She grinned. Makthryg would have something to contend with. She caught herself. Don’t get too cocky now. This is not a rescue mission. Yet. She had to help Nathan and Paolo first. She slowed as she arrived at the clearing and came to a halt, nestled into one side of the trail and peered forward.
The men were crowded around a figure on the floor. Some were shaking their heads. Others had knelt down and were slapping the man’s face. Her eyes widened. It was Makthryg on the ground. Unconscious! She bit her lip. Something strange about that. Another hypothesis—but a movement in front of her jerked her to her senses.
Paolo was staring at her. “Sarina!” he whispered, “Is that you?” She showed herself briefly, then looked around her. With Makthryg out of action, she could take full advantage of the moment.
She floated around behind Paolo. “I’m going to try to help.”
He whispered back to her out of the corner of his mouth. “You will have to do something for this idiot first. Makthryg turned him into a low-grade drivelling fool with no brain matter. Even if you free me, he will probably walk over and ask if Makthryg needs any help. He is a full field of ploughs short of a farm.”
She whispered back. “I thought as much. I’m going to try to reverse the curse. Keep an eye on the men.”
Paolo nodded and Sarina moved behind Nathan, who jumped with a shock. “Whassit?”
“Shhhh.”
Nathan craned around to try to see her and recoiled in horror. She put her hand over his mouth and felt him struggle. Though she wasn’t fully in this world, it was enough to give the impression of physical reality. She whispered in his ear. “It’s Picasso. Remember? Here’s a rhyme for you:
‘You must hypothesise, you must not guess,
Then you must test and let the facts confess’
She saw from behind that his eyes widened momentarily, and he stopped struggling. “I’m going to paint a picture in front of you. Watch carefully and follow my instructions.”
Now that she knew it was no madness she’d been experiencing, only danger from the unstable rem, she felt free to let fly with her artistic talent, confident she would be able to override any rem-loss by relying on her own strength. She stood behind Nathan to keep herself out of sight from the men, who were clearly far too anxious about their ‘great one’ to be worried about their prisoners, who were, after all, tied to a tree. She reached around him from either side and began painting in the air.
“Thok?” Nathan was looking at one of her hands. She had his sock in it.
“Don’t ask,” she whispered, “and keep quiet.”
She painted rapidly, and at some point when she had nearly finished, she felt the boy in front of her stiffen at what he saw. She was sure it would work. “Listen, we don’t have much time.” She glanced at Paolo, who was still watching the men. He caught her look and nodded briefly to carry on. She turned back to Nathan. “That picture is your great-great-grandfather, Nathan Rosen, with a famous scientist called Albert Einstein.” She was particularly proud of Einstein’s hair, shimmering in the air in front of them.
“Together they hypothesised the existence of a thing called a ‘wormhole’. I’ve painted an image in front of them of what I imagine a really good one would look like. I’m going to move that image closer to you, and bring it into your chest. When it touches your heart, you will remember who you really are: A brilliant and clever scientist who will find a way out of here, together with Paolo. Then you must hide, until we rescue you both. Ready?”
She saw him nod and she brought the image closer, and released the likeness of the wormhole into his chest. She felt him flinch, then stand taller as the edge of the shimmering picture touched his chest and entered his body. “Breathe, Nathan, and feel your spirit fly high with your mind.”
She felt him inhale deeply, then twist his head around sharply. His eyes held intelligence again. An elbow dug into her side and she looked at Paolo, who gave her a meaningful look and flicked his gaze over at the men.
Makthryg was still on the floor, but all the men had turned around and were staring at her, momentarily frozen, until gapped-tooth yelled.
“The Witch! Seize her, but make sure she stays alive!”
She shouted down to the boys as she shot up into the air with the sock stuffed into her nose. “Gotta go!” and she looped back down into the trail in a graceful dive. She flew along feeling her own spirit glow—and was sucked straight down an entrance tunnel to a multi-jawed monster. She bashed into a branch as she was hurled from side to side and watched in horror as the collision knocked Nathan’s sock from her hand and spiralled out of sight.
