Captivate (Manipulate, Book 2)

Chapter 26

Basher couldn’t sleep that night. He tossed and turned and finally went to his office, letting the lemur ride on his shoulder.

“Hey Akemi, you awake?” he said.

There was no response on his computer.

He opened some paperwork he needed to complete for the other Rik he’d caught recently, and also opened a connection to Akemi.

“I’m up if you want to talk,” he typed.

Okay Mom.

“Sorry what?”

No, it’s okay. I feel good today.

“Are you talking to me?”

A huge chunk of text followed that looked like gibberish.

Basher suddenly realized what was going on. Akemi must be asleep. She’d mentioned that sometimes she accidentally did stuff in her sleep (the mental equivalent of sleepwalking), but he hadn’t really thought about it.

He saw that the gibberish Akemi had sent actually contained several things she’d said to him earlier that day. It was mixed with snippets of their research about the dead Rik and their separate research about Faal. Akemi had been combing the public archives for references to him or his zoo. He caught the phrases, ‘underground zoological atmosphere,’ and ‘Velvidian enclave,’ among others.

The last coherent bit of the jumble seemed to be from something else she’d been reading. He caught the phrase, ‘who are now dead,’ repeated several times. Then he saw where the phrase had come from:

“That is why the good news was preached to those who are now dead – so although they were destined to die like all people, they now live forever with God in the Spirit.”

Basher wondered what that meant to her – did she consider herself as someone now dead? She was so alive to him, though he’d never met her.

She didn’t moan about her situation, but he would be a fool to assume that it didn’t prey on her mind. Basher would have closed the connection then, but Akemi started to send video. Or at least, maybe it was video, there was no sound.

Nat was in it. Basher recognized her, though she looked younger and healthier and had no tattoo on her face. She was riding down an escalator in a huge mall, and all the signs were in Japanese. Near the bottom of the escalator she jumped off the last two steps and ran to hug another Japanese girl.

This girl looked like Nat, but slightly different. Her black hair had light brown highlights and her eyes were more almond shaped. She had on sparkly blue eye shadow, pink lipstick, and designer sunglasses holding back her hair.

The two girls held hands and began to walk past the shops, swinging their arms and smiling non-stop.

That must be Akemi, Basher thought, rather stunned. He wondered if this was her memory of something that really happened, or just a dream.

He had his answer when the mall suddenly began to shake. A huge crack split the floor and Nat slid toward it, grasping desperately for her sister’s hand.

He could feel Akemi’s horror as Nat’s fingers slipped and she disappeared into the void. Akemi’s mouth opened in a soundless cry. She ran forward and threw herself into the crack. She managed to grab Nat’s hand as they both fell.

At some point Basher had read that people who dream of falling never actually hit the ground, but apparently Akemi hadn’t read that. She landed on a beach in a bone-shaking, concussion-inducing heap. It reminded him of what Nat said when she first saw Claire, “Sometimes the terrible story is true.”

Akemi’s life certainly hadn’t taught her that you get rescued at the last moment, or wake up from the dream when it starts to hurt.

The scene melted away into a new view: a small, cramped office. At first it was empty, but then the door opened and a guy came in. He was tall and dark with a scrubby five-o-clock shadow.

The guy in the image came and sat down at a computer and Basher laughed. It was supposed to be him. Basher usually did have a persistent five o-clock shadow. Probably because he only got motivated to shave every few days. This guy looked taller and younger and a lot more like a Bollywood actor than Basher had ever looked, but it was clearly him.

On screen the door opened once again, and this time Akemi came in. He recognized her from the first dream. She pulled up a chair and settled in next to him, watching the computer. They were pointing and talking about something. It was such a friendly, chummy little scene.

Poor girl. If that last dream was a nightmare, then this must be one of the good dreams. He was surprised that he ranked up there with Nat in people she dreamed of.

Suddenly Basher realized what he was doing – spying on a teenage girl’s dreams. He closed the connection immediately.

She deserved what privacy she had, though he was glad to have a mental image to put with her.

Basher was surprised when Nat wandered in his office a few minutes later. It was nearly three in the morning.

Basher wasn’t usually one to notice, but she had dark circles under her eyes and she was extremely pale. If anything, she looked more exhausted than when she’d arrived at the embassy two weeks ago.

“Are you alright Nat? Can I help you with something?”

She shook her head with an attempted smile. “No, I just can’t sleep, and I saw that you’d opened a connection with Akemi so I knew you were awake.”

“I didn’t mean to watch her dream,” Basher explained. “I thought she was awake for a moment.”

“It’s okay, I didn’t think that. I was just surprised to see you in her dream.”

“I was too.”

Nat sat in his partner’s chair. “I know she’s lonely, with only us to talk to. I’m glad you’ve become friends with her.”

Basher felt vaguely uncomfortable. “It’s not hard. She’s a fun girl, and she certainly is great with the research.”

“The research...” Nat said vaguely. “Right.”

“We’ve uncovered a decent bit about the eight Rik in the apartment. Nothing would indicate that they had particular terrorist leanings, but there were a few interesting things.”

Nat didn’t say anything.

“Apparently they bought entirely new wardrobes and personal items when they got here. Akemi found the records. Looks like they were concerned that their clothes might be evidence, which would be the case if they had those explosives with them for any length of time. They also paid for Vel deep cleaning, which Akemi says would be really unpleasant, but would effectively destroy the top layer of skin that might also hold trace elements or even burns from when they wired the bombs.

“Akemi also says that she was lucky in the way they set the bombs. Even if you hadn’t been able to get to her, she probably would have survived the explosion. The engine room was nearly untouched, though of course without breathable air. You probably would have been able to retrieve her from the wreckage if you hadn’t been able to get to her before you evacuated.”

That finally got a little reaction out of Nat, who smiled. “Please don’t tell Sam that. He’ll never let me live it down if it turns out I dragged him through all that fire for nothing.”

“No problem... You should probably go back to bed though. We should rest up for Faal’s visit tomorrow.”