Luminosity (19 page)

“Calm down,” I mutter, glancing about to see what else we can set up for our safety. “I want every piece of furniture that moves pushed to the windows and doors.” This will make it harder for them to breach, if they try. They’ll have lots of debris to climb over, which will hopefully give us the advantage when they are stumbling about. Overhead, a ship hovers nearby, and the ground starts to rumble from the thrusters pushing down the air with incredible force. The sound is nearly deafening mixed with the scraping of desk legs across the marble floor.

“Damn it, they are right there, Bea.” Gabe rushes to my side and starts to tug me back toward the middle of the room.

“Stop. We can’t run from them. They might not even know we are in here.”

I am wrong about that. They drop a bomb that explodes just outside the bank, blasting all of the glass out of the windows. Some of the shards fly inward, hitting Seers and Citizens alike. Screaming erupts on either side of me. I’m too busy watching each of the windows, waiting for Dreamcatchers to come barreling in. But they don’t. The ship continues to hover.

“What are they doing?” I whisper.

Gabe lifts his gun, sighting from one window to the next. Nothing happens.

I make a motion to those who were moving the furniture. “Keep going! Move, move, move!”

They hesitantly drag desks, file cabinets and other miscellaneous pieces to the windows, pilling them up on top of one another. The crunch of glass under their feet is almost sickening as the pieces scrape and pop together. Outside, the trees are all bent at strange angles from the force of the blast and from the power of the ship’s thrusters. Is there more than one ship overhead?

Then, I spot their next move. Ropes drop from the sky and dangle there, empty and curious. A few minutes later, Dreamcatchers descend from the ship and land on the ground, dressed for war. They also carry guns, though their combat outfits have a few modifications, including gloves that allow their fingertips to be free. A few of the bigger ones carry net-throwers in their grips, nets to catch Citizens and load them into the ships.

“They are starting to comb the City,” Gabe whispers to me when he spots the net-throwers in hand. “They are taking Citizens.”

Like Echo said they were here to do. “Here they come!” I yell, and Gabe wastes no time pulling me back toward the teller desks, where most of the Seers are set up, their guns resting on the surface, all pointed toward the windows and the doors.

The Dreamcatchers gesture toward our building and do exactly as I expect. They try to breach the windows and the doors by throwing grenades and other explosive devices. The walls crumble in some places, but stay strong and sturdy in others. Stones soar through the building, and we duck behind the desks to avoid being hit by them.

One-by-one, the enemy soldiers climb through the rubble. I hold my hand up, fist closed in the “hold your fire” position. For some reason, I want them to fire first. I want to feel as if we were defending ourselves from the start. Maybe it has to do with the fact that any one of them could be Echo. And what if one of them is?

But the Dreamcatchers don’t fire. They make their way over the mess, some of them still standing in the middle of it, and they train their guns on us. There’s about twenty of them all together, not much more than my group, and they are all dressed in black jumpsuits with helmets that are similar to our own. Some of them are men, some women, and they all look as if they are different ages judging by their sizes.

We point our guns at them.

“What do you want?” I call out, opening a line of communication, even if it is probably useless. No one ever taught us the art of diplomacy. No one ever said that it was an option. We’ve been given guns and weapons with the order to seek out the Dreamcatchers and slaughter them. We’ve been encouraged to climb over their bodies and keep moving forward to seek out more and murder them where they stand. It’s not as easy as it seemed, though.

We weren’t taught to talk to one another, and even the Dreamcatchers seem confused by it.

“What?” One of them calls back at me, but I don’t know which, since I can’t see their faces or mouths.

“What. Do. You. Want?” I slowly speak the words. There’s a long pause between what I say, and what their next words are. And I immediately regret trying to speak to them at all.

“We aren’t here to talk.” And then the one speaking opens fire on me, and it’s only by the grace of my intuition that I hit the ground before the bullets can lodge themselves into my head. The rest of them open fire as well, and we find that we’re pinned behind the desk, unable to get our weapons up to fire back. This is my fault, and I feel guilty and angry all at once. Why did I have to try and talk to them? Did I really think Echo was standing with them? There are hundreds of Dreamcatchers, and only a handful of them are standing right here. What were the odds anyway?

“We have to shoot back!” Brandon blurts and lifts his gun over his head. “Come on! Everyone start shooting back and we can push them into cover!”

I’m glad someone else is paying attention while I’m sitting on the ground like a moron. How could I have messed it up?

