Dreamlander

by K.M. Weiland

  Chapter Twenty

  Chris woke in Mike’s spare room, the bedsheets twisted around his body. A moment ago, he had collapsed into the softness of that big bed in his quarters at Réon Couteau, exhausted from a day of trying to learn a lifetime’s worth of knowledge about Lael. Now he was here.

  He rolled over and made himself breathe while his brain scrambled to once more snag ahold of his shifting reality. Then he kicked free of the sheets and crossed to the door, pulling his clothes back on in the order he’d tossed them off last night. While his body slept in Lael, he was going to wring some answers from a certain former Gifted.

  His cell phone was moldering somewhere in Lael, so he borrowed Mike’s from its recharging dock in the kitchen. A call to the hospital was all he needed to get Harrison’s room number. He was alive, he was in ICU, and he wasn’t taking any phone calls, which meant Chris would have to risk running into Kaufman if he left the house. He put the phone back.

  Mike shuffled into the kitchen, wearing the duck-flipper slippers Brooke had given him for his last birthday. “You’re up early.” He yawned and rubbed a hand over his hair. “Why didn’t you get the coffee started?”

  “Sorry, just got up myself. I lost my phone, so I borrowed yours.”

  Mike waved it off and reached into the cupboard for a coffee filter. He glanced back. “How’s the dream machine coming along?”

  “Wha-at?” Chris stuttered. There was no way Mike could know about the dreams.

  “A few days ago you were going on about bad dreams. I thought maybe the excitement of someone trying to murder you knocked them out of your head.”

  “Oh, right. The dreams.” He leaned back against the sink and tried for a casual look. “Um, they’re good, actually. Haven’t been dreaming much at all.” Which was technically true, since they couldn’t rightly be called dreams anymore.

  Mike shrugged. “Always a silver lining.”

  “Speaking of silver linings—” although he would be hard-pressed to explain the connection, “—would you mind dropping me by the hospital on your way to work? I’d like to see Harrison Garnett.”

  “I thought you were staying incommunicado for a while, until the creepy bodyguard backed off.”

  “Yeah, well, I stayed inside yesterday. He doesn’t know I’m staying here, so that’s probably the end of that. And I just feel like I should go check on Harrison.” Check on him and pump him for whatever useful information he could cough up about Mactalde and this possible imbalance.

  “I thought you didn’t know him.”

  “I don’t. But I met him, and I just think that’s what I should do.”

  Mike wrenched the lid off the coffee and dumped four heaping spoonfuls into the coffeemaker. “What you should do is call the cops, but, of course, you’re not going to do that no matter what I say.”

  “The cops aren’t going to protect me. They’re probably going to accuse me.”

  Mike brought the carafe over to the sink and stuck it under the tap. He watched Chris sidelong while he filled it up. “Brooke was going to come by and keep you company this afternoon.”

  “And you think that’s an argument?”

  __________

  Thirty minutes later, Mike dropped Chris at Mercy General Hospital. “Remember to play on your own side of the street this time, huh?”

  Chris checked to make sure he didn’t see anyone tall, blond, and armed, then pulled up the hood on his jacket. At least, the wind made it cool enough he could wear a hoodie without standing out. If he kept his face covered and his head down, maybe he could get in and out of here without any problem. With any luck, Kaufman would have called his losses and given up after his one failed attempt anyway.

  “You want me to pick you up when I get off work?” Mike asked.

  “No, that’s all right. I’ve got enough for a taxi home.” It was about all he had, since his wallet, along with his credit card and his extra cash, was on its way to decomposition in Lael alongside his cell phone. “I’ll see you later.”

  He climbed out and headed for the entrance. Three days had passed since Harrison Garnett’s shooting. According to the nurse he talked to over the phone, the old man was in stable condition, but the doctors wanted him in ICU for at least another week. Chris had been told he could visit so long as he didn’t upset the patient.

  Yeah, right.

