The Children of Hypnos

[Vol. 3] Chapter 8: Savior

The driver's gloves squeaked against the steering wheel. He leaned forward every minute or so to peer up at the Sleeping City skyline. Emery watched a bead of sweat roll behind his ear, down his neck, and under his collar. He wasn't a dreamhunter.

"You'd know if the Sandman was near," Emery said. "Even the untrained would feel the Dream pressing down on them."

The driver glanced at her in the rearview mirror. "Of course, Ms. Ashworth."

At this time of night, the streets were almost deserted. The Sleeping City had become a strange sparkling tomb, most people boarded up in their homes, offices, and apartment buildings. They passed few other cars. The only people Emery saw were a couple women and a man on a street corner, holding up signs to vehicles that passed. The signs read HYPNOS WILL KILL US and The State can't save you and Embrace Chaos!

The driver grunted when he saw them. The light turned red. One of the women came up close to the car, waving the Embrace Chaos! sign in Emery's window until the man behind her said, his voice muffled, "That's one of their cars!"

The sign dropped. The woman glared inside at Emery, at the driver, then slammed her hand on the window. "Pigs!" she yelled. "You caused these problems! We can't wait until you're gone!"

Emery jolted back from the window. The driver startled, hit the gas before the light had turned green. Emery twisted to watch the group disappear in the rear window.

"Who the hell were they?" she asked.

The driver caught her eye again.

"I haven't been around for eight months," she reminded him.

"Right, sorry. There's been some unrest in the city because of all the turmoil in the last year. Protests, gatherings. But one group in particular has started to gain a following. They're calling themselves the Children of Eris."

"Dreamhunters are the only people who can keep them safe from all this chaos."

The driver shrugged. "They seem to think dreamhunters and the Hypnos State are the ones who caused the problem in the first place. My sister went to a few meetings. Angie doesn't get spooked about too many things, but whatever she heard there got to her. Every time I've seen them, they've got those signs, or they're chanting something about removing the Hypnos State from the Sleeping City."

"There is no Sleeping City without the Hypnos State," Emery said, but her heart wasn't behind it. The citizens of the Sleeping City had cause to be upset, to hold protests, to rebel. They were right: the State had caused all this.

They finished the drive to Fenhallow in silence. Cars queued to pick up students and employees and ferry them across the city or drop them at campus. The guards strictly funnelled access in and out. Emery texted Wes that she was back, showed the front gate guards her ID badge, and started down the front walk.

Despite the enduring presence of the Dream, she felt more awake now than when she'd left. The Dream's pressure was there, but its efforts to drag her back into her harrowing had released. Everything seemed more concrete, more real, and reality sat on her like a block of lead.

She'd been gone for eight months. Ridley was killed and taken over by her doppelgänger. Klaus was deep in his Insanity Prime. Marcia was pregnant. Edgar was ten years older than he should be. And Emery's parents had been taken away by the State. She now had each particular thing filed into two categories: things she could change, and things she couldn't. Edgar's transformation was permanent, until Lana told her otherwise. Marcia was going to have a baby. Those things were done and happening. Ridley was gone, but her doppelgänger was still out there, and if Wes wanted to find her, Emery would help.