One.
Two.
With a battle cry, I thrust all of my mental power into tearing that steel trap open, and a giant hole ripped open before us.
“Good lord!” Maxine exclaimed at the hundred-foot-diameter circle opened up right at the edge of the lake in Oregon. It wasn’t the hole that had me transfixed, it was the freaking thousands of soldiers who were now marching towards us, guns drawn.
Damien had called in the cavalry.
Dawn needed no urging. Together, she and Clyde burst forward, hovering a few inches off the ground. The second we entered Earth, Jeremy popped out behind a tree, scaring the shit out of me.
“Keep it open!” he shouted to me, indicating the portal.
It was causing a major throb at the base of my skull; I’d just been about to close it. But I forced it to remain open, the biggest one I’d ever created. Damien slid in next to Jeremy and I noticed they both were carrying cylinders, like some type of black tubing with a spike at the bottom.
They walked to the edge of the portal I had opened; Jeremy went to the far left while Damien went to the outermost right, almost into the water.
“Now!” Jeremy shouted, and they both shoved the spikes into the ground.
A small shockwave burst out, throwing them both backward a little.
“Jeremy!” I leapt off of Dawn and ran for my boyfriend’s brother.
He was grinning ear to ear, lying flat on his back and looking up at the portal.
When I spun, I realized I’d lost my concentration on the portal… but it was still open.
I looked at him incredulously. “You did that?”
Jeremy stood, brushing off his pants. “Easy once I realized it was a quantum field. The two quantum flux stabilizers should keep it open for now.”
He’d just spoken Latin but I didn’t care. Jeremy had found a way to keep the portal open!
The military was moving into position to guard the newly-opened gateway and I wanted to get Jeremy away from the opening in case the breeders came down with their giants and firepower.
“Come on, buddy, let’s find your brother.” I hauled him away from the opening by the armpit, ignoring the dull headache throbbing at the base of my skull.
“Kit! Jer!” Damien cried out as I wove Jeremy through the advancing army.
“No touching,” Jeremy reminded me and pulled away from my hand.
“Sorry.”
When we finally broke through the crowd, Damien was just getting to us.
He crashed into me, wrapping his arms around me so tightly I thought I might be crushed.
“K, bye. I need to look at the data readings,” Jeremy mumbled and ran off. Damien held me, his chest rising and falling as my own emotions clashed within me.
Finally, he pulled away and faced me. “I thought you were…” He couldn’t’ say it.
Dead.
I shook my head. “Dawn saved me. Pulled Ronnie, Maxine, and I up to Skyhome. I had… some health issues… so I couldn’t contact you.”
My ankle still hurt, as well as the wounds on my upper arms, but I was okay.
Best not to mention the possible “brain bleed.” His eyes ran over the stitches and staples dotting my shoulders from the skid bite and finally he sighed. “I tried to get to you by going to sleep, but they locked us out.”
A frown pulled at my lips. “Who locked you out? Out of the Dream War?”
He nodded. “I took a sleeping pill, passed out, and dreamed! Kit, the entire world was locked out, or in depending on who was already asleep at the time. When the breeders shut down your ability to open the portals, they shut down the Dream War temporarily.”
Holy shit. People… dreamed. It must be all over the news. That also explained why that guy who’d jacked my gun at the lake had been so frantic. He’d been trapped in there for days.
I asked what had been pressing most on my conscience: “Did you get citizenship for the Galadrias? Do they have food?”
He glanced around at the soldiers near us and pulled me into a thick grove of trees for added privacy. “Jeremy has discovered a synthetic mixture of aloe vera juice, any kind of cooking oil, and chlorophyll sustains them. Buckley is having barrels of the green stuff shipped over from Nevada.”
That was a huge relief.
“And the citizenship?” I could tell by his fallen expression that there was an issue with that.
He chewed at his lip. “That’s a work in progress. They’ve been granted temporary asylum.”
Rage flooded through me. “Ex-fucking-scuse me?”
Damien reached out and squeezed my hand. “Buckley was super impressed with what you could do with the portal and excited at the prospect of the breeders and sentries turning to ash. She’s given Jeremy full range over all intelligence to build whatever he needs, but…”
“But what?”
“But she still sees the Galadrias as aliens who don’t belong here. She will only grant them citizenship if you destroy the Dream War as promised.”
I was fuming. “And if I don’t?” How dare she give me a fucking ultimatum!
He winced. “They need to go back.”
“Their home was just destroyed! The giants ripped Skyhome down as we stood on it!” I was hyperventilating and my headache was worse than ever. I needed to relax and should probably go check on Ronnie and Maxine, see how Dawn and Clyde were, but this was too important.
“I’m going to speak with her. I’ll be right back.” I spun to leave, but Damien was right on my tail.
“Kit, that’s not a good idea! She’s fighting a lot of international pressure. News crews have shown up—”
I spun on him and faced him down. “Are you with me or against me?”
It was a shitty thing to ask but now was the time to take sides. This was it. The end. The big moment. I needed to know that
