The Awakening (30 page)

As soon as I’m through, Link waits for my nod and we both startle awake.

I blink up at my ceiling. We did it. Our next rescue mission is under way.

An Impossible Request

I
f I thought hopping to Shady Wood to awaken my grandmother and Clive DeVant was frightening, it’s nothing compared to what I’m walking to the cafeteria to do now. It’s Sunday, which means the cereal bins are available from six in the morning until ten. Cap, I know, will show up closer to six. Now that Link and I successfully started the mission, it’s time to bite the bullet and fill him in on our plans. The sooner, the better.

My heart thuds heavily inside my chest. He’s going to be fuming-hot mad, maybe so much so that he will kick me and Link out of the hub. And if I’m kicked out, Luka will feel compelled to come with me, and then what? In my fervor to rescue my grandmother, I didn’t fully think through the repercussions. I was exactly what Cap accused me of—impulsive. I didn’t think ahead to this moment, right here.

When I step inside the cafeteria, there is only one person sitting at a table. Sure enough, it’s the man in a wheelchair, the material of his shirt so threadbare I can see the outline of every muscle and saggy spot of his back. I look down at my own pair of jeans, which have holes in both knees. We could all use some new clothes. A mug near Cap’s left hand breathes steam into the air and an old newspaper, courtesy of Dr. Carlyle, lays open in front of him. It’s outdated, but Cap reads it anyway. I supposed he figures week-old news is better than no news.

I take a few steps closer and clear my throat.

“You’re up early,” he says, not even turning around.

“Yeah.” My voice comes out shaky, the same way it sounded whenever my family moved and teachers asked me to stand at the front of the class to introduce myself. I try to inject some confidence into my posture as I close the rest of the distance between us and take the seat across from him.

Cap studies me while tapping a slow, steady rhythm against the tabletop with the tip of his pointer finger. My heart beats triple-time for each one of his finger-taps. “Are you going to tell me what you and Link have been up to?”

“How do you know we’ve—?”

“Been up to something?” He raises his eyebrows. “Tess, I’m the captain of this ship. I make it a point to know when members of my crew are up to something.”

I wring my hands in my lap and look at the door, as if Link might step through and offer some help. But it’s a foolish hope. Link will not be in here until nine forty-five. Fifteen minutes to grab a bowl of cereal before Non shuts the bins. “I was hoping the three of us could meet in the conference room later. Link and I have some information to share.”

Cap takes a sip of coffee, peering at me over the mug’s rim. “Don’t you think Luka ought to be part of that meeting?”

“I’m not sure we need to burden him with this yet.” And burdened he will be, against his will. A compulsion of his spirit, one he can’t control. Like hunger or thirst. Only his is a consuming need to ensure my safety.

“He’s your Keeper. I think that warrants his involvement, especially when it’s in regards to something of this magnitude.”

“Magnitude?”

“Awakening a mental patient who is part of The Gifting.”

Warmth drains from my face. Cap isn’t a dream-hopper. There’s no way he could know, unless … Did he somehow overhear my conversation with Link early yesterday morning when I snuck into his room? Of all those gadgets, it would be easy to hide a bugging device in one of them. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t.”

I press my lips together, annoyed with myself for falling for the same trick Cap played before. On me and Luka, when we tried hiding from him the fact that Luka was my Keeper. I can’t believe I fell for it again. Why, if he strongly suspected what we were up to, did he let us go through with it? I wait for his wrath to descend. I wait for him to grab me by the scruff of my neck and wheel me to Gabe, who will then kick me out.

He takes another drink of his coffee. I find his calm demeanor more unnerving than his outrage. “Luka deserves to know,” he finally says. “Ten o’clock. Make sure he’s there.”

I scoot my chair away from the table and turn toward the exit. As much as I don’t want to, I need to find Luka. After everything I’ve already done, I’m not about to disobey another one of Cap’s orders.

*

The already-small conference room feels even smaller with so many of us stuffed inside. Cap invited Sticks and Non, who wear matching looks of intrigue. Luka sits to my right, looking green in the face. It’s the same way I found him earlier, when I told him about the meeting. It’s as though he’s battling a strong bout of wooziness. Link sits to my right, half-awake. I had to drag him out of bed to make it to this meeting on time and if the yawn splitting his face has anything to say, it’s that he’s not going to be much help. Besides, all eyes are on me. I’m the one who called for the meeting.

I take a deep breath and dive in. “Last night, Link and I visited two patients at the Shady Wood Mental Rehabilitation Facility in Oregon.”

Luka’s chair scrapes against the floor. “That’s impossible.”

I hadn’t planned on looking at him. In fact, the less I look at him, the easier it will be to plow through all I have to say. But his words are so strange they grab a hold of me. The pallor of his skin. The tremble in his hands. His refusal to eat breakfast earlier. Suddenly, his flu-like symptoms make sense. He tried to keep me from dreaming last night. It’s why it took me so long to find Link. He tried to keep me from dreaming even though I strictly forbade him from ever doing it again. I can’t believe him.

“Apparently, it wasn’t impossible. We visited Elaine Eckhart, who is a Fighter. And Clive DeVant, a Cloak.” I glance at Cap, who wears that same calm expression from before. I keep waiting for an explosion of anger, more harsh words about my insubordination. But it doesn’t come. I guess technically, I didn’t disobey orders. We just didn’t ask for permission. “Link awakened them both.”

