1 The Dream Rider (7 page)

The sound of metal grinding on metal followed by a loud
clank woke me up. I rubbed my eyes for a few seconds; relieved I was finally
waking from the strange dream. That feeling only lasted a moment, though. As my
blurred vision came into focus, I realized I was still in the prison cell.

The night before, I’d felt my way over to the little cot
in the corner and lay down. It was a fitful night of tossing and turning. I
could never really get comfortable, and it was too chilly in the tiny room.
Eventually, I fell into an exhausted and troubled sleep, hoping the next
morning I would find myself in my dorm room, pushing the snooze button on the
alarm. The disappointment with which I’d met the morning was quickly replaced
by a terrifying thought:
What if all this is real?

Panic began to creep into my mind again. My breathing
became short and a tight knot formed in my chest. The small box of a room began
to grow smaller and smaller, closing in around me like some kind of strange
death trap. I shuffled over to the door with the intent of banging on it when
suddenly it opened in front of me. I noticed the door across the hall had also
opened. A black man in a gray tunic and brownish belt stood just inside. He
stared out at me with vacant eyes then stepped into the hall. His shoulders
were broad atop chiseled arms. He was about the same height as me, around six
feet, but his presence was far more imposing compared to my thin frame.

“You should come out of there before they decide to go in
after you,” he warned in a deep voice. I could hear the gate next to our cells starting
to open so I did as my neighbor suggested and stepped into the doorway,
assuming the same stance as him—palms up and staring straight ahead.

A long line of guards filed through the gate and marched
between all of the prisoners. One stopped in front of me and inspected my
hands. He looked at my clothes with disdain then checked the room behind me. I
guess he was satisfied with his inspection of the cell because he returned
quickly and looked me over again.

“What strange clothes you have on, frag. Where are you
from?”
 
He lifted a clear tablet
and touched a corner. A color screen came to life and he started scrolling
through lists of names.

“I’m from Tennessee,” I answered.

“Tanasi? I never heard of a place called Tanasi,” he
replied. Then he stopped at a picture of my face, which appeared to be
different than the one the cop had accessed. They must have had cameras
everywhere. Or maybe there was one I hadn’t seen on the way into the building
the night before. The man pressed a button on the side of his helmet and his
visor went up into the helmet. His eyes grew wide. It was the first I’d seen of
any of the guard’s eyes. They looked human, tired but definitely human. I think
in the back of my mind I had hoped they were robots or something non-human.

“Well, I don’t see anything in here about Tanasi, but it
seems we have ourselves a boy from Earth,” he announced proudly. His voice
sounded distinctly English, south London if I made my guess.

The immediate area around us became hushed at his comment.
The guards who were busy checking other inmates turned their heads in our
direction. Even the prisoners twisted and craned their necks to have a glance.
Earthlings were apparently something of an oddity. I wasn’t sure if that was a
good or bad thing.

The dark-skinned man across the corridor stared at me. His
shadowy brown eyes became narrow slits that peered into my soul as if he was
trying to pry a deep secret from me.

The guard noticed something flashing on the screen and his
face became perplexed. “Looks like you are to be prepped to fight
tomorrow.”
 
He scratched his face
as he continued reading the information on the tablet.

“Fight?” I asked frantically. I definitely didn’t like the
sound of that. “What do you mean fight tomorrow?”
 

The guard that had been checking my neighbor across the
corridor stepped near and looked over the shoulder of my guy. He studied the
screen for a moment. “Looks like you’ve got the interest of the emperor,” the
man stated in a deep baritone.

“I’m sorry. Did you say emperor? What did I do?” I shook
my head in disbelief.

The guard holding the device shrugged. “It doesn’t say,
frag. It just says by order of the game master and the emperor, you’re to be
prepped for a battle against Darwinius.”
 

Both guards looked at each other with raised eyebrows. “I
know
who
I’ll be betting on in that one,” my guard
burst with laughter in his thick accent. The other guy joined in with a bellow.

I started to raise my hand to ask what they were talking
about but my sudden movement must have appeared threatening and because they
responded with raising their weapons immediately.

I froze in place, showing them I had no ill intentions. “I
just want to know what I’m doing here. That’s all.”
 

The guard with the accent lowered his gun slightly. He jerked
his head to the side as he barked out an order. “The emperor wants us to take
him to Jonas. The old man just lost one last week. Looks like he’s about to
lose another.”
 
Then he turned his
attention to me. “I’ll let Jonas explain everything to you, frag.” He looked
back at the other guards, “Let’s get him on the floor before we move the others
in for the day.”

I wondered who this mysterious Jonas was. But the comment
about losing one in battle was more concerning. Before I could protest, the two
men spun me around and lashed my hands behind my back with a device that
automatically tightened around my wrists. Then they shoved me towards the gate
leaving my neighbor across the hall to stare on curiously.

The guards pulled me along, like a dog, through the
training facility. As they dragged me through it, I noticed a few other things
I hadn’t seen before:
 
weights,
ropes, racks full of swords and armor. We approached a corner of the giant room
where the old man from the night before was sitting alone at a rickety wooden
table. I recognized him from the night before. He was the one that had been
watching a few of the others sparring. His long, graying hair had been pulled
back in a ponytail; his face was hidden, hovering over a bowl of whatever it
was people seemed to be eating around here. The thought of food caused my
stomach to grumble slightly. Up above, I could see several guards watching me
from the balcony areas, their weapons following me as I moved. The men
escorting me seemed to not notice. I guess they were used to being in the kill
box. It was slightly more disconcerting to me.

