Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2 (9 page)

Adi continued to enlighten Maggie while writing something different on paper. Zeke found it tough to concentrate on both the pencil and her voice. He opted to listen and read her note when she was finished.

“Needless to say, we cannot allow dream comas to continue indefinitely, as manifestation is inevitable,” Adi said aloud. “We’ve had to resort to undesirable experimental procedures.”

The camera would pick that up. Adi’s suspicions about Karen’s wounds, murderous intent and superfast healing were the items she felt compelled to hide. Experimental procedures were apparently fine and dandy.

“Some patients have been in medical comas long enough that their bodies couldn’t tolerate the displacement to a dream coma.” Adi’s mild voice didn’t change in tenor, though she was describing some pretty depressing shit. Nearly all the patients here were the good guys, their condition ill-fated instead of a relief. The Somnium had had few alucinator villains during its history. “They died shortly after the changeover. Kingsbury is one of our longest-surviving high-levels in any type of coma, and she’s no longer well. I have asked you here, Zeke, to authenticate that she is experiencing a dream coma. EEGs are suggestive, but we don’t consider them verification.”

“What can I do that a vigil can’t?” Zeke asked aloud.

“We need to officially settle her condition before we can authorize any experimental procedures,” Adi said. “Vigils can occasionally sense the fitness of a dream coma sufferer and guesstimate how long before a manifestation conduit will form. Since I could not, it was expedient to request your help, as her former mentor, to see if your tangible connection can be exploited for that purpose. Oh, and I thought it would be instructional for Maggie to witness.”

She handed Zeke the pad.
How did you know this was about K?

He was about to ruin Adi’s day. Only fair—she’d sure as shit ruined his.

Zeke wrote,
She communicated with me. Not normal coma.

He left off the part about how the wraith mob he’d seen resembled Maggie’s. If Lill had told her, she already knew. If Lill hadn’t, it was best if she continued to think it was a psycho Karen thing.

Adi’s jaw clenched. She rubbed her brow. When Zeke noticed her hand trembling, she whipped it down to her side.

Yes, she was afraid.

Outside of curators, a class unto themselves, vigils were the wisest and most powerful L5s the divisions had to offer. As large as divisions were, that was saying something. Vigils even had to possess good personalities. Assholey vigils found themselves out of a job before long.

If a vigil were frightened by recent events, Zeke would be wise to take Maggie and run. He owed it to her, and she wasn’t as prepared as she should be to protect herself. He should have tried harder, figured out a way to help her graduate from his bed. And his life.

Lame shields after two months. He didn’t push her enough. He worried so much about doing it wrong that he hadn’t done it right.

His extreme caution with her—was it caution? Or selfishness?

Maggie, however, looked more curious than frightened, as if this were another dreamsphere theory class she’d enrolled in. She held out her hand for the pad.
What did K say?

He debated how to phrase it. Karen had begged him. Karen had said only he could help. Karen had said she was trying to “hold them off”.

The wraiths? The observers? The other patients?

Wants out,
he scribbled.

Adi replied on paper.
Cannot allow that.

No shit. Karen conscious was Karen deadly.

Euthanize,
he wrote. Alucinators sometimes had to make hard choices—but this one wasn’t.
Better, safer, not sorry.

Maggie and Adi glared as if he were the evil one. The evil one was Karen, lurking in the dreamsphere, waiting for another crack at killing them all. He wouldn’t be surprised if she figured out how to manifest wraiths from her coma. After all, she’d claimed she could control them.

Dreamers couldn’t control wraiths. Nobody could.

Yet nobody could explain why the hundreds of wraiths Karen had created in Harrisburg hadn’t tried to kill her.

And nobody could explain why wraiths flocked to Maggie in the sphere—and now to Karen. He didn’t need anyone associating the two women more than they already did.

Trance in, assess, tell no one. An order,
Adi wrote, the letters dark and angry.

No manifestations = secure,
he wrote back. An assessment, even a rudimentary one, wasn’t like oration. He’d have no barriers between himself and Karen.
Let her fade.

