Chapter 8

The vibrationof the alarm wakes me.

I feel groggy, like I could sleep for many more hours. Oh, well. Maybe I'll sleep after I help Valerian with the Erato business.

Climbing out of my pod, I notice Bernie and Rattie are still slumbering in theirs. I approach Rattie and check his eyelids. Yep. He's dreaming right now. That means I could establish a dream link with him if I wanted to.

It doesn't take me long to decide. I do want to. I could then inspire him when it comes to levels of my game, for starters.

Stealthily lifting the lid, I touch Rattie's forehead.

* * *

I appearin my dream palace and come face to face with Pom.

"Bailey," he exclaims, turning a deep purple. "I've missed your face."

I fluff his fur. "Can't you just make yourself a dream version of my face and stare at it in a pinch?"

To demonstrate, I create a disembodied replica of my grinning mug and leave it floating in the air next to me.

He gives a small shudder. "That looks kind of disturbing."

I roll my eyes. "Good to know. I didn't realize my face has that effect on you."

"When not attached to the rest of you, it gets creepy," he says seriously. "I guess your arms and legs keep your face from being that way."

Shaking my head, I teleport to the tower of sleepers and look for Rattie.

He's indeed in a nook, not far from Bernie, who's also showed up in his bed.

"Trauma loop," Pom says, the tips of his ears darkening as he eyes the clouds above Rattie's head.

He's right. And not just any clouds, but turbulent ones. I rub the tip of my nose. "I don't get it. Does Valerian seek out software engineers with deep psychological trauma, or is it just bad luck on everyone's part?"

Pom's fur darkens further. "I'm not going in there with you."

"I don't think I'm going in either. I have to meet Valerian and do a job for him in the waking world. I've set up a link with this guy so I can inspire him in the future, not deal with that." I wave at the clouds.

"Inspire him?" Pom turns light orange. "Are you talking about the private things you do with Valerian that you asked me not to witness?"

I put my hands on my hips. "First of all, I never got further than first base with Dream Valerian. Secondly—"

"What's first base?"

"Secondly, that is not the kind of inspiration I'm talking about. Besides, Rattie might be pleasant to look at, but doing stuff like that with him would feel like cheating on Valerian, even in dreams."

Wait, what am I saying? How can you cheat on someone when you're not in a relationship?

Pom takes on the colors of root vegetables—first a carrot, then a beet. "Did I upset you?"

"It's fine." I sigh. "The private stuff you mention is a sensitive subject, that's all."

He waggles his ears. "Like the P word for me?"

The P-word stands for "parasite"—which Pom contends he's not, preferring "symbiont" instead. Of course, considering that he uses me as his food source, feels my emotions, possibly excretes his metabolic byproducts into my blood stream, and is attached to my wrist to the end of our days, the jury on parasite-versus-symbiont is still out.

He bristles. "I can't believe you just thought that."

"I was just testing if you're reading my thoughts. You said you wouldn't, but you did."

He turns a deeper shade of beet. "Sorry. I'll stay out of your thoughts going forward."

"Thanks." I fluff his fur. "And we're definitely symbionts."

His ears perk up. "Like a bee and a flower?"

"Definitely not like a bee and a flower," I say and jolt myself out of the dream world.

* * *

Struggling not to giggle,I open my eyes next to Rattie's pod. Though it's unclear which of us Pom views as the flower, I know this much: If anyone's going to do any pollination of me, it better be Valerian.

Speaking of which, I need to get moving, else I won't make it to Gomorrah on time. I leave the building and buy more hand sanitizer before grabbing a taxi to JFK. Once we hit the inevitable traffic, I open up Leal's journal in my VR view to have another look.

Skimming over a lot of minutiae, I locate something that piques my interest:

Another day, another failure. I'm beginning to think touchless dreamwalking is impossible—or if it is possible, it may be something only those of us with more power can master.

Touchless dreamwalking? How does that work?

I search the journal for more mentions of this term and eventually puzzle out that it's basically a way to enter someone's dream from a short distance—in lieu of touching them skin-to-skin.

Puck, that would be amazing. My least favorite thing about my powers is all this exposure to cooties. Next time I meet a sleeper, I'll see if I can do this.

Arriving at JFK, I make my way to the secret hub and enter the gate that leads to Gomorrah. Once there, I stop by my place to use the bathroom, change my clothes, hygieia myself from head to foot, drink like a camel, and scarf down some manna. Then I head over to my destination—Erato's restaurant.

Valerian is already there, waiting for me by the building.

He's changed his suit for an outfit that would definitely look out of place on the parts of Earth I'm familiar with. It's a black, sporty bodysuit, a skintight contraption that shows off every muscle on his body as thoroughly as if he were naked and covered in tar.

Another flush heats my skin. This outfit will definitely make it hard to concentrate on the job, whatever it is.

Valerian's clearly not in the mood for flirting, though. "You're late." He puts on a breathing mask that blocks his features and makes him look like a gnome, then hands the same thing to me. "Put this on."

