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Pom claps his tiny paws together. “So he’ll make a technological discovery when he wakes up?”
“And he’ll be positive he came up with it on his own. Valerian, of course, will profit.” I leave the nook behind me to fly alongside Pom. “I wonder how often my kind has been responsible for big discoveries that are really just information from another world? Maybe this is how Earth’s Dmitri Mendeleev came up with the periodic table in his dream. Niels Bohr is also said to have come up with the structure of the atom in his dream, and even Albert Einstein—”
I stop short because I notice something that can’t be.
A sleeper who shouldn’t be sleeping, yet is.
I look at Pom. “You see him too, right?” I point at the nook in question.
Pom turns a hodgepodge of colors. “I see. But isn’t that—”
“Exactly.” I whoosh toward the room.
“But how?” He flies after me.
“I think he was doing his best to stay awake until I’m executed, but he must’ve accidentally fallen asleep.” I loom over the sleeper, still having trouble believing my eyes.
“Do you think it means—”
“Oh yeah.” My voice crackles with excitement. “This must be the murderer.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
We both examine the deceptively kind, grandfatherly face in front of us—a face belonging to someone who’s supposedly dead.
A face belonging to Dr. Hekima.
“But he died,” Pom says, bewildered. “Nessie ate him.”
I shake my head. “Hekima’s an illusionist. He made me and Kain believe we’d seen his death in a way that conveniently left no body to be examined.”
Pom’s pupils morph into red hearts again. “So Valerian isn’t the killer after all?”
I grin at him. “No, but the way Hekima pulled off the crimes is probably the way I said Valerian would’ve. I almost figured it out—I just suspected the wrong illusionist.”
Pom’s ears flap back and forth. “But why did he kill all those people?”
That’s what I have to go in and find out. I point at the clouds swirling over Hekima’s head. “I bet his trauma loop has something to do with it.”
Dragging in a steadying breath, I touch the illusionist’s wrinkled forehead with unsteady fingers and jump into his dream.
“Please, Siti,” a younger version of Hekima says. “What you’re doing isn’t safe.”
He’s talking to a teen who looks just like him, frizzy hair, kind face, and all. Her name sounds vaguely familiar to me.
“I’m easing people’s pain, Daddy,” Siti says. “If you weren’t under the stupid Mandate, you’d do the same thing. You know you would.”
Hekima sighs. “I’m not saying what you’re doing isn’t kind. It is. It’s just that using your powers that way is forbidden by—”
Puck, now I recall where I heard her name. It was when I was researching the voting patterns. The case about the young woman who eased the pain of human hospice patients in their final days—her name was Siti.
“I make them think they’re somewhere beautiful,” Siti says, confirming my suspicions, “and sometimes I surround them with their loved ones. Is that so wrong?”
It all clicks into place. Siti was caught. There was a Council trial, and Eduardo, Tatum, Ryan, Gemma, Leal, Albina, and a bunch of others voted for the ultimate penalty—and the Council executed the poor girl.
When Hekima learned what had happened, he gained prominence in the Cognizant community by running the Orientation program Felix mentioned—all so that one day he’d be chosen to serve on the Council and be positioned to take his revenge.
And he’s not done yet. There are still people on the Council who voted to execute his daughter. With me out of the picture and everyone else thinking him dead, he’s free to finish what he started, one Councilor at a time.
Realizing I missed a shift from one dream to another, I start paying closer attention.
Hekima is standing over an unmarked grave, tears streaming down his face.
“I’m sorry, Siti,” he says thickly. “I should’ve forced you to stop. I should’ve dragged you to another world before you got caught. I should’ve—”
He stops talking and looks right at me.
Puck. What’s wrong with me? I forgot to make myself invisible again—and at the worst time ever.
I belatedly disappear, but it’s too late. Hekima saw me, I can tell by his expression. Looking at the spot where I stood, he smashes his fist into his own nose—and that must cause him to wake up.
I end up back in the tower of sleepers, Hekima gone from the bed.
“He knows that I know,” I tell Pom grimly.
He turns black and grabs my wrist with his little paws. “Wake up and do something.”
So I wake myself—and end up back on the dirty floor of my stinky dungeon cell.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Then again, all is not the same as when I first got locked in here. Having slept, I feel amazing. I must’ve gotten at least a few additional hours of rest. Leaping to my feet, I whip out my sanitizer and wipe down every part of me that touched the floor.
