The Tower (38 page)

“I think this one means something, Terry. I want to know what.”

“If you’re going have a dreamweaver help you, you really should just have him overwrite your nightmares so that you wouldn’t be so obsessed by them.”

I frowned. “I’m not obsessed, Terry. I’ve been trying to ignore this ever since I started living here. I should have realized long ago that I couldn’t ignore it no matter how hard I tried. Something is happening in my head, and I’m going to find out what.”

“Paranoid,” said Terry, unsmiling.

That night was like any other. I woke up screaming twice.

Several days later, Terry asked me over breakfast, “How’s your brain hack coming?”

“Not so well,” I answered honestly.

In fact, I had made next to no progress. The last few nights, I remembered having seen flashes of dull, greenish light at the start of my nightmares. They were different from the brilliant flashes of light that my nightmares often ended with. I had called Mr. Koontz on the telephone and he confirmed that the green flashes had been his attempts to shock me into consciousness without waking me. Once, the light actually did wake me up, and while that spared me from another midnight scream, nevertheless it frustrated me even more.

“You’re wasting your time, Adrian, and Mr. Koontz’s as well,” said Terry. “I’d give it up if I were you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not you,” I said irritably. “And what do you care about Mr. Koontz?”

“Nothing, Adrian!” Terry snapped back. “He’s
your
friend. I just think you should get your head out of your dreams and focus on your real life. Your power balance, CQC, all that stuff.”

“Hey, what I do in my sleep is none of your business, Terry!”

Terry just glared at me, and we finished our breakfast in silence.

The phone rang as Terry was packing her school bag, and I answered it to Mr. Koontz’s voice. After our greetings, he said, “How would you feel about spending the night at my place one of these days?”

“If it’s for what I think it’s for, tonight is as good as any,” I answered. “But I thought you could throw your dreams a hundred miles.”

“I can,” replied Mr. Koontz. “But that doesn’t change the fact that the closer I am, the better I can dreamweave to you. This is a pretty solid building, and you are actually farther away from me than the Knights had been when I was sending dreams to the surface above the research center.”

I arranged to knock on his door at 10pm that night. Over lunch, I told Cindy what I was planning to do, and she smiled, saying, “Experiment. Do whatever works.”

I laughed. “That’s what you said about Alia’s mouth-speaking training.”

“I know,” said Cindy. “It’s a good technique when you’re stuck.”

Before leaving that night, I helped Cindy tuck Alia into bed.

“I’m just going to be gone one night, okay, Ali?” I said.

“I’ll be okay, Addy,” said Alia, hugging me, and then added into my head,
“Good luck.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Taking my duffle bag containing my nightclothes and change for tomorrow, I had almost reached the front door when I heard Terry’s voice behind me, asking, “Where are you going?”

I didn’t turn around. “You’d just make fun of me.”

“Are you going down to Mr. Koontz’s place?”

I didn’t reply, and a moment later I heard her say quietly, “Come on, Adrian, I’m just worried about you. This dream hunting isn’t healthy.”

I turned toward her and said, “Listen, if Mr. Koontz can’t help me unlock this nightmare in a few more days, I’ll give it up, okay? Just give me some time.”

“Okay, Adrian,” said Terry. “Sweet dreams, then, or whatever.”

I gave her a little smile, telekinetically opened the front door and left the penthouse.

Mr. Koontz was waiting for me in his condo. He ushered me in and showed me his bedroom.

“I don’t sleep until after sunrise, so it’s all yours. I’ll leave you alone until you are asleep, but then I’ll quietly come in and sit by you, if that’s okay.”

“That’s fine, Mr. Koontz,” I said, looking around the bedroom. The only window had thick curtains drawn over them, which I assumed was how Mr. Koontz simulated nighttime while he slept.

As the dreamweaver turned to leave, I said, “Thank you for this, Mr. Koontz. You have no idea how much it means to me.”

“Thank me later, Adrian. This may not work.”

Once I was alone, I changed into my nightclothes and slipped into Mr. Koontz’s bed, which I found to be considerably harder than my own. I hadn’t had a CQC lesson with Terry that day so I wasn’t very tired, and I was in an unfamiliar room which made it even more difficult to fall asleep. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what I might discover if Mr. Koontz succeeded in helping me “hack my brain” as Terry had put it.

Terry... What did she have to do with all of this anyway? Mr. Baker had suggested that the doctors at the Psionic Research Center might have done something to me that was messing up my mind, but I hadn’t met Terry until after arriving in New Haven.

I remembered how Terry had dragged me into that dance hall last summer. She had asked me about Alia. She wanted to know what I was willing to die for. Given the choice, I’d die for family. But I never chose to die for Alia. Choice just didn’t work that way. After all, theoretically, you could choose to hold your hand in an open flame until all the flesh burned away, leaving nothing but bones. But could you really? Of course not. For all her down-to-earth pragmatism, when it came to choice, Terry was more of a dreamer than me. She didn’t understand the fundamental truth that choice was by and large an illusion that people created so that they could make believe they were somehow in control of their own lives.

I wondered what Terry would die for.

A flash of dull, green light. Where had that come from? Where was I? My head was spinning. The whole world was rocking back and forth as a firm hand pulled me forward into the darkness.

“Where are you taking me, Terry?” I mumbled, stumbling as she pulled me along.

