Dreams of the Damned

by Lindsey Sparks

  An alarm blared suddenly, followed by the distinct sound of one of the guards knocking on the outside of the ship.

  “I think they’ve found us,” my mom said from beside me, crouching slightly to peer out through the windshield.

  Several guards searching nearby areas started heading our way.

  My mom glanced over her shoulder at Hades. “Might want to get this thing in the air . . .”

  Hades strode forward and slid into his seat in front of the controls. With the flip of a switch, he started the engine, and within seconds, we were in the air, leaving behind four very confused UN guards, blinking in the wind created by our liftoff.

  10

  I sat cross-legged on the floor in the aft of the Argo, Meg seated directly in front of me. Cloaked in invisibility, the ship took up the eastern end of the parking lot nearest our mark on the CERN campus, the Atlantea Project building. The stone in Meg’s regulator glowed a brilliant amethyst to mine’s electric blue, and the channels running the length of our hoplon suits matched the colors of our psychic energy.

  Meg’s eyes were closed, and her face was a mask of concentration as she focused on our bond and on sensing what I was doing.

  With a thought and a focused surge of psychic energy, I activated my hoplon suit’s stealth mode, making myself invisible to the naked eye.

  The muscles in Meg’s face tensed, and the next moment, she too blinked out of sight.

  I clapped my hands together, squealing with delight as I dropped out of stealth mode and became visible again. “You did it!” I beamed at the younger psychic as she winked back into sight.

  Meg’s eyes were alight with excitement, and her grin mirrored mine. She was a talented psychic warrior but learning to operate the hoplon suit’s more advanced features was proving to be a challenge, even for her. It had taken two hours of focus and failed attempts, but finally, she could control the suit’s stealth capabilities. Not that the time lost to this lesson mattered all that much.

  We had to wait until nightfall to infiltrate the Atlantea Project building anyway, so Meg could assist. Her lethal case of solar urticaria meant she was a nighttime-only operative. And as the only other psychic on our team, she was essential to our success on this mission. Hades had already promised to reverse the genetic marker causing her toxic sunlight allergy as soon as we got the Alpha site up and running, but until then, she had to stay indoors during the daylight hours. It was a massive weakness for such a powerful ally.

  “Just remember,” I warned her, “maintaining the illusion of invisibility for too long will drain your reserves of psychic energy, so only use it when absolutely necessary. For this mission, as soon as the cameras and the security system are down, drop the illusion. There’s a good chance you’ll need to save your energy for a battle.” I reached for her hand, squeezing her fingers. “We can’t fail, tonight. It’s do or die.”

  Meg nodded. “I understand,” she said solemnly.

  That we wanted the chaos stone was no secret, and the UN had already sent over extra security to guard the building. Heavily armed guards now manned the entrance and patrolled around the building. I could sense their minds—dozens of them, muted by distance but there, nonetheless. Stunning them wouldn’t be an option, not with the chaos stone so close. A wayward blast of psychic energy could initiate a catastrophic chain reaction. If we were caught in there, we would need to be careful and a little creative about the way we fought.

  Adrenaline surging as I anticipated the coming mission, I stood, then offered a hand to Meg and pulled her up to her feet.

  With a faint hum, the ship’s loading ramp began to lower, and we both looked toward the growing opening. The sound of footsteps signaled Fiona’s approach from further in the ship. Her mind throbbed with excitement, and her surface thoughts told me she couldn’t wait to get inside the Atlantea Project building and snoop around.

  The CERN complex was like a college campus, with numerous buildings sprawled across a nearly one-square-mile area. The organization mainly focused on particle physics, with buildings devoted to studying this or that aspect of the field, along with seventeen miles of underground tunnels making up the world’s largest particle accelerator, but they also dabbled in the computer sciences and were largely responsible for the invention of the World Wide Web. It wasn’t hyperbole to say they had changed the world. Or to say that if we didn’t steal the world’s first truly renewable power source—the chaos stone—their greatest achievement would end the world, once and for all.