The concussion from the force of the net-thrower sounds along with the gunshots, and the weights on the net clatter on the floor by the teller’s desk. Citizens start to scream, the tellers themselves now caught for the Dreamcatchers’ purposes. We are too far away to help them, and everything happens so quickly that it is soon too late. The net retracts, dragging the Citizens across the floor. I count three of them, and they are dragged away like objects for the taking.

The other Seers react, and each of them raises their gun and begins to blindly fire in the direction of the Dreamcatchers. The effect is immediate, and the enemy fire becomes less and less as they fall back to find cover. It gives us enough time to peek up over the desk and secure a visual of their forces dropping back and hiding behind the pillars of wall left behind after their breach.

Elan drops his gun as a bullet hits him in the wrist, blasting a hole straight through it. He screams in agony and grabs his hand to try and stop the bleeding with the other. The Citizens lose their calm and begin to irrationally scream as well, as if all of them had been hit just when Elan was.

“Hang in there, Elan! Fall back and take cover!” I yell in his direction. I feel some sort of sisterly attachment to Elan. I want to protect him like I did before, but I’m stuck behind a register, firing away at the opposite wall, hoping that maybe I’ll hit something in the process.

Eventually, the Dreamcatchers retreat, and the enemy fire stops altogether. They grapple onto the ropes that they had used to lower themselves to the ground, and all at once they are pulled back into the ship along with the captured Citizens.

“Fire! Open fire!” I shout, and we all run to the windows to try and get a good aim on the fleeing Dreamcatchers. Gabe manages to hit one or two of them, and they come crashing down onto the street, each of them making a sickening splatting noise as their bodies break on the asphalt. They are the only two that fall, though, and soon the rest of the Dreamcatchers are safe in their ship.

And that is when it happens.

The ship suddenly drops toward the ground, its artillery pointed at the bank. My eyes widen and I scream at the top of my lungs, “Everyone down! Take cover! Take cove—”

The words get lost in the noise of their cannons charging. I barely manage to get on the ground as the shots are fired, and large balls of flame streak through the bank and hit the opposite wall, blasting a hole straight through it, and anyone who happened to be in front of it. Citizens and Seers instantly turn to ash.

I hold onto my helmet with one hand and stare at the ship as it charges up again. “Stay down!”

Gabe inches up beside me and shouts, “We need to get out of here!”

“I can’t leave them behind!” I yell at him, just as the ship fires again, and the bank continues to fall apart around us. “I can’t leave them!”

“You have to, Bea! We need to leave! Let’s go!” Gabe hooks a hand around my bicep, and his grip is so tight that it hurts.

“Gabe! Let me go!”

But he doesn’t listen to me. He makes a motion for whoever is paying attention to follow us, and we run straight toward the ship as the cannons recharge. The low humming sound becomes louder and louder the closer we get to it. Just as the sound stops altogether, in that nerve-wracking silence before the shots go off, Gabe and I and a handful of others slip under the ship and roll into the street. The next round of fire cripples the building and it falls in on itself, leaving nothing but a pile of rubble behind.

“Get up! Keep running!” Gabe darts away from the ship, and when I look behind us, I notice about ten others who have made it, out of about fifty, including the Citizens. Only a few of them run along with us, bloodied and covered in soot, tears spilling from their eyes.

“Have I failed?” I call to Gabe as we race away from the Dreamcatchers and into the heart of the City, specifically where I said not to go. “Was my Vision wrong?”

“Your Visions are hardly ever wrong, Beatrice.” But Gabe doesn’t say that I didn’t fail, and this sticks with me as we scurry into the City like mice.

Chapter Twenty-Two

More ships descend upon the City.
You will know,
Paradigm said,
and now I do. The Dreamcatchers aren’t going to turn back now, and they come down on us full force, guns and cannons blazing. The ships are equipped with large barrels that jerk backward before letting go and firing shells big enough to demolish a building in one hit. One of these ships is doing just that, razing the City structure by structure, presumably after their forces sweep them and capture as many Citizens as they can. The surviving members of Team A, including Brandon and Elan, have to duck and weave as we race toward nothing in particular.

Gabe is at the front of the group, even though I’m technically the leader. But I don’t mind, and we follow him into the dust and chaos stirred up by all the fighting. There are moments where sharp pains sear up my sides and into my head, and I hear the Keeper lecturing us about how, if a Dreamcatcher catches one of us, we all experience it in some way or another. She never clarified how, exactly, but I know that each rush of pain means another Seer has been caught and killed. They are eliminating us one by one to get to their prize.

