“What future missions? There is no future without Trent.” Tears streamed down Whitney’s dry cheeks and neck and collected on her collarbone.
The two men moved in and sandwiched Whitney with a hug. She felt at peace for a moment with her two friends’ show of love.
Darominius said, “You know, we could take this to the bed if you want.”
Whitney wriggled her way out of the two men’s grip. “Eeewww. You really are an animal.”
She glanced at Darominius, who had a wide grin on his face. He said, “Just kidding, damn. I’m just trying to make you smile and forget about this nonsense for a minute. Jokes aren’t my strong suit.”
Whitney smiled and her jaw felt weird. “That actually was pretty funny. And I don’t want you two talking about me when I’m not around. Have sex with each other, that’s fine, just keep my name out of your mouths.”
Bo said, “Oh please, what else are we supposed to talk about when you are gone for extended periods of time. D doesn’t have a phone that he can play on and the service around here sucks anyway.”
“Did you just call him D?”
Bo answered, “Yep. I cut out four syllables and made it sound a lot more badass and time appropriate. Don’t get me wrong, if we were in ancient Greece or Rome, Darominius makes perfect sense but not in the twenty-first century.”
“How do you feel about this?” Whitney asked Darominius.
The shifter shrugged his shoulders. “Doesn’t matter to me, really. I’ve recently been called buddy and it didn’t bother me.”
She smiled. “Well then, buddy. I guess it would save some time when trying to get your attention. D it is then.”
Darominius said, “You can still use my real name every occasionally, so that I don’t forget where I’ve come from. That’s very important to me.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t mind going back and visiting that world with you again. Have you ever thought about going back and altering what happened?”
Darominius paused for a few moments. “Sure I have. But what drastic effects would that carry? This world as we know it could be gone. It could be a great heap of ashes. A scorched earth unable to sustain life. Keeping a line of living dragons would be great unless they unleashed a great fury and eliminated all the people on earth.”
“Couldn’t you just go back and change the past again?”
Bo said, “Alright I think I know, but what are you guys talking about? Is this about Whitney going with you to get her special power?” He directed the last question at Darominius.
The shifter replied, “Yes. She got to see some of my family and friends during the time that we visited. To answer your question Whitney, maybe. Most of the things I do are backed in science and mathematics. These matters can be proven in a very exact way and replicated without worry of varied results. However, there are some things like time travel that are propelled by unexplainable properties that always work and aren’t steeped in science.”
Bo asked, “So what does that mean?”
Darominius said, “I was just about to get to that. What that means is we don’t know if this process can be replicated forever. There might be one time when we try to do time travel and it just doesn’t work. It could be the same process that has worked one thousand times before and it just magically stops.”
“So how many things do you do that could stop happening at any time?”
Darominius rolled his head from side to side, stretching out his long neck, which cracked several times, causing Whitney to clench her teeth at the sound.
The shifter said, “There are a few. Most is backed in strong facts and mathematics.”
The phone rang and Whitney opened the front pocket on her camouflaged backpack. She grabbed the black object and pressed the answer button.
“Hello.”
The kidnapper said, “You sound happy. Well, happier. I don’t like it. Are you ready?”
“I guess. What do I need to do?”
The man said, “You just need to go to school now. You don’t need any supplies, there are plenty in Dreamland. Get in your car and drive into Dankstone and park in the same exact spot that you did last time. Wait for me to call.”
She hung up the phone and set it down on the desk. She took a deep breath but it couldn’t calm her nervous energy.
“That was the call.” Whitney started to gather her purse and wondered what she should take with her.
Bo said, “Good luck. I wish I could go with you.”
“No you don’t and I don’t blame you for it.”
Bo breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re totally right. I never want to go back into that place again. That was some spooky ass shit there.”
She grabbed the phone and her keys from the desk and walked to the door. “Alright, hopefully I will be back very soon. Wish me luck.”
Darominius said, “Good luck, Whitney Powers, you will be just fine.”
Bo shrugged his shoulders. “Give em hell? Does that get you fired up?”
“Sure, thanks. And don’t worry, I’ll knock on the door when I come back.”
Bo smiled and said, “Thanks. That might be in your best interest.”
Whitney opened the door and the heat hit her before she could step outside. She went to the car and drove to the same spot in Dankstone.
The heaviness of the air surrounded Whitney again and put the uncomfortable pressure on her. Her breathing became labored and the irregular heartbeats started up like they had every time she had entered Dankstone.
She wiped a sheen of sweat from her left forearm and wondered if she should have worn long sleeves for protection. She had worn her hoodie for most of the previous tasks, despite the summer heat. She kept looking at the phone to see if she had missed the kidnapper’s call, but nothing came up on the screen.
She paced back and forth along the dirt road covered with different sized rocks. The phone rang and Whitney pried it from the pocket of her tight jeans.
“Hello.”
The voice said, “Turn right and walk.”