Need to study her healing. Find out how unstable she is. If she’s killing. What she intends.

If she’s killing, I can’t stop her.

If she is, we reevaluate.

Reevaluate now,
he wrote.
Trapped me. What else can she do? Stupid to keep her alive.
There was no way he was exposing Maggie to this. What was Adi thinking? He and Maggie hadn’t practiced trancing since the time he’d nearly lost her.

Yet more evidence his training of Maggie had been second rate.

Adi’s lips tightened as she dashed off her response.
You will do this, and M will support your shield. If I order you to assess K once an hour, you will remain at this facility and assess her once an hour until I am satisfied. It’s essential that we study her.

Her handwriting worsened until it looked like a person instead of a typewriter. If this were a normal government and he a normal soldier, Zeke would be written up for insubordination. Hell, if this were a different division of the Somnium, Zeke would be written up for insubordination. But Adi and the vigils of this division had allowed Lill to remain a sentry after the way she’d yelled at and even disobeyed the curator in Harrisburg. Zeke arguing about the best way to handle this situation was hardly going to get him censured.

Maggie took the pad.
I’ll help him. I’m not afraid.
She eyed him as he read her statement as if she expected him to contradict her.

Why disappoint her? He flipped back in the notebook several pages and circled
Fuck no.

Adi regarded him for a long moment. Her dark eyes were as piercing in the terra firma as they were in the dreamsphere when she conducted assessments. Matriculation wasn’t the only time dreamers were assessed, and he’d had more than his share of Adi since Harrisburg.

His fears had been laid bare by her scalpel, exposing his shame. His failure with Karen and his less than stellar performance with Maggie had never felt like such a yoke.

Stopping Karen, doing whatever was needed, was his job. His vocation. His pride. He’d once been fulfilled by it, by helping people and killing monsters. Griping or no griping—yeah, mostly with griping—he’d always done his duty. He’d given a hundred and ten percent of himself to the Somnium.

With Karen, he’d done what had been needed to survive. He’d done what they’d told him during and after. A year later, his shields perforated, he’d taken on another student, a L5 with a tangible to whom he was wildly attracted, because he shouldered his responsibilities.

But this?

He rejected this. It wasn’t because of his fear of Karen or of getting trapped in a coma again. It wasn’t the fear of hundreds of wraiths being manifested because of his poor judgment.

He was afraid to risk Maggie. He’d rather put several states between her and Karen’s comatose body. He didn’t want her near if Karen could go nuclear. He’d kill that psycho himself, orders or no orders, before he let her or her wraiths touch one hair on Maggie’s stubborn head.

If she’s hurting people, find out,
Adi wrote.
Orate. Assess. I’ll observe. You cannot refuse this mission.

Zeke’s innards twisted with guilt. If Karen was killing again, he was indirectly responsible. He was the one who’d let her scam everyone in the first place. He’d trained her. He’d propped her up until she’d blown up in their faces.

I failed once. Can’t.
Because they were linked, he could lock any conduits Karen might form, but he couldn’t keep her from making new ones. He wasn’t a curator or a vigil. He wasn’t the man for this job, and Maggie was definitely not the sidekick for it.

Adi handed him another note.
I will personally ensure Maggie isn’t relocated when she matriculates if you help me.

Zeke blinked, not sure he’d read correctly. She was bribing him…with Maggie. That meant Adi had guessed how much Maggie tempted him.

Dammit.

He’d assured everyone who’d listen he was over his thing for Maggie. He’d behaved like a jackass. Explained his initial attraction as short-lived tangible lust—not unheard of. He didn’t pretend he disliked Maggie, but he implied she was a burden. Everyone knew he hadn’t wanted students, so nobody seemed surprised.

The only thing he hadn’t done to convince everyone he was over Maggie was actually get over her.

Maggie read Adi’s words and snorted out a laugh. She asked for the pen.
He can’t wait for me to go.

