Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2 (28 page)

The curator eased himself onto a couch and sighed, rubbing his left arm. “An unsanctioned alucinator with the camouflage. I never thought I’d see the day.”

“What can you tell us about it?” Maggie asked.

“I suppose this counts as a crisis. It’s against all the rules, but I could teach you a trick, as far as that’s concerned. On one condition.” He held up a finger. Maggie couldn’t help but notice it seemed shaky. “You must give me permission to confound the trick from your memories after it serves its purpose. I could get in a lot of trouble for sharing this.”

Everyone shifted uneasily at the thought of the curator erasing knowledge from their brains. Adi lowered her chin and tightened her lips in evident displeasure. “I will happily take a team to vigil-block Karen once you geolocate her, but I would prefer my memories remain intact.”

Or what was left of them after being around Karen for three days. Maggie didn’t think she herself had been affected, but the rest had.

The curator nodded. “Networking is the key with a renegade who can vigil-trap.”

“It sounds like you’ve dealt with renegades before,” Maggie said. That was not something she’d learned in class—the Harrisburg situation was considered the worst outbreak in modern times.

“Here and there.” The curator waved a hand. “We curators have our ways of handling it.”

“Do the curators handle many situations the rest of the Somnium isn’t told about?” she asked, carefully not glancing at Adi again. And did the curators, say, need to heal themselves from those situations?

The old man winked at her. “Maybe you’ll find out some day. I’m told I’m close to retirement age, but personally I feel fit as a fiddle.” He chuckled, but he didn’t look as well as he had earlier. Was the stress taking its toll on him? “The other curators are worry warts.”

Maggie exchanged a glance with the doctor, who seemed to have noticed the curator’s pallor and palsy as well.

“I’ll just check your pulse,” the doctor said gently, holding out a hand for his wrist. The curator pulled a face but complied.

“Perhaps,” Adi suggested, “rather than take such drastic measures, you could simply handle Karen’s camouflage and geolocate her yourself? I assume you have methods to avoid being vigil-trapped. Once you find her, I can do the rest. Then there would be no need to for you to expose classified information.” Since Karen had proven she could pop in and out of the trance sphere as quickly as a confounder, a vigil-block was one of the few things that could stop her from creating more monsters.

Or an ECT. Or a lobotomy. Or death.

“I can’t imagine Karen wouldn’t have considered the possibility of a vigil-block, if she’s the mastermind you all fear she is.” The curator peered at them around the doctor, who was glancing between her watch and the old man with a concerned expression.

“She might be assuming we can’t geolocate her with her camouflage.” Was it Maggie’s imagination, or was the curator sweating? “She wouldn’t have to worry about being vigil-blocked as long as she’s physically far enough away.”

“That reduces our search area,” Adi mused. “If she fears scattershot vigil-blocks, she won’t be near the outbunker.”

“What the hell does she want, anyway?” Zeke said, frustrated. “To kill people? There’s not that many here, and we know how to fight. If mass murder was all she wanted, she’d have waited until she was in a populated area.”

“It’s me,” Maggie said. “I suspect she wants to kill me.”

Shame flashed across Zeke’s features, quickly hidden by a grimace. “So much for her dread of going back into the dreamsphere and getting possessed by the Master.”

“Her evil, split personality twin, you mean,” Lill said. “Like that one needs an evil twin.”

Adi’s walkie crackled, and she stepped away from the group to speak into it. “Sharma. Yes, the curator is safe and the outbunker is secure. For now. We need those reinforcements, Blake. Any signs of them?”

Fighting and gunfire echoed through the walkie when Adi’s second in command replied. “The main body of the horde appears to be concentrated between the coma station and here. The manifestations continue. Small ones. Three or four at a time. It’s almost concentric, converging on the outbunker. We’re killing some, but they keep coming. There’s also an airborne creature. Pterodactyl, maybe.”

Flying wraiths were few and far between. Could it be that Karen not only commanded the wraiths, but what would manifest?

“She’s got to be controlling them,” Maggie said. “She’s keeping our reinforcements from getting through on purpose.”

Zeke held up a hand, his head cocked and his eyes narrow. “Hold that thought. I think I smell—shit.”

Red sparks popped in the hallway. Six wraiths coalesced like a Star Trek transporter beam.

