I Woke Up Floating.

Chapter Three: It's More than a Dream.

Again—as if last night would have been any different—I had a dream. It was becoming clearer. I could see Taylor in it, and in it she was teleporting. We were stuck behind this door, but suddenly she had appeared on the other side. It was crazy, but despite the fact that Taylor has powers, I didn't see mine. It started to blur the second I woke up. I opened my eyes and sat up in bed. I looked over at the clock. It read "8:37 AM. "  Taylor was already up and was flipping through my journal. "Woah, dude," she said. "You really weren't lying about writing in different languages." She closed the book, and handed it back to me. "I was watching the news," she said. "It doesn't look good either." I looked over to see Ben waking up, and throwing the sheets back. "They've decided to make it illegal," Taylor continued. "Guess why? Contamination purposes. They say they think it's a radiation leak, and that all who are contaminated must go to Portland for 'decontamination'."

"Guys, I think I know my power," Ben said. We both looked over, and his arms were glowing. The orange and blue light shed from beneath his skin. "I think I have some super strength or something," he said. "In my dream, we were running from something. All three of us were terrified. I woke up tense, and now my arms are glowing. What is going on?" We walked over to him to inspect his strange skin, and his arms were hot to the touch. "Dude, your arm is on fire," I said, my voice shaky. Suddenly, Taylor spoke up, "Hey guys, I'm going through the TV." Ben and I glanced up to see her hand and forearm shimmering from a light blue light around her hands. It was a beautiful light, unlike anything I had ever seen before. She pulled her hand from the TV and put it back down.

"How did you do that?" I asked. "I have no idea," she said. I walked over, and tried to put my hand into the TV. My hand crashed against the screen. "Ouch. I guess I'm not able to do that," I said, shaking my hand. Taylor came and sat on the bed we shared. "So, what's the plan now?" she asked, seemingly to both of us but secretly directed at me. Ben and Taylor looked at to me and stared, expecting an answer. "Well, maybe if we can get out of Maine everything will be okay. Maybe they won't chase us down," I said. I couldn't think of a better idea to save my life. Part of me was jealous that I hadn't found my powers, but I was happy for them. It's so incredible, and I couldn't wait for my powers to come. "What would they be?" I wondered. "Would they be as cool as Taylor's?" My thoughts were cut short by a loud knock at the door. We all froze, and it felt like an hour went by before a voice from behind the door called, "Housekeeping!"

We all let out a long held breath and sighed, "We're still in here," Ben said. The feet quickly shuffled away from the door. We all gathered into the middle of the room and turned on the TV. We turned the channel to Southern Maine News, and we waited for an update on the treatments in Portland. "Weird," Taylor said to herself. "They were talking so much about it all yesterday, and now it's just silent." There was something suspicious going on. It's like the whole world woke up and forgot about the rise of magical powers. One of the reporters said something that caught our ears.

"The latest news about the 'Dream Paradox' as the Government is calling it! They have claimed radiation to be the cause of all weird dreams, and have setup a decontamination facility for all who have experienced symptoms. They have noted that fatalities have sky rocketed due to acute radiation sickness. They say everyone affected should report to Portland immediately for treatment. Failure to obey is now a felony." The reporter ended his segment shortly after, and we turned off the TV. "That's such a huge lie," Taylor exclaimed, frustrated. "Why can't everything be straightforward? Everyone and everything seems so fake now." Ben walked over and put her hand on Taylor's shoulder.

"Maybe it's time for us to go," Ben said. "We can't do anything for anyone here. We might as well get out of state." Taylor and I agreed, so we all grabbed our things and walked out to the bottom floor. When we got outside, I noticed that the air felt almost lighter. We heard a loud explosion, and we saw two teens running from a military Jeep. One turned around, and they shot some sort of orb at the Jeep. The Jeep returned fire, and they turned and ran. "What is going on?" Taylor said. "That can't be real. What caused that?" Ben rushed us to the car, and insisted that he drive. We threw our bags in the back, or wherever they would fit and started to leave. We could still hear the gunshots down the street. Ben looked at us, and looked back at the road. "Should we pick them up?" he asked. "What? Why?" I said. "They're running from the military. They could get us killed." Ben looked at me. "We are running from the military. They will kill us for who we are, Alex. We can't win." Taylor looked at me and nodded. "He's right, you know," she said. "Fine." I ended up cracking. "Let's go pick up our new friends."

