For the second time in thirty years, the entire world has fallen asleep...
Thirty years after the Greymen caused the decimation of her people, high school drop out Rain Collins spends her days learning to pickpocket and hold her booze. Yet she long...
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Beth screamed, jumping up from her chair and flying across the room, landing with both hands over the wound, pressing hard and trying staunch the blood as it flowed forth. Hopeless. She was already gone.
Kayle sat back in her chair, laughing. "Wow," she said. "That's amazing."
I shot a dark glare at Kayle. How could she laugh? Dr. Farrah just killed herself in front of us. Oh, God. Billy. I looked back at the doctor, hoping there was something I could do, yet knowing there was nothing.
She blinked twice. "Would you mind getting off of my neck," she said, her voice strangled by Beth's hands.
"What?" Beth said, gasping and pulling her hands away as if she'd been burned. "You're alive?"
Dr. Farrah sat up on the floor, straightening her blood-covered, formerly white coat and replacing her glasses on her nose. I stared at her neck. Though blood surrounded the spot, the wound had disappeared.
"Jenny," she said simply, gesturing at her unharmed neck.
"Jenny... Wait. The little girl. Jenny is your Greyman?" I said, incredulous. What the doctor was proposing was impossible. But then, she had just done the impossible.
"Yes. This is what Dreamcallers are." She waved a hand over her bloody clothes. "We are connected to Greymen. They give us power and keep us safe, and we do the same for them."
"Is Jenny the one who's been impersonating you? The Screaming Cowbird, trapping and torturing me and Jacob and Kayle and Billy?"
Dr. Farrah looked away, blushing. "Yes," she said again. "I've tried to explain to her that Greymen need to be patient and give me time to convince our people to bond with them, but she is reckless. That is the Greyman's nature, unfortunately. After having been used to destroy for so long, the concept of kindness is unfamiliar to them."
"Can we stop them?" I asked.
"The Greymen? No." The doctor shook her head. "Not in the way we have been trying. We can't annihilate them—not unless we want to kill most of our own people in the process—no, we have to assimilate them. If we work with our Greymen, if we train them, we can have a proper society. One of two peoples. Of two worlds." She smiled and looked around her office. "With a proper bond, we can visit the dream world when we please, we can communicate with the Greymen—"
"Wait," Beth said, holding up a hand. "What exactly is a proper bond?"
"Smart girl." Dr. Farrah smiled at Beth, then reached a hand up. She helped her up to standing. "Yes, that is why the Knights do not know about this. As I may or may not have mentioned, a bond is made upon the death and rebirth of the host. This means that our people must die so that the Greymen can live."
"Why would we do that?" I asked. "The Greymen massacred our planet, destroyed our society. Why should we sacrifice ourselves for them?"
"We don't really have a choice," the doctor said. "Either we do it willingly and gain control or we wait for the Masters to come annihilate us. Our dreams of returning to the society we had before will be worse than dashed. The broken cities of yesterday will be pleasant memory compared to the hovels we'll be living in a few months from now, if we're lucky enough to be alive."