  Once inside, he headed for the doors that separated the whispers of the waiting room from the controlled chaos of the ICU. On a bench next to the window, a small dark-skinned man read a magazine. A short beard covered his face, and he wore his sunglasses pushed back on his head.

  Chris hesitated. Either he was being incredibly paranoid, or there was something familiar about this man. He’d seen him—recently. An EMT who had answered his 911 call the other day? But why would an EMT be out here?

  Before the man could look up, Chris retreated a couple of steps and fell into stride with a middle-aged couple and their two teenagers.

  The dad gave him a smile. “How’s it going?”

  “Just fine.” Chris kept up the banalities, head averted from the bench, and managed to pass into the ICU without catching more than a glance from the stranger.

  Letting the family walk on, he ducked into Harrison’s room, the first on the right.

  In the center of the room’s white glow, the old man lay on his bed, his mouth slouched open, his skin faded to the gray of an X-ray. The weight of the bedclothes seemed to have compressed him to half his original body mass. Only jutting bones and the wisp of his breath raised the blanket. Compared to the muted commotion outside the door, the methodical beep of the IV throbbed against the room’s silence.

  Chris eased the door shut and stepped to a window in the right wall. He pried the blinds open far enough to see into the waiting room on the other side of the glass. The magazine reader, his profile to the window, turned a page and scratched his cheek. Chris’s skin crawled. Definitely familiar and definitely a recent acquaintance.

  He gave his head a shake. He was being paranoid. Unless Kaufman was such a master of disguises that he was able to lose twelve inches and change his skin color, there was no way this was him.

  Behind Chris, the mummy on the bed woke with an explosion of breath. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  Speaking of justifiable paranoia. Chris released the blinds. “It’s just me.”

  Harrison, his finger halfway to the call button, slumped back against his pillow. “You? Just you? I was shot, and it was your fault.”

  Chris walked to the foot of the bed. “Yeah, well, I’m being shot at and that’s partly your fault.”

  Harrison sank deeper into the pillow, bottom lip sucked into a pout. “Did you tell the police who did it?”

  “Our proof isn’t the kind the police are going to buy.” He leaned both hands against the foot of the bed. “Especially since they’re not going to find a trace of our prime suspect anywhere in this world.”

  Harrison’s eyes bulged. “You took him across? You idiot! You’re a bigger fool than even I took you for.”

  Chris stood up and made himself breathe evenly. “What I’m here for is answers. And if you can manage to stomach it, I’d like them straight for a change.”

  “This would never have happened if you’d listened to me! I’m going to tell the cops you shot me.”

  “Yeah, why not? Once a traitor, always a traitor, isn’t that right?”

  Harrison stilled. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean people in Lael don’t seem to remember you too fondly.” Chris walked around the bed. “You want to make yourself out to be a big fat martyr, dying at the hands of the evil Mactalde. But that’s not quite the version I’m hearing from anybody.”

  “Get out.” Harrison groped for the call button. “If you don’t get out, I’ll call the nurse.”

  Chris leaned forward and snagged the remote. “Just stop. I don’t even care about whatever you did or didn’t do. I really don’t. I’ve got m
y hands full trying to fix my own mistakes.”

  “Yeah, I’ll say you made a mistake.” Harrison dragged his sheet up to his chin. “You’re gonna get us all killed. I’d say that’s a mistake.”

  Chris circled to the side of the bed and kept the remote cord stretched between him and Harrison. “In this world, Mactalde shouldn’t even have been able to remember what happened in Lael. But he knew. How did he know?”

  “He talked to himself in his dreams.”

  “He did what?”

  Harrison shrugged a bony shoulder. “Everybody remembers their dreams. It’s just most people don’t remember all the details. It all gets filtered and interpreted by their waking minds in the opposite world. But they do remember. Mactalde took it from there and figured out one side of his brain could send messages to the other.”