We rush into another building, and once we are inside, I realize it’s the Widow’s house—or the bar that she called home—but she is gone. I run behind Gabe as he weaves through the halls of the home and to a door that is flung open to reveal stairs leading into a basement. Before we can take cover, though, the roof is ripped off of the small home like a lid being peeled off by a can opener. We stand there, exposed to the fire of a large ship that hovers overhead, blowing around all of the Widow’s effects. Within minutes, the house is completely destroyed, and about five Dreamcatchers are deployed onto the ground by sliding down the ropes.

“Take cover!” I scream just in time. The Dreamcatchers open fire on us as soon as their feet hit the ground. I roll behind a wall that divides the kitchen from the front room. The stools that used to stand in front of the bar are all tipped over and broken into pieces. Shots from the Dreamcatchers’ guns tear apart the wall, so I hit the ground and crawl on my stomach to find a good place to return fire.

I peek around the corner and notice some of the Dreamcatchers aren’t even dressed for battle. They are wearing their white robes with the red satin lining, and somehow, none of the robes are dirty from fighting. They are the same robes that Echo wore in my dream.

And that’s when I see him. Echo.

He has a large gash in his cheek, to the point where you can see the meat inside, and he is holding his side with one of his hands, blood dripping through his fingers. He shoots in the direction of two Team A members who desperately shoot back at him. And what if they hit him? What if he kills them? Flashes of light illuminate the room as the beacon bullets explode on impact against the walls.

Someone starts to shoot at me before I can open my mouth and tell the other two to cease fire. They’d of course think I am crazy, but I don’t care. I wouldn’t have cared…if I’d had the chance. I roll on my side and shoot, bullets ripping into tables and sofas, anything they make contact with. I can barely keep my thoughts off Echo, and my aim is terrible.

That’s when we hear another, different alarm sound. It startles all of us, even the Dreamcatchers.

A Citizen girl, who was hiding in the rubble, bolts toward the door while we are all stunned. Echo steps forward and trips the girl and she goes tumbling across the ground, all limbs. Echo lifts her by the wrist like a ragdoll, and in just a moment she screams and collapses. He releases her, and when he looks at me, his eyes are a deep crimson color, no longer blue. The gash on his cheek is also completely gone. Healed.

I stare at him, but the Dreamcatchers must have been ordered to depart, as they all turn on their heels and run out of the house.

“Keep firing!” I hear Gabe order. We’ve all stopped shooting, shocked at what we witnessed.

“He killed her,” I whisper to myself, finally fully understanding why the Dreamcatchers are here.

“Keep firing, Bea!” One of Gabe’s shots catches the Dreamcatcher who brings up the rear of their group. He falls, and none of the others turn back to try and help him up. They disappear around a corner, and I hold up my hand to signal that we aren’t going to chase them down. The Dreamcatchers are gone.

“What’s that alarm?” Brandon stops by my side and looks around. “And what is
that
?”

I look to what he’s pointing at, a beam of red light that shoots straight up through the middle of the City and into the sky.

“It’s coming from the Institution.” Elan has his head tilted all the way back and stares at the light, transfixed.

“Yeah, but what is it?” Brandon asks again, but his words die off as a ship rushes through the light and is immediately turned into dust.

“Holy crap!” I blurt, still not understanding what I am witnessing. Another ship or two zooms by overhead, and they quickly change their course, barely avoiding the beam. “I think…I think that’s the Beacon! Come on, let’s get back to the Institution. It looks like the Dreamcatchers are trying to get to it, and someone should be there to meet them.” I look back over my shoulder in the direction where the other Dreamcatchers left. Echo is long gone. Did I save him? Was that all I had to do?

I climb out of the house’s rubble, scaling broken bookshelves and piles of shingles and brick. The alarm is blaring louder now, and I can barely make out the moaning of someone to my right. “Wait! Someone’s in here.” They all stop moving, and we hear the moaning again.

“That way!” One of the other team members calls, leading us down what used to be a hallway leading to a bedroom. Inside the room, the Widow lays crushed under a beam that used to help hold up the structure of her house. No one else knows who she is, but when I remove my helmet and head over to her, it’s made perfectly clear that she knows who I am.

“Beatrice.” She breathes raggedly, just like the gurgling noises that Mae made before she choked on her own blood and died.

Gabe stops by my side and grabs my arm so I can’t approach.

“Is she a Dreamcatcher?” Elan asks.

“Why would a Dreamcatcher know Beatrice’s name?” Brandon shoves Elan, nearly pushing him to the ground in the process. Elan winces in pain, still holding his wrist, and frowns up at Brandon. When they are standing next to each other, one looks like a giant and the other a tiny bug, and if we weren’t in the middle of a war, I’d maybe laugh at it.

