Luminosity (16 page)

Brandon
huhs
. “Do you think their whole family is made up of Dreamcatchers then? Or is there just one with the gift? And the others are all normal people?”

I hadn’t thought about this. Did Echo have his own family? Did he have to leave them behind? Was he taken from them as soon as they realized he had the gift? And was Dreamcatching a gift at all if everyone else also shared the ability?

“Maybe we can ask Mirage before we kill him,” Gabe says as we walk down the hall and toward the arena. His words are brutal and make me angry because I can’t help but to think that Echo could easily be in Mirage’s place. But Gabe knows nothing about Echo and my offense is lost on him.

When we get to the arena, others are suiting up, loading their magazines and getting ready for the game. Rachelle stands at the head of her group and is already giving out orders, her voice stern and unwavering. She must have been appointed the Captain for the day.

I walk over to my locker and open it. As I pull out my gun, ammunition, grenades, smoke capsules and flash bangs, someone comes up from behind me, their shadow looming over mine. I turn around to find it’s the Keeper, her hands folded in front of her, hidden under the long bell sleeves of her robes. The raven on her shoulder watches me almost as intensely as she does.

“Beatrice. You will be the Captain of Team A today. It is your responsibility to see to your team and their safety. We will be watching you.”

When aren’t you watching me?
“Yes, My Keeper.”

She nods and walks off, the crowd of Seers parting to move out of her way.

I gather my weapons, most of which are held on the belt that I clip around my waist, and then shove all my hair up into my helmet, which is securely pulled over my head. After slinging my gun over my shoulder, I approach the rest of my team. I have to do this whether I like it or not. “Team A, assemble. Now.” The other eleven members of my team line up in two rows, one of which is missing a person—me.

The Keeper’s voice masks mine, though, as she gets on the mike. Her voice crackles across the staging room, loud and grave. “Seers, today you will be hunting a real Dreamcatcher, Mirage. He has already been let loose in the arena and given time to hide and prepare. The team who takes him down will receive an award after the game is over. The teams who fail will be punished.” As the word “punished” reverberates through the room, the raven cries out, screeching loudly and unfolding its wings to flap them, though it flies nowhere.

“You have five minutes until the doors open. Please use this time wisely.”

I look at my team and freeze, having no idea what I could possibly say. Gabe stares at me expectantly, waiting for me to say something. Anything. He waves his hand forward in a “what next” sort of way, and I shrug at him, since I have no idea what comes next.

“Um. Remember to…um…make sure you are
feeling
where the Dreamcatcher is. It’s much more important that we follow this feeling than branch out on our own and blindly search for him. The arena is big. There’s one of him and thirty-six of us.” I am banking on the assumption that Rachelle is yelling at her team about razing the City to the ground until the Dreamcatcher is the only thing left standing. I can’t hear her words over the mumbling and general chatter of everyone else, but she points angrily at specific people in her unit and scolds them about something or another.

The red light by the arena door illuminates and spins, and a loud buzzer sounds, warning those by the entrance that it’s about to part. We all step back and wait for the doors to open all the way. That frenzied, panicked feeling starts to build in my middle, like expanding dough without a place to rise. Inside the arena, standing in the middle of the main street that splits the mock city in half, is Mirage, hands boxed in plastic. He doesn’t move as he stares at all of us with green, vibrant eyes. Why doesn’t he run? Why isn’t he hiding? All of the teams, ready to lunge into battle, stay still, violet eyes on the Dreamcatcher.

Rachelle uses the moment of shock to fire at Mirage, but as soon as the bullets leave her gun, he’s no longer standing where he was. “Where’d he go?” she yells and motions to her team. “Get in there! Go, go, go!”

Where
did
he go? I didn’t know Dreamcatchers could just…disappear. But, I’m starting to realize that I don’t know much about Dreamcatchers at all. I think everyone is realizing this. “In!” I yell at Team A, and they follow me as I dart down a side street to where the park is. I look back to Team B to see what they are doing, and trailing at the end of their unit is little Elan, his gun bigger than he is. He must have recovered from the previous Training Game when he was shot. At least he doesn’t look bothered by his team demotion.

