The blood rushed so loud in Emery's ears she couldn't hear their footsteps clanging on the metal staircases. Couldn't hear Wes saying something to her as he checked corners to make sure no one was around. Couldn't hear the dinging of the elevator as they rode it back up, out of the Fenhallow Underground and into the administration building.
Her doppelgänger was active.
It had been active for months.
It had been active while she was in the Dream, and she hadn't known, and it could have come for her then.
Emery had to brace herself against the wall of the elevator to stay standing. She'd assumed when it happened, when it finally came for her, she'd feel it. She'd know she was standing on the edge of her Insanity Prime and she'd feel some switch get flipped, something that said It's coming for you, the doppelgänger is coming for you.
"I don't feel different," she said aloud, looking at Wes, who was frowning deeper than ever. "I still feel like me. I thought it would feel different."
"Do we trust him?" Wes said, a plain question, not an accusation.
"We do," Emery said.
The elevator doors opened. David the Receptionist stood there in his black-rimmed glasses and thick cardigan, hands tucked behind his back, looking apologetic.
"The dean would like to see you," he said.
"Yeah," Emery replied, without inflection. She couldn't drudge up even a hint of sarcasm.
David followed them up to the second floor, but didn't go into Grandpa Al's office with them.
Grandpa Al sat behind his desk, typing on his laptop, head tilted up so he could look down through his glasses perched on the end of his nose. He didn't look up at them or stop typing. He didn't so much as sniff when Wes closed the door. Emery hovered behind one of the chairs before the desk, trying to detect disappointment on him, but it was like looking in on a room through a two-way mirror. He could have been in the room alone for all he reacted.
Emery took one chair. Wes took the other. Grandpa Al kept typing. Slow chicken pecks, his eyebrows raised, eyes half-lidded. The building's furnace kicked on; a breeze picked up outside and a storm of brown leaves swept past the windows.
Her doppelgänger was active. Grandpa Al would want to know that; he'd want to help her. If the doppelgänger hadn't left the Dream yet, if it was still weak, would the termination request need to be put in? Couldn't they wait? He was a dreamkiller; he'd gone through this before. And he only wanted to keep her safe. He always only wanted to keep her safe.
"So," Grandpa Al said finally, after what felt like hours. His voice was light. He typed for another second, tapped Enter smartly, and closed his laptop. He took his glasses off and reached for the cleaning cloth in his pocket. "How was your trip to the Underground? Did you learn anything from our friend?"
Emery's hands fisted in the hem of her sweater. "He didn't tell us anything."
"Interesting. He seemed to be speaking on the recording, and you were there for some time."
"He admitted that he was stealing sand from the research clinic," Wes said.
Grandpa Al perched his glasses back on his nose and looked first at Wes over the rims, then at Emery. She felt like he could read the truth scribbled across her face. Doppelgängerdoppelgängerdoppelgänger. He could sense the Insanity Prime looming up on her. He would know. He would sniff it out like a bloodhound. Her cheeks had already flushed; a bead of sweat ran between her shoulder blades.
"I--" she started. "He said I--"
"He only answered that question," Wes said, talking over her. "About the stealing. After that, he kept telling us how dangerous it was going to be if he was allowed to slip into sleeping sand withdrawal. He said he was using it to keep himself awake for the whole time he was gone. If he falls asleep, his nightmares will come for him, won't they? His dream was strong; Emery couldn't shoot some of the things in there. Shouldn't something be done to prevent that? There should be some kind of rehabilitation techniques, or something Dr. Lupova can help with--"
Grandpa Al held up a hand. "I appreciate your concern, Wesley, and it's well-founded. The appropriate precautions will be taken to ensure Fenhallow remains safe." He glanced at Emery again. "Are you sure there's nothing else he might have mentioned?"
Doppelgängerdoppelgängerdoppelgängerdoppelgängerdoppelgänger
"No," Emery said. "And--Marcia only let us in because she thought we could get information out of him. About what he's been doing."
"I'm sure she did." Grandpa Al took a deep breath and laced his hands together on top of the computer. "That may explain why Marcia let you in, but not why you wanted to speak to him in the first place."
"To find out what he was doing that the Hypnos State wanted him caught," Emery said. "You never told us."
Grandpa Al raised an eyebrow. "Is that the whole reason?"
"Yes," they both said at the same time. Emery cringed.
Nothing registered on Grandpa Al's face. Emery's heart sank to somewhere around her ankles. He looked from Wes to Emery and back again.
"Well, in that case...The two of you deliberately raised alarms in the research labs, disrupting normal work; you stole from a senior member of the faculty; and you broke into a restricted area of campus in search of answers for a mission to which you were never assigned. You have consistently shown disregard for authority and put yourself in dangerous positions. I can't have a pair of renegades running loose in this school, especially when one of them is my granddaughter. Effective immediately, both of you are on suspension from missions, your accumulated mission credits are revoked, and you are forbidden from leaving campus."
"What?" Emery shot out of her chair. "You can't do that! If we don't have all our credits, we'll be at the bottom of the class—"
"And you'll stay there if your attendance suffers, as I believe it's doing right now."