“Everyone knows her name, child.” The Widow holds her hand out to me. “You must save us.” She coughs up blood and it trickles from the corners of her mouth and down her cheeks. “Save us.”

“I don’t know how.” And I
don’t
know how. How did I become the one who has to save everyone else? Why can’t it be someone else’s burden and not mine?

“You do.” The Widow closes her eyes and coughs again, and when she opens them back up, she reaches out and pulls on the chain around my neck, revealing the raven necklace under my jumpsuit. “Beware what you cannot See.”

“But how do I avoid something if I cannot See it?” Everything around me seems to disappear as I grasp the Widow’s hand, trying to will her to stay alive a little longer. To help me.

“You rely on your other senses, Beatrice. Seeing is only one part of us. Sensing, as you have learned, is another.” The Widow looks up into my eyes. “Don’t forget that you are more than just your Sight. You are so much more, Beatrice, and you don’t even know it.”

“What do you mean? What more?”

After a few, raspy breaths and another cough or two, she ceases to breathe, leaving my question unanswered.
Beware what you cannot See. You are so much more…

Gabe lets go of my arm. “Who the hell was that?”

“The Widow.” I brush some of her hair out of her face. “Remember? She was kicked out of the Institution long ago. A Dreamcatcher found his way into her dreams…or her Visions. I don’t know which, just that they threw her out to protect the rest of the Seers at the time.”

“Lucky her,” Elan mutters, and I cast him a curious look, since I’ve never heard of a Seer who didn’t want to be at the Institution.

I don’t have time to pry any further into his words, though. “We have to keep moving. Back to the Institution. Now.”

On our way back, we pass remnants of skirmishes that look as if they broke even for the most part. Dreamcatchers, Seers, and Citizens alike litter the ground like pieces of discarded trash, limbs sprawled out unnaturally in every direction.

The closer we get to the Institution, the louder the alarm becomes, and the more intense the light shines. I put my hand up to my brow, or where my brow would be if I weren’t wearing a helmet. Even with the tinted visor, the light is too bright, and I have to look away.

When we get to the front doors, they automatically slide open for us then bolt behind once we are inside. One by one we pull our helmets off, faces beaded with sweat and dirt. I wipe the back of my hand across my cheeks and frown.

“Where are we going to set up now?” Gabe leans down, his palms on his knees. He takes deep breaths, his back heaving up and down as he tries to relax.

“Just outside. We can make a barrier in the bay and wait in there in case the Dreamcatchers try to get in. That’s probably where they are going since it’s our biggest entrance.” I glance at what remains of my team and notice that two Citizens have been running along with us. They stare in wonder at the grandeur of the Institution. “Damn it. How’d they get in here too?”

Elan pushes the two Citizens back toward the door. “Consider yourselves lucky. You got to see what very few Citizens ever get to see.” With a little push, the doors slide open and the Citizens tumble out. “But you aren’t allowed in here. So go find some cover.”

“Give them your gun.” I order, feeling bad that we are going to hide ourselves away in the comfort of the Institution, while sending two people back out into the war zone with nothing to defend themselves with. It wouldn’t be very honorable of us, and to the Citizens, the Seers are supposed to be anything but dishonorable.

Elan pulls the strap of his gun over his head and tosses the weapon out onto the ground. “Stay safe.” The doors shut, allowing no time for the Citizens to say anything back. “We’re going to get in a lot of trouble for that one.” Gabe picks another gun up off the ground and tosses it to Elan.

“One, two, three, four, five, six…” I count the heads of those who have managed to escape the bank, which is only half of my team. Two of them look even more frightened than the rest. They are new Seers, even if they have the raven’s wings to mark the sides of their faces. “Six.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Bea.” Gabe knows what I am thinking. He always knows what I am thinking.

“Then whose fault is it?”

“The Dreamcatchers’. Now come on. We need to find a good place to set up in case they come this way.” He allows no time for me to retort. Gabe takes off toward the staging area, and we run behind him, trying our best to keep up. He moves gracefully, even when jogging in his combat suit, which is heavy and cumbersome.

I find myself wanting Echo, and part of me hurts that he didn’t seem to recognize me or care that I was standing right in front of him. But at the same time, I want to shake him, yell at him for killing something so innocent in order to heal himself. How could he do that to her? In this chaos, though, it’s hard to arrange my thoughts into something coherent, and before I can turn back to confront Echo, Gabe leads all of us into something none of us expected.