Gabe pushes me, and I stumble forward. “Keep moving, Bea.”

“Aren’t I the Captain here?” I snap at him and stop in front of a building that is at least four stories tall. With the heel of my boot, I kick the door open and swing my arm. “Get in! Go!” Team A hesitates for a moment, but then they all enter the building, stepping over the remnants of the wooden door. I point to the stairs, “All the way up.”

When we get to the top floor, I slam the door shut behind us. “I know you are wondering why we are up here.”

“We’re going to lose.” Tina, a petite girl of about my age, pulls her helmet off and drops it on the floor beside her.

“No, we won’t. Listen. We need to think this through. The other teams are blindly running around the city after something that can just appear and disappear. They are chasing a ghost. We have to be smarter. So start thinking.”

There’s quiet as everyone does exactly that—think. Gabe is the first person to speak up. “How was he caught, I wonder?”

“Good, Gabe. That’s a good place to start. It seems that plastic box kept Mirage in captivity, like the boxes that are on his hands right now. But how did they get him into the box anyway?”

Mae waves a hand in the air, like a schoolgirl in a classroom. “Maybe they trapped him! We could trap him too!” She looks at the rest of her peers with a proud smile, as if she just cracked this whole process and won the game herself.

“But how?” Gabe knocks Mae’s hopes down a little bit.

“I…I don’t know…”

I put my palms on a windowsill and stare outside. At times, I can catch glimpses of the other teams storming down streets, busting into buildings and turning up nothing. They are running around without any direction, and part of me finds it amusing. They are literally chasing after a mirage, which is absurd within itself. “We’ll have to lure him.”

I’m about to say more, but there’s a swish of air that blows through the room, and suddenly Mirage is there, standing at the door. He’s taller than I thought he’d be, standing almost at six feet, looming over most of us, even Gabe. His hair is a sandy brown and greasy from not being washed recently. He wears a long, black tunic, the kind that the brig hands out to prisoners.

His presence is more than overwhelming. It makes me want to run away and toward him at the same time. The others feel the same way, and somehow I miss that they all have drawn their guns and have their sights pointed at him. Before anyone can fire, though, I bark the order, “Stand down!”

“What?” Brandon blurts like I’ve lost my damned mind.

“Stand down!” I think of Echo. How can I save him if I can’t save Mirage? But how do I save Mirage if it means that I’ll certainly die a traitor afterward? I hear the Keeper’s voice reminding me that I’m being watched. Are they watching me now?

I approach Mirage, and he doesn’t move. His chin tips downward to look at me the closer I get to him. Gabe stands up when it seems I am too close, but he doesn’t approach. Not yet, at least. I look the Dreamcatcher over, and the whole time, I see Echo and not Mirage at all. Do the others see Echo, too? When I look back up into Mirage’s green eyes, they are now blue and don’t belong to Mirage. I don’t understand what is happening. Has he found a way to catch me?

I stare for too long. I hear Gabe yell, “Do something, Beatrice!” And I do.

I shoot him.

A beacon bullet enters his middle and an expanding glowing light fills him, then shrinks. Mirage falls to the ground, dead weight. His blood is on my face and jumpsuit, and soon it begins to pool on the ground by my feet. Team A cheers, and I hear their hands hollowly slapping together as they clap for me and what is certainly an achievement in their eyes. But for me, all I feel is cold and sick. Though the Dreamcatcher no longer looks like Echo, he does look like someone who was, just moments before, standing in front of me, alive.

His blood pools around the rubber soles of my boots.

Chapter Nineteen

Team B and Team C’s punishment was to spend the night in the
streets of the City, protecting the Citizens from the threat of the Dreamcatchers. They were without food or shelter until sunrise, and when they returned to the Institution to eat breakfast, they were hostile and accusatory toward Team A. Since we won, we had a rare day off, and I spent most of it in my room, thinking about Mirage and Echo and what happened between the three of us.