Emery glanced at the clock on the wall. They were ten minutes late to Dream Theory.
Grandpa Al's voice was hard. "This punishment is because I want to know you're going to follow an order when I give it to you. Being a dreamhunter doesn't mean being the most powerful, or completing the most missions. It means striving for the good of the whole. We function most effectively when we work together to complete tasks given by those who understand the scope of our resources and goals. Partners, rules, heirarchy—we have these things for a reason. Order keeps us safe.
"The two of you will be responsible for escorting the Ward Reviewer who arrives to evaluate the school. I'd like you to ready his quarters, lead him around campus, and make sure he has everything he needs, including answers to any question he may have."
Emery's cheeks were burning. "And now we're guide dogs?"
"It's that or you clean dishes in the kitchens for a month."
Wes stood and grabbed Emery's sleeve. "Let's go. The later we are, the more points Professor Lenton will dock us."
"But—"
"Let's go."
Wes pulled her from the room. Grandpa Al watched them go, and Emery stared at him, trying to find the right words, trying to find a way to put the strange maelstrom of emotion inside her into words. Outside the room, she tore her arm from Wes's grip and followed him from the administration building. They hurried down the front steps, over the inlaid quotes, until Wes stopped on the landing halfway between the admin building and the quad.
He spun on her.
"You're seriously going to get upset about rankings right now?" he said, keeping his voice low. "Your doppelgänger is active somewhere, and you almost told him. That was the one thing we weren't supposed to do."
"I—I don't care about the rankings. I don't, I just—it was a knee-jerk reaction. But I thought he could help. He won't report me. He's kept me safe my whole life. If there's anyone at this school who's going to understand, it's him."
Wes scowled. "Are you positive he doesn't think the State's rules will keep you safer? Or that he won't choose the safety of many over the safety of one? That's what the doppelgänger termination laws are for—keeping other people safe."
"You don't trust him?"
"Oh no, I trust him. I trust that he's known as a strong proponent of Hypnos State policies. Didn't you hear what he just said? Rules are in place for a reason? Order keeps us safe? He was the one who notified the Ward of his own son's doppelgänger. Why wouldn't he do the same for you?"
"He did that because everyone already knew it existed," Emery sniped back. "Dad got extra training and time alone to prepare. And it was time, they expected it—it was a completely different situation."
"It's really not. No one can keep you safe from your own doppelgänger, no matter how powerful they are. You're the only one who can kill it. That's why dreamkillers don't just go hunt down all the doppelgängers that appear."
"He can't kill it for me, but he'd understand that something is wrong! Maybe he would know why this is happening, and how to stop it. Besides, what are we going to accomplish now on our own? I'd like to figure out if it's true, if my doppelgänger really is active, but after that..."
Wes huffed and crossed his arms. "Klaus said a lot of things about the State."
"Yeah, he did."
"A lot of things I don't think the dean would confirm, whether or not they're true. Do you think the dreamseekers were actually silenced?"
"I don't know." Emery pushed her hair away from her forehead and looked across campus. The sun was high in the sky now, but the quad was mostly quiet. Classes had started. "Klaus could be a conspiracy theorist. This could all be nonsense."
"Does he have any reason to lie to us?"
"He hasn't slept in three years. He could be out of his mind."
"That doesn't mean he's wrong."
"No, it doesn't." Emery sighed. "Well. There is one way to find out. He said he was doing doppelgänger research here in Fenhallow's library when he found those gaps. The absence of information from dreamseekers. That was only a few years ago. If we do the same research, we should find those gaps."
"Confirm his claims."
"Exactly." Emery already had her phone out. "I'm going to text Joel and the others to let them know we need help. Jacqueline and Kris are research experts—if there's something out of the ordinary, they'll find it."
"Are you sure it's a good idea to keep telling them about all this? If this is true, if the dreamkiller coup of the State was actually a cover-up, that's not something they're going to let us off the hook for knowing just because we're teenagers."
"Yeah, obviously, but Joel and the rest of them will kill me if they find out we knew more and didn't tell them. They're my friends; they'll want to help."
He scratched at the back of his head, making his hair stand up. "Fine. What about this Ward Reviewer?"
Emery rolled her eyes. "Grandpa always used to give me menial tasks to keep me busy when I was little. This is the exact same thing. The review doesn't start until next week; we can do the research before then."
A second of silence passed between them, during which the beginnings of a headache stirred behind Emery's eyes. She groaned and pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. "Research is starting to sound a lot like do nothing."
Wes frowned. "How are you at the top of our class, again? You don't get perfect grades by hating work."
Emery shrugged. "I like to win."
"So. Win this."
He said it so simply, like discovering the secrets of a world organization and fighting the avatar of your own subconscious were as easy as looking over a study guide. Maybe it was. Maybe, for right now, she didn't have to look at it as anything more complicated. There was a mission at hand; she'd start with the resources she had.
"Okay," she said, nodding. "We should get to Dream Theory."
"So Lenton doesn't destroy our grades, yeah."
"No—so I can try to learn how to open a gateway. If we're going to see if my doppelgänger actually exists, we're going to have to hunt for her."
(Next time on The Children of Hypnos --> Libraries Are Great!)