“All right, Xena,” Link says after hooking me and Cap up to the probes. “Take it easy on the captain in there. He’s getting weak in his old age.”
I can’t even manage a smile.
His finger depresses a button on the computer and I find myself standing in the dream dojo. It looks bigger somehow, with just me and Cap. I shift my weight nervously. “Is what Link said last night true? Does dream hopping to California mean I can
fight
in California?”
“I’m not sure.” He slides on a pair of gloves and tosses a pair to me.
I soon find out that sparring with Claire and Jose was child’s play. Cap is insane—one place one second, another place the next, defying gravity, moving in ways I can’t even follow with my eyes let alone mimic. He doesn’t sneer at me like Claire or remain detached like Jose. He coaches me, insisting that I work harder, focus harder, fight harder. He conjures up distractions, all sorts. They fly at me in the midst of our sparring. Cap demands that I concentrate. That I get my head in the game. I should be better than this. The odd combination of provocation and pride growing in his eyes gets under my skin. I’m increasingly motivated to prove to him that I can do this. That I’m as powerful as I’m supposed to be. That this attention he’s giving me is not undeserved.
He keeps pushing—harder and harder. And I push back. Until we’re both spent, dripping sweat as we sit on the mat and guzzle water.
I squirt the liquid onto my face. “Did I pass the test?”
He knows what I want to move on to. If he teaches me how to impact the physical when I’m in spirit form, then I can help. I can make a real difference. Link and I can awaken people with the gifting. Cap and I can set them free. Together, we can make our side stronger. It’s the only way I know how to help my family.
“It will involve leaving behind the protection of Anna’s cloak.”
“I’m okay with that.” More than okay, actually. I’m chomping at the bit.
“When you open yourself up to the physical, you put yourself in physical danger.”
“I’m not worried.” But even as the confident words rush forth, I picture Cap in his wheelchair and I’m not so sure.
He studies me in that piercing way of his, a way that indicates I’m about to undergo another test. “First, you need to learn how to startle.”
“Which is …?”
“The ability to wake yourself up from a dream. I can’t take you past Anna’s cloak until you have it mastered.”
“How do I do it?”
He crosses his legs and sits up straighter. His eyes roll back in his head. His body gives a small shudder. And
poof
. He’s gone. I twist around, as if I might find him behind me. But he’s nowhere.
How did he do it?
I stand up and pace, waiting for him to come back and show me. Seconds tick into minutes. My pacing grows frenzied, impatient. What’s taking him so long? And then I stop, comprehension dawning. He’s not coming back. He’s waiting for me to wake up. All on my own, without any clue as to what I’m doing. Eagerness stirs to life. This is another chance to prove myself. To show him I’m capable.
Okay, Tess, think. What did Cap do?
I try rolling my eyes in the back of my head. I even force a shudder through my body. Nothing happens. I’m still in the dojo.
Wake up
, I tell myself.
Wake up, wake up, wake up!
Before I realize it, I’m screaming the words so loud they echo off the high beams overhead. When my screaming stops, I’m still here. Alone. With nothing but embarrassment to keep me company. Who in the world was I screaming at?
I resume pacing, thinking about last night. Link grabbed my hand and sprinted far away from Leela until I was awake in my room. It’s not much help. Sure, that’s how Link woke us up from Leela’s dream. How in the world, though, do I wake myself up from my own?
What usually wakes a person up from a dream, other than an alarm clock? Two things come to mind—fright and death. Seeing as I can’t exactly frighten myself, I settle on the second. But how? I’m not about to conjure up a noose or a gun, not when the images they elicit make me so nauseous.
Without thinking, as though my subconscious figures it out for me, I suck in a mouthful of oxygen and hold it captive. I count off the seconds. At forty-five, my lungs start to burn. At seventy, my vision blurs. At eight-two, the room darkens. At ninety, my eyes close and then I’m gasping for air, sitting in the dental chair while Link and Cap stare at me.
“Told she’d be out in under ten,” Link says with a smile.
I gulp in gobs of air—over and over again—until my lungs are satisfied. “I could have done it in five if I hadn’t spent the first half waiting for Cap to come back.”
Link’s smile turns into laughter.
“I’m so glad this is entertaining you.”