I want Echo to come to me, so I sleep a lot, but he doesn’t and I’m starting to believe that maybe Echo is angry and has abandoned me because of my atrocious act against one of his kind. He knows just as well as I do, though, that we are at war. It’s he who keeps reminding me of this, and yet, when it is my side who lashes out, he becomes angry and leaves me here? It isn’t fair, and I feel more like yelling and screaming at him the more I can’t see him in my dreams.

I also fear what the others saw when I stood there, staring at Mirage as if I knew him from somewhere. I have to find Gabe—he’s the only person I trust—and if it comes down to me having to confess to someone about Echo, I’d rather it be him than anyone else. I need to be careful, since the Keeper is watching me, and it might only be a matter of time before she calls me to her and questions me about the incident herself.

The intercom is across the room, so I make my way to it and dial up Gabe’s bunk. The speaker rings back at me, and eventually crackles as Gabe’s voice comes over it. “Hey, Bea, what’s up?”

“I was wondering if you are busy.”

“Nah. I was just playing some stupid game on the holo. Want me to come by?”

“Yes. And bring a snack too.”

Gabe laughs. “Alright, Bea. I’ll be right there.” The intercom switches off, leaving me in the silence of my room.

I put my hands on the glass of the window, staring outside at the City beyond. I remember Echo’s hands on mine, his lips on mine, and my head slumps forward, forehead resting against the glass. “What have I gotten myself into?”

Some minutes later, Gabe knocks at my door. “Come in!”

The door slides open, admitting him and the tray filled with snacks that he bogarted from the cafeteria. Most of it is wrapped up cookies, crackers and other various unhealthy things that they sell from a separate window at outrageously high prices. If the Seers want to eat unhealthy, they have to do so at the expense of their own pockets. Considering there are very few places for us to make money, it isn’t very often someone buys too much. I have to wonder where the heck Gabe got all of these goodies.

“Where’d you get all of that?”

Grinning, Gabe sets the tray down on my desk and shrugs. “Called in a few favors.”

“A few favors? What does that even mean?” I pick up a pack of cheese crackers with peanut butter in them. I haven’t had these in years, and I anxiously unwrap them, crumbs falling everywhere as I break a few crackers in the process. I shove one into my mouth and close my eyes, lashes brushing against my cheeks. “Mmmm. These are so good.”

“Does it matter where I got them? It looks like you’re enjoying them well enough.”

I open one of my eyes and focus it on Gabe. “Well, it’d be nice to know how I could get some for myself.”

“Easy. The cafeteria.” Gabe smirks.

“You know what I mean.” I push another cracker into my mouth, all too aware of the fact that I am not being ladylike in the least. Not even a little bit. In less than a few minutes, the whole pack of six peanut butter crackers is gone, with only the plastic wrapper left to show for it.

“Damn, Beatrice. You were hungry, weren’t you?”

“I could eat that whole tray of snacks, Gabe. Don’t test me.” I pick up another, a plump, squishy, chocolate cake filled with cream.

“Well, feel free. I don’t really eat this crap anyway. Only sometimes, when I really have a sweet tooth.” Gabe lies back on my bed, his hands behind his head, feet crossed at his ankles. He stares up at the ceiling of my bunk, left foot twitching back and forth. “So, what did you need me for?”

“I wanted to talk to you about Mirage.” I break the cake into two and sit on the edge of the bed, offering him a piece. “And what you saw. Or didn’t see. Or what you felt…or anything. Anything you can tell me about what happened, I’d really appreciate it.”

“Why? You were there, weren’t you?”

I hesitate. Lately, I’ve been wondering if I was really there or not. Or, if all of me was there, and part of me was somewhere else, which is why I could see Echo in Mirage’s place. Maybe it was half a dream. “Yes, I was there. But…I just need to know what you saw, okay? I want to write it down and study it so I have something to present to the Keeper when she calls me, which I’m sure she’ll do. She’s all about questioning me until I have nothing left to say.”

“Yeah. She has been on your case a lot, hasn’t she?” Gabe takes the cake and picks at it.

“Yes.”