“Blake, we have a second internal.” Adi drew her blades and positioned herself in front of the curator while Zeke and Lill sprang into action. The door slammed behind them before any wraiths could shamble into the common room. If Karen could target her wraiths inside the bunker, Maggie didn’t know where would be secure anymore.

“Move the furniture there and there. No, sir, you stay seated,” Adi said. As the muffled sounds of combat issued from outside, Adi directed Maggie and the doctor to rearrange the utilitarian furniture into a sort of blockade. Her walkie crackled with intermittent static and updates from Blake—which grew less and less frequent.

Maggie tried to remain alert for manifestation sparks inside the room. Some of the furniture was heavier than expected, requiring her complete focus. She was shoving a heavy chair on top of a couch that protected the curator when the doctor shouted a warning.

“Look out!”

Maggie ducked. The chair, imbalanced, toppled toward her. She protected her head with her arms and flipped it behind her as it struck.

Pain walloped her left forearm. A human-shaped, smelly body thumped to the ground beside her, the chair tangled in its legs. It glared at her and hissed.

Dammit. A Whedon, not a zombie.

And she only had a gun.

Maggie drew quickly and shot it in the head. Gray goo splattered in a spray of ick, but it wasn’t dead by any means. It struggled with the chair, struggled to get to her.

She shot it again. Right between the eyes. The crack of the gun hurt her eardrums.

“Neck shots,” Adi called. “Three, horizontally.”

Maggie risked a glance at the vigil, who was crouched on the supply counter with her blades held before her like a ninja. Dust clouded the air around her. Two vampires menaced her. How many had Adi taken out?

The chair on Maggie’s attacker crashed to the side and broke. The vampire groped blindly for her, since the second gunshot had taken out most of its face.

Oh, God. Chips of bone, gobbets of flesh and an eyeball. Clawed hands grasped her foot. Maggie, arms trembling, aimed at the monster’s neck and fired three times in quick succession.

Too close to miss. The monster’s head canted to the side, nearly severed. Swallowing bile, Maggie kicked at the skull, hard. She danced to avoid the arms scrabbling for her. When a solid blow detached the head like a soccer ball, monster and head alike faded to dust.

Maggie immediately ran to help the doctor. She brandished Maggie’s knife in front of the curator, fending off a…what the hell was that? Some kind of white, tendril-haired humanoid in a lab coat. It looked like a Nosferatu crossed with a Medusa, and it dribbled dark blood from a gash on its hand.

Maggie didn’t want to risk shooting the doctor or curator by accident. She grabbed a chair leg and advanced on the wraith. Favoring her right arm, because the left hurt like a bitch, she walloped whatever it was in the back of the head.

The skull crunched like thin ice. Bone shards glanced off Maggie’s cheek, stuck in her hair. It whirled and attacked her. She stumbled back, shocked by the wraith’s extremely human face.

It was one thing to chop zombies and slime monsters into bits and another when the creature looked like a regular person.

A person with a caved in skull, scalpels for fingers, and snakes for hair. Was this Karen’s nightmare? Well, Karen’s nightmare had just coated Maggie in a rain of putrid flesh. Maggie felt a retch coming on.

Retching mid-combat? Really? This was getting old.

The doctor, less squeamish, tackled the monster from behind. It fell forward, barely missing Maggie. Together, Maggie and the doctor managed to brute force the dagger through the monster’s neck.

All the bits and pieces of wraith on the women puffed into dust. The smell remained. Adi dispatched her monsters, and Maggie swore the vigil looked more composed than she’d been before the code one. Perhaps she’d needed to work some frustration and anger out of her system after being fired by the curator and fooled by Karen.

“Is the curator secure?” She might have been sacked by the man, but Adi would perform her duty.

He hobbled out from behind the stack of furniture. Not a speck of wraith dust marred his spiffy guayabera shirt and pressed khaki trousers, but his skin had a grayish cast. The doctor took his arm and helped him back to the sofa.

“That was unexpected.” He didn’t say exciting. The way he looked right now, excitement would give him that heart attack he’d kidded about.

Zeke and Lill returned to the room, brushing themselves off. Zeke frowned when he saw them. “I told you to fetch me if there was a manifestation.”