Whitney faced the woods and marched ahead. The kidnapper led her with directions for about an hour. She kept moving downhill toward the Dankstone valley. When she reached the edge of the forest, she saw that an old, abandoned town sat in the valley.
There were a few small building and rows of houses on either side of a concrete road. The image looked like a time capsule from the sixties or seventies. She walked past the tree line and into a green field of grass with blades up to her calves.
She kept moving toward the tiny town and the kidnapper directed her toward a red brick building that appeared to have been abandoned before it was finished. One side of the school was completely open to the elements without an outer wall.
Weather had ravaged the once-vibrant bricks into a pale red shade. The kidnapper’s directions led her up to the front door, and he hung up the phone.
The same voice came from an intercom next to the door.
“So glad to see that you have made it. Now, the adventure really begins. Come inside and go up to the third floor and listen for more directions. I would offer the elevator, but it seems to be broken right now.”
She made it to the third floor and waited.
The voice came over the intercom again. “Turn left and walk down the hallway.”
Whitney passed unfinished schoolrooms on her way. She could hear a faint beeping that grew louder as she kept walking. She didn’t need the kidnapper to tell her which room to enter as she followed the sound and dipped into an open door on her right.
She started crying instantly. She barely looked at the young man lying in the hospital bed with blinking and beeping machines connected to him. She barely looked at her friend, Tara, whose pale blue, lifeless body would have convinced most people that she was dead.
She focused on the man she loved. Her husband’s skin had gone whiter than an albino with hints of green and blue. His eyes were sunken back into his head, bloodshot and glazed with a
dark shade of yellow. He looked dead.
Tara and Trent sat on chairs next to each other and both their right hands were holding the forearm of the young man in the coma. She couldn’t stop the tears and went over to touch her husband. As she neared him, the voice came out of nowhere.
“Don’t touch. If you do, you might kill him. You see, they are already in the game.”
“The game?” Whitney asked.
The voice said, “Yes, and what a fun game it is. Allow me to explain the rules. You are going to need to enter the Dreamland like your friends to have a chance to save them. All you need to do is put your hand around Robbie’s other forearm like your friends have done and you will be transported to Dreamland. If you get lost from the telepad when you enter this world, you may never come back.”
The voice crackled for a few moments and then became clear again. “It looks like your friends are having a gay old time in there. They can come out at any time, but it seems like they choose to stay in there. If you pull either of those bodies away from Robbie, they will die. Probably best if you don’t touch them at all. I am off to mastermind the greatest heist ever attempted. Looks like you have a pretty big decision to make. I’ll leave you alone.”
Whitney walked around the bed a few times inspecting the machines that Robbie had been hooked up to. She knew the choice was obvious if the kidnapper was telling the truth. She had the sinking suspicion that these were clay models of her friends. They weren’t even breathing.
Her sleepless, confused mind tried to make sense of everything but common sense rejected it. How was she going to be transported to another world by clutching someone’s forearm? Was that really Trent or Tara?
Her twisted thoughts fought with one another until she stopped on the side of the hospital bed opposite her friends. As she stared at Trent and Tara, she slowly extended her right hand toward Robbie. The closer she got, the more her hand shook like a leaf in a wind storm.
She grabbed her wrist with her left hand and tried to stop the trembling. Her palm hit the cold flesh of Robbie’s forearm and she wavered. Whitney wrapped her fingers around the crusty skin and squeezed.
12
Whitney felt intense pressure as she glided through a tight, dark, twisting tunnel. Her hair was blown straight back from the incredible speed. She became dizzy from the corkscrew-like descent.
The trip came to an end when Whitney’s shoe bottoms hit black pavement. She couldn’t tell if she was still out of sorts from the ride to get there but the surroundings looked like video game graphics. They were realistic, lifelike graphics that carried an animated feel.
A ravaged city with fissured roads and busted buildings lay straight ahead. The gray clouds lingering in the orange sky hid the sun and gave the landscape a post-apocalyptic dystopian feel. Whitney shook her head to see if her vision would return to normal but her left arm still looked animated.
Am I in a video game of some sort? Is this even real? Nothing around here looks real; even this paved road doesn’t look real and yet, I am standing firmly on it. What am I supposed to do here? Run into the city and rescue my husband and friend super hero style?
A voice that sounded like a boy going through puberty came from behind her. “There you are.”
She spun around. A boy who looked like a teenager walked toward her. Shaggy, sandy brown hair swept to the side came down and covered his right eye. The skinny teen smiled, exposing his pearly white teeth.
He said, “I’ve been waiting for you. People keep entering my body, making it impossible for me to ever escape this coma. I need you to help get these people out of me so that I can finally go home and see my mom and dad. That’s all I want.”
Whitney began to tear up. “I’d love nothing more than to help you do that. What do we have to do?”
Robbie said, “The first thing we need to do is rescue your friends and get them out of here. Then I can chase away everything else that is fake.”
Whitney asked, “It’s fake?”
Robbie held out his arm as a direction marker and they walked toward the city.
He said, “Yeah, everything in here is fake except for the people that enter through my body.”
