The grey man nodded. “Specifically, the ones that inspired several gaming modules you designed. Let’s begin with Demon World, The Seven-Fold Path, and Passage to Hell. Please describe to me exactly which elements in those modules were inspired by your dreams and what the dreams themselves were like.”
This is too friggin’ surreal, Tommy thought. Here he’d suffered what seemed to be a genuine alien abduction, and all they wanted was to know about his dreams? What happened to prodding him with giant needles and stealing his bodily fluids? What made this even crazier was that it wasn’t his dreams this guy was asking about; those three modules had been based on stories that Jesse had told him, about her dreams.
Oh.
Understanding hit him like a bucket of ice water.
Oh!
They wanted Jesse’s dreams. That what this was all about! She’d told Tommy he could use them for his games if he claimed them as his own, so he’d done that, and now … holy crap.
They think I’m Jesse.
He started to talk, but very slowly. Forcing words out—any words—to buy himself time to think. The first thing he needed to do was confirm to this guy that they’d grabbed the right dreamer, to buy himself some time to evaluate the situation. So he started talking about his dreams, but he deliberately mixed up the details. Some bits were from Jesse’s dreams, some from his own, and some was stuff he just made up on the spot. He did rip off a few ideas from World of Warcraft, but despite the fact that the grey man was the one who had brought up the subject of game modules, Tommy suspected he wasn’t enough of a player to catch the references.
His captor listened to all of it with no change of expression, but Tommy could tell from the questions the grey guy asked which parts of the recitation interested him the most. And that was all stuff from Jesse’s dreams. Tommy tested that theory out with a few more story twists, and soon there was no doubt about it: She was the dreamer they’d meant to kidnap, not him.
The revelation both elated and terrified him. Whatever they’d been planning to do to Jesse, it surely wouldn’t accomplish their purpose to do it to him instead. So that was a good thing, right? Only here he was, trapped in this cell, and they couldn’t just let him go now that he’d seen these aliens with undrugged eyes. So as soon as they realized that they’d made a mistake, and that he was of no possible use to them, they’d probably dispose of him. And so he struggled to sound useful, feeding the grey man the stories he seemed to want to hear, presenting each dream as his own.
After about a half hour of that the grey man finally held up a hand and said, “Enough for now.” Which was a good thing, because at that point Tommy was mentally exhausted, and he was running out of dreams to talk about.
“Can I go home now?” he asked in his most plaintive naïve-little-boy voice. He was sure the answer would be No, but he figured that the more scared and helpless he looked, the less likely it was that this guy would think him capable of misleading anyone.
The huge cat-eyes fixed on him. “Not yet,” their owner said, without a hint of emotion. Not ever, his eyes proclaimed. Then the alien called for the door to be opened, and he exited without further word, leaving Tommy alone with his thoughts, and his fears.
Enough for now. Did that mean that this guy would be coming back later, to hear more dream stories? If so, then Tommy would need to come up with some new ones, and fast. He would include details from Jesse’s dreams to keep the grey man engaged, but mix in enough nonsense from gaming scenarios to make it hard for his captors to be sure which parts mattered. The longer they were uncertain, the longer they would need to keep Tommy around to feed them information.
Always keep them wanting more, he thought grimly.
He remembered a story he’d read once, about a princess whose husband wanted to behead her after their wedding night, but she had talked her way out of it. What was it called—1001 Nights? She told him a story that night but left off the ending, so he had to let her live another night to finish it. Then the next night, after she finished that story, she started a new one, which also had the ending missing. And again the next night. And the night after that. Eventually he just gave up on the whole beheading idea and let her live on as his wife. Happily ever after. True, it hadn’t sounded like a very healthy marriage to Tommy, but who was he to judge?
He was pretty sure that his captors wouldn’t give him a total reprieve like that. But as long as he kept telling stories they wanted to hear, they’d probably keep him around. And meanwhile, maybe Jesse would find him. Or someone else would. Or he’d figure out a way to get out of here by himself.
Lying back on his bed, trembling, he shut his eyes and began to weave suspense-filled fantasies in his head.
Hell, he thought dryly, at least I’m playing to my strengths.
12
BLUE RIDGE GATE
VIRGINIA PRIME
YOU KNOW HOW YOU FEEL when you jump off a high diving board for the very first time? There you are, suspended in midair with nothing to hold on to, and suddenly it hits you just how far down the water really is, which you never really understood until that minute. You have this long, terrible moment where you’re falling—just falling—and the whole world seems to slow down around you, so you have time to analyze every flaw in your diving technique and calculate just how bad the pain is going to be when you hit the water belly-first, because empty air doesn’t offer any handholds and gravity doesn’t allow do-overs.
Going through the archway was like that.
One minute I was lying like a corpse in my cloth-and-steel coffin, trying to ignore everything that was going on around me, and the next minute I was moving. The cavern floor that had seemed so smooth when I was walking on it turned out to be anything but, and a few times the gurney got jolted so badly I was afraid my backpack would come loose and fall to the floor.
Trust the duct tape, I told myself. Trust the duct tape. A mantra of serenity. Trust the duct tape.