“Just follow me, Adrian. It’ll be okay.”

Terry led me down the car ramp and into the basement parking lot.

We entered the elevator. Terry pulled out her silver key.

“Try not to fall over,” she said, letting go of me. Closing my eyes, I leaned against the elevator wall, but soon slid down the side. It felt like the elevator had fallen into a raging sea. Was this what it felt like to be drunk?

When I opened my eyes again, Terry was pulling me into the concrete hall. We passed through a few doors.

“What is this place, Terry?”

“You’ll see,” she said, pushing me in through a heavy steel door.

It was the holding block. I looked at the cells lining the wall, and in the closest was a bearded man wearing a heavy steel ring on his right ankle. It was locked in place. I realized that this man was the Angel spy that had been caught a few days ago. He stood up from his bed and approached the bars, looking at us curiously.

“What are we doing here?” I asked, trying not to fall over again.

“Shut up, Adrian,” Terry said quietly.

Terry walked over to the bars and said to the man, “I’m going to let you out now. Don’t do anything stupid and you’ll get out of here safely.”

“Terry! No!” I shouted.

Terry turned to me. “That goes for you too, Adrian.”

I clumsily tried to make a break for the exit. Terry pushed me hard from behind, slamming me into the steel door. My right arm seared with pain as it was crushed against the doorknob. Terry pinned me against the door, and the combination of alcohol and metal draining meant that the only reason I hadn’t slid to the floor was because Terry was holding me up.

She pulled me back, throwing me down onto the hard concrete floor. “I’m sorry, Adrian,” she said, “but this is going to happen the way I want it to, and you’re not going to stop me.”

Terry opened a supply cabinet mounted on the wall and pulled out a pistol.

“You’re not going to shoot me, Terry,” I mumbled, not entirely sure she wouldn’t.

“I won’t, but he might,” said Terry, walking back to the spy’s cell.

Handing the gun through the bars to the Angel spy, Terry said to him, “If the boy screams or tries to run, kill him.”

“Sure thing,” said the Angel, leveling the pistol on me.

Terry went over to the control panel and pulled two of the levers. The spy’s cell door and the cell door farthest from the entrance both creaked open.

“How are we getting out?” asked the man.

“Through here,” said Terry, gesturing toward the farthest cell. Then she came back to me and roughly stood me up. “You’re coming too.”

“We could just leave him in my cell,” suggested the Angel.

“No,” said Terry. “Someone might come down here. I don’t want him shouting for help. Just keep the gun on him.”

We entered the farthest cell together, and Terry felt along the far wall until she found the hidden switch.

The secret passage opened, and I was pushed in first, with Terry behind me and the spy following.

“You’re crazy, Terry,” I said as I stumbled along the pitch-black tunnel. “Why are you doing this?”

“I’m not,” replied Terry. “It’s just a bad dream, Adrian.”

At the end of the passage, Terry reached around me and pulled the lever to open the door into the sewage drain.

Waiting for us on the walkway were two men holding flashlights. They were dressed in blue coveralls, and one of the men had short, dark gray hair. He was the peacemaker. His partner was slightly shorter and had a bushy beard and mustache. I sensed he was a destroyer of some kind, but I was too drunk to identify which specific destroyer power he had.

“You’re late,” said the destroyer.

“I got held up,” replied Terry.

The spy was still standing behind Terry, and the gray-haired peacemaker asked him, “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” answered the spy, carefully stepping around us and shaking hands with the peacemaker. “Thank you, sir.”

“Get going,” the peacemaker said to him, handing him a spare flashlight and gesturing toward the rusty iron ladder that led out of the sewer. “My team is waiting for you at the top. Tell them I’ll be up in a moment.”

As the Angel spy made his way up the ladder, Terry said to the peacemaker, “You got yours. Now, where’s mine?”

But the peacemaker shook his head. “This was merely a test of your loyalty, girl,” he said mildly. “You’ll get yours back when you’ve paid his debt to us.”

“That wasn’t the agreement!” shouted Terry, her voice echoing through the pipe.

“Oh, there’s no agreement,” said the peacemaker, chuckling. “You’ll do what we say when we say it, girl, or there’ll be some assembly required when you get him back.”

The peacemaker’s destroyer partner snickered loudly, and Terry glared at them both.

Then the destroyer turned his attention to me. He poked me in the chest as he sneered at Terry, asking, “And who’s this? Your boyfriend?”

“My cover!” snapped Terry. “And he’s not to be harmed.”

“We’ll decide that,” said the peacemaker. Then he shined his flashlight into my face and said in a surprised tone, “Hey, don’t I know you? What’s your name, boy?”

Squinting in the light, I didn’t immediately answer. Suddenly the peacemaker’s partner grabbed my shoulder with his left hand and shoved me down onto my knees. He pressed a pistol barrel onto my forehead as he commanded, “Answer him!”

Drained, dizzy and weak, I just stared back dazedly.

“He’s Adrian Howell,” said Terry.

“Liar!” shouted the destroyer, pressing the barrel of his gun harder against my head. “He’s the Gifford boy! I saw him on stage. We could take him now and use him to get to the hider.”

“No!” said the peacemaker. “If we take the boy, there’s no telling what new security will be set up, and Baker isn’t dumb enough to risk his precious hider for one child. If we’re going to hold this to Cynthia Gifford directly, we’ll need the healer girl with him.”