“What exactly happened to this city?”
Robbie replied, “I still haven’t been able to figure it out. Looks like it was involved in a major battle of some kind with chunks of steel buildings blown out like that.”
Almost every skyscraper and all the smaller buildings had sustained major damage. The two walked into the forest of steel structures and just as the sun came out from behind a cloud, a triangular high rise swallowed the golden rays.
The city was eerily quiet and the blown-out pieces of the buildings had never been cleaned up from the streets. Whitney and Robbie had to navigate around huge, boulder-sized pieces of steel.
“So what happened to my friends that we have to save them?”
Robbie, who was breathing heavily, spoke in short bursts. “They got caught. Got caught by them.”
“Who is them and caught for doing what?”
Robbie stopped for a moment and wiped his forehead. “The people in the game are the only way I can explain them. They caught your stupid friends after they invaded my body. He told me that you were going to invade my body too.”
“Who are you talking about? Who is he and who is they? This is too confusing.”
Robbie shook his head. “You don’t have to know about that. All you need to know is that you and your friends are going to die when he gets back. Then I will finally be free.”
Is he talking about the kidnapper? This is starting to feel like a set up. Have I been lured to my own death? Trent and Tara did look dead and they weren’t breathing. Is my body not breathing in the real world?
All the worlds she had recently visited only added to her confusion.
“What do you mean, we are going to die?”
Robbie said, “Jeez, he told me you were stupid, but what does die mean to you? He told me that you guys are trying to kill me but the joke is going to be on you.”
“Robbie, listen to me. He is lying to you. He has warped your head into some kind of crazy thinking but I can promise you that my friends and I aren’t here to hurt you. We just want to go home and we want the same for you.”
Robbie chuckled. “Ha. He said that was what you were going to say. Doesn’t matter now. It will all be over soon.”
Whitney didn’t like the kid’s cold tone and turned around, planning to go back to the telepad. She took six steps and was greeted by a dangerous-looking search party. Fourteen men with black assault rifles closed in on Whitney.
She looked at Robbie and warned him. “You’re making a big mistake.”
One of the men jabbed her in the small of the back with the butt of his rifle and forced Whitney to walk into the middle of the city. The men were fitted in shiny white bulletproof protection from head to toe with a tinted visor over the eyes of their helmets.
They led her to an enormous silver skyscraper and pushed her through an opening covered with broken glass on the ground level. The glass crunched under her tennis shoes and Whitney worried that some might poke through the thin rubber soles.
The dusty building had tan walls and bold yellow carpeting lining the floors. They pushed her toward a marble staircase and Whitney started the ascension. Her calves burned as passed the fourteenth floor.
The armored men kept poking Whitney in the back with their weapons as her pace slowed toward the end. They finally stopped on the thirty-first floor and one of the men rushed ahead of her. He opened a door and Whitney walked through and into a hallway of what appeared to be an office building.
The men directed Whitney into one of the rooms and her heart stopped. She locked eyes with her lover.
“I love you, baby,” Trent said, bringing tears of joy to her eyes.
“Oh my God, I love you too. So much.”
She finally glanced over at Tara and tried to provide a look of hope but it didn
’t seem to help very much.
Her friends were tied to the chairs they were sitting in. They looked desperate but they were alive, not looking morbid and decrepit like their bodies back in Dankstone.
A few of the armed men put down their weapons and sat Whitney on a wooden chair. They used heavy yellow rope to secure her legs, arms and body to the chair. The coarse wraps chafed against Whitney’s rough skin, causing blood blisters to rise to the skin.
The men pushed her chair over by her friends in the open office room. The rectangular room had three solid walls and one made of glass windows. The three prisoners had their backs to the wall of windows.
Whitney said, “How did all this happen? What is all of this? Do you guys even know?”
Trent spoke calmly. “All I remember is that we were having a great time on the honeymoon and I wake up inside here. Some teenager was telling me I needed to come into the city to escape and then I was surrounded by a bunch of people armed with assault rifles.”
“That seems to be an unoriginal move they have perfected because they did the same with me. Some anonymous man apparently kidnapped you and has been putting me through living hell to get you two back. Tara, I am so sorry. How did you end up here?”
Tara shook her head and her braids swung from one side to the other. “I don’t really know either. That asshole threw me out of that canoe and I was in here before any other memories come to mind. It was all so strange.”
“So I guess nobody knows how this works inside here. We are inside someone’s body if you didn’t know. The guy kept calling it Dreamland. It seems too surreal in here, like a video game gone wrong. Are these real people in here even?”
Tara said, “Well, this is great. None of us really know why we are here, how any of this works or how we can get out of here. So, we’re just going to die here? Is that what we’re looking at?”
“I won’t let that happen,” Whitney pledged.
Tara scoffed. “Pffftttt whatever.”
“What do you mean, pffftttt. Don’t you pffftttt me.”
Lost In Dreamland: Whitney Powers Paranormal Adventure #3 (Whitney Powers Paranormal Adventures) Page 9