Zeke had no idea if Adi’s offer lifted the romance restriction or if it was still a pipe dream, despite kissing Maggie in the SUV. He lifted his hands as if to say, “Yeah, and?”

Adi rolled her eyes. She said, aloud, “Are you finished with the paperwork? Thank you. Hopefully this won’t take long. Do you need more comfortable seating to begin your assignment?”

If he refused to do the task Adi was publicly asking of him—verify Karen’s condition—it could create waves. Verification shouldn’t require the dangerous level of exposure that assessment did. His stubbornness might make people on the other side of the camera suspicious.

But Adi wanted more from him than was smart, and she was a smart person. What was driving her to insist on this? If the others thought Karen might be killing again, they, like Zeke, might vote to euthanize her instead of study her miracle healing. Was that the reason for Adi’s secrecy or did she suspect treachery, as Karen’s mysterious injuries suggested?

Who besides wraiths would break a comatose patient’s bones? Many Somnium employees, understandably, wished Karen ill. They didn’t care that she’d possessed inexplicable skills. They wanted revenge.

A better question might be, who would bother breaking her bones but not killing her outright?

Healing from broken bones in three days. Impossible. Vigil-trapping an alucinator in a coma without being taught how. Impossible. Controlling wraiths. Impossible.

Wanting Zeke to go up against Karen again? Asking for the impossible.

He flipped through the pad and found one of notes where Maggie had asked about involving a curator. He circled it three times. When Adi shook her head, he tapped the tablet emphatically. If he was going to be pushed into this, she was going to answer.

She hesitated, pencil in hand, before writing on the pad.
Do you know how old curators are?

He’d met one. The tall, black-haired guy who was Lill’s favorite person. He’d seemed like he might be in his late thirties. Alucinators aged well. Exercise, sunscreen, clean living.

No.

Adi wrote, erased, wrote again.
Nobody knows anyone who became a curator. Not even Gus.

Zeke frowned. Gus Bachman was ninety if he was a day, spindly but still going, the oldest vigil on active duty. Maggie took the pad from Zeke.
L5s taken by curators don’t become curators?

Adi shook her head.
Curators not in tag system. Who are they? Where do they come from?

Are you saying we shouldn’t trust?
Maggie wrote.

No proof curator intent is ill.
Adi grimaced as she wrote, which Zeke understood. The curators weren’t beloved, but no one questioned—had ever had reason to question—their devotion. There had been zero instances of curators flaming out in thousands of years. One thing for sure—they gave up their lives in a way no other alucinators did in order to run the Somnium.
If they discover K’s healing, they’ll take her. We’ll never get answers.

To what, the curators’ skin care regimen?

Don’t care,
Zeke scribbled.

My job to find answers.

And it was his job to…

Deal with Karen Kingsbury. Protect and mentor Maggie. Which duty was more important?

Zeke grabbed the pad.
I go alone. Maggie can’t trance.

Some of the tension left Adi’s small body. She knew she had him now.
She goes. Shield her.

Not safe.

She’ll keep you safe,
Adi wrote.
I’ll observe. To everyone else, K’s dream coma seems typical except for wraiths. Let’s find out what’s going on in there.

Chapter Six

Maggie was not going to hyperventilate. Trance state allowed alucinators to view the dreamsphere differently, as well as have more of an effect on it. It also had more of an effect on them. She’d gotten herself out the one time she’d entered, but it had been two months ago, when the wraiths hadn’t been dead set on mobbing her.

She and Zeke had opted to work from a sofa in the room next to Karen Kingsbury’s. Terra firma walls had no bearing in the dreamsphere. This room was set up as a lounge. A lounge with a steel vault door.

Adi was in the room with Karen, settled in one of the folding chairs. She’d mobilized soldiers and positioned them throughout the ward. Whether or not she’d been honest with anyone besides Zeke and Maggie, any attempted trance-scan of Karen Kingsbury required a full squad on alert.