  As the loading ramp lowered, our target came into view. The Atlantea Project building was shaped like a cube, the exterior almost entirely composed of smokey glass. The windows gleamed in the rising moonlight, making the building look like a giant block of obsidian.

  The external security measures had been reinforced by UN guards, but the internal security was the real problem. According to Fiona and Meg’s research, there wasn’t an inch of the interior that wasn’t covered by cameras and motion sensors, and each lab within the building had restricted access controlled by biometric-coded key cards, cards that would only work when handled by their designated owners. And to make matters worse, the central lab where we wagered the chaos stone was being held, was rigged to lock down if the security system or personnel suspected anything hinky.

  I could trick the key cards into working with a little psychic mojo, and I could make the security personnel see whatever I wanted them to see when they looked at us, but if anyone was monitoring the cameras, they would spot us—even Meg and me in stealth mode. Brute force wouldn’t help us here. This job required finesse, which wasn’t exactly one of my strong suits.

  When the loading ramp touched asphalt, my mom boarded the ship, sporting a pristine new lab coat she hadn’t been wearing when she’d left fifteen minutes earlier. Whatever labels my mom liked to assign herself—archaeologist, treasure hunter, explorer—there was one label that fit her best: thief. Her contribution to the great chaos stone heist was to steal what we needed to sneak Fiona into the building. Hades might have been the expert when it came to Olympian tech, but Fiona outshone him in every possible way when it came to human technologies. We would need her in there, and while I could alter the perception of others to make them see her differently, I couldn’t make her disappear completely. For her to get into the building, she needed a disguise and credentials. And it was my mom’s job to get the things we would need to make that happen.

  My mom reached for my arm as she passed me, giving me a gentle squeeze, then handed her prize—one of the almost infallible key cards—to Fiona. “Like taking candy from a baby,” she proclaimed, a wry smile twisting her lips. “Caught him on his way to his car.”

  I moved closer to Fiona, craning my neck to get a look at the key card. The photo on the front displayed the face of a chubby, balding, olive-skinned man: Dr. Alejandro Castillo, according to the bold text typed below the photo.

  “A woman would have been easier,” I said, glancing up from the key card to meet my mom’s eyes. “Less work to trick their minds into believing the disguise.”

  Her smile wilted as she shrugged out of the lab coat.

  Fiona shook her head. “No, this is perfect,” she countered. She accepted the lab coat when my mom handed it to her, slipping first one arm in, then the other. “Dr. Castillo is one of the Atlantea Project leads.” Fiona clipped the key card onto the breast pocket of the lab coat. “He has top-level clearance,” she went on. “This badge will give us access to every inch of that place.” She pointed to me. “And, he’s a little guy—rounder, but not much taller than me, so that ought to help with the illusion.”

  She pulled out her phone and swiped through some pictures before holding it out to me, showing me a full-body shot of Dr. Castillo standing beside some colleagues. Either they were all giants, or he really was a shorty.

  Fiona looked from me to Meg and back. “It’ll help, right? At least a little?”

  For long seconds, I studied the image
of Dr. Castillo, cataloging as many details as possible. Finally, I sighed, mentally preparing for the additional strain this illusion would put on my psychic abilities to alter Fiona’s appearance so drastically while maintaining my own relative invisibility. “Alright,” I said, “but try to walk like this guy would walk. That'll make the illusion more believable.”

  Fiona adjusted her lab coat by the lapels, widening her stance and slouching a little. “How’s this?”

  I frowned, assessing her posture and briefly overlaying a rough illusion of Dr. Castillo in her place. “Not bad,” I admitted. “And if you can help it, don't talk. I don't know what his voice sounds like, so the best I can do is guess. If those guards know him . . .”

  “No talking,” Fiona said with a nod. “Got it.”

  The others had gathered around us in the back of the ship as we discussed the disguise. Now that my mom was back and we had what we needed, it was go time.

