Hero Reborn (Keepers of Justice, Book 3)

by Dee J. Stone

  He waves his hand. “Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

  Kale looks at me. “How does it work? Maybe you need to think of the person before you fall asleep. Were you thinking about Furball?”

  My stomach feels funny. “Yeah. I think about her, like, every night.”

  Kale’s eyebrows furrow. “Hmm. So why are you entering her dreams now?”

  “No, I think he’s always been entering,” X says. “But you’ve never actually been…active in the dreams, have you, Stretch? Made your own decisions?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You didn’t tell her where we were staying when we were at your parents’ house,” X continues. “I think in those dreams you had more of a passive role and Furball controlled you because it was her dream. Maybe your power is getting stronger and you can decide what to say or do in the dreams.”

  He might be right about that. In all the previous dreams, I felt part of it. But the one with Furball in the alley, I felt like I was talking to her on my own. Like I was in control.

  “Makes sense,” I say. “Okay, I’m ready. I’m going to go to sleep thinking about you.” Kale bursts out laughing. I shove him. “It’s not like I want to do it. Besides, it was your idea, dude. Not mine.”

  He’s still laughing. “Okay. I’m ready. Wait. Make sure I’m asleep before you come in. It won’t work if you fall asleep when I don’t.”

  “Okay.”

  Kale and I lie down. X slips down to the floor. “See ya later, X,” Kale says.

  “Have fun.”

  ***

  I fall through the black hole. Shouts are below. Looking down, I see fire, like an explosion’s going on. I’m right on top of it and feel the heat touching the bottom of my feet.

  “Kale?” I yell. “You here?”

  The shouting gets louder. I’m dropping toward the fire. Oh, crap! If I don’t move I’m going to get fried. But I can’t move. My legs wiggle and thrash around. I close my eyes. Something went wrong. Maybe I’m not in Kale’s dream. Maybe I’m going to die again.

  I land hard on the ground, which is on the roof of a building. I don’t feel the pain on my butt, though, I feel the flames. They’re, like, less than a foot away. I scamper back. It’s not really a fire—it’s a person. A girl. She’s floating in the air. Arms and legs are spread out. The fire is coming out of her.

  It’s Lindsay. Her explosion.

  Is this what Kale dreams about? He told me Lindsay was so close to blowing up four months ago. It was such a scary moment in his life.

  Kale’s right beneath her, his hand stretched up. “Lindsay,” he says. “Fight it. Fight it with all your might.”

  She doesn’t seem to hear him, only shouts out in pain.

  “You can do it, Lindsay,” I call, not sure she’ll hear me, either.

  “Stretch.” Kale’s voice is high-pitched. “Do something. She’s gonna—she’s gonna die!”

  I’m frozen. Got no clue what to say or do. But I’ll try. I step closer to Lindsay. The fire is so powerful I’m sure it’ll melt my face. I fly back.

  “I love you, Lindsay,” Kale says. “I care about you so much. You have so many people who care.”

  I raise my hand. “I care!”

  “Fight it. Take control,” Kale urges.

  “I can’t!” She yells so loud I get deaf for a second. The fire’s expanding, getting more intense.

  Oh, no. She’s gonna—

  I jump on top of Kale and we crash to the ground. My body stretches out to protect him.

  Her shouts are really loud now, like she’s being torn from the inside. I lower my head to the ground. This is it.

  Another screech and I feel myself tumble in the air. Kale’s hand is clutched tightly around my arm as we’re shot toward space. The explosion is so strong that we’re zooming fast. I can’t see anything around me, only fire.

  We’re spinning and tumbling like we’re on a roller coaster. Sounds come from Earth…it’s like an earthquake times a hundred. I’ve never heard anything like it. Earth’s exploding. That’s all I know, and when I’m done spinning, I actually see it. Fragments of our planet are dispersed all over space. The spot where Earth was is empty. It’s really…it’s really gone.

  Kale’s eyes bug out of their sockets. His face is white, probably the same shade as mine. I can hardly breathe. Why did we survive?

  Right, it’s Kale’s dream. They never make sense.

  We’re floating around in space. Sweeping our hands around like we’re treading in water.