  “Messages?” It made sense, almost. “But I thought only Gifted can break the mental wall.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Gifted don’t break the wall. Our minds don’t merge. Our minds from this world completely take over the minds from the other world. If you think about it, Mactalde’s got one up on us on this one.”

  “How’d he do it?”

  “All I know is he’d get into a sort of trance, talking to himself over and over again about Lael. Sooner or later, it penetrated his dreams, and his other self started to believe it.”

  “So he remembers everything.” If Mactalde remembered what had been done to him in Lael, he’d have plenty of incentive for protracted revenge. Where was the silver lining there?

  The oxygen tube in Harrison’s nose hissed. “Yeah, and he went bonkers because of it, hearing voices, seeing things.”

  That explained Mactalde’s comment about wanting the voices to stop.

  “There’s something else.” Chris tossed the remote back onto the bed. He crossed the room and opened the drapes to reveal the gray sky outside. “The weather isn’t right.”

  “So what? I’m a Gifted, not a weatherman. What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Something’s wrong with it in Lael too.”

  “The worlds are connected. Haven’t they told you nothing?”

  “Yeah, I heard about that.” Chris turned back. “According to the Garowai, bringing Mactalde back into Lael knocked the worlds out of balance. I don’t suppose you’d have any idea what that means?”

  “Of course I know what it means!” Harrison flailed around in the bed and groped for the call button. “It means the worlds are going to tumble down around our ears, that’s what it means!” He stabbed the button with his thumb. “If you don’t get it fixed, everything will tear itself to pieces!”

  Harrison was just a crazy old man who spouted crazy ideas. Why would he know what the Garowai had meant when even Allara hadn’t? Chris wet his lips. “Do you know what you’re saying? You’re talking about an apocalypse or something. How do you know this?”

  Sweat stood out on Harrison’s ashen forehead. “The Garowai told me. The Garowai tells every Gifted.” He lurched halfway off his pillow. “He would have told you if you hadn’t messed everything up first. I would have told you if you hadn’t gotten me shot.” He flopped back. “I was going to be your mentor. I was going to help you, and together we could have beaten Mactalde, Tireus, the whole lot of them!”

  “If you knew this is what would happen, why did you promise to take Mactalde across?”

  “He was dying! How was he supposed to be able to make me keep my end of the deal? How was I supposed to know he’d be able to find me here? But by the time he did, it was too late for both of us. They’d already killed me in Lael too, and the only reason Mactalde didn’t kill me here was because he knew I would be able to find you.”

  “And you did that just beautifully, didn’t you?”

  Harrison sulked. “I tried to warn you.”

  The door behind Chris opened to admit both the noise of the ICU and a trim nurse in lavender scrubs.

  She frowned at Harrison’s excitement. “What’s the problem?”

  Chris stepped back. “I’m not sure. I think his heart rate’s elevated.”

  Harrison’s wasn’t the only one. If what he was saying was true . . . No, it couldn’t be true. A cold breeze in the summertime hardly signified the end of one world, let alone two. But if he was right, what did that mean? Chris made himself breathe. For one thing, it meant Allara was more accurate than she knew about time being short.

  So now what did he do? Tell Allara? He shook his head. The woman didn’t need another reason to hate him. He’d already promised to take responsibility, and right now there was absolutely nothing she could do that she wasn’t already doing. If things were headed the direction Harrison thought they were, they’d start seeing problems that went far beyond unseasonably cool temperatures.

  He stepped back against the wall and lifted the blinds away from the window. In the waiting room, the stranger with the beard sat in the same place on the same bench. A little girl skidded past on pink roller shoes and stopped to study a picture in the magazine. She pointed and asked a question. The man turned his head to her and gave Chris a full look at his profile.

  Chris stared. He had seen this guy before—in Mactalde’s living room the day he’d woken up on the couch with a concussion. Probably a concussion this guy had helped give him.

  He snatched his hand away from the blinds and let them fall back in place. The other day, he had only caught a glimpse of the guy as he had walked past the couch on his way out of the room. Mactalde had called him Flores.