The snapping and snipping jaws were flying towards her and she screamed as she tumbled. Smell something! Nothing to smell! Imagine something that triggers an inspiring image. Aaaghh. She’d never taken the time to think of anything, unlike beautiful Lena. She tried to stop her descent but only managed to slow it slightly. Lena! Of course.
That was the only cue she needed, and she worked hard to bring a big, colourful image of a beaming Lena into her mind. It was enough to unfreeze her nightmare—and her arms—and she reached up and ripped the Intensifier off and stood up into where she hoped the headshield would be. The warehouse came back into view, and there she was, shivering and shaking, but in one piece. She laughed out loud.
She’d done it.
And now Nathan had his mind back, she was sure of it.
She untied the headshield, plumped down on the crate and looked at the collider in front of her. Now she was wearing the headshield, everything was so much clearer. Which meant she could think. The relief she felt at helping Nathan was slowly being replaced by a rising tide of anger.
Every time she thought about the Professor and their situation, her body tensed and she felt her jaw clench tight. How dare they mess around with people’s heads like that! She had been completely convinced she was hurtling down the same path as her two great-aunts and would be locked away by the time she was thirteen.
But now it was obvious all the dizzy spells and blackouts were caused by the Professor’s blinking monstrosity in front of her, she was left seething. To think she had almost given up on her dream to attend the Paris School!
Sitting on a crate stewing over everything wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She was pretty sure she had reversed Makthryg’s curse on Nathan, but he was still stuck in Paolo’s world and the options for extracting him were dwindling with every minute. So far, everything they had tried simply hadn’t worked.
She hoped, now that Nathan was, well, Nathan again, he would devise some ingenious method for escaping; making his own portal and coming back here to rescue them all from a future destined for stupidity. A future where blackouts and dizzy spells would be the norm for anyone vaguely creative, and wearing a silly silver headshield would be compulsory for anyone with a brain.
She thought for a moment about a future like that: No more artistic expression possible, everyone wearing tin hats and consigned to a life of deadly-boring repetition. They had to find some way out of this. What a nightmare!
She got up and paced around. No use sitting here waiting for the world to get worse. No matter how angry she was with the Professor, this ... problem, was bigger than any of that. No, she had to get the dratted machine out of harm’s way, and away from any more police raids. The more she thought about it, the better the idea sounded. She had to get both herself and the machine to safety.
She wrapped the collider in some sacking she found piled up by a wall, and picked it up. With both arms wrapped around it, she could manage to walk, as if she was delivering a package. A heavy one. She jumped slightly to shrug the machine further up against her chest, grabbed tight and made her way out of the door. After looking cautiously one way then the other, she walked in the direction of the town centre.
Her first mission would be to get to a phone and call—who? Hmm. She’d work that out when she came to it.
After she had crossed a couple of junctions, she n
oticed quite a few car drivers were giving her more than a cursory glance. She didn’t think anything of it until a motorcyclist slowed as he passed by and teased her: “What’s up, love? Lost yer bike?” He laughed and roared off.
Oh. The headshield. She stopped to sneak a glance in a window and was distressed at the vision she saw. A rumpled girl, wearing a heavily stained t-shirt, carrying some old box covered in sacking and sporting a very odd shiny silver bicycle helmet. No, that wasn’t going to attract attention at all, was it?
She looked around. Across the road were some shops, where a couple of blocks ago there had only been warehouses. One of the shops was a newsagent, and they would probably have a public phone. She would think of someone to call for help and wait out of sight. She crossed over and stopped outside the shop before going in.
Outside were newspaper placards advertising today’s editions. One exclaimed: “Nightmare Epidemic Spreads!”, another: “Mystery Brain Disease Causing New Threats!” She put the sack-wrapped machine down carefully and sat down on the pavement. A young woman poked her head out of the doorway. “Are you alright, dear?”