Two guards waited by the lounge door, swords drawn and points toward the floor. Maggie and Zeke sat beside each other on the sofa. She couldn’t believe the butterflies in her stomach.

This wasn’t about her. She was a bystander. Zeke’s supporter. All she had to do was hop in, bolster him, and hop out.

“Should I piss you off first?” Zeke asked quietly. “Get your shield all revved up?”

She didn’t want him to know her knees were knocking. “No need. I stay pissed off at you.”

Her quip earned her a half-laugh. “You tired? You’re near twenty-four hours awake.”

“The coffee’s taking care of that.” The caffeine jittered through her almost as fiercely as her nerves. She wouldn’t be alone in the trance sphere long. Seconds. He’d find her immediately and shield her from the wraiths—the wraiths who could kill her.

How many would they face? Would it be harder to hold a shield when the wraiths could hurt her—or would it be easier? Had Zeke done the right thing not warning Adi about the quantity of wraiths attracted to Maggie?

A guard’s walkie crackled with a message for Zeke. “I’m entering the sphere in sixty seconds,” Adi’s voice said. “Please accompany me for the attempted assessment of Kingsbury’s condition.”

Zeke took Maggie’s hand. The first and only time they’d tranced, they’d been in the initial throes of the tangible. They’d…well, they’d been physical. He’d projected her into the sphere after distracting her with kisses.

She didn’t know if their liaison in the car meant anything, but he wasn’t going to kiss her in front of these guards.

She took a deep breath and relaxed her body into a comfortable position for when her conscious mind vacated it. It wouldn’t do to slump over and obstruct her airways. The guards watched impassively. No doubt they oversaw scanners on a regular basis.

“Here we go,” Zeke said.

She felt the pull of their tangible all through her, and the room winked out of existence.

Maggie flung up her shield before she got her bearings. She managed a quick glimpse of the hazy, distorted, dreamsphere version of the small lounge before the world started to go black.

Black with wraiths. These wraiths—they had forms. Monsters. She hadn’t seen actual monsters in almost two months.

Was it because she was so scared? Was she giving them form the way brand new dreamers did?

She took an instinctive step back. The shield bobbed with her. The creatures swarmed closer, moaning, drooling and hissing. Black ichor smeared on the protective barrier. The walls, the dream hospital walls, tilted toward her as if they longed to crush her too.

Trance was so unwelcoming it made the sleeping sphere seem like La La Land. Maggie fought the urge to crumple and gibber with fear. The smell of vomit and decay surrounded her as if her shield were a sieve.

Giant, hairy spiders clacked ghostly mandibles. Were-creatures sprouted claws and fangs. Vampires stared at her with red sparks in their eyes.

As if they were sentient. Judging her. Figuring the best way to rip through her shield and eat her.

Maggie, an ineffective hand over her mouth and nose, couldn’t signal for help until she found someone to latch on to. She sensed no nearby alucinator sigs when there should be three, at the least. Adi, Zeke and possibly Karen, if what Zeke said about her was true.

Not that she wanted to sense Karen, but Zeke claimed the woman had talked to him.

After triple locking her conduit—if these monsters got through to her, they wouldn’t get through to the terra firma—Maggie opened herself psychically. The wraiths howled.

“Zeke!”
It wasn’t a cry of fear, it was a demand. She wouldn’t feed these wraiths with her terror.
“Get here.”

He didn’t respond. Maybe he’d traveled around, trying to find Karen.

She tried again.
“Zeke. Adi. Anyone?”

Like a faint breeze, a response tickled her hair.
“You.”

Maggie whipped around. A vertical, clear space against her barrier filled in like an oil slick polluting the ocean. What the heck had that been, a dreamer? One of the guards? A new kind of wraith? Or was it Karen? She didn’t have enough experience to answer her own questions.

In moments, all she could see was black. It was distressingly familiar. She was used to it, used to seeing darkness and achieving little in the dreamsphere. She just wasn’t used to…

Wraiths surged en masse. They walloped her like an elephant’s foot stepping on a soap bubble. Maggie nearly collapsed.

