Chapter 4 by Ojas Vatsyayan

Chapter 4

By Ojas Vatsyayan

“We found Eric!”

I thought back to yesterday… Freya ambushing us, me abandoning Eric without thinking about what would happen to him. And now, Bluu finding him.

If he had really found him, why wouldn’t he bring him over here? Unless he was in no condition to be moved.

Goddamn it. Could Eric be dead because of me?

Get a hold of yourself, Cartwright.

“What are you waiting for, Cartwright? You want me to carry you over there?” Bluu said.

I got up from my chair, anxious. “How is he?”

Bluu rubbed his hand over his face. “ You’ll see.”

Roshani and I ran after Bluu. If Eric was in the shape he was proclaimed to be, could I have stopped it? Would I have stopped it?

Suddenly, my thoughts were interrupted. Bluu had stopped...in front of the house I had “bunked” in for the night. And I quickly realized why.

Eric, the great Dreamer, summoning flaming spears from his hands, was in front of it. His crisp tie was gone, charred. He was hunched over, mumbling something. We inched closer, and he turned around. And his eyes…

His eyes were completely black. A voidless end, a delve into the night, and nothing else. And he was mumbling... "Jimmy...Jimmy...Jimmy.”

I stumbled back. This wasn’t Eric. I don’t know who this was. It looked like him, but his eyes, his demeanor. His mind had been shattered and left by Freya.

Bluu came to my side. “It’s time to take him back to base.” W

e led him back to the base. All throughout the way, he kept mumbling...”Jimmy...Jimmy...Jimmy.” As the Sun turned into the Moon, and the starry night lit up the path in front of us, we reached the base, and immediately set Eric down onto a bed. He turned over, still mumbling my name.

“Goddamn it. What’s happened to him?” I said.

Roshani answered. “Jimmy, your ability…you know how you can turn emotions into what you want them to be? Fix the knot, untie it to help others? Freya…she ties that knot tighter. She can shatter the mind of anyone incapacitated under her command.”

“Is there a cure? A way to fix it? Anything?” I asked. I was holding myself together, making sure I didn’t display weakness.

“We haven’t found anything, yet, Cartwright,” Bluu told me. “But there have been rumors…”

“Bluu, are you sure we can trust him with this?” Roshani asked Bluu in a hushed voice that I was able to overhear.

“Look at the kid. We can trust him,” he responded.

“Okay,” Roshani replied. “Jimmy, there have been rumors that Nozpin carries a cure to the...state Freya can leave a mind in. A way to mend it back together. The government provides them any resources they need, and in this war, we all must be prepared for anything.”

“Then we have to do it. We have to steal that cure. I’m not going to leave Eric in this state for the rest of his life. And Freya….I’m going to make her pay.” I had never felt this in my life. This anger...this bond to someone as strong as I trusted Eric. We had only known each other for a few hours, but he laid down his life for me. I knew I had to do the same for him.

“Alright then, Jimmy. Going in with just you and me would be a suicide mission. It’s time for you to meet everyone else,” Bluu said, a look of resolve in his eyes.

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.

“You didn’t think Wang was just us four, did you? No, we’ve got to take you to headquarters. The power you have, aside from the cure, can turn the tide in this war.”

“But where? And how have I never known there were other Dreamers like me?”

“All in due time, kid. Now let’s go take these as*holes down.”

We headed out of the building, and towards the parking space in front. And the car, a Rolls Royce Phantom.

Despite myself and the circumstances, I whistled. “Damn. That’s a helluva car.”

Bluu chuckled. “I get that a lot. Now, headquarters is about 10 miles away. The rich part of the residential district. You take the car, and I’ll go a different route with that one.”

He pointed to another Phantom 15 spaces away from ours.

“If anyone’s following us, they won’t know which one to hit. Got it?”

“Yeah,” I said. I walked to the driver’s seat, and gunned the engine of the car.

Bluu and I pulled out of the parking lot, going the same lane, when a fork in the road appeared. Bluu rolled down his window.

“I’ll take right, you take left!” he yelled over the wind.

We pulled onto different roads. The headquarters was a few more miles away. Everything was running smoothly until I heard another car behind me.