Gabe licks his fingers with a shrug of his shoulder. “What I saw, hmm? Well. All of the sudden that Dreamcatcher was in the room with us, and you were just standing there staring at him, and then you shot him dead.”

“You didn’t see anything else?” Like Mirage not being Mirage at all?

“Nope. Why?” He finishes the piece of cake and looks at me. “Did you?”

How do I tell him? Or should I tell him at all? If I don’t tell him, he’ll just get angry with me again and accuse me of keeping things away from him, or me growing apart from him, or something equally ridiculous to me. “Yes.”

He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “Oh really? And what did you see then?”

“He changed. His face changed. He was Mirage, and then he wasn’t Mirage. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Who was he if he wasn’t Mirage?”

“I don’t know.” I lie.

“Strange. I didn’t know that they could change their appearances.” Gabe leans back on his palms and stares at the ceiling again.

“I don’t think he did, if you didn’t see it. I…I don’t know what it was. I just know that maybe we should not say anything about it past Mirage’s ability to appear and disappear at will. The Keeper will be on both of our cases…and what if it isn’t something good? It could land us in the brig.”

“Or the gallows.”

“Or that.” I swallow and sit beside Gabe on the bed. I want to pour everything out to him. I want to grab him and hold him close and tell him that I’m not going to leave him here. I won’t abandon him. But I saw it in my Vision…which means that I might very well do just that. Abandon him. I want to apologize and cry and yell all at the same time. But I do none of these things. Instead, he and I sit there in the silence of the bunk, each pondering our own thoughts. If I were a Dreamcatcher, I could probably tell what he was thinking. If I just held on to him for long enough, I could see what was on his mind.

I feel his hand on my face, and it jars me out of my daydream. “It’ll be okay, Bea. We’ll keep it between us, and if we’re asked about anything, we’ll just say what we said here. He changed himself, but he didn’t change himself, and only you could see it. I mean, maybe you didn’t see it at all. Maybe you were just…I don’t know.”

That’s when it occurs to me. “Daydreaming.”

“Daydreaming?”

“Yeah…I was thinking of something else. Something I saw in a Vision…and maybe I was just daydreaming and somehow he was able to make me believe he was someone else?” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize that I shouldn’t have said this aloud. If it was true, then the Dreamcatcher found a way to catch me without touching me. He was able to get into my head through my thoughts, my daydreams, and nothing more. He didn’t even have to touch me. “Shit.”

Gabe must have been thinking the same. His hand leaves my face, and his fingers curl around my hand instead. He squeezes it once and shakes his head, dark hair falling about his face. “Don’t think about it. Let’s pretend we didn’t come to this realization and never speak about it again.”

I look at him, my gaze catching his so that he can’t look away. “Okay.”

There’s a pause of uncertainty when both of us don’t know what to do now. I’m staring at him, he’s staring at me, and his touch is slowly warming me as the familiarity spreads up my arm and through my body. It’s just like the moment on the roof, and I wonder if he’s going to kiss me again. And if he does, where am I going to run off to if I am already in my bunk?

He does kiss me. His lips press against mine, and the softness of them is surprising. I don’t pull away this time. Instead I fervently return the kiss. I keep my mouth against his and breathe in his scent, which reminds me of something hungry and needy. The hand that is holding my hand moves up to my wrist, which he holds with some authority and purpose.

I break the kiss, though, and our faces part. Searching his violet eyes, I see him in my mind again, reaching for me, and the warmth inside me turns into a gripping, paralyzing cold. “I’m not going to leave you. Not on purpose.”

Gabe’s brows lift in surprise. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means what it means. I’m not going to leave you on purpose.”

“How else would you leave me, then?”

By necessity? By force? Both? “I don’t know, Gabe. I just know that it won’t be on purpose.”

“I don’t understand why you’re saying this.”

“Because…because I saw you in my Vision, and it’s been bothering me.” His hand slides off my wrist and the mood is killed. “I left you. I was being pulled away from you. I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean, okay? I just know that if it happens, it won’t be on purpose. I was being
pulled
away…”

“Calm down, Bea.”

