Another pillar crashed to the ground. Sejal yanked the Dream fabric with a sharp jerk. The multitude fell silent, and Sejal continued gathering. He felt Ben and Kendi’s minds and ruthlessly added them to the pool.
— Sejal, what-?~ Kendi yelped, but Sejal ignored him. Silent after Silent fell into his pool. He felt swollen with them. Lights sparked around his body. He felt like he was drinking electric water until it threatened to burst out of him. Only a few minds were left, a tiny handful. He reached for them.
“Sejal, look out!” Katsu cried.
Sejal’s eyes snapped open. A black pillar was dropping straight for them. Reflexively, Sejal yanked on the Silent around them, took them into himself, possessed them fully. As one mind, they all reached up with arms suddenly grown god-like in size. The pillar landed on their shoulders. It was cold as winter, heavy as snow. But Sejal had the strength of nearly every Silent in the universe behind him, and he pushed back. His shoulders rose like Atlas, pushing the pillar back to the sky. The children stormed angrily above him, but Sejal held them back. Then he reached out with one giant hand and grabbed one of the pillars that had already reached the ground. With easy strength, he lifted it back to the sky and added it to his burden. A billion minds cleared and a thousand Silent pulled themselves out of the despair of separation. Sejal added them to his strength and reached for another pillar.
His brothers and sisters fought back, pressing down with their full weight. Sejal lifted despite their power. A small part of him marveled at what he was doing, relished in the strength. He lifted another pillar clear of the Dream, and another, and another, adding more and more Silent as they were freed. Every mind added to his own made the burden easier and easier to lift. The children howled mindlessly above him, clawed at his back, tore at his face and hair. But they did no damage. Sejal lifted the final pillar and stood with the black sky on his shoulders. Katsu was small and far below.
And then Sejal noticed that no more children had left the Dream. There were still fifteen left, had been for quite some time. Had something happened to Prasad and his mother? A bit of uncertainty wiggled through him and his knees buckled for a moment before he could firm them again.
“Katsu,” he boomed. Below, Katsu flung herself to the ground, her hands over her ears. Wincing, Sejal modulated his voice to a whisper.
“Katsu,” he murmured. “Leave the Dream and go see what-”
A shudder wracked his body and Sejal’s grip on the Dream weakened. A jolt of pain ripped through him. His eyes popped open and he found himself staring into the face of a Unity guard.
Ben snapped awake. He was lying on the bed in Kendi’s quarters aboard the Post Script. Actually, he was lying on top of Kendi. He must have fallen sideways when Sejal had taken him into the Dream. Kendi shuddered once beneath him, and Ben sat up. A pounding noise thudded through the cabin. What had happened? One minute he and Kendi had been sitting together in the Dream, and the next he had been dragged into…what? It was like some kind of drug-induced hallucination.
The pounding noise came again. It was the door. Ben called, “Come in,” and the door slid open.
“What is wrong?” Harenn strode into the room. “You would not answer the chime.”
“I’m not sure,” Ben said. He looked down at Kendi, who was still unconscious. Ben put a hand to Kendi’s neck. His pulse was thready, and his skin was clammy. Harenn took one look and her eyes widened above her veil.
“He is going into shock.” She hurried back toward the door. “Elevate his legs with the pillow and put the blanket over him. I’ll get a medical kit.”
Mystified, Ben did as he was ordered. Had the fight done this?
But why was it affecting Kendi and not Ben? Ben was on the verge of working himself into a panic when Harenn returned. She slapped a monitor strip on Kendi’s forehead and checked the readout on the medical kit’s display. Her firm, decisive movements calmed Ben down.
“Is he going to be all right?” he asked.
“He is still in shock,” Harenn reported. She racked an ampule into a dermospray and pressed it to Kendi’s arm with a thump.. “This should take care of it.”
A few anxious moments later, Kendi’s eyes opened. “What’s going on?” he asked in a blurry voice.
“What do you remember?” Ben asked.
Kendi shook his head on the mattress. “It’s all fuzzy. I can’t focus.”
“Do you remember the fight?”
“What fight?” Harenn said.
“Sort of,” Kendi slurred. “I feel like ‘m…half outside my body. Help me sit up.” They did, though Kendi had to lean heavily on Ben.
“What fight?” Harenn said again. “What happened?”
Ben explained while Kendi took several deep breaths. His head apparently cleared a little, for he sat up straighter, though he left an arm around Ben’s back. Without even realizing he was doing it, Ben pulled Kendi closer while he spoke, as if he were afraid Kendi would disappear. It felt good to hold him.
“So why did you leave the Dream?” Harenn asked when Ben finished. “Did your drugs wear off?”
Ben shook his head. “I didn’t need any. None of us did as long as Sejal held us there.”
Harenn put the dermospray away and reached up to remove the monitor strip from Kendi’s forehead. “What about these children you spoke of?”
“I don’t know,” Ben admitted. “Sejal disappeared. I think that broke the rest of us up.”
“It hurt like hell when he did that,” Kendi put in. “At least, it did me.”
“Can you feel the Dream?” Harenn asked.
Kendi closed his eyes. “Sort of. It’s there, but not there. I’m having a hard time concentrating, though.”
“The question is,” Ben said, “what the hell happened to Sejal?”
Vidya’s terrified mind raced through a dozen options and discarded all of them. She was standing with her hands laced over her head in the Nursery. Prasad lay at her feet. He was breathing, which meant he was merely unconscious, not dead. The four guard had spread into the room, pistols trained on her. They had not searched her yet. They seemed to be waiting for something. The cattle prod pressed against her stomach beneath her shirt. She could probably whip it out and get off a shot, but that would leave three other guard to react.
Life support monitors beeped softly, and over that Vidya heard shouted orders and crashing sounds from the lab itself. Vidya’s nostrils were dilated with fear. There had to be a way out of this. If she didn’t find a way, life as she knew it would end everywhere. It was no use trying to explain this to the guard. It would sound like the babblings of a lunatic.
A new guard appeared at the door. “We found two more,” he said. “A boy and a girl. They were obviously in the Dream, but we hit them with the pistols until they came out of it.”
Vidya’s legs went weak. The fifth guard shoved Sejal and Katsu into the glassed-in portion of the Nursery. Katsu looked dazed and Sejal was barely conscious. As one they stumbled and went to their knees. Vidya started to rush toward them, but two guard leveled their pistols at her, and she stopped.
“Are you all right?” she asked them.
Katsu looked up. “We’re fine, but the children will soon go back to devouring-”
“No talking,” the guard said, and fired his pistol at the ceiling. Katsu clamped her mouth shut. Sejal slumped down beside Prasad just as another guard entered the room, a sharp-faced man with a whipcord build and thinning blond hair. The bars on his sleeve indicated his rank.
“I’m Lieutenant Arsula,” he said. “How many are on this station?”
Vidya considered remaining mute. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Sejal stir slightly and changed her mind. She needed to keep the Lieutenant talking until Sejal recovered.
“We are nineteen,” Vidya replied. Something else, some important oddity, nagged at her, but she couldn’t place it. “That includes the twelve slaves.”
Arsula whispered something over his shoulder to someone in the hallway. The oddity continued to poke at Vidya. What was it? What was wrong besides the obvious? Her teeth tried to chatter and she kept her jaw firmly clamped to prevent them. Visions of a Unity prison swam through her mind, and she almost snorted. If they couldn’t do something soon about the children, prison would be the least It hit her. The children. That was the oddity. The children no longer squirmed in their beds. The room no longer whispered with the rustle of flesh against linen. Vidya stole at glance toward the fifteen Nursery beds and a chill trickled down her spine. Every child wore a beatific smile