And in the driver’s seat, smiling. With no remorse. Freya.

Sh*t. I gunned the engine, the thought of Eric in my head, and veered into a different lane. But she kept following. And I could do nothing.

I looked back to see her hand extending from the window, black tendrils extending from her fingertips. If my mind shattered, there would be no hope for Eric. The corporation would be defeated. I had to get away. The speedometer raced forward. I was already running at 80, so I gunned the engine to a hundred. We were racing down the freeway, an exit coming up on my right. I had to time this just right. The window of opportunity was closing. The tendrils were almost at my door. I heard a shout.

“I’m going to do to you exactly what I did to Eric! Worse than death, and there’s nothing you can do!”

But there was something I could do. At the last second, I veered onto the exit, and, unsuspecting of this move, Freya raced on. She was still screaming at me, and I couldn’t help myself. I waved at her as she was unable to control her speed, and she veered right and crashed straight into the guardrail. If I was lucky, she would be out for quite a bit. Sadly, I’m not usually lucky.

I raced down the lane, and a few minutes later, pulled up right next to a shining building. The buildings here were anything but copy-paste, all magnificent. The upper residential area. And a minute later, another Phantom pulled up. Bluu, thank god, was safe. He stepped out of the car, took one look at me, and rushed to my side.

“What the hell happened, Cartwright? Your car looks like it got crushed and a couple of five year olds tried to put the damn thing back together!”

I told him what happened: the ambush by Freya. When I told him how I got her off my trail, he smiled despite himself.

“Oh my god, Bluu, you smiled.”

And just like that, the smile was gone. So much for a historic moment.

We turned to face the next step in our journey. The Wang Corp. Headquarters stood there, in front of us, the moonlight shining off of its obsidian black exterior. Within it, apparently, would be the recruits that would help us save Eric, and finally take down the rival gangs once and for all.

“You ready, Cartwright?” Bluu asked me.

I thought of Freya, of Eric writhing back at the base, and the tendrils reaching out at me during the ambush. I thought of Freya’s words, a fate worse than goddamn death.

I smiled. “Hell yeah.”

Together, Bluu Mrengo and Jimmy Cartwright ascended the obsidian stairs, and proceeded to the imposing set of glass doors. Without hesitation , I pushed open the doors. I was running on a rush of adrenaline, and I felt like I was never going to be scared of anything ever again.

I was so dumb. Because the lobby was a massacre. The receptionist was slumped over in her chair at the entry desk. A quick check revealed she had been shot, a clean shot through the neck. A bullet was lying on the floor next to the wall behind her. I picked it up.

“13 mm, Bluu. Whoever did this wasn’t an amateur. They were ready.”

Bluu didn’t even respond. I imagined the scene, Dreamers disguised as businessmen walking through the lobby. They weren’t expecting anything, and gunmen stormed through the door. 10 minutes later, they wouldn’t expect anything again. I walked through the lobby, bodies everywhere. They were all throughout the lobby, in rooms and hallways all around the first floor of the building.

But something was off. It was strange. On a crowded work day, there would have been hundreds of people in the building. But this wasn’t reported. The police didn’t know about this nor the bodies on the floor. There were 20 bodies, which was a stretch. So where were the other (hopefully alive) Dreamers? And could we find them?

“Bluu, did you realize that there are 20 bodies on the ground? Where are the others?”

Bluu didn’t respond. This was unusual, he hadn’t responded the last time I called him either. I turned around, and there Bluu was, at the far end of the hallway outside the lobby. He was standing there, his swirling demeanor looking strangely confined. In front of him, I could see something on the wall. It looked, oddly, like a message.

I walked to Bluu, who was just staring at the message. After reading it, I could understand his reaction. Because on the wall, written in red, was this: ‘Tomorrow, 10:00 AM. Sunside. Bring the Manipulator. Or else.”

And underneath the message was a picture. Many men and women clumped together, unconscious on the floor. And a red cross was plastered on the image. A single tear dropped from Bluu’s cheek, and the droplet splattered on the floor. He turned to me.

“I’m sorry, Jimmy. I have to do it. We’re going to the Sunside.”