Am I getting upset? I lift a hand to my eyes and feel my lashes are damp with unfallen tears. Strange. I don’t even feel like I’m crying. “I’m calm. You…it’s just that you’ve been saying so much how I’ve been leaving you out of things, and I want you to understand that this is part of the reason why. I can’t figure them out. All I can see is that I’m maybe going to lose you, and I don’t know what to do about it. Do you know how frustrating that is?”

“I can’t really say that I do. My Visions aren’t nearly as clear as yours. I can hardly make out faces half the time.”

He’s missing the point, and I sigh. “Gabe, come on. I’m being serious here. Whatever is happening in my Vision, I don’t want it to happen. I don’t want to lose you or anyone else. Especially not you…but
something
is going to happen. Something we won’t be able to stop.”

“I think that’s already happening, Bea.” He’s right, too. The war has just begun and as Echo said, the Dreamcatchers have not even started their attack yet. We are in for so much more, and yet we have no idea what we are in for at all. Gabe leans forward to try and kiss me again, but this time, I do pull away.

“I…I can’t.”

“Why not? You just did two seconds ago.” Gabe doesn’t press the issue, though. Instead, he runs a hand down the back of my head, cradling the base of my neck in his palm. “It’ll be okay, Beatrice. You’ll see. I’m not going to leave you. No one is going to take you away from me.”

If only you knew, Gabe.
“I’m sure I’m just overreacting or something.”

“Yeah. Overreacting. That’s what it is.” Gabe and I both know though that I don’t really overreact too much. But it’s something neutral to say, and it caps our conversation nicely. He stands up from my bunk, hand leaving my hair to scratch at his. “Anyway, I should be going. Are you going to be okay here? Want me to see if Mae can come up? You girls can talk about something girly. Like about how handsome I am.” He grins, and I melt a little bit inside. Even in the most confusing of times, Gabe always knows what to say. And even if I’ve known him longer than most the other people here, I fall for it constantly.

“No, I’ll be okay. But feel free to bring more snacks if you want.” I smile back at him until he leaves, and then the smile fades away as I’m left with individually-wrapped chocolate chip cookies, chips that taste like onions, and this terrible, ominous feeling that sits low in my gut.

I have to figure this out. What will happen if I don’t?

…

In the middle of the meadow, I can hear people screaming from the City, though when I turn to look, the City is nowhere to be seen. Echo pulls me along by my wrist, and I stumble forward while trying to pull back. “Stop!” I hear myself yelling the word over and over again, but he doesn’t listen, and the screaming behind me becomes more frantic and painful. There are gunshots. Too many gunshots, and then, like the water from a tidal wave, silence blankets the meadow and there’s no more noise.

We stop a few yards from the tree—our tree—and I hunch over to try and catch my breath. Tears and sobs choke me, and each time I suck in air, it gets stuck on the grief. I quickly begin to hyperventilate, and Echo leads me to the trunk where I can sit and calm down. Though I can’t hear or see the City anymore, I can smell the sulfur from the gunshots, and the scent of burnt meat.

When I find my breath, I immediately start to yell at Echo. “I told you to stop! I told you to stop! Why didn’t you stop?”

“I couldn’t, Beatrice. If I stopped, you would have been left back there. I couldn’t… ”

“You could! We have to go back, Echo! Gabe is back there!”

“Gabe is gone.”

My heart stops. He said I either had to stay behind with Gabe or run with him. I didn’t choose to run with him…he pulled me along. He dragged me out of there.
Gabe is gone? Gabe is gone?
“What do you mean he is gone?”

“I told you, I don’t know. He’s just gone.”

I get sick. The vomit hits the ground and forms a foul-smelling puddle. Echo doesn’t seem to care. He wipes my mouth off with a corner of the regal white robes he wears. “We’re safe. You’re safe. Isn’t that what you wanted, Beatrice? To be safe?”

“I want to know what is happening!” The Vision part of the dream starts to slip from me. I’ve seen this part before, at least most of it. Now, I want answers. “Why did Mirage look like you, Echo? Why was he himself one second, and the next second he was you?”