The War for the Waking World (24 page)

“Okay,” Rigby said. “So watch the screen.” Rigby's fingers flew on the keyboard, and a wire-frame representation of the earth appeared.

At least, Archer thought it was the earth. Dotted-line rings circled the planet, like the planet Saturn. But not quite, these rings passed in and out of the planet's mass. Rigby kept typing, and two points appeared.

“Know what these are?” Rigby asked.

Archer guessed, “North and South Poles?”

“Close,” Rigby explained. “These are the magnetic North and South Poles, distinct from the geographical poles, y'know, like the actual locations South Pole and North Pole on the map. Heh-heh. Santa's place, right? The geographical poles don't move, but the magnetic poles do. And these circles are the electromagnetic fields of the earth as they normally are. Now watch this.”

He clicked a few more buttons. Archer blinked at the screen. There were a lot more dotted-line circles, but these were horizontal.

“Now this,” Rigby said, “is earth after the Rift. Right now, as a matter of fact.”

“I—I—I don't understand what I just saw,” Archer admitted. “It looks like there are two more magnetic poles, only the two new ones are going east and west.”

“No, no, you got it,” Rigby said. “Don't you see? The Rift gave us new poles.”

“Yes, yes,” Doc Scoville said. “And this is the very thing we need to test. We've just gotten the data in to run a simulation.”

“What data?” Archer asked.

“Fluctuations in the earth's electromagnetic field. Fluctuations over the last two years, leading up to the Rift,” said Doc Scoville.

Archer sat up rigidly. “You mean since you started Lucid Walking?”

Rigby didn't say anything, but he nodded slowly.

“Run it, Rigby,” Doc Scoville urged.

“Roger that,” he replied, his fingers rippling over the keyboard like a pair of frenzied spiders. He clicked once more. “And 'ere we go.”

THIRTY-SIX

T
HREE
D
AYS

A
RCHER STARED AT THE SCREEN
. H
E WASN
'
T ENTIRELY
sure what he was looking for. The digital earth appeared once more, the magnetic North and South Poles looking pretty much as before, the rings circulating north and south. Then, just a few seconds in, the North and South Poles appeared to shift. It was more of a wobble, Archer thought, the rings shifting a little one way and then the other.

“How much time is passing?” Archer asked.

“A week per second,” Rigby said.

The magnetic fields of the digital earth continued to waver. A few seconds passed. Then the whole screen flickered.

“Wait!” Archer said. “Did you see that?”

“Back it up three weeks, Rigby,” Doc Scoville said.

Rigby did. “Oh, now
that
is peculiar,” he said.

There had been a rogue fluctuation. A new ring of electromagnetic energy had formed for just a moment.

“Point of origin?” Doc Scoville asked. “Looks like the UK.”

Rigby clicked away. “Glasgow, Scotland.”

Archer frowned, something itching at the back of his mind, but nothing he could identify.

Rigby pulled up a picture within the main screen. “This field,” he said, “will monitor for similar magnetic spikes.” He tapped a few keys. “Going forward now.”

Archer lost count of the rogue spikes, but became mesmerized by
the way the north and south fields were bouncing. One minute they were steady. The next, the graphic looked like a Slinky bent in half.

“Getting into this past autumn,” Rigby said. “That's . . . that's just incredible. The movement . . . so far.”

“There!” Doc Scoville said, pointing.

The east and west fields made their first appearances. They flickered and were gone, but in a few seconds they returned . . . and they remained. More and more rings appeared. They too began to wobble violently. Then there was a flash, and the screen froze.

Archer asked, “What happened?”

No one answered right away. Doc Scoville knelt to give Kaylie a high five, and then he yanked Rigby out of the chair and hugged him.

“What?” Archer groused. “You wanna tell me what's going on?”

“There's still a chance,” Doc Scoville said.

“I think Kaylie's plan will do it,” Rigby said.

“But we haven't much time,” Doc Scoville said. “Reverse the algorithm. Reduce the frequency and go from the Rift to this very moment.”

“Right,” Rigby said, leaping back into his chair. “On it.”

Archer was fit to be tied. “Would someone please tell me—”

“Shhh!” Rigby, Doc Scoville, and Kaylie cut him off.

Another data field appeared on screen. As the digital earth's EM fields jumped around, the numbers rolled on the new field. Then it all stopped again.

The number field read:

78:24:46:02

“How long is that?” Doc Scoville asked. “I'm too excited. I can't think straight, heh-heh!”

“It's a little over three days,” Rigby said, his tone much soberer than a moment ago.

“That's a tight window,” Doc Scoville grumbled. “I still have so many tests. We'll have to factor in travel. There's so much to do, and just three days . . .”

“It matches up with Old Jack,” Archer muttered, leaping from his chair and trotting to the lab's nearest window. “Yup! Three days left, and it looks like to the minute.”

“Old Jack?” Rigby echoed thoughtfully. “The clock tower you Dreamtreaders use, kind of like Big Ben in London, right?”

“Yup, yup,” Kaylie agreed.

Doc Scoville looked up from a notepad filled with calculations. “But I thought that was only in the Dream.”

“It just showed up again,” Archer explained. “But it's keeping time differently. Not hours, but days.”

“How peculiar,” Rigby said, squinting. “And it's at three days? Like the chronometer?”

Archer nodded, returning to his seat.

“Where does the clock—Old Jack—where does it come from?” Rigby asked.

“I don't know actually,” Archer replied. “Master Gabriel has never said.”

“Not in the Creeds either,” Kaylie said. “Not the cause of it anyway.”

Rigby shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Is it like Dreamtreader will, maybe something out of your subconscious?”

