Waking the Dreamer (Transhuman)

by Andy Kaiser

  “You were. You are.”

  I spread my hands in front of me and shook my head. “Did I do the wrong thing? You said you needed help. You said someone else was trapped here. When Zack and I found you, you're trapped here too! What's going on, Eena? What is this place? What is Talia doing to you?”

  She told me.

  Chapter 27

  “I'm only fourteen. But with everything that's happened to me, it's seemed way longer than that.”

  She had sat back down on the bed and was staring at the floor. Brown hair hung down to frame her face as she stared at nothing. I sat next to her on the bed and listened.

  “I don't remember much of my childhood. Something happened to my memory. It's really blurry. Like when I think about the past, I only get impressions. Ideas. Quick pictures or flashes. I do remember Talia, though. She's always been with me, as far back as I can remember. Kind of like a mix between a teacher and a guard.”

  “You're talking about her like she's nice.”

  She shook her head. “She's not. Every time she talks to me, it creeps me out. Look at her eyes and you'll see what she really thinks about you. Like she's talking to you just because she has to. Like you're not really a person. She looks at you like you're dead. She and I are the only two people here now, and that makes it worse.”

  I thought about the room upstairs filled with bones and skulls. Was that the way Talia saw people? Maybe anyone who studied skeletons saw everyone that way – they saw the bones inside, without realizing the bones made up a person.

  “One of my first memories was Talia calling my name. 'Eee-naah, Eee-naah.' She said it really weird, all long and drawn out like that. I remember her laughing after she said it. I never understood why.

  “As I got older, I lived in this room – this place.” She shrugged at the building around us. “I figured out the dreaming on my own. I also figured out how to use it to escape.”

  “Escape? So when you first met me-”

  “Yeah. I'm allowed to leave the room for exercise. Or at least I was until now. I took off. I headed to the lake, then I talked to you and headed back here. I got back in before Talia knew I was gone. The next night, I found out how to open the door with dreaming. I'd been practicing for a while, but finally figured out how to rotate the door lock from the inside. I did it again tonight. That's when Talia saw I'd escaped.”

  “Why did you even stop to meet me?"

  “I wanted to escape, but I knew that unless I had help, unless I knew more about what was around me, Talia would take me down.”

  “How do you know? If you got out, couldn't you just run?”

  “Not far. I know because she's caught me before. Like it was easy for her.” Her eyes were glazed over, then she stared hard at me. “It was bad.”

  She took a moment, then shook her head firmly.

  “When I leave again, it has to be without Talia seeing or knowing what happened for a long time. If she knows I just left, she will catch me. She's too fast. The next time I run, it has to be for good.”

  “That's why you need me?”

  She nodded. “I need your help to get out and stay out. Tyler, you're special. Like me. We both have the dreaming power. Twice as much strength will give us what we need to escape and keep Talia from catching us. I hope.”

  “You hope?”

  “There's something else, too.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “Every once in a while, I see Talia with a small box – you can carry it in one hand – but whatever's in it is really important. I know for sure it has something to do with our power. With the dreaming. The one time I saw it opened was when she was experimenting on-” She paused. “On... something else. Before we escape, we have to get it. If she's going to come after me, I want something first. Something we could use to find out more about this place.”

  I wished then I had asked more questions. I should've asked what she knew already, more about why that little box was so important. I should've realized that stealing something from Talia might not be the best way to keep her away from us. But there was too much to process and I was getting lost in the flood of everything that was happening and what we still had to do.

  I sat and thought. I sure couldn't figure out what had happened to Eena, but I knew we had to get her out of there. Though one thing she'd said bothered me.

  “Eena, you said you were fourteen.”

  “Right.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She looked at me, confused.

  “You really do look older than that,” I continued. “I mean, you're shorter than I am, but you act older. Your face looks older. Your-” I took a moment to swallow. I looked away from her. “Your body seems older. If I had to guess, you're like sixteen, seventeen years old. Older than Zack.”

  Her laughter took me by surprise. It was shocked laughter, the only response some people had when hearing an idea that was completely insane.

  “No,” she said. She wiped her eyes and giggled. “I'm not sixteen or seventeen years.”

  “Tyler, I'm only fourteen. Fourteen months.”

  Chapter 28

  I had no chance to respond. With a metallic clang, Talia slammed open the door to Eena's room. It was a heavy metal door, and she opened it like it was nothing. She approached us. Eena shrank away from her and scrambled farther back on the bed.

  Talia glared at me and I met her eyes. Eena was right - Talia was angry for sure, but the most creepy part about her was her stare. There was no connection, no interaction. Her gaze dissected me, piece by piece, until I felt like nothing. She didn't seem to register I was human. I didn't matter to her at all.

  “We need to have a talk,” she said to me. Then she looked hard at Eena. “All of us.”

  She turned and stalked out of the room. She left the door open. Eena and I stared at each other.

  “Come on.” Talia commanded loudly, already halfway down the hallway. We left N3 and followed.

  I had to process what Eena had just told me. There was no way she was fourteen months old. Not possible. She'd be a drooling baby. She wouldn't be able to talk. Or walk. She wouldn't be Eena.

