again, judging his injuries as best she could with the new knowledge she had learnt over the last few months for Dr Burman. His injuries were far beyond her. She healed the burn onherself the other day, but that had been tiny compared to this. Parts of his face looked like he had melted, and she wasn’t sure what she could even do for that. But she didn’t need to heal everything, she just needed to heal enough that he could move under his own power again.
Ignoring the voices around her, some of which were questions for her, she pushed through her friends to the man’s side. Swallowing hard, she prepared herself for a monumental task that might not even work. She had experimented and knew that having Amber with her wasn’t improving her dreamwalking ability as it did with her dad. Therefore, she didn’t know if she had the power to take on a job this large and still get everyone out. She wasn’t even sure if she could even do it. After Dr Burman had stressed how much damage she could do to herself by failing, she was reluctant to even act.
However, surrounded by frightened faces and knowing she couldn’t just leave this poor man here, Jen didn’t see any other choice. She had to at least try to help him, or she could never live with herself.
Fighting down a fresh wave of nerves, she lowered herself to the floor beside the injured man, and forced herself to look closer at his wounds.
34
Wednesday, 30th November 2016
16:31
It took all of her willpower to keep looking and not be sick. She hadn’t seen this level of damage on a person before and the longer she looked at his face the less it looked like a face. The whole left side was a mass of scar tissue, blistered, red, and raw. His eye was swollen shut and she thought he’d be lucky if he got to keep it.
That’s not your problem, Amber’s voice whispered in her mind. Just focus on doing enough that he can regain consciousness and can move with minimal pain. Leave the rest for the doctors.
It was sound advice, and Jen nodded in agreement.
To accomplish even that reduced task, she needed to remember her how she healed her own injury.
Once again she focused on her eyes and called to Dream. She felt the same tugging sensation as the muscles in her eyes worked in ways they weren’t used to. She focused on the man on the floor, closing her mind off to everything but him. Her whole world became the cells on his skin and in some cases the exposed flesh beneath, and she concentrated on differentiating the healthy cells from the injured ones.
The sight was familiar, reminding her of her own wound. The cells looked no different, despite the fact that they belong to another person. In a way, that made her job easier as she hoped she could just repeat what she did the other day. Once again Jen visualised millions of tiny cells clustered together and healthy. She imagined his face covered in those cells, free from damage.
She was again struck by the alien feeling of this not being her body and not being able to feel the sensations he felt. However, with the image of those cells clear in her mind, she thought back to Dr Burman’s other advice. He told her that in this situation she should substitute her own sensations to fill the gaps in her mental vision. She opened and closed her mouth as wide as she could, feeling the way her muscles stretched taut, and how her skin tightened and relaxed.
The people watching her must have thought she was crazy, but she paid them no attention, lost in creating the perfect image in her mind. Getting a better idea for how she thought the skin should feel on the face, she added that into the image, using it to tighten up the cells, make them more condensed. Her final step was to look at the undamaged skin on the right side of his face, to double-check her work, make sure the image in her head looked right. She made a few tweaks, mainly to the structure of the cells and how they fit together, and then she was done.
Reaching for Dream, she hesitated just a moment as she wondered if this would work or if it would just be more agony, then cast all doubt aside. She pushed against that door and Dream answered in a rush.
It flooded through the door like there was an ocean on the other side waiting to pour in. Soon her body was flooded with so much Dream that every part of her tingled like she was plugged into a power outlet and someone had flipped the switch. Every part of her buzzed with electricity and the limitless possibility of Dream, and when she couldn’t hold it any longer, she saturated that image with energy and folded it onto reality.
The pain struck instantly, blacking out her vision. She felt hands grabbing her shoulders and arms to keep upright as she lost the ability to use her legs and slumped from her kneeling position.
However, one thought helped her endure that pain.
She had not failed.
This was not the pain from a backfired dream, but the pain of Dream overused. Between dreamwalking continuously for the last half hour, drawing on Dream to power her legs, and now this, she had overextended herself. Maybe a human body was only supposed to hold so much Dream and maybe each body was different. Tad once had a theory that the pain would lessen with practice, like a muscle that needed to be trained. Jen hadn’t trained as much as him, but she was tenacious when she needed to be and wouldn’t give in. As her vision returned and her ears picked up the surrounding sounds, she was surprised to find excited whispers and gasps. She turned her attention back to Mr Dwight just in time to see the tail end of her miracle.
Blistered and cracked skin fell away, replaced with fresh skin that was pink and new. It was a different colour to the right side of his face, but healthy nonetheless. Slowly the swelling went down, the blisters disappeared and the skin re-forged with barely a scar to show for the effort. It contuned for nearly ten minutes until only a slight discolouration remained, and when the man opened his eyes, Jen saw the only remaining damage. The fire had taken his left eye, and it was beyond helping. She was tempted to use the same trick to focus on the right eye, see how that was constructed and maybe re-forge the left eye. However, even as she thought of it, her headache forced her to see reason.