Shields. Damn. Her own shields protected her, not Zeke’s.
Hold, Maggie. Hold.
She could do this. Should she try to wake up? She was supposed to support Zeke. Where was his conduit, Adi’s conduit? Anybody’s conduit? Why was the trance sphere empty of anything but her and a billion wraiths?

What if…what if Karen was trying to vigil-trap or kill Zeke? What if she already had?

Maggie locomoted in a widening circumference, holding her protections as well as she could. Search pattern. She needed a conduit, a trace. She spiraled through blackness and wraiths, their putrid odor and snarling cries her only companions. She wasn’t moving fast enough to escape them. Only geolocation informed her when her noncorporeal self exited the facility area.

At least she could figure that out.

At five miles west, give or take, Maggie spied glitter through the blockade of wraiths against her wobbly barrier. Manifesting conduits glowed red. The paler sparks made this one a locked conduit. She probed and sought the signature.

Zeke. Thank God.

Relieved, she called to him, hoping he’d supplement her shields. She was proud she’d maintained this long, but it could end at any moment. She’d shrunk her safe zone as snug as she could without endangering herself. The barrier was modulated to keep wraiths out, not to keep dreamers in. It wouldn’t block her fingers or feet from straying outside and getting chomped off.

That wasn’t an issue in the sleep sphere. The threat of death and dismemberment motivated her to greater efforts, the way Adi said she motivated Zeke.

With all these wraiths, he might need her to motivate him more.

“Zeke, I’m here.”

He didn’t respond. She couldn’t see a thing, but she could sense him. His signature. The tangible tugged her. She drifted through the yawning blackness and came up against a wall.

What was it? Zeke? She pushed forward hopefully.

The wraiths thinned between her barrier and the wall. She took another step, shuffling from side to side like sandpaper in hopes of dislodging them. The creatures remained—wispy, oily shadows. The compression between her barrier and the invisible obstruction dispersed their monster forms, but not the threat they posed.

They didn’t need the appearance of vampire teeth to kill. She’d best be careful.

Maggie squinted through the semitransparent wall of wraith gunk into the clear area ahead of her.

Zeke, a blond woman in his arms, stood in the center of a large, strong shield. That was what she’d bumped into. Their colors were more vivid than Maggie was used to, since her experience was of the grayed-out sleep sphere. Zeke and the blonde—Karen, surely—seemed vital and full of life.

Jealousy vented inside Maggie like a geyser. The way Zeke held Karen, his biceps bunching, his fingers splayed across her back. His head bent toward hers. His whole being seemed focused on embracing this woman who’d once tried to kill him.

Karen and Zeke had been lovers. They had a tangible. Karen’s sobs reached Maggie’s ears with a harsh cadence.

“Zeke, dammit!”
Maggie punched the edge of her barrier. The strands of squalling wraiths trapped between the shields clustered at her fist.

One of them gashed her. She snatched her hand back. Blood dribbled down her wrist.

Crap. That would be there when she woke up.

The pain was nothing compared to the fact Zeke stood right there—right there—and she couldn’t get him to notice her. He was completely absorbed in Karen.

The woman twined her hands around Zeke’s neck. Maggie could see her tremble. She wasn’t beautiful. She was hospital-gowned, emaciated. Her yellow-gold hair hung in lank rat’s tails. But her face glowed with joy.

“You saved me. You saved me. I was afraid I’d never…”
Karen choked out the words.

Why could she see Karen?

Come to think of it, why could she hear Karen? Maggie hadn’t matriculated yet, and neither had Karen. Adi’s rationale for sending Zeke into the sphere was that only Zeke had a chance of assessing Karen because of it. Maggie should only be able to hear and see Zeke.

“You think you deserve saving?”
Zeke asked Karen harshly.

“Please,”
Karen begged. Her mind-voice seemed as meager as her body.
“I’ll do anything.”