He’s unfazed by my scowl. His smile doesn’t even falter. Cap says again, and with the push of a button, we’re back in the dojo.
“What was your method?” he asks.
“I held my breath.”
“That’s no good. You need something that will wake you up instantaneously.”
“Tell me what you did.”
“It’s called a hiccup.”
“How does it work?”
“What do you do when somebody jumps out at you?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“That moment, when somebody JUMPS—” He shouts the word, clamping onto my arms at the same time. And I’m awake in the dental chair again, sucking in a sharp breath.
Cap is awake too.
Link lets out a whistle. “A minute thirty. Not too shabby.”
“Now you need to figure that out without me.”
Link sends me back into the dojo alone. I focus hard on the way my body reacted when Cap startled me. My muscles clamped tight. My lungs seized. A jolt of cold shock crackled down my arms into my fingertips. I squish my eyes closed, simulate the reaction, and I’m awake on the chair.
“Fifteen seconds, Cap.” Link slaps him on the shoulder. “That’s a record.”
We do it again. And again and again and again. Until I’m in and out in under two seconds. Link is about to put me under once more, but Cap holds up his hand to stop him. He stares for an extended moment, then gives me a barely-there nod.
I want to jump out of the chair and do a victory dance. Instead, I give him a barely-there nod in return. I passed the test.
Cap’s Orders
“Y
our move, Tess.”
Jillian’s words are muffled. I hear them without really hearing them. Link and Jose and Claire toss a football near the entryway to the common room—where Luka exited a second ago. An entire day has gone by without us talking, an entire day with us in this weird spot. “Ground control to Major Tess? It’s your move.”
I blink away the glossy film over my eyes and focus on the board. I move my rook up four spaces and capture one of Jillian’s stray pawns.
“That’s really your move?”
“Sure.”
Jillian shrugs, like it’s my funeral. She moves her knight to capture my rook and lets out a sigh. “Check mate.”
Sure enough, Jillian’s right. Thanks to her queen and now the placement of her knight, my king is trapped with nowhere to go. I knock him over.
“Man, Tess, I never win at chess.” Jillian starts arranging the board again, as though we’re going to play another game. “Even Danielle beats me most of the time and she’s not the brightest bulb, if you know what I mean.”
Claire shrieks delightedly. She has the ball. Link has his arms wrapped around her waist and he’s attempting to tackle her to the ground. I look at the spot where Luka disappeared. He didn’t even ask about my training with Cap. On Sunday, he said he felt like I was slipping away from him. Today I think we can both agree that
he’s
the one slipping away from
me
.
I twist the stones inside his hemp bracelet that’s still on my wrist. I want to ask Cap when he will start teaching me how to impact the physical while in spirit form, but he’s been MIA since our training—conferring with Dr. Carlyle in Fray’s room. I caught a glimpse of Anna after dinner. She looked as though she’d aged ten years in the span of twenty-four hours. She’s now having to cast the cloak without any help from Fray. One thing’s obvious—she can’t keep it up. Either Fray needs to get better or we need to find another cloak. The entire ordeal makes me want to crawl out of my skin. I have to do something. This place is making me claustrophobic.
I stand abruptly from my spot on the floor.
“You don’t want to play one more game?” Jillian asks, looking at her watch. “We have forty minutes before lights out.”
“I think I’m gonna call it a night.” If only I didn’t have to walk in between Link and Claire and Jose’s football game to do it. I make a beeline for the door and right when I’m about to exit, a ball flies at my face. I attempt to dodge it, but I’m not quick enough. It pegs me in the shoulder.
“Whoopsies.” Claire raises her eyebrows and shrugs. “Didn’t see you there.”
Yeah, right.
“I guess you’re reflexes aren’t as quick in real life.”
My teeth grind together. What are the chances that I’d be stuck with a prettier, stronger version of Summer Burbanks in the basement of a warehouse in Detroit, Michigan? I pick up the ball and throw it back at her—hard, hoping she will fumble. Claire catches the ball with all the grace of a star receiver and throws it in a perfect spiral to Link.
“Hey Xena,” he says. “You hop to me tonight, all right?”
“Why?”
“We’re gonna try something.”
