The Illusionists (25 page)

‘Um. Sorry to interrupt. But I think you'd better come and see the news.'

Cho was hovering in the doorway. She had become muted over the last day or so – they all had. But with Cho there was another reason. He caught her watching his interaction with Rue sometimes, a curious look on her face like she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing.

Rue was curled next to him, asleep. Her head was too heavy on his shoulder now, but he hadn't wanted to move her.

‘What's wrong?' he said in a whisper.

‘Just come and see.'

He disentangled himself from Rue as gently as he could. She stirred but didn't wake. He moved out of the room and closed the door.

‘Is she asleep?' said Cho.

‘Yes.'

‘I mean  …  she's not  …  gone somewhere, has she?'

‘No, just asleep. It's too dangerous for anyone to go to the Castle right now. It might be overrun. I just don't know.'

‘Oh. I always freak when I see her asleep. She does it a lot.'

They made their way downstairs and into the social room. A screen, similar to Greta's in the medical hall, had been stuck up on one wall like a poster.

‘Aren't they ridiculously expensive?' said White, in surprise.

‘Um, Livie's rich. I don't know whether you've noticed her house.' Cho fiddled with the screen. ‘No one really needs them, anyway – they're just for being a show-off. But, you know, without your implant I can't share anything with you. That's a really weird feeling, by the way, like you suddenly stopped being able to speak a language, or something.'

‘I know.'

‘Is it  … ?' She hesitated. ‘Is it, you know  …  weird, not having an implant?'

‘It is here. In Angle Tar I got used to being without Life. Here it's like being partially deaf and blind.'

‘I think about it sometimes,' she said. ‘A lot, actually. I know I'm a hypocrite, you know. With what I do. Preaching about how awful Life is but still massively connected. But the truth is, most hackers are the biggest addicts there are. I don't know if I can live without it. I wouldn't feel like me any more.'

White shifted, swallowed. He wasn't sure what she wanted from him.

‘It's hard,' he offered. ‘But it's possible.'

Cho shrugged, like it didn't really matter one way or the other, even though they both knew it did.

‘Are you going to tell me what's happening?' he prompted, trying to be gentle.

‘Hang on, hang on, I'm trying to show you. I just need to connect the screen to my account  …  Okay.'

She stepped back.

The screen lit up. It showed an aggregator feed, pulling in images and text and video based on a search subject. Cho had inputted the search term ‘arrests/teleporting/dreamers'.

White felt a coldness squeeze his chest.

He scanned the feed. There were photos of people being arrested, looking dazed. One had a sedative dart sticking out of him – still the weapon of choice for the police, it seemed. Fast, effective, more humane than bullets. There was a jerky video someone had taken with their implant recorder; the voice on the video shouting a string of curses as they watched a friend led into the back of a transport vehicle.

‘They're rounding up Dreamers,' said Cho. ‘Sorry, you say Talented, don't you?'

‘Based on
what evidence
?'

‘Based on the fact that you're all religious loons with ties to terrorists, and they can do what they like with that, remember? Also  … ' she hesitated.

‘Tell me.'

‘Look, I never know how truthful this kind of thing is, but apparently, over the last couple of days, there've been a few cases of Talented suddenly attacking people – even their own families. Um. Disappearing into thin air. And then, you know, reappearing. So they started arresting them. I think now they're kind of pre-empting, arresting any Talented they know about, just in case.'

White put his head in his hands. So fast. So unbelievably fast. Wren had opened a crack, and now it was turning into a flood. More monsters had escaped, possessing the Talented, using them as their vessels, riding around in them like cars. How much havoc would they wreak? How many deaths would they cause?

He thought they'd have more time. They needed more time. They hadn't even talked about how they would go about finding the monster inside Wren's body. He hadn't counted on having to find more than one.

He felt so small, suddenly, like the world was spinning out of control and all he could do was sit in the middle of it all like a frightened child.

‘I have to do something,' he said, eventually. ‘I have to  …  I have to stop this, somehow.
Somehow.
' He laughed, the sound a little too wild for his liking.

‘Jacob.'

‘What?'

‘Are you  …  Is this going to happen to you? I mean, it's the Talented this is happening to, not anyone else.' She jerked a thumb at the screen. She was scared angry. ‘I mean, I really don't want you being possessed or something, you know?'

White opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

They needed the Talented, didn't they? That was why the Wren thing had called him a vessel. That was why it hadn't killed him. The Talented had the right sort of minds to be taken over. They were already displaced, half in other worlds. Untethered. It'd be so much easier to take over a mind like that than a mind rooted in reality.

He'd thought of the Talented as weapons – the only ones who could protect the weak from the horrors waiting patiently in the dark spaces for their chance. But the truth was so much worse.
They
were the weak.
They
were the problem.

If you got rid of all the Talented, you solved the problem.

‘Then we have to go back to the Castle,' said Rue. She was awake and raring after they had filled her in. White had been afraid it would dispirit her. If anything, she was jiggling, impatient.

‘No,' he said. ‘No. It's too dangerous.'

‘How else are we going to find them? We can't just roam around spotting Talented and then  …  what? Kill them?'

‘Of course not,' he said. ‘We'll leave that to the police.'

‘They can't even slightly get away with murder right now, Jacob,' said Cho, impatient. ‘They're just locking them up. We're not completely fascist here, you know.'

‘Anyway, they have the right idea,' said Rue.

White swallowed a reply. They did have the right idea, and that was what galled him the most.

‘They're cleaning up this end as best they can. But they can't stop it at the source, can they? That's up to us. And we have to do it before there's none of us left.'

White stared at his hands, trying to think. ‘All right,' he said reluctantly. ‘But what do we do once we get there? I remember how it is there, Rue. Do you think you could face one of those things and not die? Do we even know how to kill them? We have no idea how  …  how he managed to open the Castle. So how do we close it?'