Archer shrugged. “Like I said, I don't know.”

Doc Scoville looked up from his calculations. “Has it . . . has Old Jack ever steered you wrong? You know, showed the wrong time or . . . uh . . . put you in danger?”

“
No
,” Kaylie said emphatically, drawing out the word. “Never.”

“Why so interested in Old Jack?” Archer asked. “It's harmless.”

“Well,” Doc Scoville said, “whatever it is, it managed to survive the Rift.”

Save for the quiet hum of the servers, the laboratory went silent.
Archer had never really given much thought to Old Jack. The old clock was pretty much a part of the scenery of the Dream, a landmark like the Empire State Building or Mount Rushmore. The fact that Dreamtreaders could always see Old Jack no matter how far away it was—well, that was strange. But then again, so was most of what happened in the Dream.

“So three days,” Doc Scoville muttered as he scribbled on the notepad once more. “If we position the anchors correctly, it should push the magnetic fields back.”

“What happens after three days?” Archer asked.

The room grew very quiet. Kaylie frowned, Rigby's eyes seemed to glaze over, and Doc Scoville said, “In three days, the earth's magnetic field will be set in its normal position.”

“But you said it moves all the time,” Archer said.

“It moves a little, but not like it has with the Rift. The thing's all out of whack, but it's still swinging with the Rift's initial push. If we wait past the three days, we'll still be able to move it, but we won't have the momentum from the Rift. We'll never push it far enough. The Rift and all its consequences will become permanent.”

“As in there'll be nothing we can do?” Archer asked.

Rigby rolled his eyes. “As in the normal meaning of
permanent
, Keaton.”

“Let's not think that way,” Doc Scoville said. “It's simply a deadline.”

“We can do this,” Kaylie said. “Archer? Do you hear? Anchor Protocol is going to work. Archer?”

But Archer didn't answer. He couldn't answer. He was no longer aware of anyone in that room. A high shriek had pierced his consciousness, followed by a regal, melodious voice, speaking in a language Archer at first did not understand.

Te voxis, Kae-ah-tohn. Te voxis borundum entrar mil se bonis. Skandar belli, skandar vin thel te mourna xivis . . .

It was an unearthly language, proudly spoken, but desperate to be understood. Archer trembled, gasped, and then convulsed so terribly he fell out of the chair. As he thrashed about on the cold floor, at last he began to understand the message.

THIRTY-SEVEN

W
HISPERS AND
F
LAME

“T
HESE
NUMBERS
,” K
ARA SAID, FLIPPING BACK AND FORTH
through the packet Frederick had given her. “Are these right? We have that many people coming in?”

“Baltimore is a large city,” Frederick replied, gesturing with a sweep of his arm to the vast metropolis beyond the window glass. He sat on the edge of the conference table, adjusted his ever-dark sunglasses, and said, “Six hundred thousand people and counting—there's bound to be a healthy supply.”

Kara frowned and tilted her head. A ribbon of her silky black hair swung down over her eyes like a pendulum. With a curt wave of the hand, she tossed it back, and said, “But there are fifteen hundred names here.”

“Not enough?”

“More than enough,” Kara replied incredulously. “Far higher than our initial projections. Can we treat them all in time?”

Frederick whipped out his phone. “We're already at 66 percent,” he replied. “Thanks to Mr. Bezeal.”

Kara shook her head in amazement, both at this extraordinary news . . . and at Frederick's calling her merchant
Mister
Bezeal. “He is kind of a miracle worker,” she said. “When can we expect full strength?”

He didn't answer right away but scrolled on his phone, his fingers swishing back and forth as if he were tracing an inverted cross. “By tomorrow morning,” he said. “At the latest.”

“I want to see them,” Kara said.

“Let's go,” Frederick replied, springing off the table. “I think you'll be pleased.”

Archer stopped convulsing. He lay very still and lost any concept of where he was. “Archer, Archer! Please wake up!” came a voice.

Archer felt movement around his body. Someone said, “Nephew?”

“It wasn't me!” someone exclaimed. “I didn't do anything!”

In a warbling storm of sound, the world came back to Archer. He coughed, spat, and tried to sit up.

“Easy, Archer,” Doc Scoville cautioned.

“No, can't,” Archer coughed. “Nick . . . I . . . the valkaryx . . .”

“What? Keaton, you're not making any sense.”

Archer blinked. “Help . . . help me up.” Rigby and Doc Scoville each took one of Archer's arms. Kaylie hovered around like a mother hen.

“I know of the valkaryx,” Doc Scoville muttered. “Majestic creatures in the Dream.”

“No,” Archer said. “Here. They survived the Rift, at least Nick's pair did. Rock and Shock, he calls them.”

“What happened to you, Archer?” Kaylie asked, a worried quiver still in her voice.

He looked at her. “I . . . I don't know exactly. But Rock and Shock, they found Nick at the Dream Tower but couldn't get to him, couldn't rescue him. They could speak to him, though. And through them, Nick . . . he sent us a message.”

“Well, out with it, lad!” Doc Scoville said. “Honestly, you've gone ghost-pale, Archer. What was Nick's message?”

Archer blinked. “Kara knows where we are,” he said. “She's tracked us somehow.”

“Magnetic signature,” Doc Scoville mumbled.

“Gotta be,” Rigby confirmed.

“She's building an army,” Archer whispered, “not to capture us but to wipe us out.”

Kaylie's hands flew to her lips. “Oh!”

“It's worse than that,” Archer muttered. “Kara and Bezeal are going to do something to Nick . . . something . . . I don't know, something that turns him against us. They're going to use Nick as a weapon against us.”