Then strange patterns filled my head again, and this time they were ten times brighter than before. Glowing lines swept around me in seemingly chaotic abandon, but I could sense that there was a greater pattern to them, and that the pattern mattered. I tried not to think about what it could mean, for fear of getting so distracted that I would turn my head to look at some part of it.
We must have entered the archway then, because suddenly the ground was level and everything else was gone. Just gone. I’m not sure how I knew that, from under my sheet, or how I knew that there were a thousand different directions we could go in—a hundred thousand—and only one of them would bring us safely to the other side. Assuming there was anything on the other side that a Manassas gal would call safe. It was a terrifying ride, smooth on the outside but roller-coaster scary on the inside, and I had to fight not to reach out and grab the edges of my gurney, just to have something to hold on to.
And then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. The gurney jolted as one of its wheels bumped into something solid. The sound of human voices—or maybe non-human voices—filled the air and the bits and pieces of conversation I overheard were so unexpectedly mundane that they served as an anchor, grounding my soul as the strange patterns faded from my mind.
Is this the last group for today?
Paula asked if you could take her shift.
No, I don’t know when Sanderson will be finished. Why don’t you just ask him yourself?
I was shaking pretty badly by that point, which was dangerous. I tried to hold my body rigid so that its trembling wouldn’t be visible, but trembling doesn’t work like that. Luckily no one was looking too closely.
There was a sudden jerk as my gurney started moving again. The floor was perfectly smooth, which at least told me that we were no longer in the cavern. Then the table stopped moving, and I heard other gurneys wheeled into position beside me, five in all. Footsteps moved away from us. Snatches of conversation fluttered about my head like anxious insects, then moved off into the distance and were gone.
br /> Silence.
For the first time in what seemed like eternity, I dared to draw in a deep breath. My chest ached as clean-smelling air filled my lungs. I had the sudden crazy vision of a Star Trek landing party reporting back to Captain Kirk: “The aliens breathe oxygen, sir.”
Then the lights went out.
I listened for a moment just to make sure no one was still around then pushed the sheet to one side and reached for my flashlight. But Rita got to hers first. We had been wheeled into a small room that looked like a storage closet of some kind. There were shelves on three sides of us, with boxes and piles of folded fabric and what looked like cleaning supplies. Not until we got to the doorway could we see what was outside.
It was a cavern, similar in form to the one we’d just left. But this one had been upgraded considerably. The central portion of the floor was covered with colorful tiling, and slatted benches were positioned at regular intervals along its periphery. The tunnel where the steel walkway had been was now framed with a decorative archway labeled “Victoria Passage,” and further down were two smaller archways labeled with symbols I’d never seen before.
All it needed was a ticket booth and it could pass for Union Station.
“We need to get out of here,” Rita said. I could hear fear rising in her voice. “I don’t like being trapped underground on a good day, and throwing those Shadows into the mix doesn’t make it better. Let’s get out of this deathtrap first, then figure out what to do about Tommy.” She looked at the arches. “We’ve got three options, so we can’t just flip a coin. Unless someone packed D&D dice.” She glanced at Devon.
“Four options,” he corrected her. “Assuming this cavern really is the same as the one we left.”
We took a few minutes to stow supplies from the closet under our sheets, creating what we hoped were reasonable simulacra of comatose bodies. Then we went searching among the formations to see if the crevice we’d come out of in our own cave existed in this one too. It did. Which at least answered the question of how we were going to get out of there without being seen.
Apparently the locals never used this crevice for anything, so they’d never bothered cleaning it out, which meant it was muddy as hell. And of course there was no neat brick path at the other end. Our former route was still in its natural state, which meant that much of it was covered in mud, some of it ankle-deep.
We sloshed and mucked and squelched our way through quasi-familiar chambers and tunnels, all too aware that we were leaving behind a trail of footprints deep enough for a blind man to follow. But what had seemed like a simple enough journey when following a brick path wasn’t nearly as simple without one. Devon marked every turning point with his chalk, and one time we discovered that we had circled back to a previous mark. But eventually we managed to locate the place where a narrow tunnel cut up through the rock, leading to the surface.
There were no stairs this time, and no one had expanded the tunnel to facilitate climbing, but we were pretty damned determined, and nothing short of solid rock would have stopped us at that point. Eventually, we reached the surface, and we exited onto the grass one after the other, collapsing underneath a black sky filled with stars. For a handful of minutes we just lay there, utterly exhausted. Every muscle in my body ached, and the night wind chilled me through mud-soaked clothing as I took my first good look around.
The mountain behind us was familiar enough, but there was some kind of large building perched up on the crest. By the light of a slender moon we could make out the shape of a Victorian-style mansion, looming over the surrounding landscape like a hungry vulture. Anyone walking its ramparts would be able to see for miles in the moonlight … which meant that for as long as we were out in the open we were vulnerable. We had to find cover, and find it fast.
We started to walk. And we walked. And we walked. We came to a place where the trees were dense enough to shield us from observation, but that was too close, Devon said. Sooner or later the locals would discover our trick with the gurneys, and we had to be far enough away by then that a basic search of the area wouldn’t find us. Much as it pained me to travel away from the place where my brother was most likely to be, I knew he was right. We’d be more use to Tommy if we weren’t caught by a search team.