  I looked around, scanning the faces of all the people I loved. I had to pull this off—for them and their world. I never knew my homeworld, thanks to the Tsakali, but I’d be damned if I let my mom, Raiden, and the others lose theirs.

  Each of them nodded as my eyes met theirs. Whatever happened, we were in this together.

  I looked at Hades last. “If something goes wrong in there, you get them out of here.”

  He stared at me for a long moment. “I believe I speak for everyone when I say that we will not abandon you.”

  A quick glance at Raiden and his set jaw, at my mom and her quirked eyebrow, at Emi and her crossed arms, told me it was hopeless to argue.

  I blew out a breath. “Great. No pressure.”

  Raiden pushed through the gap between my mom and Emi and wrapped his arms around me, holding me tight against him. His concern seeped into me, but so did his certainty that I would succeed. He tucked my head under his chin and held me snug and tight, and I clung to him. For so long, he had been my crutch, my safety net. This was my first big mission without him.

  “You got this,” Raiden said, his voice a low rumble. “Don’t overthink it. In and out, and then we’re gone.” He gave me one last squeeze, then released me.

  I searched his eyes, seeing nothing but his utter conviction that I could do this—without him. Since the merging of my past and present selves, I had been thinking of Raiden as a reminder of how weak I had let myself become in this lifetime. But I could see now that I had been wrong. He believed in me, had always believed in me, far more than I did. Back when I was just Cora, his belief in me had given me the confidence I had needed to venture out into the world and save my mom. Hades was right: my loved ones weren’t a weakness at all. They made me stronger, each in their own way.

  Holding my head high, I turned my back to Raiden and started down the loading ramp, Meg and Fiona falling in step behind me. I paused at the foot of the ramp, safe within the veil of the ship’s cloak, taking a moment to activate my hoplon suit’s stealth mode. Through our bond, I could sense Meg doing the same.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Fiona, concentrating on her appearance. In a blink, a far more detailed illusion of Dr. Castillo than I had created earlier replaced her.

  “It’s done,” I told her. “Let’s get moving. The longer we have Dr. Castillo’s key card, the more likely he is to notice it’s missing.”

  Meg and I waited for Fiona to take the lead, then flanked her as we started across the parking lot toward the boxy building looming ahead. We passed several pairs of patrolling guards, but they must have recognized Fiona’s disguise as the man who had left the building just a short time ago because all they did was nod and continue on their way.

  The guards at the door watched Fiona as she held her key card up to the reader. I stared at the key card, sending the thinnest threads of psychic energy into the deceptively complex device to trick its internal mechanism into activating. The card reader beeped a cheerful note, and the yellow light at the top of the reader blinked to green. The door lock disengaged with a click, and the guard to the right of the door pulled it open.

  Fiona nodded to the guard as she entered the building, Meg and I close on her heels.

  Not quite a dozen paces into the lobby, our way was blocked by a standing metal detector and a security desk manned by another guard—this one looking like he wasn’t on loan from the UN and actually belonged here, according to the CERN logo embroidered over his name on his breast pocket.

  Meg and I silently slipped around the metal detector while Fiona stopped at the desk and flashed her key card to the guard.

  “Forget something, Dr. Castillo?” the guard asked, his voice carrying a heavy French accent. He scanned the key card with a hand-held card reader. From the guard’s mind, I sensed this happened often with Dr. Castillo.

  Breath held, I turned to watch the interaction between Fiona and the guard. I formed a telepathic connection with Fiona’s mind and reminded her not to speak.

  Looking slightly uncomfortable, Fiona laughed silently and shrugged one shoulder.

  “Try to be quick,” the guard told Fiona. “We're expecting some trouble tonight.”

  Fiona made a good show of looking alarmed and nodded hurriedly. She rushed through the metal detector, and I followed her down the main hallway toward a set of reinforced double doors. The sign over the doors read LABORATORY 1.

  Meg split off into a side hallway, heading for the security hub to disable the cameras.