  Kale grabs his head. “It’s gone. She…she blew it up. Oh, man. I can’t believe I failed.”

  “Kale—” I reach to pat his shoulder, but he slaps me off.

  “Why did they send me on this assignment? Why me? Clearly I can’t do anything right!”

  “Kale—”

  “Everyone’s dead!” He whips his head around the area. “Why are we alive? What the hell?!” He’s yelling and muttering and moving around so fast.

  I reach for his arm again. He slams his palm against my chest, shoving me so hard I roll like a ball. I don’t know where I’m going, only that I’m getting farther and farther away from him.

  “SCREW THIS!” he yells from the distance.

  I’m still tumbling. All I see is black, but it’s getting fuzzy. The shouts from Kale grow fainter and fainter.

  My eyes shoot open. The first thing I see is X on the floor, leaning on the wall, his head drooping. Kale’s staring ahead, his mouth and eyes wide. His gaze slowly moves to me. “Did you see that?” His voice is hoarse.

  X shifts on the floor. “You guys okay?”

  Kale and I exchange a glance. He scans his body. It’s trembling. “F-fine. Stretch?”

  “I’m okay. Freaked, but okay.”

  “What happened?” X asks. “Did you enter his dream?”

  I turn to Kale. “Lindsay?”

  He nods.

  X’s eyebrows scrunch. “What about her?”

  Kale’s too shaken up to talk about it. I am, too, but probably not as much as him. I tell X everything. Kale’s body seems to relax a bit, but he’s still whiter than his T-shirt.

  The room gets silent.

  I pat Kale’s arm. “It’s okay. Was just a dream. Sorry I saw that.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “Was this the first time you dreamed of this?” X asks.

  He shakes his head. Breathes in and out. “I dream about her explosion all the time, but she’s never actually destroyed Earth.” He looks from me to X. “You think it means she’ll blow up again?”

  “I don’t think so,” X says. “I’m pretty sure it was just a dream.” He gives him a small, encouraging smile.

  Kale twists his mouth. “Yeah, probably.” His gaze goes to me. “So now we know for sure that you can enter dreams.”

  “I don’t want it,” I say. “It makes me feel dirty. Dreams are, like, the most private things ever. I can’t just drop by whenever I want.”

  “No one blames you,” X says. “Like any power, you’ll need to control it.”

  “Yeah, and I’ll tell Furball about it tomorrow and hopefully she won’t hate me.”

  “She’d never hate you.”

  I hope so.

  We climb into our beds to get some sleep. I roll onto my stomach, my left side, then my right. I crush my pillow under my head. Nothing’s working. Kale and X are shifting in their beds, too. I guess there’s so much going on that none of us can fall asleep.

  Kale sits up. “Okay, guys. We’ve got to figure out a way to remove Vlayne’s hold on the humans.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Interrogating that Blade was a bust. If only we had someone working undercover in the…oh, dude. Stealth!”

  “What?” they both say.

  I bounce on my bed and turn on the light. “Maybe I can enter her dream and ask her where the Blades’ headquarters is. Assuming she wants to help…”

  X’s jaw clenches and his eyes fill with pain. But he shakes it o
ff. “It seems that when you talk to the person whose dream you’re in, they’re fully aware and can respond. Like you’re having a real conversation. That must be how Furball knew to come here.”

  “And it felt like a real convo for me, too,” Kale says.

  “So if Stretch were to enter Stealth’s dream,” X says. “She’d be fully aware and tell us their location.” He gets up and paces. “There’s just one problem. Vlayne has a hold on Stealth’s mind. You wouldn’t be able to get in.”

  Oh, yeah. My shoulders droop.

  Kale jumps up. “No, no. I had a telepathic block on my mind. Stretch passed through it.”

  We all gape at each other.

  “Are you saying…you’re saying I can bypass telepathic blocks? Maybe telepathic blocks don’t work when you sleep.”

  “They work all right.”

  We stare at each other.

  “I…” I swallow. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to go into Stealth’s dream. Don’t want Vlayne to catch me.”

  Kale frowns.