We drove down the road after the gunshots. We decided to cut them off and meet the two running down the street. We pulled up onto the end of the road, and we spotted one guy running down the street. Ben rolled down the window and yelled, "Hey man, we are with you. Hop in!" He looked up and nodded. He ran with such speed and leaped into the car. We drove off before the Jeep had rounded the corner. "Weren't there two of you?" Taylor asked. "I'm Taylor, by the way." He looked back to Taylor. "Yea, but my friend was... She got hit in the back when we turned down this street. She told me to go without her," He said. "I'm Sam, by the way." We quickly introduced ourselves. "Where where you headed, Sam?" Ben asked. "Wherever is safe, honestly," he responded. "Wanna join us?" Ben asked. "I'd love to. I haven't had a group of people like me since this started," he earnestly replied.

"So, what all is going on?" we asked Sam. "We know they want to keep it contained, but why?" He pulled out a notebook from his bag and started reading from it. "Okay, so it's a long story that I don't know some answers to. I'll try my best though." We all listened, and Ben turned down the radio.

"So, there are levels to this 'radiation' as the government calls it. The levels are: Red, Orange, Green, Blue, and Purple. Red is the weakest, also known as the lowest threat level. Purple is the highest threat level." Ben looked into the rearview, and asked, "What are each of these threat levels? What do they do or mean?" Sam looked up from his notebook and continued to explain. "Red usually has one power, and they normally aren't too powerful. If they have more than one power, usually it's nothing that can affect others. So, I guess you could call it a cosmetic power. Orange is a little different. Orange Level Subjects are usually the fighters of the group. They usually have powers such as super strength or so. They're good fighters. Green gets a little more complicated too. They have more handy powers, so that means they're usually good with their hands. They can usually hack or lock pick anything with ease. So, I guess you could call them engineers. Again, Blue gets more complicated. They usually have two powers, just like everyone else. However, some can have three powers. They're just overall great warriors and they're smart. They can easily beat most opponents. Their powers are usually super enhanced and perfectly tuned to be almost natural skills. Last, but not least, we have purple. These are the scary ones. They are usually very volatile. They have at least five powers usually, and they're all perfect skills. They have no flaw in the skills, but they can't control them without certain training. They usually have trouble visualizing their dreams too," Sam finished. "There's a lot more here, but that's just some basics."

I sat up in my seat, and I remembered my notebook. I remembered my dreams, and how they're blurry. "So, you said the purple level subjects are usually the ones that can't remember their dreams?" I asked. "Do you think any other levels have that same problem?" Sam looked at me, and he looked back down at the book. "No, I don't see anything in her journal about any other level having troubles," he mumbled as he flipped through the book. Shock ran through my body. "There is no way that I'm a Purple Level Subject," I thought. I looked out my window, and I ran everything through my mind. "That makes sense now. I wrote down my dream, but I couldn't read my own writing. Maybe that's my mind protecting me from becoming volatile?" I pondered for a while.

Suddenly, Ben spoke up. "Sam, how do you know all of this?" Sam looked up at Ben. "Well, my girlfriend was a part of the branch in the government that studied this phenomenon. It turns out, this isn't the first time this happened. There was this subject, and they called him PZ-1 in their entries. My girlfriend happened to be able to shadow one of the doctors. He went through every phase. It was unlike anything else, and they labeled him Level White. He eventually died from the power he had. They saw him go through each phase, and they recorded diagnostics. Some of these things that are written are really complicated," he said as he gazed out the window. "I'll tell you guys more whenever we get out of Maine."