  With my help, Fiona used the key card to unlock the double doors. She pushed her way through the unlocked doors, lingering in the doorway to let me pass.

  The room beyond was dome-shaped and cavernous, and remarkably barren. The curved walls were white with crisscrossing silver lines forming a diamond pattern, and the only objects in the lab were a control station set off to one side and a column in the absolute center of the space. The column was constructed of some shiny, silver metal, broken at chest-height by a foot-long gap. A ball of silver light no larger than my fist hovered in the gap, twisting and writhing like it was alive, held in place by an electromagnetic field.

  “There it is,” I murmured, taking a hesitant step closer to the chaos stone.

  I had never actually seen a chaos stone in person before. The chaos stone that had powered the Tartarus had burned out from too frequent use of the FTL drive during the journey to Earth from Olympus, leaving us with shattered fragments of the once-powerful stone. The fragments themselves had retained enough potency to power the gephyra, but just barely.

  Fiona slowly approached the hovering mass of near-endless power. “It’s so beautiful,” she said, her voice distant. She stopped just out of arm’s reach of the column and crouched to get a closer look. “I had no idea it would be so beautiful.”

  I stared past her, equally mesmerized by the chaos stone.

  The lights flickered, shaking me out of my reverie, and through my bond with Meg, I could sense that the security system had been disabled. Not only did we not have to worry about cameras and motion sensors anymore, but the lockdown was no longer an issue.

  Exhaling in relief, I dropped out of stealth mode and let go of the illusion masking Fiona’s appearance. “Fio,” I said, approaching her position near the column displaying the chaos stone, “we’re clear. Get to work on the EM field.” When she didn’t respond, I nudged her arm.

  Fiona blinked at me. “Sorry. What did you say?”

  “Security’s down,” I told her and pointed to the control station with my chin. “You're up.”

  She would need to disable the electromagnetic field holding the chaos stone in place before I could move it. EM fields were like kryptonite to psychics, blocking our powers, or nullifying them completely when used on a grand enough scale. The Tsakali had exploited that weakness to great effect during the final strike that drove my people from Olympus.

  “Oh,” Fiona said, blinking dazedly. “Right.” She shot one last yearning glance at the chaos stone, then spun around and jogged over to the control station. When s
he reached the oversized computer, she immediately set to work hacking into the system, her fingers flying over the keyboard.

  I turned back to the chaos stone and took a step closer, cocking my head to the side as I studied the glowing, writhing mass. It was smaller than I had thought it would be but no less impressive. I waited a few minutes, then raised my hands and attempted to wrap the chaos stone in a cocoon of psychic energy, but the EM field was still in place, and as I had expected, the waves of electric-blue energy fizzled out of existence inches from the chaos stone.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Fiona. She had stopped typing and was staring down at a sheet of paper she held in her hand. “Fio?” I turned to face her fully, my hands settling on my hips. “Is there a problem?”

  Fiona continued to stare down at the piece of paper, her brow furrowing. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe.” She looked up, her eyes meeting mine. “This memo is signed by Henry Magnusson.”

  “What?” I blurted, rushing over to see the damning signature for myself. I rounded the desk and took the memo from Fiona, skimming over the bulk of the writing until my eyes locked on the name typed at the bottom. “No,” I breathed, shaking my head. “It’s not possible.”

  I could feel Fiona’s stare burning into the side of my face. “What does it mean?”

  It meant the Custodes Veritatis was involved in the Atlantea Project.

  Again, I shook my head. The Custodes Veritatis had been founded by Hades some three thousand years ago. He had trusted the group with the history of our people. With the cause of our downfall. Because of him, they had known about chaos stones and orichalcum, the element from which chaos stones were made. They had known about the Tsakali's endless drive to possess any and all sources of the unique renewable energy known as chaos. There was no way the Order could have been involved in the Atlantea Project and not been aware of the consequences.

  I licked my lips, horrified by the implications. “It means,” I said, my voice haunted, “that Henry called the Tsakali here.”