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Score. Another successful beheading.
I create more creatures and practice beheading them, all the while repeating the phrase “this is a subdream” like a mantra.
For the next phase of the training, I animate the monsters and make them even more aggressive with their attacks. Next, I create them in groups—first pairing the tardigrade with the nail-sword thing, then the ant with the spiral worm, then the vulture with the warthog and its ugly rider. Finally, I throw them all into a fight and behead them until my Pom katana feels like a real extension of my hand.
The world around me vibrates.
Someone is trying to wake me from my trance in the real world.
“Pom, train without me for a bit,” I say and jolt myself awake.
I wake to the sight of Virgil’s pale face a foot away from mine.
“What?” The question come out sharper than is wise when dealing with a killing machine that is a vampire.
To my relief, he doesn’t bat an eye at my rudeness. “Maxwell has arrived. Shall I take you to see him?”
I stand up, eager to see the other dreamwalker. “Let’s go.”
Virgil leads me down a corridor. Stopping next to a metal door, he unlocks it and ushers me in.
There’s a man inside.
I stare at him.
Specifically, at his familiar features.
“Is this a… a joke?” I stammer.
Virgil frowns at me uncomprehendingly, and so does the man.
“Valerian?” I spin in a circle. “Is it you doing this?”
Virgil presses his finger to his temple and makes a circling motion.
The man is also looking at me like I’ve gone crazy. “I’m Maxwell,” he says slowly.
His voice is also familiar, and not from when we met near Necronia. That time, it had been out of context and muffled by his mask, so nothing had clicked. That same mask had also concealed his features—just as my mask must’ve concealed mine, preventing him from recognizing me.
But now he should know who I am. Yet he’s acting as if we’re strangers.
“Don’t you recognize me?” I ask breathlessly. “I’m Bailey.”
“I figured.” Maxwell stares at me with a deepening frown. “You do look vaguely familiar, though I’ve only seen you in a mask. In fact—” His face twists. “No, I can’t place it, I’m sorry.”
He can’t, but I can.
Because I saw him recently without a mask, and more than once.
It was in Mom’s black window memories, and Valerian’s as well.
Maxwell isn’t just a random dreamwalker.
He’s my father.
Chapter Nine
I want to lunge forward and embrace him. I also want to lash out, yelling questions like “where the puck have you been all my life?” and “why don’t you recognize your own daughter?”
But I don’t say anything.
I can guess what happened. He’s forgotten me, same as Mom has forgotten Asha, my twin, and for the same reason. Soma illusionists made him—and Phobetor, who took him over—think that he killed me.
Yet even if I’m right, it doesn’t make this feel any better. His lack of recognition feels too much like rejection. Like I don’t matter to him… which I guess I don’t.
Maxwell nervously brushes the gray stubble on his chin. “Bailey, is everything okay? You look upset.”
I pull myself together, ignoring the pitch-black Pom on my wrist. “There’s a dreamwalking problem I need your help with,” I say, my voice impressively even.
His amber eyes brighten. “What’s the problem?”
“It’s my mother. Her name is Lidia.”
He shows almost no reaction to the name, except maybe a slight widening of his pupils.
Seems like he’s forgotten more than just little old me.
Could he be missing all the memories related to Soma, like Valerian was? If so, he wouldn’t even recognize Mom—assuming Soma is where they met.
“She’s in a coma,” I continue and explain the strange state Mom is stuck in and how I need to push her into REM sleep so I can jolt her awake from inside her dream world.
“Sure, I can try to put her into REM sleep.” He rakes a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “Where is she?”
I glance at Virgil, who turns around and leads us down the corridor.
The two gnomes are still in Mom’s room, still chatting after all this time. I ignore them, my attention on my father’s face as he looks at Mom.
“Have you met her before?” I ask, gesturing at the rolling-bed contraption. “She’s a dreamwalker like us.”
Maxwell stares at her, his forehead creasing. “She does look familiar…” Stepping closer, he scans her face. “The two of you share some features.”
So that’s that. He’s missing a lot of memories.
Knowing that I’m not the only one he’s forgotten should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. All I feel is sadness… and under it, my anger at Phobetor expands. He’s pucked up the lives of everyone in my family.
He’s torn us apart.
Reining in my emotions, I ask, “Do you need to touch her? I saw you do this from afar with Dylan…”
