Another jolt of adrenaline electrifies my nerves.
Three more red lights go on. It’s as if the dreamers’ lights are an outward reflection of my inner alarm.
Over my earpiece, Anna’s voice says, “Whistler, will you check on the vault? Do you see? We have four lights on.”
I can’t hesitate any longer. I go down the steps into the vault, and instantly, half a dozen more lights come on around me. I take another step so I’m poised between two sleep shells. More lights ripple on above the sleep shells in an ever-expanding wave, spreading out from where I am across the entire space, until every single dreamer has a red light alert and silently gleaming.
My heart goes still, then jolts on again. A tremor of inexplicable power hovers in the air.
“Whistler?” Anna says. “Did you hear me? Where are you?” And then, “Okay, we’ll have to leave this. Meet us in the vault.”
With a jolt, I run toward the center of the vault. If I can get to the middle and aim in the five o’clock direction, I can run out seven rows and find the place where Dubbs was. But I haven’t anticipated the invisible weight of the dreaming children. As I run between their sleep shells, I can’t help but be aware of their gelled eyelids and the blue glow on their skin. They’re a limbo sea of dreamers, silent and close, and they drag at my heart like an undertow. It seems to take me forever to reach the inner circle of the vault, and then I aim out toward where Dubbs was before.
But when at last I reach the seventh row, I can’t find her. I run from one sleep shell to another, scanning the dreamers’ wasted little faces. I backtrack. I try again. They’re all wrong. All not Dubbs. They all wrench my heartache.
“Dubbs!” I call. “Where are you?”
I don’t dare look back toward the nine o’clock arch because I’m absolutely certain Anna and the others are coming. A twisting scurry of panic flickers in the back of my mind. In frustration, I slam my hand against the lid of the nearest sleep shell.
“Tell me where she is!” I say.
Around me, a dozen dreamers’ red lights turn off. The sleep shells look newly abandoned without them. Their normal blue glows look even more sickly. Then more red lights go off, vanishing in a ripple across the room and leaving a weird brown afterglow in their wake. The expanding darkness reaches the outer edge of the circle, and the last of the red lights go off, all except for one.
One single red light keeps shining, far off in the two o’clock direction, small but steady under the vast, hovering gloom of the dome.
I hear a shout from behind me, but I don’t turn back. Instead, I charge toward the red light, running full speed between the sleep shells and heedless of how many I bump. As I near the red light, my heart almost bursts with eagerness, and when I can finally make out the face under the glass lid, I gasp in relief.
It’s Dubbs. She’s inside, asleep.
I throw open the lid. Her eyelids are covered with gel and her cheeks are pale, but she’s breathing. That’s all I need.
“Dubbs!” I whisper urgently. I rip the tabs off her temples. “It’s me, Rosie! We’re leaving!”
I yank aside her gown to find the connections to her ports, and I twist them free. Then I lift her limp body out of the sleep shell, scooping under her knees and back. She’s gangly, all skinny legs and arms, but I pull her securely against me so her head lolls forward beneath my chin.
Then I run.
More shouts come from behind me, closer now, but I still don’t look back. I plunge past the last rows of sleep shells and race into the darkness of the three o’clock tunnel. I know the underground stream is up ahead, if I can get that far. When I can’t see at all, I pause to flip on the headlamp on Whistler’s helmet, and with the beam of light bouncing before me, I keep running along the tunnel until I find the door on my left and shove through.
“She’s in the three o’clock tunnel!” Anna says over the earpiece. “Whistler, for Pete’s sake! Get yourself out here!”
The dank scent of the stream ahead makes something in me balk. I feel a refusal in the back of my brain, a sharp but wordless warning, and for an instant, I slow. But in another step, I can hear the trickle of running water, and then I see the first hint of a green glow.
“I have no choice,” I mutter aloud, and I hitch my sister up again.
At the next bend, I find the glimmering stream and the narrow bridge. The dock is empty, like before. The pounding of running footsteps comes from behind me. Without even looking up the chute again, I know it’s too steep for me to climb with Dubbs. My only chance is the stream.
Swiftly, I sit down at the edge of the dock and swing my legs over. I turn off the headlamp, take a new, firm grip on my sister, and step down into the cold water. The current is knee deep and flows to my left. I go with the water, heading downstream, away from the bridge. Faint green lights eddy around my shins, and through my saturated socks, I can feel the uneven, slippery surface of the bottom of the stream. I let the faint glow in the water guide me. I’m afraid I’ll slip if I go faster, afraid I’ll fall with Dubbs in my arms, but I’m desperate to get around the first corner before my pursuers can see me. My own splashes sound absurdly loud under the echoey ceiling. I make it a dozen steps, fighting for my balance. Then a dozen more.
“Where’d she go?” a man asks from some distance behind me. It’s Jules.
With one more step, I make it around the corner and freeze, holding Dubbs. The cold stream flows between my legs, tugging the thin cotton of my scrubs, and I shiver once, hard.
“She must have taken the skiff,” Anna says.
“If it was here. Who knows where Whistler left it,” Jules says. “Kiri? She’s gone. I don’t know. She isn’t at the dock.”
I don’t hear any replies over my earpiece, and I realize then it’s gone. It must have fallen out.
My arm muscles are beginning to burn. Carefully, silently, I shift Dubbs’s weight a bit higher and arch back. She still hasn’t moved. I lean my shoulder to the cold wall to keep myself steady.
“No, I saw her come in the three o’clock,” Anna says.
“I say we bring in the dogs,” Jules says.
“By the time we go get them and bring them down here, she could be halfway to L.A.,” Anna says.
“Not if she’s back in the tunnels getting lost,” he says. “Come on. I knew we should have put a tracker in her.”
“I hear you, Kiri,” Anna says. “Find Whistler. Check the exits up in the park. We’ll find her. Don’t worry. She can’t get far.”