  It occurred to me now would be our chance. Eena and I could break for it and run. Knock down Talia, push her aside like before and sprint away like Zack had. I glanced sideways at Eena as we walked down the hallway. She stared down at the floor. She looked like a different person.

  Eena didn't have the attitude and strength I'd seen before. She was submissive. Quiet. Sad. She was dressed in the same dark clothes from earlier in the night, but had bare feet. Even if I could get away, Eena probably couldn't because she wouldn't be able to get very far or move as fast without shoes. Not through the forest. I definitely wasn't going to try anything without Eena, so I kept quiet and waited for my chance.

  Talia led us up the stairs, away from the jail cells, back to the ground floor. I could see the building's main doors on the other side of the hallway. I hoped Talia was leading us outside, but no luck. She turned into the first room next to the stairs and we entered.

  It was an office. Talia sat in the only chair behind a wide L-shaped desk made of dark metal. Off to her side, along the long side of the L, was a matrix of six huge monitors, a row of three with another row above the first. Each one contained a lot of complicated-looking readouts and videos. I saw scrolling graphics, a lot of text and some pictures that might've been microscope views of little blobs moving around. I only had a moment before Talia glanced at them and all the monitors turned off.

  After we entered the room, I caught Eena staring at something on the corner of Talia's desk.

  It was a small box. It looked like aluminum or some other shiny metal. It had been used a lot – small dents and scratches marred the smooth, plain surface - but it also looked safe from accidental opening. In fact, I couldn't even tell how to open it. There was a small black glass or metal strip along the top of the box, just underneath its thick plastic handle.

  This must be what
Eena told me about, the box that was so important to Talia. The box Eena wanted us to take.

  Talia stared at us, giving us both the dead stare I still hadn't gotten used to. Her eyes had looked gray in the light of the parking lot, but now I saw they were light blue, so pale they almost appeared to glow. She glanced at a monitor. It rotated toward us and flickered on. A second later a video started.

  Eena appeared on the screen. Only she looked very, very different.

  “Eena,” Talia said. I shivered from the venom dripping from her voice. “How would you like to see your birth?”

  Chapter 29

  The video on Talia's monitor had a date and time code counting on the lower left of the screen. I stared numbly at it for a moment, then I did the math and realized: The video was recorded fourteen months ago.

  Eena was there. Only it wasn't her. Something was very wrong. She was almost bald. She had hair on her head, but not the long brown hair she had now. It was short peach-fuzz, like the time I'd gotten a haircut way too short and had to go to school with people able to see my skull through my super-thinned hair. Her hair was like that, only softer, like it had recently started growing.

  All of her exposed skin was really puffy and pale. Like unhealthy, never-saw-sunlight white. The expression on her face was scary. This video wasn't about the self-confident, assured girl who I'd met over the last couple days. This was someone else, a frightened little kid, dressed in a white hospital gown, who had no idea what was going on.

  Talia's voice spoke on the video, flat and monotone.

  “Video fifty-nine of sequence thirty-eight. Experimenter Talia Dunning. Subject has received the final set of knowledge uploads. We brought her to consciousness. She should be able to interact and start learning. Time to show her the world.”

  There was no love here. It was an emotionless monotone, like she did this every day and was just trying to get through it.

  On screen, Eena blinked and wavered, her movements confused and slow. She turned her head, but she couldn't control her muscles - her head flopped down on her chest.

  I heard the on-video Talia sigh in irritation. Her hand reached into the video, grabbed Eena by the chin and raised her head for her.

  The girl on the screen kept her head up and shakily examined the room. She looked briefly into the camera lens and seemed to have no idea what it was or what it meant.

  Something off-camera caught her attention. She looked at something out of the camera's view. She stared at it, and her vacant stare hardened and focused.

  “Eeeee.” She said. "Aaaah."

  It was a throaty noise, like someone talking for the first time, trying out vocal cords and a tongue that hadn't been used before. Eena and I listened to it, frozen in shock, because while it was childlike, raw, almost broken, it was still definitely Eena’s voice.

  On the screen, Eena ground her teeth together. She tried to speak again.

  “Eeee-naaah... Eeee-naaah...”

  The camera perspective moved and swung to point at what Eena was looking at.

  It was the door to her prison room.

  Seen from the opposite side, the N3 label on the door's window appeared in reverse. It read:

  “How cute,” Talia's onscreen voice said, with no sense of humor. “Looks like we need to practice our reading.”

  “Eeeena,” Eena said. “Eena.” The camera shifted back to point at her face. She still stared at the door, at the reversed label, at the letters she was trying so hard to read and pronounce.

  “Interesting,” Talia said. “Subject N3 thinks she has a name. Eee-naah.” She laughed. It was an ugly sound.

  I looked at Eena now, the girl who I'd thought I knew. I couldn't have been more wrong. I knew absolutely nothing about her.

  My world had changed, but hers had become a nightmare.