Maggie scrambled for explanations. For her to hear the conversation, her oration with Lillian must not have been a fluke. Karen must have achieved oration ability too, or none of this would be possible.

Perhaps Zeke was better at teaching oration than shields, if both she and Karen had—

No. Maggie didn’t want to have any commonalities with Karen beyond the ones she couldn’t escape.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t leave you here to fade. After what you did.”
Zeke had to know Maggie and Adi could listen in. Why was he ignoring Maggie—did it have anything to do with Karen?

“I’m so sorry. I can’t… I don’t know how to explain. It wasn’t me. It never was.”
She began to cry so desolately her excuses turned to gabble. When the sound from Karen’s waterworks escalated, the wraiths outside both Maggie’s and Zeke’s shields churned.

“You killed civilians. Children. You tried to kill me.”

If he felt that way about Karen—suspicious and angry—why was he comforting her? Frustration made Maggie’s barrier vibrate and wane. Desperate, she bobbled her shield against Zeke’s, careful not to let any appendages break through. Would it catch his attention?

Dammit, she had a tangible with him too. She paced his perimeter and guided her bubble into his line of sight. Wraiths boiled around her, trying to get to her, never letting up.

She yelled in her head.
“Zeke. Zeke. Zeke. Look at me. Dammit, are you blind?”

It didn’t have an effect. He was captivated by the woman in his arms. It was like Maggie didn’t exist in the same sphere as Zeke and Karen.

“Where is she?”
he demanded of Karen. He didn’t sound friendly—but he didn’t thrust her away, either. He held her. With that much contact, the tangible would be coursing through them both, magnetic and compelling. Sexual.

Maggie felt like a wraith herself, growling and enraged.

“Who, the vigil?”
Karen managed, her voice scratchy. Clever. A mind voice had no throat to become scratchy. She had to be directing her mental voice to sound like that—thin and pitiful—on purpose.
“Below. She’s below.”

Far off, as if it were an echo, Maggie sensed the vigil’s signature. Adi was coming. Adi would know what to do. Maggie ought to be able to communicate with her, exercising her new ability. Then Adi could tell Zeke Maggie was here—and to quit hugging on Karen.

“Not Adishakti. I can read her. Where is my student?”
Zeke snapped.

“You’ve been allowed another student? After me?”

Zeke hesitated before answering.
“Yes.”

“I sense no one but the vigil. The one who looks for me. I can’t get through to her, nor her to me. They prevent it.”

“I know my student’s here. I brought her here. I should be able to sense her, and I can’t.”

“They hide signatures,”
Karen said.
“Camouflage. They can do that if you’re weak.”

“They who?”

It was Karen who finally ended the embrace. The blonde glanced fearfully around, cowering into herself, as if expecting an attack at any moment.
“The monsters. If they’re hiding her, the student must be like me.”

Were the wraiths—monsters—keeping Zeke apart from Maggie? Or was Karen? Maggie knew she wasn’t doing it. She also knew the wraiths had never managed to hide her from Zeke before.

Of course, she’d never been alone in the trance sphere before.

“Maggie isn’t like you,”
Zeke said.
“She’s nothing like you.”

“Nothing at all?”
Karen’s watery gaze met and locked with Maggie’s. She’d never seen such abject terror on anyone’s face—not even her own, in the mirror, the night she’d become an alucinator and almost died.
“I was weak. I was weak. They aren’t what we think they are. They’re so much worse.”

“Bullshit. You’re crazy, Karen. Everyone knows it.”

“Is she weak?”
Karen seemed to be asking Maggie, not Zeke.
“They’ll exploit her if she’s weak.”

Karen’s pupils shrunk to pinpricks, and Maggie’s theoretical bones turned to water. Was there truth to the babbling? Was she weak?

Was that why the wraiths tried so incredibly hard to get to her?

“Leave Maggie out of this. You expect me to believe anything you say? All you do is lie,”
Zeke declared. To Maggie, he sounded like someone betrayed, someone hurting. He crossed his arms, his face a beautiful mask.