  The nurse looked up from injecting something into Harrison’s IV bag. “Are you all right?”

  Chris gestured to the window. “Who is that guy? There’s a little guy in the waiting room. He’s Mexican, Cuban, or something.”

  She shrugged and turned back. “Oh, him. He’s been there for the last couple days. Must have family in here.”

  He took another peek. The man hadn’t moved. He didn’t appear armed, and if he knew Chris was in here talking to Harrison, it didn’t seem to bother him in the least. But his relation to Mactalde made any chance of a coincidence out of the question. Was he staking out the place?

  “He never comes in to visit anyone?”

  “Not that I’ve seen.” She finished with the IV and tugged Harrison’s blanket higher. “Would you like me to turn up the heat?”

  Harrison grunted. “No. Just shut the drapes.”

  Chris looked at Harrison. “You know anybody named Flores?”

  “No.”

  The nurse smoothed the drapes over the window and headed for the door. Her gaze speared Chris as she passed. “I think you should leave and let your friend rest now. We don’t need him getting tired.”

  “All right. Just give me a minute to say goodbye.”

  Harrison glowered at him. “Goodbye. Now get out. And don’t come back until you’ve put everything back together the way it’s supposed to be.”

  Chris waited until the door eased shut behind the nurse. Then he crossed the room and leaned over the bed railing. “I think that guy out there works for Mactalde.”

  Harrison hitched his head and shoulders up from the pillow. “What?”

  “I saw him at Mactalde’s house. I think he works for him.” He dropped his voice. “Mactalde’s got Kaufman coming after me, and this guy coming after you. He wants us both dead.” Coming here today was beginning to look about as dumb as Mike had warned him.

  Harrison’s eyes got big again. “And you led him right to me? Why didn’t you just shoot me yourself?” His good hand fumbled for the nightstand. He found his water jug and hurled it. “It would have saved time!”

  The jug smacked the wall behind Chris, and he bent to pick it up. “Cut it out. You’re going to have every nurse in the place swarming in here.” He fished the lid out of the puddle and stood up in time for Harrison to thwack him in the chest with a box of tissues.

  “I hope they do swarm in here!” Harrison hammered his thumb against the call button. “I hope t
hey throw you out and give you to that guy!”

  Chris grabbed Harrison’s arm before he could find another missile. He snatched the remote and flicked off the call button above the bed, but not before the door clicked back open.

  The nurse stepped inside. “What is going on here?” She elbowed past Chris. “You need to leave now. I told you I didn’t want him getting excited.”

  Chris backed off from the bed. “I’m sorry. But that guy out there—I think he might have been involved in Mr. Garnett’s shooting. I think Mr. Garnett’s still in danger.”

  She stared at him over her shoulder. “What?”

  He pressed his advantage. “You need to call the cops in here and make sure somebody’s watching this room.”

  She nodded, eyes wide. “I had no idea,”

  “Mind if I take the back way out?” He started toward the door. The last thing he needed was to be here when the cops showed up. He hooked a thumb toward the waiting room. “Make sure you keep that punk out of here.” Hand on the doorknob, he glanced at Harrison. “Stay healthy.”

  Harrison glared at the ceiling. “Easy for you to say.”

  Chris left the room and resisted the urge to jog down the hall to the rear exit. When the door closed behind him, he stood for a moment and scoped out the parking lot, just to make sure Kaufman wasn’t waiting for him. But he was alone on the gray asphalt of an employee parking lot.

  He shivered. The last time he’d been in this hospital had been the night of the wreck that had killed his mom and sister. He zipped up the hoodie and started walking. The last time he’d been here, he’d thought losing two of the most important people in his life was the worst thing that could happen. But if Harrison was right about the worlds breaking apart, he might learn to be glad his mom and Jenifer had gotten out when they did.

  Silver linings were just everywhere today.