She looked up at the woman and nodded. She pointed to the sacking. “Heavy delivery. My bike broke down.” She tapped her headshield.
The woman shook her head in disbelief. “Whoever has you delivering that needs their head examined. Slave labour that is, asking a slip of a girl like you to carry that.”
Sarina smiled. “Do you have a public phone here?”
The woman shook her head again. “No, sorry.”
Sarina nodded. “Okay, thanks. I’ll rest here a bit—oh, by the way”—she pointed to the placards—“how long has this been going on?”
The woman squinted at her. “Been living in a cave have you? It’s been all over the news for the last few days. Speaking of caves, they reckon we’ll all be back in the land of the caveman if they don’t find a solution. Me? I don't believe it. Sounds like nonsense. Here”—she reached back inside the shop and pulled out a newspaper—“yesterday’s paper had a big article all about it—centre-spread it was. I was only gonna throw this one away, so take it and have a read.”
Sarina took the paper and smiled. The woman nodded briefly at her and went back inside. Sarina opened the paper to the middle.
‘Experts are still no closer to a cure for the epidemic of nightmares flooding the country and affecting children everywhere. Most schools are already closed, and even those on limited vacation schedules have had to close their doors, lacking the specialised psychiatric care on hand to deal with multiple nightmares. Medical professionals are still debating the exact cause.
‘Most agree, although the initial sporadic reports began several weeks ago, the epidemic-like activity only escalated in the last two to three days. “At the moment we suspect a virus,” said Dr Phillip Whiting, Resident Paediatric Neurophysicist at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, “which may be related to increased reports of localised comet dust in the atmosphere, though we are yet to determine a specific correlation.” Drug company insiders say activity in research labs is frenetic, with each company desperate to win the quick approval for a cure, and the multi-billion dollar government contract sure to result.
‘Progress has been hampered by a possibly related issue, though this reporter could find no-one who would comment on record. An anonymous source told this paper that all creative activities, including the project groups brainstorming options for attacking the speculated ‘Alien Brain Virus’, or the ABV-76 strain as it has now become known [the ‘76’ relates to the comet responsible for the dust, reputed to contain a virus], have been plagued by persistent illnesses, typified by blackouts and dizzy spells. Those most affected appear to be the known creative thinkers. Our source has suggested this issue might be caused by a mutated version of the virus; specifically targeting the highly advanced neocortex of our creative brains.’
What piffle! Pompous scientists. Let’s see what they would do if they were confronted by a giant half-bird, half-man with razor-sharp talons. Now that was a nightmare. She shuddered—then sat bolt upright. Valkrog was a nightmare. Maybe literally. What if this whole episode was triggered when the creature arrived in their world?
Wait a moment. How had Valkrog arrived in her world? The Professor had never told her what he thought had happened. Maybe he didn’t know. The memory of their intense battle with Makthryg and Valkrog flashed into her mind, and she jolted with the image—of her blasting her power into the out-of-control structure, then collapsing to the ground, exhausted. She frowned. So why did she think Valkrog was vaporised? She’d convinced herself that she had seen it happen—but actually, she hadn’t. It was Tomas who had suggested it. What else had they thought? Hadn’t they speculated that the creature had been banished somewhere?
She felt sick. It had been her power that had despatched Valkrog here.
Not that she’d known that at the time, but there was no denying it. The cold-plasma power she had used as the Orange Witch, the same power that had defeated Makthryg and transmuted the Xtrium, had not vaporised the creature at all, but had instead sent him to some at-the-time unknown place. Now known.
She ignored her growing nausea and forced herself back to the newspaper report to scour the pages for more evidence. Yes! There it was. Experts had traced the entire problem back to a statistically significant increase that only started a few weeks ago. Which jogged another memory. Didn’t the Professor also say something about the rem spike activity only starting to increase a few weeks ago?
She put the paper down and stared into space. It was like a slap in the face.
She was just as guilty as the scientists.