Sticks’ eyes go buggy.

One corner of Non’s mouth pulls up a little.

And the muscle in Luka’s jaw tick, tick, ticks into the silence.

“You should have seen it,” Link says. “Tess was in and out in under two minutes. Got them both off their medication like it was nothing but gravy.”

Cap’s nostrils flare.

Here it comes
.

“You mean to tell me that you tampered with the physical
without
your Keeper?”

I lift my chin, feeling justified. If Luka was trying to keep me from dreaming last night, then it’s obvious he never would have gone along with the plan. Never.

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?” Cap growls.

“She wasn’t in any danger,” Link assures. “I’m telling you, Cap, she’s unstoppable.”

“No, she’s not!” Luka smacks the table with his hands, then stands so abruptly that his chair topples backward. “She is
not
unstoppable.”

“Luka,” Cap says.

“You know it and I know it, Cap. But this guy here.” Luka jabs an accusing finger toward Link. “He doesn’t know it. Because he’s never been in danger before.”

Link’s expression clouds over.

“He’s just a Linker. He’s not a Fighter. He has no idea what he’s talking about!”

Luka’s outburst sets a tremble in my hands. I sit on them to hide the shaking. “We need to continue this rescue mission right away.” I might as well come out with all of it, now that so much is already out in the open. “The other night, Link and I ran into the man from my mother’s bedroom. He must have followed me through the doorway. Link and I saw him outside the Dragon Den.”

Cap’s lips pull into a thin, straight line.

“With Anna’s cloak flickering in and out the way it is, it’s only a matter of time before he finds us.”

“Isn’t Shady Wood located in Oregon?” Sticks asks. “Even if we can break them out, where will they go when they escape?”

“I have a friend named Leela. She helped Luka and me when we needed to get out of Thornsdale. I can visit her tonight. I think she would help again.”

The air inside the small room crackles with tension, most of which radiates from Luka, who has yet to right his fallen chair and sit back down. It stirs up a desperation that will not remain inside. “Cap, you said it yourself. I’ve been given an extraordinary gift. Only I can decide how I will use it. Well, I’ve decided.
This
is how I’m going to use it—to awaken and free as many people as I can. I started this, and I will finish it. But I’d really like to have you on my side when I do.”

Everyone turns to look at the man in charge.

I wait with bated breath. His answer determines the fate of this mission. If he’s on board, then everyone else will be too. But if he’s not …

“Cap.” Luka squishes the name between his teeth. “You know how dangerous this is.”

He looks at Luka.

He looks at me. “You’ve decided?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then. I’m in.”

Luka kicks over an empty chair, then stalks out of the room and slams the door behind him. It rattles the walls. It rattles my soul.

*

I have the courage to battle white-eyed demons, to break my grandmother out of the highest security asylum in the country. Yet when it comes to finding Luka after his display of outrage, I’m paralyzed with fear.

The only way I know how to fight it? Convert my fear to anger. Anger at this ever-widening chasm between the two of us. Anger that he continues to treat me like a helpless child. Anger that out of everyone here, his support matters the most, yet he refuses to give it. Anger that he tried stopping me from dreaming last night. I gather it into a hot, dense ball and fling open his bedroom door without knocking.

He sits up in bed, his hair sticking straight up, as though he’s pushed his hands through it a few too many times.

“I have the chance to get my grandmother out of Shady Wood. You of all people should know how important that is.” He saw the atrocity of that place right alongside me. The images have to be just as seared into his memory as they are into mine. “I can’t let her stay there. Not when I have a way to get her out.” We have a plan, and if he would have stuck around instead of storming off, he could have heard it with his own ears.

Luka works that same muscle in his jaw. It pulses like an angry heartbeat.

“Please, I need you to believe that I can do this.”

“Just because you can jump to California does not mean you can do this.”

“What was all that crap about believing in me, then? About seeing my strength? You said it with your mouth, but you don’t act like it. Sometimes it’s like you
want
me to fail.”

Luka shakes his head.

“You tried to stop me from dreaming last night.”

“To protect you.”

I run my fingers back through my hair and laugh—a fed-up, slightly hysterical sound. “You didn’t see Link last night. He knows what he’s doing. And he believes that we can do this.” If only Luka could believe the same.

“Link doesn’t know what it’s like to be in danger. Link can’t see the things I see.”

“Nobody does, Luka. Because you won’t tell anyone.”

“You want me to tell you what I see?”

“Yes!”

He stands from the bed. “Fine. Every night in my dreams, you’re killed. Is that what you want to hear? You die, and I can’t save you. You’re leading a freaking army, Tess.
An army
. And every time you die. Over and over and over again, you die. If that’s what you want to know, then okay, there it is. That’s what I get to live every night when I close my eyes. So excuse me if I don’t have the same confidence as your friend, Link.”

“Luka … they’re just dreams.”

“You and I both know they’re never
just
dreams.”

I hold out my hands and shrug, at a complete loss, because where does this leave us? “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to stop being reckless. I want you to think before you jump into things. And I want you to stop leaving me out of your plans.”

“I leave you out of them because you won’t let me do what I need to do.” Last night was proof. Claire’s words come—
little
Tess’s babysitter
. And my anger swells. “If I could figure out a way to release you, don’t you think I would? But I don’t know how, and I can’t wait in the shadows of safety while people die all for the sake of making your burden easier to bear.”