I tiptoe inside the penthouse. Valerian, the guy who hired me to do this, must pay Bernard well. This place is spacious, especially for New York, where real estate is nearly as pricey as on my home world of Gomorrah.
I locate the bedroom and squint through the darkness at the bed. Whew—Bernard is curled up in a fetal position, covered by a heavy blanket.
I creep toward the bed.
“Doesn’t he look like Mario?” Felix whispers.
Comparing a man to a digital plumber isn’t as crazy as it sounds. When I first met Felix, we bonded over our love of video games.
I examine the pudgy man’s mustachioed face. “More like Wario, Mario’s archrival.”
“Neither of them has a scar like that.”
He’s right. The scar on Bernard’s forehead belongs on the face of an interdimensional warrior, not an engineering executive at a VR company on Earth.
“So what now?” Felix asks.
“I have to touch him.”
Felix chuckles.
I roll my eyes. “Not in a dirty way.”
I peer at my victim’s eyelids for rapid eye movement. Nothing. Crap. I pull off my gloves and do my best to prepare for the unpleasantness that is to come—specifically, the least risky but most disgusting aspect of what I’m about to attempt.
Skin-to-skin contact.
The bead of sweat wobbling along the edge of the scar on Bernard’s forehead doesn’t help, nor does his mooft-dung breath.
“What are you waiting for?” Felix asks. “Is it your OCD again?”
“Caring about hygiene doesn’t mean I have OCD.” I touch the bottle of hand sanitizer in my pocket, my lifesaver here on Earth. “Besides, he’s not in REM sleep.”
“Which means you’ll have to do that dangerous subdream battle thing when you enter him?”
“You make it sound way too rapey. I’m not going to ‘enter him.’ I’m just visiting his dreams. But yes, if the subdream battle thing kills dream-me, real-me will go insane.”
Actually, that’s an understatement. Not long before her accident, as a way of discouraging me from using my powers, Mom showed me footage of what happened to a dreamwalker who’d died in the dream world. He went on a killing rampage like a rabid puck and cannibalized his victims. I checked on this, and even years later, he’s still being kept in restraints in a padded cell.
“So you’re going to wait until he goes into REM sleep?” Felix asks.
“Ideally.”
“How long’s that going to take?”
I sigh and consult my Earth phone. “Ninety minutes, if it was my gas that knocked him out.”
I hear Felix clicking away on his keyboard. Then he says, “I see that he takes Ambien. I doubt it was your gas that put him under.”
“Dammit.” I resist the urge to kick the leg of the bed. “That drug suppresses REM sleep. I might have to come back later or—”
“Bailey.” His tone sharpens. “You’re about to have company.”
I spin around to the door, my heart rate spiking as Pom’s fur darkens on my wrist.
“Vampires,” Felix rattles out. “Enforcers. They have every exit covered. Running would be pointless.”
Pucking puck. Why couldn’t it be any other type of Cognizant? Vampires only sleep if they want to, so my remaining grenade won’t knock them out—and I don’t have anything else at my disposal.
My gaze falls on the walk-in closet in the corner of the bedroom. “Can I hide?”
“They probably have your DNA. How else could they have zeroed in on you with such precision?”
He’s right. Even I didn’t know I’d be here until I’d read my encrypted email an hour ago. This is bad. Armed with my DNA, a vampire could find me anywhere in the Cogniverse.
I stroke Pom, trying not to panic. “What do they want?”
“No idea,” Felix says, “but I doubt they care about your breaking and entering.”
“Arguable.” I whirl back toward Bernard. “Sounds like I have no choice. If I want to keep Mom’s life support running, I have to go in, REM sleep or not.”
“And I’ll do my best to stall the Enforcers. I think I can make the elevator run slower, maybe even—”
“Thanks.” Ignoring the shaking of my hands, I pull out the hand sanitizer and slather it on Bernard’s hairy forearm. “Here goes nothing.” I reach for the (hopefully) decontaminated patch of skin.
In a way, there are silver linings to this clusterpuck. If the subdream kills me and I go homicidally crazy in the real world, at least the vampires will put me down before I can cannibalize anyone. Plus, all this adrenaline is short-circuiting my usual fears of picking up Staphylococcus aureus and other cooties from my target.
My fingers touch the man’s skin, and my muscles stiffen for a moment as I catch a faint whiff of ozone and experience the sensation of falling. Then the room darkens around me, and the world of wakefulness goes away.
Chapter Two
I’m standing on top of black water, with a sky like magma above. Barreling toward me are a dozen creatures, each more hideous than the next.