“Then why bring it here?” I ask.
He tilts the jar, letting the slow liquid flow to one side. “Because it might work in Linus. Or you,” he says. He considers me with a calm, maniacal gleam in his eyes. “You’re my best chance, Rosie. It will be strange starting life over as a teenage girl, but it’ll be better than not existing at all.”
I am completely stunned. “You’re out of your mind!”
“I believe you’ve said that before,” Berg says calmly. “And now, Anna, if you would be so kind, pass me the scavenging line. We’ll mine one last sample of her dreams before we introduce the hybrid.”
“No!” I say. “You can’t! Anna, help me! Kiri!”
I see a needle catch the light, and Berg tilts my helmet slightly so he can reach the sensitive skin at the back of my left ear. I try to wince away from him, but it’s impossible. He swabs the place with cool disinfectant, and then I feel the sting of the needle entering my skin. Berg turns to his computer again, frowning intently.
“See here?” Berg says. “We follow the fear in.”
I hold my breath as the first hungry, feasting nanobots enter my veins, and a rush of anger wars with my fear.
Arself! Help me!
Hold tight, she says, and for one unspeakable moment, a cold, grim winter hardens my soul into pure darkness.
In the next instant, Arself sends an electric tendril of herself through the scavenging line and into the computer. Light knocks me backward.
Now, says Arself. We’re home.
My lungs fill with desperate air. I’m starved and exploding at the same time. A flash of molten energy pours through my veins, and next I’m speeding and flashing through a thousand firing circuits along a million electric miles. I’m everything. I’m Arself and myself and every dreamer that ever offered up a shred of dream. Lightning carries me through and around the whole world, and then I’m back to me and Arself, here on this deathbed. My body’s motionless, but I hover, ready for everything, eager, alert, alive.
Through half a dozen eyes, from different angles, I’m watching the scene in the operating room where time is expanding in slow motion. Berg’s features have barely registered surprise.
We’ve lost so many of us, Arself says.
With a pinging noise, we speed through the network and drop by each dark sleep shell in the vault. We gather the fine, ephemeral loss of each dead dreamer into our invisible arms. Then we swirl hugely, galaxy-like, with a golden spiral of wings, and time collapses into the cold, empty space around us. Breathless and wondering, I’m suspended in Arself in a realm beyond answers. I’m aware that my body is back in the operating room where my journey with Arself started, but at the same time, the true essence of me is everywhere else, glimpsing an existence so much bigger than anything I’ve ever imagined. Power and fragility. Connection. Bliss and loneliness. It’s like the stars have come with all their splendor to swirl and live in my own cupped fingers. They’re humming my language. They have secrets to tell me.
And finally, I get it. Arself doesn’t have to translate it into human words for me because I can feel it. The dreamers were each precious on their own while they lived, but they aren’t individuals anymore. They’re part of us, and they’re safe in the golden wings with Arself and me. For a moment, I grasp this. I know it intuitively, to the roots of me. There’s no separation anymore. We’re us, all belonging and promise. I’m other, finally, like I was always meant to be. I feel a growing sense of victory in Arself, and it’s my victory, too. The starlight in my chest expands to a shimmer, and we breathe in the golden air.
28
THE VAULT OF DREAMERS
FOR ONE BLISSFUL MOMENT, I understand everything, and then a poisonous hiss breaks through my ears. It brings me halfway back.
There was once a boy named Linus, I think. Or maybe he was a fish and I was a bird.
You have to return to your body, Arself says. Get back aboveground as soon as you can. It’s not safe in the vault.
The golden light grows thin at the edges where darkness is seeping in, and then a sharp, vinegary smell smarts up my nose. With a start, I open my eyes.
The operating room is dim, with only one overhead light on at the back of the room. Hissing blue fog is spraying down from several broken hoses above, making it even harder to see. I can just make out the shapes of the operating tables around me, but not Berg or the other doctors. How much time has passed?
Twisting my wrist, I’m able to get my right hand free, then I release my left. The helmet is still around my skull, and it weighs heavily as I roll over. I pat my fingers around the helmet until I find a clasp under my chin. As I take it off, it snags in the scavenging line that’s attached in back of my left ear, and I gasp in pain.
Disconnect that, and we’ll leave the dreamers behind forever, Arself says.
That’s what you want? I ask, surprised.
We must. Hurry.
I check for where the other end of the line is still attached to a machine next to the computer, and the screen shows a burst of yellow and red color, like a sunset but with no horizon. I find the catch and release the line from the machine. The computer goes dark. Carefully, quickly, I tuck the loose end of the scavenger line down the front of my shirt, allowing enough give so that it’s not tugging at my skull where it’s still attached.
“Linus,” I say, and turn to the next operating table.
He’s lying motionless. I roll off my table, stumble over to him, and check anxiously behind his ear. No line goes into him, and the skin there is smooth and flat. I’m beyond relieved. Clutching his shirt, I give him a little shake. His body is warm and heavy beneath my touch, but he doesn’t respond.
“Linus!” I say again.
I shake him harder. He moans and turns his head slightly. A second moan down near my feet makes me jump, and that’s when I notice Berg, Jules, Anna, and Kiri are slumped on the floor, passed out. Keeping one hand on Linus, I lean down to get a closer look at Kiri, and she’s barely breathing. I look up at the hissing hoses again.
I don’t understand. If the blue fog is a narcotic strong enough to knock them out, how can I be awake?
We took care of you, but you can’t linger, Arself says.
I shove the computer out of the way so I can get a real look at Berg where he lies on the floor. His head is at an unnatural angle against the base of an operating table, and his hand is clutching the opening of his shirt by his neck, as if he was struggling for more air when he went down. I hate this man. I hate everything he’s ever done to me and the people I love. I was prepared to kill him to get free. It seems almost too easy to leave him here and let the gas finish him off.
A rumbling noise comes from deep in the stone around me. With a sense of dread, I recall that the narcotic gas is flammable. If it ignites, we won’t stand a chance.
Let’s go! Arself says.