  “There’s another thing we need to consider,” X says. “Kale, when you woke up you remembered clearly what happened in your dream about Lindsay. You remembered Stretch was there. Furball remembers clearly, too, or else she wouldn’t be here.”

  “So Stealth will remember her dream, and Vlayne will read it in her mind. We can’t risk our lives or Stealth’s.” Kale’s body sags. But then it perks up and he smiles mischievously. “Unless I erase her thoughts before she wakes up.”

  “What?!” I sputter.

  “If I can telepathically connect us all, maybe we can come with you, Stretch, when you enter Stealth’s dream. That way, she’ll see X and trust us. And when you feel you’re about to be thrown out, I’ll erase the dream from her mind, which would erase the conversation. Vlayne wouldn’t read it.”

  “Good idea,” X says.

  I stare at them. I can’t believe they’re seriously considering this. “You know we’ve got no proof this will work.”

  Kale shrugs. “We’ll practice on my dad.”

  “Right. Like Samson will let us do this.”

  X crosses his arms over his chest. “The normies are going to get worse and worse. I don’t think he has many options. But you’re right. He won’t let us get involved. We do it without telling him. We’ll go into his dream and Kale will erase his memory of it. Then we’ll wake him up and ask him if he had a dream about us. If he doesn’t, that means the memory is gone.” His eyes get dark. “I’m willing to risk my life to protect the humans. It’s what my mother wanted. She risked her life for it. So will I.”

  Kale and I exchange a glance. “I’m in,” he says.

  I swallow. “You know we’d be risking the lives of everyone here, right? If Vlayne finds out, she’ll come after the surviving Keepers.”

  “I know. That’s why we’re going to test it on my dad.”

  “What if you can’t erase his memory?” I say. “He’ll be pissed when he wakes up.”

  Kale shrugs. “At least we’re trying.”

  We lie on our beds and Kale connects our minds. If this works, they’ll be with me all the time and will be able to see and feel everything inside the dream like they’re real. I really hope this works.

  “Wait,” I say. “The only way we can do this is if we fall asleep at the same time.”

  Kale nods. “You’re right. I guess I’ll have to control us to go to sleep at once.”

  X and I exchange a glance. He shrugs. I say, “Cool.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I’m thrown into a black room. I land hard on my butt, on the cold, stone floor. No one’s around, other than Kale and X, who lie beside me. They sit up, rubbing their arms and heads.

  “Where are we?” Kale asks.

  “Your dad’s dream, I guess.”

  It’s dark and spooky, with ghosts and skeletons roaming around. Someone laughs evilly. The ghosts are closing in on us.

  “What the hell is this place?” Kale says.

  The laughing gets louder.

  “Boys?” a voice says from behind us. The sounds disappear. A chill passes over me. I turn around. Samson stands there. He looks around, then back at us. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hi, Dad,” Kale says. He turns to X and me. “It worked. We’re in.”

  “Excuse me?” Samson says. “How did you get here?”

  The guys and I exchange glances. What do we say?

  “Oh, you know,” Kale says. “Just dropped by.”

  Samson narrows his eyes. “What’s going on, Kale?”

  He throws his hands up. “Fine, Stretch can go into dreams.”

  Samson raises his eyebrows at me. “Is this true?”

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “The three of you need to get out of here.”

  Kale steps forward. “What is this place?”

  Samson gestures around at the ghosts moving toward us. “This is where I go when I sleep.”

  “Oh. Freaky.”

  “Concerns and fears of a leader,” Samson says. “They won’t hurt you, but you shouldn’t be here.”

  “I don’t know how to leave on my own,” I tell him. “The person usually wakes up.”

  Samson pats my shoulder. “We don’t have time to practice your new ability right now. I’ll force myself to wake up.” His face turns stern. “I don’t want the three of you invading my dream again, understood?”

  “Sure, Dad. Sorry.”

  The place gets blurry. Kale shuts his eyes and clutches the sides of his head.

  A second later, we’re flying toward the roof. We don’t crash through it—the ceiling disappears just as we’re about to hit it. We fall on the floor, and my eyes pop open. I’m back in my room. Kale and X are awake, too.

  Kale shivers. “I can’t believe my dad dreams about that.”