Sometime during the walk that followed, the last of my energy finally faded, and if not for Devon I don’t think I could have kept going. He lifted my arm and wrapped it around his shoulders, encouraging me to lean on him. I put up a token protest, but I was grateful for the physical support; I don’t know how long I could have gone on without it. The fire had been only a day ago, and the muddy trek out of the caverns had been exhausting. Fear can only sustain you for so long.
“We need rest,” Rita said, voicing my thoughts.
At one point I caught her watching us. She turned away quickly when I looked in her direction but not quickly enough. I suddenly realized that I knew nothing about her relationship with Devon. They were such different people, I’d assumed they were just friends, strangers from opposites sides of the track who’d been drawn together by a common threat, and who had established a friendship of convenience. Which was pretty naïve of me, really. The world was full of lovers who had nothing in common. Playwrights wrote whole plays about them … and about their jealousy.
I kept a wary eye on her for the rest of the night, but she never looked my way again.
13
OBFUSCATE GUILDHOUSE IN LURAY
VIRGINIA PRIME
WHEN TOMMY WOKE UP in the morning, a fresh shirt and jeans were on the little table, along with a washcloth, sponge, and towel. He was genuinely grateful for the clothing; surely there was nothing more humiliating than being interrogated while wearing Star Wars pajamas. The bath supplies seemed kind of pointless as there was no bathtub in the room, but he took the hint and cleaned up the best he could by the sink.
Keep the kidnappers happy, right?
Soon after that he discovered the purpose of the mail slot, when a food tray came sliding through it. It had been a day since he’d eaten, so he devoured its offerings in record time. No sooner had he swallowed the last bite then he heard the steady rhythm of footsteps approaching his cell once more. This time there was a high pitched tap-tap sound in the mix. High heels, maybe? Sure enough, when the door opened he saw that the grey man had brought a woman with him, and she was ushered into the room with such an air of formality that Tommy guessed she must be a very important person.
She was a striking woman, and—to Tommy’s relief—she appeared to be human. Her clothing was white, and it seemed to glow in the shadowy confines of the small room, drawing his eyes to her. White silk blouse, white waistcoat, flowing white evening pants. Her face was pale gold, sun-kissed, with a hint of coral in her cheeks, and her blond hair was dressed up in a complex arrangements of coils and braids that must have taken a hairdresser hours to arrange. Her eyes shifted from grey-blue to grey-green as she looked around the room, and they might not have seemed remarkable on their own, but the thick bands of eyeliner that extended far past the outer corners of her eyes—black on top, gold on bottom—made her look like an ancient Egyptian queen.
“This is Her Ladyship Alia Morgana, Mistress of the Guild of Seers,” the grey man announced. “You will cooperate with her in all that she requires.”
The woman smiled; it seemed a well-rehearsed expression. “Tommy Drake, is it?” When he said nothing she asked, “Are you the dreamer?”
He flushed. “If you mean, am I the one who’s been telling this guy all about my dreams? Yeah, I guess so.”
“No,” she said quietly. “That was not what I asked.”
He felt a flutter of unease in his stomach. The woman’s gaze made him feel like an insect pinned to a collection board. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure what the question is.”
“On the contrary, Tommy. I think you are far sharper than this gentleman makes you out to be”—she nodded toward the grey man—“and I think you know exactly what I’m aski
ng.”
There were no safe words, so he said nothing.
She walked toward the bed and sat down on the end of it, then patted the mattress beside her. He shook his head quickly in refusal. He didn’t want to get any closer to her than he had to.
“Do you know what it means to be a Seer, Tommy?”
“No, ma’am.”
The grey man interrupted. “She is to be addressed as Your Ladyship, or Your Grace.”
Tommy whispered “No, Your Grace.”
“It means I know how to read people,” the woman told him. “It means I can tell when they’re lying to me, or even when they’re just trying to hold something back. It means I can sense their emotions, so I know which questions make them afraid. Which ones they don’t really want to answer. Do you understand what that means?”
He nodded miserably. What a fool he’d been, to think that he could have any kind of control over this situation! Never before had he felt so utterly helpless. And she knew it, too. She could read him like a book. He saw it in her eyes.
“Do you know why we’re so interested in your dreams, Tommy?”
He shook his head.
“There are some people in the world who have special abilities. For example, I can sense a person’s spiritual essence.” She nodded toward the grey man. “Master Wells here can walk through a crowded room without anyone noticing him. We call them Gifts, and they come in many varieties. We try to identify the people who have such abilities while they’re still young, so that we can arrange for them to have proper teachers.”
Wary of where this was leading, Tommy nodded again.
“There is one very special ability that few people have mastered. Can you guess what that is?”
His throat was dry; it took effort to force the words out. “Something to do with dreams?”
“Exactly. That’s why we watch for young people who have certain types of dreams, because it tells us that they may have this Gift.” She paused. “Your dreams suggest you’re one of those people, Tommy.”