We stopped at the table and the man with the accent kicked
the chair the older guy was sitting in. “Jonas, we have another recruit for ya.
This one is from the emperor himself. We figured since you lost one the other
day, you had room on your roster for a new frag.”
 

They shoved me forward and stepped away. “Enjoy your last
day of life, boy. Darwinius will make quick work of you.”
 
Both guards laughed heartily as they
turned and headed back towards the gate.

Anger and fear mixed inside my head. I had so many
questions.
Why
was I here? Where was here?
I had so many questions. I looked back to the
old man who was still staring into his bowl of yellowish liquid. He’d stopped eating,
if he ever had been.

“Now is not the time, Finn,” he said, unmoving.

My eyebrows lowered.
He knew my name?
“I’m sorry, Sir. How do you
know my name? What is this place?”
 
Part of me was terrified, the other part was relieved at the possibility
that I could talk with someone and get some answers.

Slowly, Jonas lifted his head towards me. His green eyes
were sad, but kind, wrapped in a face full of wrinkles and concern. Somehow,
though, when his gaze fell upon me, it was as if something about him lightened,
just slightly.

“You may call me Jonas,” he replied kindly. “And I know
who you are because I have been looking for you for a long time.”
 
He extended a hand, motioning for me to
sit across from him. I looked back in the direction the guards had gone, but they
were already to the other side of the room. When the gate closed behind them, I
felt the device on my wrists loosen and fall to the ground. Jonas reached down
and picked it up. “You’ll need this later. They use them inside the training
area when there are guards present. Makes them feel safer.”
 
The corners of his mouth revealed his
amusement. His voice was calm and refined, producing an even tone that made him
sound almost regal. It was a strange contrast to our surroundings.

I shook my head, still confused. “I’m sorry,” I
interrupted him as he began to slurp some of the liquid from his bowl. “Did you
say you have been looking for me?”
 

He swallowed a mouthful, nodding. “Mmhmm.
That
’s right. We’ve been expecting you.”
 

“I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this. What
is going on? Is this some kind of crazy dream? Why were you expecting me?”
 

Jonas set his bowl down and rubbed his hands together. “Of
course you don’t understand. I’m sure they didn’t bother to tell you where you
are or what any of this is.”
 
He
waved a hand around like a mocking tour guide.

I shook my head slowly back and forth.

“Well, I may as well start at the beginning with the
simplest part. We are in a prison facility underneath Sideron City.”
 

“Sideron City? I’ve never heard of it.”
 

“I’m not surprised. You’re not from around here.”
 
There was something mischievous about
the way he said it and his grin confirmed my suspicion about the mischief. “I
suppose there’s really no easy way to say this, so I may as well lay it all on
the line.”
 
He opened his hands as
he spoke.

“Finn, you are on a planet called Sideros. It is around
55,000 light years from Earth, on the other side of the Milky Way Galaxy. Well,
we don’t call it that, but I’m trying to use terms a person from Earth would
understand.”
 

I stared at the old man for a few seconds, waiting for him
to tell me he was kidding. He said nothing so I blurted out a laugh that turned
into twenty seconds of uncomfortable laughter between the two of us.

“I’m glad you’re taking this so well,” he said in-between
chuckles. “I honestly thought you might have more trouble acclimating.”
 

My laughter started to die down. Obviously, the man was
crazy, a figment of my overactive dreamy imagination. “Look, Jonas. I’m pretty
sure this is all just a dream and any second I am going to wake up in my dorm
room. But that was good. I needed the laugh.”
 

His smile began to fade with my dying laughter.

“Ah,” he said with resignation. “I had a feeling you were
taking it a little too well.”
 
His
expression became serious. “Finn, I’m not joking with you here. You are on the
other side of our galaxy. This planet is called Sideros. And you are in the
custody of a man named Mallock who our esteemed guards refer to as the
emperor.”
 

I decided to play along for a minute, though worry began
to rear its head in the back of my mind again. “So, you’re saying I’m not
dreaming any of this?”

He shook his head. “No. You are dreaming, Finn.”
 
The words brought me some level of
comfort, right up until he said
but.
For some reason, that
word is almost never good a good thing.
“But, even though you are
dreaming, you must understand what that means. Humans from your planet have yet
to learn the mysteries behind dreams.

“When you fall asleep, your conscious mind rests, but your
subconscious comes alive. The subconscious mind can operate millions of times
faster and process much more information than the conscious mind. More than
that, it can transport itself to other places.”

I looked around the room. Whoever this guy was, figment or
not, he was starting to sound insane.

“Finn, when you fall asleep, your subconscious is free to
travel the universe, and it often does. That is what you earthlings call
‘dreaming.’
 
Here on Sideros, we
call it dream travel.”
 

“So, wait a second,” I stopped him. “I just want to make
sure I’m hearing this correctly. You’re telling me that all of this is a dream,
that I am actually back in my dorm room right now, ready to wake up at any
second.”
 

“Not exactly.”

“Well, I don’t follow what you’re saying then,” I said,
exasperated.

“You’re close to understanding. Finn, have you ever
noticed how that, sometimes your dreams seemed so real. You could swear that
they had actually happened. Sights, smells, feelings, people, fears, and events
were all there just like in your conscious reality. Remember having dreams like
that?”
 

“Pretty sure this one will be like that.”