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 Speaker's appeal to the people was similar to the speech he had made to us, the children, in his house hours before. He spoke of our history, the truths and the lies, our Dreamcallers and the Greymen, their bond and its implications. He spoke of the Masters. As we got closer to the square, I could hear the crowd's reaction. They were booing.
I pumped my legs and quietly begged my Greyman to speed me to the square. A fraction of a second later, I stood at the foot of the stage, looking up at the Speaker as he struggled to be heard over the dissidents.
"Please," he shouted. "You must hear me."
I hoped that they did. We did not need to speed our doom. We needed peace. And we needed it soon. Our bodies starved in the waking world, while the Masters loomed somewhere out there.
But the crowd was overwhelming, the noise too much. If they hadn't heard the Speaker before, they certainly wouldn't now. He stepped down from the small stage and disappeared into the crowd.
Billy grabbed me by the arm and pulled me over to where a small group of Dreamcaller students stood huddled over a punch bowl.
"Discreet," he said, sarcastically, as we approached.
The other kids waved their hands at him. "This punch has turned," they said. "All the punch has turned. Don't drink the punch. Tell everyone! Don't drink the punch."
So, it seemed that Beth, Jacob, and the cowgirl weren't the only ones to betray the Speaker and our cause. These poisoners were trying to shirk their duties, too.
Billy and I stepped forward, our hands glowing, and unbound each of the students. "Get out of here," I whispered to them. "Don't try to interfere again."
The kids ran, wrists glowing, from the punch table and into the crowd. I hoped they heeded my warning. I didn't know if the wristbands broke the connection to their Greymen enough that they could die, but I didn't want to find out.
Billy and I ran to the punch bowl and grabbed the small pouch that one of the students had dropped. It was filled with a powder. Poison. We dumped it in the punch, then ran back into the crowd.
"Do you think it was enough?" I shouted to Billy over the noise. "The speech, I mean?"
"I hope so," he said. "Or this is going to be a bad idea." He jumped into the air, spinning as he ascended. As he started to fall, he threw his arms out and fire burst forth, bright white and burning. I felt my skin, my muscles, myself peel away, disintegrating. Billy was nuking the square.
"Stop him!" someone shouted.
The light suddenly went out and Billy fell to the ground in front of me. I reached for him, blinded by his light. Or, perhaps my eyes were still burned out. In either case, I could not see. As I wrapped my hand around what I thought was his arm, I felt a tug from behind.