  “Yeah.” I shiver, too.

  X is the only one who’s composed. “Did you erase the memory?”

  “Yep. We need to talk to him and see if he remembers the dream.”

  X and I follow Kale down the hall toward our leaders’ bedroom.

  “Hey,” I say. “If you’re able to erase your dad’s thoughts, does that mean you can read his mind? Learn all the League’s secrets?”

  “Nope. I couldn’t access any of his thoughts or memories, other than the dream one. That’s why I was able to erase it.”

  “Oh.”

  X and I decide to stay behind the wall while Kale walks up to his parents’ room. It’d be suspicious if all three of us talk to him. We’re close enough to hear.

  After clearing his throat, Kale knocks on the door. It takes a few more before Samson says in a sleepy voice, “Yes?”

  “It’s me, Dad. Can I ask you something?”

  A few seconds later, Samson opens the door. “What is it?” he asks. “And what are you doing up at this hour?” He’s not mentioning the dream. Does that mean Kale was successful in erasing it?

  Kale shifts to his other foot. He examines his dad’s face, then laughs sheepishly. “Oh, I guess it was a dream.”

  “What was?”

  “Well, uh, we were in the Tower. Me, the guys, and you. Only us. Now I realize it really was a dream.”

  Samson eyes him slowly.

  “I woke the guys to see if it was real, but it wasn’t. Did you have a dream like that? Of us?”

  “No, I had no such dream.” Samson’s eyes narrow a bit. “Kale, what’s this about?” Oh, man. He’s onto him.

  “So you didn’t dream about us?” Kale asks.

  “Kale…”

  He backs up. “Was just a dream. Sorry for waking you up. That was really stupid—dreaming about the Tower like we’re ever going back home.” He forces a smile. “Never mind. Sorry. Go back to sleep.”

  He turns around and dashes down the hall to us.

  “You think he suspects anything?” I ask.

  Kale huffs as we enter our room. “Probably.”

  “The important thing is
that it worked,” X says, sitting down on his bed. “And now we know we can enter Stealth’s dream and can erase her memory.”

  “My dad will tell my mom and she might check up on us now,” Kale says. “You know, read our minds and stuff to try to figure out what we’re up to. I’ll hide our thoughts so she won’t read what we’re doing.”

  “You sure you can do that?” I ask.

  “Yep. I hid everything from my mom when Stealth went undercover.”

  “Oh, okay.” This is one of those times where I feel left out. I wish I was part of it, instead of being dead.

  Kale touches my head and shuts his eyes. I don’t feel any different. He does the same to X. “Done.”

  “I feel kind of bad,” I say. “That we did that to Samson and that we’re keeping secrets.”

  Kale sighs, plopping down next to me. “Yeah, but we’re doing it for a good cause.”

  “I know. Maybe we should tell him about it?”

  X shakes his head. “If they find out we’re going into Stealth’s dream, they’ll try to stop us.”

  I know he’s right. This might be our only shot at finding out how to tear down Vlayne’s hold on the humans.

  “Are we ready?” Kale asks.

  “I—guess so.”

  X hasn’t said much. He must be nervous to see Stealth. “You okay, X?” I ask.

  “Fine.”

  “Okay.” Kale peers at the clock. “Three in the morning. She should be sleeping.”

  I hope she won’t be pissed to see us.

  We lie down. I shut my eyes tight. Kale gives me a few minutes to think about Stealth before he controls us to sleep. I don’t know her, but the guys have told me a lot, and she was responsible for my resurrection. I focus on that.

  We fall down the black hole. Even though he’s been through this already, Kale has a creeped-out look on his face. I get what he feels—I’m still not over it, either. X seems indifferent, but I know he’s covering up his real feelings. I have to remember to keep my thoughts together so we don’t get lost or fall apart. The three of us must remain together at all times. Especially Kale. Without him, we won’t be able to erase Stealth’s memories and we’ll be screwed.

  We land on something hard. Lifting my head, I look around. It’s daylight. We’re on some sort of high cliff with a vast ocean below. Grass is all around us. A girl is sitting on the ground. Long white hair like Vlayne. Stealth.