Rue chewed on her lip for a moment. She needed to stop that. It did something to him that completely broke his concentration.

‘I've been thinking about that a lot,' she said. ‘It's a question of perspective.'

‘Explain.'

‘Well, when we go to the Castle, it's just like another Talent dream to us, right? We visit it with our minds. All your lessons, all the training you did with us, it was about controlling our minds. Controlling where we wanted to go, and then controlling what we did when we got there. You know. “Move forward.” “Look around.” “What do you see?”'

‘Mind spying.'

‘Yes. And I always thought of mind spying more like “awake dreaming”. Well, you can take that control from awake dreaming into your sleep dreams, can't you? I've done it loads of times before.'

He stared at her. She was constantly, overwhelmingly, the most surprising person he'd ever met. Just when he thought he had a handle on her, she threw him again.

‘You're talking about lucid dreaming,' he said.

‘What the hell is that?' Cho was frowning.

‘It's when you can control what happens in a dream,' said Rue. ‘If you're having a nightmare, for example, and you manage to stop whatever it is chasing you. Or you turn it into a butterfly or something. Or you think, “I want to wake up now.” And then you do.'

‘Oh,
that.
Even I can do that. Well  …  I've only done it once or twice, maybe.'

‘Well,' said Rue. ‘That's what Talented do all the time.'

‘Jack,' muttered Cho. ‘No wonder you're all so weird.'

‘That's how I pull people into my dreams, I think. I mean  … ' She glanced at White. ‘That's how I pulled you in. I wanted to see you, so I made it happen. That's how all Talented works, isn't it? Maybe we just have more  …  lucid dreaming ability than everyone else. Our minds detach themselves, and they go exploring, and when we learn to control where we go and what we do, well – that's lucid dreaming, except we do it when we're awake.

‘Well, why can't we lucid dream in the Castle? It's the same thing. Just because we're afraid of it, doesn't mean we can't control it. So when we're there, couldn't we just try to control what happens? Couldn't we think, “I want to close the Castle?”'

White shook his head. ‘No. No. It doesn't seem possible. It can't be that easy. I don't think anyone has that power.'

‘I think you do,' said Rue, quietly. ‘You're the best in the world at it.'

But I don't know what I'm doing!
he screamed in his head.
I can't save everyone! I can't do that!

Rue reached out and touched his face. Cho looked away, uncomfortable.

‘We work together,' she said firmly, as if she could read his mind. ‘And we won't be alone. The more Talented we have there, the better. We'll be stronger.'

White looked into her eyes. Then he dropped his gaze. She seemed to reach inside him and he felt open, wide open.

‘Who do you propose taking with us?' he said.

Rue leaned back.

‘Some people we both know.'

She talked.

She really had thought it through. While he'd been busy tying himself up in knots over everything he'd failed at, over Wren, she'd come up with it all. He had no faith at all that any of it would work. Neither did she. But it was better than doing nothing. It was better to try than to hide away and hope someone else took care of it. It was courage. He could feel it leaking from her to him.

At some point, Livie wandered into the room. She and Cho left, and then came back with food. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so hungry. Did hope bring appetite back? They thrashed arguments back and forth. They made lists.

It felt good. It felt insane, and ridiculous. It didn't feel real.

‘Cho,' said White, when it was all laid out. His whole head felt heavy – they'd been at it for over two hours. ‘We need you again.'

It was the right thing to say. She was like him – she hated feeling powerless. She wanted to
do.

‘Just as long as I don't have to go anywhere near that Hammond bitch,' she said.

White wanted to reach out and touch her somehow. Touch her shoulder, or lift the spike of hair she always had dangling in her eyes and tuck it back. But they had never been that way.

‘Not this time,' he replied.

Cho took Livie's hand, grasping it tight. ‘What do you need?'

It had taken two days to arrange everything.

In the meantime, the news got worse. Rue stopped looking it up. They all did. Greta seemed to be holding up her end for now – there were no visits from the police, despite the fact that she must know exactly where they all were.

Everything was in place for tonight.

It had gone too far to back out now. If this didn't work, if more people died, it was all on her. Rue felt sick, as if her fear were rotting inside her, poisoning her blood and her mind.

Livie's guest bathroom had a steam function. Rue filled the room with it until it choked her. She sat in it until her clothes stuck to her in moist folds, and then she stripped. She was hot. Her skin was hot. Her head was hot. But she still felt cold.

‘Rue?' came a voice outside the room. ‘Rue!'

White opened the door.

She looked up as the steam was sucked away, billowing past his lean figure.

He didn't say,
oh gods, sorry
, or even
Rue, you're totally naked
. He just stood there, looking at her. She liked that. Maybe he finally knew that she was his, and that he didn't need to apologise for it.

‘The temperature alarm was going off,' he said. ‘You've got it on too high.'

She just gazed up at him, sat on the floor with her knees hugged to her chest.

‘I can't get warm,' she said.

‘It's horrible in here.'

She didn't reply.

‘Are you all right?'

The concern in his voice broke her. He was supposed to be cold and unfeeling. What was wrong with him? More to the point, what was wrong with
her
? This was a life she had in front of her, a living breathing person. You couldn't play around with that.

‘White,' she said, her voice sharp and jagged. ‘What are we doing?
What are we doing?
'

He crossed to her and crouched. He slid his arms around her, and then sat down awkwardly, folding himself around her hunched figure.

‘We're no one,' she said against his chest. She could feel his heart beating. It was too meaty for her, that reminder of the blood that was pushed around his system in rhythmic pumps, the muscle and bone that caged it. She hated hearing his heart beat. What if it stopped?

‘We're not no one,' he said into her hair.