A few weeks ago—though it felt like a lifetime—she’d sent Valkrog into this world—unknowingly—and they had all happily rejoiced in their win. But what if Valkrog’s connection with this world was what had caused the imbalance with that stuff—what was it again? Rem and dark rem. What if Valkrog was a source of dark rem from the other world? He was certainly nightmarish enough.
If she was right, then all this was her fault. Had she endangered the world with her thoughtless use of her ‘superpowers’? Created another chain reaction?
The nauseous chasm in her stomach threatened to overwhelm her.
She tried to think. If all that was true, now what?
Rescue Nathan, or try to help fix the problem? She stood up shakily, pushed her headshield down, hefted up the sack-wrapped device and started walking. She had to talk to the Professor.
In the shop behind her, the woman watched as she left, picked up the phone and dialled. “Yes, hello. That girl you are looking for? She was just outside my shop. Yes, I’ll hold, thanks.” She peered back out of the shop window to see a sleek black limousine pull to a halt and the girl get in.
~~~
By the time Professor Harrison had extricated himself from the police and returned to the lab building, it was already late afternoon, and he was anxious for news of Nathan. He ran down the main corridor searching for someone who would bring him up to speed, preferably Sarina. He’d been so quick to leave her the codes and the instructions. At the time, it seemed the right thing to do—and the only choice he had.
The place was strangely quiet and he hoped it wasn’t a bad omen.
“Daddy!” Lena ran from the café area to hug him.
“Lena! I’m sorry it took me so long to get back from the police station—”
“Are we in trouble?”
He smiled. “Not that sort of trouble. Now, tell me what happened at the warehouse. Did Sarina and the kids manage to get Nathan back?” He looked around. “I haven’t seen him or Sarina here.”
Lena’s face fell. “Sarina really tried hard, Daddy. The smell thing worked and we all used a picture of Sarina in our heads to make the nightmares not be real. But the ugly bird-thing attacked and interrupted us so we didn’t get Nathan, then Sarina tricked it so it didn’t hurt us then one of the men crashed it to the ground and so did the other
man then they tied it up and then took it away but then the police came so I told Sarina to hide with the machine and I told the policeman she had already gone and they asked about the machine but I didn’t tell them anything. Did I help you, Daddy?”
He felt his mouth hanging open, so he closed it and thought. He nodded. “Yes, Lena, you were fantastic help to all of us. And brave.”
She beamed. “Sarina is brave too, hiding in that tunnel thing with the machine.”
“What?” He jumped to his feet. “You mean no-one has brought her back here yet?” He thought of the possible effects an unstable collider would have on someone like Sarina in close proximity, and groaned.
Lena was crestfallen and a tear fell from one eye. “She had to hide from the police, Daddy. They made us come back here and tell them stories. Mr Smith and the other man did try to stop them, but it took a long time. I think Mr Smith is just about to go back to the big building and get her. I told him she’s in the tunnel thing with all the rats.”
He cringed. The poor girl. If she was still conscious, it would be bad enough, but unconscious in a dark tunnel populated by rats? Beset by nightmares? “Thank you, Lena. You stay here with the other agent. I’d better rush and go with Smith.” He raced to the lift and down into the car park, just in time to catch Agent Smith getting into the car. He jumped in next to him and they screeched off.
The Agent glanced at him. “You’ve heard all the news?”
Harrison nodded. “But from a six-year-old. As I understand it, Valkrog attacked and stopped the kids from finishing the portal. Anyone injured?” He thought of Blanchard and felt guilty he’d had no time to visit the man. Still, he would understand, knowing they had a full-scale emergency on their hands.
The Agent shook his head. “No. The creature is badly injured and weak from Blanchard’s fight, thankfully. We knocked it out and tied it up, and I had some men take it away. Actually, it’s under guard in our underground storage cage back there.” He jerked his thumb back at the car park . “Locked of course.”
The Dreamer Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set Vol I - III: A Sci-Fi Parallel Universe Adventure (The Dreamer Chronicles - Science Fiction For Kids And Adults) Page 54