  Eena was devastated. She stared at the screen even after the video stopped. The image hung frozen on the recently “born” Eena as she looked back up at the camera. The expression was one of blank incomprehension, like what you see in a baby barely able to sit up on its own, or like an animal taking in the world but understanding nothing. On Eena's face, at an age that should be able to know and comprehend, the expression was frightening.

  Eena stared at her younger onscreen self. I watched her carefully. She was breathing with fast, shallow breaths. Apart from that, she didn't move, though a tear slid a wet line down her face.

  The video disappeared and the screen went dark.

  “Now,” Talia said, sounding angrier than before. “Let me tell you why.”

  Chapter 30

  “I'm going to tell you a secret, one so hidden that much of this isn't even written down.”

  Talia spoke to me, completely ignoring Eena's grief. Her eyes met mine and the force of her stare caused me to flinch back.

  “This will be your one chance. Since you've known her, this child who named herself 'Eena' has done nothing but lie to you. You could work with me and help the girl at the same time. We would fix her. The girl,” she didn't even look at Eena, “is broken. A failed experiment that we couldn't contain. Sometimes we weren't paying attention and she escaped. So we had to tighten our security and change the way we operated. We reinforced her containment room, since a young, uncontrolled mind can cause much damage to equipment, the environment and other people. We moved our labs.” She gestured around her. “The seclusion of a heavy forest is far better than a city for managing runaway assets.”

  The way she spoke was so cold. So inhuman.

  “Eena didn't lie to me,” I said. “Not with the important stuff.”

  Talia smiled. It was a frightening, ugly look.

  “She lied to you over and over again, because if she had told the truth you would've called the police. She pretended to be the princess in distress. She used you and tricked you into doing something illegal. Nothing more.”

  Talia's accusation hit hard. There were mountains of questions about Eena. I realized that whatever I thought about Talia, she was right – Eena had been lying to me.

  Eena had told me that someone else was trapped here besides her. There wasn't. She had said earlier that it was just Talia and her in the building. She'd lied. She'd told Zack and me about “Camp Nyhill”, which had never existed. She'd lied. And how did Eena know my name? Had she been spying on me, watching me since my family arrived at Lone Wolf Lodge, just waiting for stupid, gullible Tyler Ford to show his face? She had lied.

  “Let me ask you a question,” Talia said. “Where did you get that rash on your back?”

  “My-” I reached behind me and felt the small, tender lump at the lower center of my back. I had no idea how Talia knew about it or even cared.

  Unless it wasn't a bug bite, like Dr. Imani had said.

  Talia reached into her desk and pulled out a small, flat, plastic square. One side was blue. The other was white.

  “This is a jet injector. It's a small pad containing a liquid. You press the pad onto your body, and tiny pressurized jets force the liquid through your skin. No needles. You feel no pain like a normal injection. It allows us to inject what we need, often without the patient knowing.”

  Talia glared once at Eena, then back at me.

  “What our little runaway did was to infect you with one of these on your first meeting. The serum she injected was one of Nyhill Industries' prototype projects. It's untested and unsafe and you are in danger. I don't want you to get sick.”

  She held the jet injector out to me.

  “I'd like you to put this on your skin. Blue side down. Press down hard on the pad. That will inject you with an antidote. The infection that this girl gave you will be cured within minutes.”

  I stared at the pad dangling from Talia's fingers. She looked at me expectantly.

  I couldn't believe it. Eena had injected me with something, and that gave me the dreaming power? It meant that Eena hadn't needed me. She would've talked to anyone and given them the power and used them just the same. I wasn't
special. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time.

  My fear was evaporating. I was getting mad.

  “Wake up, Tyler Ford. This girl doesn't know what she's doing. She doesn't even know her own name.”

  Her name.Eena.

  That was the idea that snapped me back to reality. It made me realize that yes, Eena didn't know her name, but it was because of Talia, because of this lab, because of whatever insanity Nyhill Industries performed on Eena. She had reasons for doing what she did. She was trying to run and escape. She needed to be her own person. She needed to be free.

  Talia shouldn't have said that.

  Eena was a failed experiment? Fine. But there was one point where Talia would never change my mind, one solidifying truth that sharpened my resolve. No matter what had happened, no matter how I got here, Eena needed my help and I had the chance to free her.

  I took the plastic pad from Talia's hand and stared at it. I faced it blue side down.

  Talia smiled.

  “Good,” she said. “Now, just-”

  I reached across and grabbed her wrist and slammed her hand down on the cold of the desk. I slapped the pad on Talia's palm and pushed hard, switching to use both hands. I heard a brief, quiet hiss.

  Talia screamed. Her arm muscles flexed. Veins and tendons appeared suddenly and bulged like a bodybuilder's. She was incredibly strong. Though I had my weight on her, she started to lift me off the floor with just her one arm.

  She looked at me and her eyes narrowed. I felt an invisible punch. It hit me over the entire front of my body. It threw me across the room and slammed me against the wall.

  “Tyler!” Eena was at my side instantly.

  She helped pull me to my feet.

  Talia frantically pawed through her desk drawer and came up with another jet injector. Panting, her eyes glazed, she slapped it against her neck and I again heard the quiet hiss.