“We handled it.” Maggie debated having the doctor check her left wrist, the one walloped by the falling chair. The throb said nasty bruise, but her hand had gone numb. Whatever was going on with the curator was more important than a bruise. “I got one and a half.”

“The ladies were quite efficient.” The curator’s voice cracked, and he coughed. “However, I’m not happy with how well Ms. Kingsbury is pinpointing her manifestations. I’m going to have to insist we geolocate her immediately and put a stop to this nonsense.”

“How long will it take to find her?” Adi asked him.

“I’m afraid the curator can’t enter the dreamsphere.” The doctor loosened the old man’s collar and propped his feet on the other side of the sofa. “Sir, how much pain are you in?”

“Quit fussing over me.” He batted weakly at the doctor but let her check his pulse again, this time with a stethoscope. “I get these spells. It’s nothing.”

“I believe you’re having a heart-related episode.” She rustled through her bag and withdrew a bottle of white pills. “We need to get you to the coma station for proper care. I don’t have supplies for anything but basic first aid.”

“We have portable ECTs that can be modified to function as an AED. There should be one in the cabinet. Maggie, if you please?” Adi flicked on her walkie and reported the curator’s condition. “Send the chopper,” she told whoever was on the other side.

The curator grunted when Maggie set the ECT device beside him and flipped open the cover to reveal the dials, electrodes and paddles. The design had been modified by Somnium staff years ago to shock dreamers out of comas. The doctor dropped to her knees and adjusted the settings.

Maggie’s mouth dried out. Were they about to witness the death of a curator? What kind of trouble would they be in if he passed away while they were supposed to be protecting him?

Speaking of which, why had the Orbis allowed a sickly old man fly across the world alone, without so much as an assistant to carry his luggage?

The curator patted the doctor’s shoulder with a trembling hand. “You’re overreacting. The device isn’t necessary.”

“Chew this and swallow, sir.” She handed him one of the white pills. “Perhaps we won’t need the ECT. I’ll need to speak with your physicians. Do you happen to know their contact information?”

“Hellfire and damnation.” Zeke stalked to the hallway, checked it, and stalked back. “I’d prefer to stay in the terra firma and kill things, but if the curator’s sick, it should be me who geolocates Karen. Are you going to be able to teach me how to offset the camouflage?” he asked the ailing curator.

“Verbally,” he answered regretfully. “It would be easier if you were a confounder. They achieve a higher level of discipline than other alucinators, an ability to manipulate the dreamsphere itself that… Well, I’m getting ahead of myself.”

Zeke set his jaw. “Does that mean I can’t do it?”

The curator regarded him for a long moment. “I’m sure an experienced L5 like yourself is disciplined enough. I must warn you the technique does include a certain level of danger.”

“I’ll geolocate Karen while you fight,” Adi offered to Zeke, her expression neutral. “You’re slightly more effective than I am in that regard, and I can take someone with me to prevent a vigil-trap.” That meant she’d have to allow the curator to wipe her memories, and Maggie knew the vigil didn’t want that. Was she afraid he’d wipe too much—or learn something that he shouldn’t?

“You’re needed to direct the troops and place the vigil-block. We can’t risk you.” Zeke’s gaze met Maggie’s. “It’s gotta be me. Karen never matriculated so I have the best chance of running her to ground. I assume. Unless she’s been lying about that too.”

Maggie didn’t want Zeke anywhere near the crazy woman who could, and had, confounded his memories repeatedly. Who’d nearly caused his death the first time he’d been sent into the sphere after her—in Harrisburg—by stranding him in dreamspace, shield slowly eroding, at the mercy of the wraiths.

“I’m going with you,” she announced. “You need a partner to avoid the vigil-trap, and maybe our tangible can help.”

Adi patted the remaining dust off her clothing. “Maggie, you know I can’t authorize you for trance state.” From his reclining position, the curator raised his eyebrows when Adi used the term “authorize” but said nothing. “You aren’t cleared for phase two training, and your record of entering dreamspace this week is patchy.”

“Are you afraid I might cause a code one in the middle of some pretty damn convincing proof it hasn’t been me all along?” Maggie asked with a harsh laugh.

Adi frowned and pressed her hand to her forehead. “Forgive me. I haven’t recaptured whatever memories Karen took from me, I suppose. My recollections of the past several days are muddled.”