Before I can ask any pertinent questions—such as, "What the puck are we doing?"—he stalks into the building and summons the elevator.

I hurry after him, fitting the mask on the way. "Wha—"

He places a finger to where the lips would be under the mask, and the LEGO letters show up in the air: My powers can't fool listening devices if they're there.

I nod in comprehension, and we ride the elevator in silence. When we get to the hundred-and-fifth floor, Valerian steps out, and I follow, staring at our surroundings in awe.

The walls are covered from floor to ceiling with vertically growing plants, each one with a dedicated lamp and a mist machine nourishing it.

"I feel like we're in a greenhouse," I whisper.

Don't talk and stay in the middle of the corridor, he tells me via LEGO letters.

Demonstrating what he means, he keeps away from the walls as he creeps forward.

I mime his actions as closely as I can, though I doubt my movements achieve the predatory grace of his.

He stops next to a moss-covered door and waves an unfamiliar device over a lock. There's a click, and the door slides out of our way. He takes out another gizmo and tosses it inside.

That will disable all electronics for a while, he tells me via LEGO letters.

I nod.

He waves for me to follow and moves even stealthier, which is logical since we've now officially broken into someone's lodgings.

Bringing up my VR, I write him a message: If we get caught, will the Senate pardon us?

Stern-looking LEGO letters show up in the air immediately: Never refer to this job in electronic messages again. And to answer your question: it would be easier for them to make us disappear, so let's not get caught.

Great. Just great. Now he tells me that.

Sighing, I follow him deeper into the apartment, which reminds me of the restaurant—a veritable jungle of different plants of all shapes and sizes. Only unlike the restaurant, there's a sinister quality to some of the vegetation—like the acid seed okra, a flowering plant that can open its pods and spit out seeds up to two hundred feet. Those seeds, as the name implies, are covered with a powerful acid. And that's an unmodified plant. Others appear to have been engineered from their nasty natural brethren, like the one that looks like poison hogweed—a plant covered by deadly poison, only with thorns. There's also a cousin of the famous strangle vine, only bigger. The winner of the creep show, though, is sitting in a giant pot in the middle of the room. It's a distant brother of the bug trap flower, except it's big enough to eat a person instead of a bug.

Press here, Valerian's LEGO text informs me as he touches a button on the right cheek of his mask.

I do the same, and the scent of the air coming into the mask changes, becoming more sterile. It must be getting filtered.

Valerian takes out a sleep grenade.

Interesting.

Gliding through the plants like a jaguar, he stops next to a door and quietly opens it before tossing the grenade inside.

Touch her to make a connection, he orders a few seconds later. If she wasn't asleep, she should be now.

Doing my best not to make any sounds, I slink into the room and examine the sleeping dryad inside.

Based on her reputation, I figured Erato had to be older, but I didn't realize she was downright ancient. Her green hair is almost entirely gray, and the green skin of her face looks like weathered tree bark.

Watching her eyelids, I frown.

What are you waiting for? Valerian asks.

I point at her lids, then at the eyeholes of my mask as I rapidly move my eyes to explain what I need.

So we're just going to stand here until she starts dreaming?

Since I don't know how to pantomime "I don't want to risk going homicidally crazy," I pointedly shrug.

With a barely audible sigh, he crosses his arms over his broad chest and closes his eyes.

Ignoring his pouting, I switch my attention to Erato's eyelids.

Nothing.

I bring up my VR display and set a timer for the length of time it typically takes for the gas to leave a large person's system. If this small woman doesn't go into REM sleep by the time the alarm rings, I'll have to risk dealing with the subdream. Hopefully I won't have to, though. The last time, with my mom, was brutal.

Feeling like the worst cat burglar in the history of thievery, I open Leal's journal in my VR view and look for something interesting to read. I still haven't found anything by the time the VR alarm rings, so I close the journal.

And that's when I realize something odd is happening in the room.

All the plants around us seem to be coming alive and moving with an eerie purpose.

She's in REM sleep, Valerian informs me.

I glance at her eyelids. She is indeed, and she must be dreaming about something that makes her agitate the plants.

I carefully approach her bed and extend my hand. Before my fingers touch her leathery skin, I remember the power I recently learned about—touchless dreamwalking—and decide to try it.

Keeping my hand extended, I will myself to go into Erato's dream.

Nothing happens.

I strain so hard a vein pops in my forehead.

Still nada.

The way the plants move grows spookier.

What's the holdup?Valerian asks. Make the connection, and let's get out. You'll do the actual dreamwalking once we're safely away.

Fine. Maybe now isn't a good time for experimentation.

I touch the dryad's green forehead and go in the regular way, popping in and out of the dream palace before Pom has a chance to say hi.

Task accomplished, I nod at Valerian and pull my hand away. "Let's go," I say quietly—which is when the dryad's eyes open and the plants around us coil for a strike like an army of snakes.