I fall spread-eagled in my dream like a skydiver. There’s a jar floating next to me. I open it but it’s full of thin, watery marmalade, so I replace the lid and let go of the jar. It arcs away on its own trajectory, a disappointment to Peruvian bears everywhere. Then I crash face-first onto sticky floorboards.
Groaning, I push myself to my knees. Raise a hand to my head. My fingers come back red, but it is not my forehead that is bleeding. The blood seeps from the dozens of Marines scattered across the ballroom floor. A woman’s outstretched hand brushes my knee and I jerk away.
The swamp of blood and bodies repeats in the surrounding mirrored walls, over and over again into dim infinity. A figure approaches from the vague distance. They brighten as they wade closer. I know who it is long before her lips and eyes and unmarred forehead come into focus from the other side of the mirrors. Four Mamans stare at me.
A hand on my shoulder. Shade stands next to me. “Do you know how long I’ve dreamed of this?” he asks me as he raises the pistol.
“No,” I whisper.
BANG.
The Mamans shatter, Shade and the Marines vanishing between one blink and the next, as I’m sliced apart by a storm of glass splinters. After an instant that lasts an eternity, the glass compacts into a throbbing Goo globe. The single star in a black universe. I reach forward to touch the glass of the globe and it splits at its seam. Ice-cold water spills forth and swallows me whole. I gasp at the burning chill.
The dense pressure of the water vanishes. I’m in the oven of the world, lips scraping against baking earth, breathing in oiled air, hearing the crack and moan and bang of eucalyptus trees and flinching as sparks rain down on my back. I’m hot, too hot, so hot, someone save me, please, Drake, please find me. Where are you? Don’t leave me.
“Drake!” I shout, lunging upright.
Carter jerks backwards. “What?” he says.
I blink at him, so tall he’s at eye-level kneeling there next to my bed, trying to remember how to think, then a wave of biting cold washes across me. I groan and burrow down under the blankets heaped on the bed. Flushes of fire and ice come and go. My whole body trembles and aches. My head’s in a vice.
“I hate dreams,” I mumble in my cocoon.
“What?” Carter repeats, softer this time.
“I wanna go home.”
He sighs. “I know. Help is coming.”
“Drake?” Drake! Please, please, it hurts. Drake, find me!
“Sorry, Alyssa, not Drake.”
I peer out from under the covers and try to focus on him. It’s hard, what with the backlighting of the Goo and Maman staring at me from the mirror. “Why’re you being nice?” I squint. “Why’re there two of you?”
He presses a mercifully cool hand to my forehead and sighs. “Get some rest. You’ll be out of here soon.”
Soothed by the relief of his palm, I drift off into the forest fire.
.
“In here!” someone shouts over me. I open my eyes a fraction to see a figure in red and black body armour, made brown and black by the dimming Goo light, towering over me. Two others appear in the doorway – the one dressed entirely in black lingers there, keeping watch, while the other joins the first beside the bed. This person, whose white and black armour glows green, only comes up to the first person’s shoulder. They look like cartoon characters.
“Rider, Leech, we’ve found her,” says the tall one, a man.
No, I think.
The short one, a woman, swears. “That bastard,” she spits. “What was he trying to do?”
It wasn’t supposed to be you.
“We need to take her to the Colonel,” says the man.
“Hell no,” says the woman. “She needs help, not an interrogation. Mrs K can take care of her.”
“They have a hospital at the base.”
“We’ll call Walsh up.” The woman crouches beside the bed. “Hey, Alyssa,” she says. “How are you doing?”
“Tired,” I slur. “Hot.” She frowns at the mountain of blankets on top of me. I don’t have the strength to push them off. Sweat trickles down my back.
“Her father will want to talk to her,” says the man.
The woman carefully tackles the mountain one blanket at a time. “Then he can come to the island. I don’t trust him not to pull another stunt if we leave her with him.”
“The party was not a stunt –”
“Ace!” she snaps. “She needs rest which she won’t get in the Bronx. We’ll take her to the island and if she wants to go see the Colonel then she can when she’s well enough. Or he can visit. Right now, I want to get her out of this hellhole.” The last blanket slips from my body. My sweat seems to freeze and suddenly I am cold, incredibly, breathtakingly cold. Every muscle in my body seizes up. I hear a high pitched whine of pain.
“Sorry, Alyssa,” says the woman. “You’re going to be all right. Ace?”
The man clicks his tongue. “Fine. Let’s go.” He lifts my stiff body into his arms. His body armour is cool and hard and covered in a thin but firm sheet of rough fabric and I shiver violently against his chest.
Drake, why didn’t you come?
too long to wait - help!
Oh no! It stops too soon! Aargh! When is the next installment coming?