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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The Green City churned with life even before the Speaker made his announcement. It was a truly vibrant place. People from all over the world made the trek through dreams and nightmare to come here, to safety. To keep the city hopeful and to keep dreams from driving them insane, the people built bazaars and marketplaces, taverns and bars, restaurants and arcades, shopping malls and movie theaters, and all of the amenities of home—and then some.
It was the truest hub of life and we were about to kill the entire population.
Of course, the Dreamcallers would be fine and most people would end up bonded and alive in the end, but some might die. Some probably would die. While most of the remaining population had some strong hereditary ties to Dreamcallers, not all had direct parentage as Billy and I did. Some, like Kayle, faced the true risk of death when they took the bond.
Hopefully the Speaker would glaze over that detail artfully in his speech. Otherwise, there was no way the people would listen. Or was there? If they wanted to deny the bond, would they kill the Dreamcallers to get to their Greymen? What would happen when the Masters came, then? I shuddered at the thought and picked up my pace. We had to find my father before the Speaker began.
I walked the streets with Kayle and Billy, my team for the big event. Operation Farrah, as some of the kids were calling it. Not us though. Billy didn't like that name.
Every kid was given a specific job to do that day. Some were to slip poison in the punch bowls and glasses at just the right moment, while others stationed in the crowd were to conjure daggers at the same time, thrusting them into the hearts of the unbonded observers. Several of the higher ranking students were to seek out certain names and faces, then bend their ears with clever influence. But the most important job was that of distracting high ranking Knights.
A team of three was dispatched to find and secure each Knight for the duration of the Speaker's speech and the massacre that would follow. Once it was done, all protestations would fall on bonded ears. It wouldn't matter. It would be done.
Our job was to secure my father. But first, we had to find him.
As one of the original and, therefore, most elite of the Knights, my father had hundreds of duties to attend to at any one time. Thanks to the bizarre way time worked in the dream world, he never found himself overwhelmed. Unfortunately, his convenience was our inconvenience; at any one moment, he could be literally anywhere in the entire dream world.
Preparing us for that possibility, the Speaker gave each group of three a tool for hunting our respective knights. For my father, the tool was me. When I was first brought to the Green City, he had apparently had me fitted with a tracking device that alerted him if I wandered too far from a safe zone. My first thought upon learning this was gratefulness that he had allowed me the freedom to rescue Billy and Kayle so long ago. The invasion of privacy was shocking, but I was more upset that I had initially reacted to it with appreciation.
We marched through the Green City, hoping that we wouldn't have to go too far to alert him. From what the Speaker said, my father had designated the liquor district of the Green City as an "unsafe" zone. My father's rage at the smell of booze on my breath back in the real world was enough to assure me that wandering here would bring him down on me like a nightmare on an unexpecting dreamer.
Sure enough, as soon as we crossed the threshold of the first bar, my father came blazing through behind us.
"Rain," he shouted. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Oh, perfect," I said, beginning the conversation Kayle, Billy, and I had practiced a hundred times. "It's you! We have been bored out of our skulls since you set Billy on my guard duty. We've been looking for you everywhere."
"You've proven you can't be trusted, Rain. He stays as your guard," my father said, just as I had predicted.
"No, sir," Billy said, gesturing at a seat in the booth he had claimed. "We wanted to hear some stories about the old days. The better days."
"We thought it would be fun to hear about what life was like before all this started," Kayle said as she waved the bartender over. When the stout old woman waddled over, Kayle ordered four pints, then added, "Three non-alcoholic," at my father's glare.
"I suppose there's no harm in that," he said, settling in the booth next to Billy.
Kayle and I sat across from them and dug into my father and his history, hoping we could keep him occupied for the short hour we would need, which should be easy. He always droned on and on about the past.
About halfway through his explanation of something called "social networking" and its global impact, the door to the bar burst open. We all turned at the sound. In the doorway stood Beth, Jacob, and the cowgirl. They were supposed to be distracting another of the knights. What were they doing here?
"What are you doing here?" Kayle asked, echoing my thoughts.
"This is wrong," Beth said, stepping into the bar. "Dad, you need to come with us. We have to stop the Speaker."
Before my father could respond, Billy had wrapped himself around his shoulders. The two men grappled for a moment before the younger produced a beam of light from his hands, then grasped my father's wrists. Billy closed his eyes, then released my father's wrists. The light shone from his skin, as if tattooed there.
Billy leapt over my father and out of the booth, his hands glowing again. In a moment, light shone from Beth, Jacob, and the cowgirl's wrists, as well.
"What the hell?" my father said, closing and opening his eyes. "Traitor! What have you done, Billy?"
"You're unbound. Can't reach your Greyman. Little trick my crazy-smart mother taught me," Billy said, shooting a glare at Beth.
"I should still be able—" Jacob started.
Billy interrupted him. "You may not accept that your Greyman gives you your power, but without the connection, a Dreamcaller may as well not even know he's dreaming. Kayle, you guard these idiots. I'm going to go make sure they haven't doomed two peoples." I smiled at his conviction as he turned to me. "Rain, you're with me. Let's go."
I put a hand on my father's chest. "This is the right way," I said, then I turned and ran out the door.
We pounded the streets toward the city square where the Speaker was to give his speech. As we ran, we heard loudspeakers crackle on. The speech was beginning.
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