I lift my shoulder—a
whatever
acknowledgement, slightly mollified by Claire’s twitchy glare. Apparently, she doesn’t like the idea of Link and I sharing dreams any more than Luka. I want to go to his room. Purpling is only forbidden after hours and it’s not yet after hours. I want to march up to him and force him to hear me out. Link and I are not having nighttime dream rendezvous for the fun of it. He’s
training
me. But then, maybe he doesn’t care. Non said so herself—keepers primary concern is for their
anima’s
safety. What if he’s not jealous or upset? What if he’s simply realizing that the best way to keep me safe is to let me train with Link and Cap?
The thought is depressing.
I lay in bed, rubbing my thumb over the strange symbol in the upper left corner on the cover of each composition notebook I found yesterday. I’ve never seen the symbol before. It’s definitely not the same one Scarface nearly marked on my brother. I flip through the pages, trying to make sense of them. Together, they paint a historical portrait of The Gifting. I need to ask Non about them, see if they are legit. When my eyes grow heavy, I drop the notebooks on the floor next to my bed and picture Link. The next thing I know, I’m standing in the center of some large, futuristic looking space ship.
Link sits at the helm, looking amused.
“What is this place?”
“Your very own star fleet.”
“Why?”
“I talked to Cap after dinner.”
My attention perks.
“We both want to see how many people you can link at once.”
As far as I know, I’ve never linked anyone. There was the one time when I brought Luka with me into the spiritual realm, but I’m not sure if that’s considered linking. “I don’t know how to do it.”
“Sure you do. It’s the same concept as hopping. You hop to someone’s dream, like mine, and we’re linked. Then you anchor yourself to my dream, think about the person you want to link me to, and voila. We’ll be linked. The most I’ve ever done is three. It took me all night and I woke up with a splitting headache.”
“So what—I’m supposed to pick someone?”
“Anybody you’d like.”
“Do we have to hold hands or something?”
“You can grab whatever you want to grab in here.” There is a flirtatious gleam in his eye. “If you want that thing to be my hand, I won’t object. Just make sure you keep yourself anchored to my dream when you travel to someone else’s. I’d start with Claire.”
I raise my eyebrow at him. “Why?”
“I’ve hopped into everybody’s dreams here in the hub. Claire’s mind is easiest to access.”
I have a feeling that’s because she’s incredibly open to Link entering. I’m not so sure the same is true for me. But whatever. I grab hold of the seat Link is sitting in, close my eyes, and focus all my thoughts on the girl I don’t like. Her ice blue eyes. The hungry way she looks at Luka. The graceful way she fights. The air around me seems to shift, like a gust of wind and when I open my eyes, Claire is here.
“A star fleet, Link. Really?”
“Would you expect anything less?”
She sits in the co-pilot seat, hooking her long, slender leg over the armrest. The way she takes the situation in such stride has me suspecting that Link told her what we would be up to tonight. Eager to get somebody else here, I tighten my grip on the chair and think of Jillian next. Her large, pointy nose. The friendly way she smiles. The slightly dorky way she words things. Again, the air shifts—widens somehow—and Jillian is there, not quite so prepared as Claire.
Her attention shifts from me to Link.
“Take a seat, Jilly-bean.” Another seat appears on Link’s other side. “We’re seeing how many people Xena can link up.”
“Oh, fun.” Jillian sits in the chair Link conjured up for her. By the way she’s looking at me, I think he ought to conjure her up a bag of popcorn too.
“Why don’t you get Luka next?” Claire asks. “We can see if he’s as hot in Link’s dreams as he is in mine.”
My grip tightens on Link’s seat back. This time, I focus on Rosie. The darkness of her hair and her eyes. Her tiny frame and dusky skin and impish smile. But it’s harder somehow, like my mind is crowded, and it takes longer too. I squish up my face in concentration. This time, I hear our new guest before I see her.
“Whoa!” Rosie grabs hold of the steering shaft. “Where are we going, commander?”
“I’m not the commander tonight.” Link nods at me, a fascinated twinkle in his eye. “You might want to link to Cap next. His dreams are pretty callused.”
I close my eyes and think of the captain. My brain feels even more crowded than before. Heavy. Easily distracted. But I force myself to concentrate on everything I know about Cap and just as his wife’s face swims into focus, he’s there making a tally of everyone here—Link, Claire, Jillian, Rosie, and now him.