The Children of Hypnos

[Vol. 2] Chapter 2: White Noise

His heart beat, but slowly.

She curled her arms around him and squeezed her eyes shut. She imagined he was sleeping. Edgar was just sleeping, and she wasn't alone here.

Her parents weren't across the sea fighting nightmares in a warzone.

Her grandfather wasn't a liar.

Her friends hadn't betrayed her.

Joel wasn't dead.

She pretended everything was as it had been two months ago, when her worst problems were a bad reputation and having Wesley Jager as a partner.

She sat up again, wiping her eyes carefully so as not to smudge her makeup. She did still have Wes, the one person who hadn't lied to her or betrayed her or left her even when she was horrible to him. He didn't run when Morrigan showed up, and doppelgängers were notorious for taking out anything that obstructed their paths to their dreamhunters, including their dreamhunters' partners. Emery wasn't the only one in danger from Morrigan; so was anyone who tried to get in Morrigan's way.

Like Joel.

Emery closed her eyes again and pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. The ripping sound. The intestines on the floor. Joel's face the last time he ever said her name.

Never again. She'd never let Morrigan hurt anyone she loved like that ever again.

She smoothed Edgar's hair back over his forehead, tried to rub a little warmth back into his hand, and curled a leg under herself to sit more comfortably on the bed. For a moment—for just a moment—she thought about praying. Dreamhunters typically didn't pray. There was no rule prohibiting worship, but growing up in the Hypnos State usually meant growing up divorced from any one religion. Even if she did start praying, Emery didn't have any idea who or what she would pray to. She had only a basic concept of major religions from movies and TV; she'd never read any religious texts, or been inside any religious buildings; she wasn't sure if she was supposed to hope something would change because she prayed, or if praying was just to help her feel better.

Thinking about it made her feel less helpless, at least. It made her feel like she could do something to fix the mess she'd caused, even if it was as little as taking a moment to talk to some vague and unknown being.

"Hey," she said to the empty air of the room. The white noise machine seemed to hum louder. "If there's anyone or anything listening, I'd like to have my brother back. I—I'll go into the Dream myself and pull him out of it, if I have to. I just need to know where to go. What to do."

She stopped. Waited. Felt stupid for expecting an answer.

"There must be something I can do." She looked up at the ceiling now, because she felt like if she looked down, Edgar would be awake and watching her and thinking she was stupid for trying this. "If I could have some kind of direction, that would be great."

And that was it. She shut her mouth and looked down again.

The door clicked.

Emery jolted up. Grandpa Al stood inside; Emery hadn't heard the door open, only close. The low light gleamed off his glasses, hiding his eyes. Though he was well into his sixties, he still moved like a forty-year-old, and as a dreamkiller he could hide the aura of the Dream that rolled off of him. It was a skill for times like these, when he didn't want anyone to know he'd entered a room.

"What do you want?" she said, voice tight, blood pounding in her ears. For a second, she had thought he was Morrigan.

"I came to see Edgar," he replied, his tone equally cool. It was only the second time in the last two weeks Emery had spoken to him. The first time, he'd come to her dorm room to try to explain himself, and she'd shut the door in his face.

"No," Emery said.

"No?"

"No, you don't deserve to see him. You're the reason he's here."

"Don't you think that's a little unfair, Em?"

"No."

He said nothing for a moment. Had his hair been dark blond instead of gray and his face less wrinkled, he could have been Emery's father standing there.

"If you had told me about Morrigan instead of using me as bait to pull her and Klaus out of hiding, we could have known that she wanted Edgar earlier. I could have pretended I was going to help her. We could've trapped her."

"I think you're underestimating doppelgängers, Em."

"No," she said, her anger rising, "I think you did."

"They'll take your body the moment they have a chance—"

"She didn't."

"They'll manipulate you into thinking they're your friends—"

"She was honest."

"They will do anything to stay in the waking world—"

"All she wanted was Edgar."

Morrigan had only wanted her little brother—Edgar's doppelgänger, inert and unformed—to have a life of his own, to be safe, not to be hunted down when he became active. She hadn't made a hostile move against them until Edgar's doppelgänger was threatened.

Emery was positive Grandpa Al knew this. The whole higher administration of the Hypnos State knew this and didn't want the information to get out. The State didn't want its dreamhunters to know that the doppelgängers weren't inherently hostile, and that there might be another way to survive the Insanity Prime than by killing the avatars of their subconscious. Morrigan had said they could merge themselves back into one. It could have been a lie, a way to open Emery up so Morrigan could take her over. But it also could have been true, and the State had retracted any record of it from published research.

Whether or not Morrigan was telling the truth, Grandpa Al was playing into the State's agenda. He was too loyal and had been working for them for too long. The only thing Emery didn't know was why the Hypnos State would hamstring its dreamhunters that way, why it would want such a brutal and lasting conflict between the dreamhunters and their doppelgängers.

And Grandpa Al would never answer that question for her.

"You should leave," she said.

The white noise machine hummed in the corner. Grandpa Al shifted his weight to his other foot; the movement took him out of the glare of the light and revealed his eyes. Dreamkillers didn't need sleep, but he looked like he could use some. He pulled his phone from his pocket and glanced at the screen, then put it away again.

"Before I go, I wanted to remind you that the Ward Director will be here on Monday for the trials. Dress well and be at the administration building at nine. I've already sent Mr. Jager a message informing him to do the same."

Emery sat back down on the bed and turned away, to Edgar.

From the door, she heard, "I love you, Em. You and Edgar."

She didn't turn around.

The door sighed open, then clicked shut.

(Next time: New characters!!! Old characters!!! Characters!!!)