Rise of the Dreamer Read online

  Rise of the Dreamer

  L.J. Higgins

  For those of you who’ve chosen to chase your dreams and fight for what you believe in.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Also by L.J. Higgins

  Utopia

  Chapter One

  The sound of Janine’s voice telling me I’d had no choice but to leave Cameron on the floor of the MMC’s building did little to pierce through the numbness filling every part of my being. I gazed past her until the lift arrived at ground level with a jolt, and it slid open once again. Darkness greeted us, a stark difference from the fluorescent lighting inside the MMC’s over-lit facility. My eyes struggled to focus on anything past the bright light emanating from the lift spreading across the dirt ground in front of us. I’d thought it’d be daylight when the door slid open, and I’d expected to be greeted by the brightness and heat of the sun. Instead, the silver moon hung low in a sky spotted with white stars. For weeks I’d craved to see the sky. I’d been sick of staring at bare concrete walls and ceilings. But now my body yearned to be lying on the cold tiled floor of the sixth-level corridors with Cameron in my arms.

  Swallowing hard, I focused on the movement of my legs as Janine pulled me down to squat. We crouched just out of reach from the lift’s beam of light. She peered around the corner before beckoning for a sobbing Kaelee and me to follow her around it. We ran in an awkward crouched position towards the nearby wire fence, my limbs straining as though I was running through thick mud.

  “It’s this way… Amelia?” Janine waved her hand in front of my vacant eyes.

  I couldn’t manage to form the words to answer, but returning Janine’s gaze was enough for her to realise I understood.

  “Stay down. I’m going to see if there’s anything in the bag to cut open the fence.” Janine squeezed my shoulder before unzipping the black backpack Cameron had told us to take.

  “I have to get out of here. I have to go.” Kaelee’s eyes darted back and forth, and she bit her bottom lip.

  “Pull yourself together. This isn’t the time to have a panic attack. Amelia needs us to keep it together, so save it for when we’re out of here.” Janine’s harsh psychiatrist tone had returned.

  Her command would’ve made me shudder if my world hadn’t become so blurry and my emotions so dull. Instead, I stared into the bushland through the fence as Janine fumbled with the backpack, pulling out a large set of cutters with a relieved grin on her face. She used them to cut a hole in the fence, just large enough for us to squeeze through.

  “You first.” She ushered a skittish Kaelee through the hole she’d made.

  Kaelee faltered for a moment, but Janine responded with a firm nudge towards the fence.

  “It isn’t much farther now, Amelia. We’ll be safe soon, I promise.” She rubbed my back before I squeezed my body through the hole in the wire.

  Janine was almost through when a loud voice rang through the air.

  “Stop where you are or we’ll shoot!”

  She pulled the bag through the fence behind her and flung its straps over her shoulders. We dashed into the thickest part of the bush in front of us, followed by loud pops of gunfire. The shrubbery was dense enough for us to evade them for at least a short while, but we didn’t dare slow down our pace. Twigs cracked beneath my bare feet and plants clawed at my clothing, arms, and legs as we continued deeper into the bushland. My heart beat quicker as the air rushed by me, pushing me to run faster and faster. The weightlessness of my stride forced me forward. I ducked and dashed around trees and jumped over low lying bushes until the only sounds I could hear were the thud of my heart in my ears, the deep inhale and exhale of my breathing, and the crunch beneath my feet.

  “Amelia. Amelia.” My name interrupted the empty space that’d formed in my thoughts. “Amelia. Stop. We’ve lost them,” Janine’s voice puffed out.

  My knees jarred as I came to an abrupt halt, the memories flooding back the moment they had their chance. I remembered the squealing alarm ringing in my ears, the guards panicking and locking me inside the elevator. I remembered Cameron’s relieved face as he opened the elevator doors, the tingle left on my lips after he’d kissed me, the safety I’d felt when he’d held me in his arms. Then we were running down the endless white hallways, and the pinging of the ricocheting bullets rung through the air. The thump of Cameron falling to the floor, his laboured breathing, his pale skin, the blood… there was so much blood, the emptiness in his eyes…

  Janine’s firm grip on my shoulder pulled me from my nightmarish daydream. “We’ll find somewhere to rest for tonight and make our way to the pickup point tomorrow.”

  “We can’t keep walking?” panted Kaelee as she caught up, leaning forward onto her knees to recover.

  “Cameron programmed a GPS for us and according to it, we have another eight hours’ walk ahead of us. Amelia and I have been locked up in a room for God knows how long, we haven’t got shoes on, and we don’t have the energy to keep walking. You’re more than welcome to continue on your own. Then you can explain to your friends why you’re wandering around in the bush by yourself.” The accusatory tone in Janine’s voice put Kaelee back in her place. “Follow me this way, Cameron marked a location on the GPS for us to camp. We’ve gone a bit too far to the south trying to keep up with Amelia, but it isn’t far. He must’ve thought we’d be safe there.”

  Giving Janine a slight nod, I followed her as she guided us through the tall gum trees and low shrubs to our resting point. The trees appeared to draw in around us the farther we walked, making it harder to follow the GPS’s directions. When we squeezed through a large shrub, we came to a shallow dirt embankment hidden by the surrounding greenery.

  “I’m pretty sure this is it,” said Janine before crouching to slide down its side.

  She coaxed Kaelee down into it and I followed. There was barely enough room for us to fit inside. Sitting at the bottom, I lay back against the curved dirt wall to stare up at the hints of sky above us peeking through branches and leaves. The night smelt of eucalyptus and humidity. A cool breeze licked at my sweaty skin, rustling the bush above us. How long had it been since I’d held Cameron in my arms, hearing him tell me he loved me? Now he was gone. I was never going to hold him again. I wasn’t sure how far we’d run or how many tears had escaped over my cheeks, but the longer I sat still, the more I could sense the stickiness of my face and the dull burning in my calves.

  Janine rummaged through the backpack and pulled out four grey blankets, handing one out to Kaelee and me. Realising there was an extra blanket in her hands, she hesitated for a moment before squashing it back into the bag and sending a sympathetic smile my way. That blanket was meant for Cameron. My handsome, smart Cameron. The Cameron I’d left on the floor of the MMC’s facility to die. A lump formed in my throat, and although I attempted to swallow it down, it stayed firmly in place.

  Janine looked through the bag again and revealed three tins of spaghetti. “Anyone hungry? I know you probably aren’t, but we need our strength for the rest of the walk.”

  Kaelee nodded without
saying a word and took a can. I shook my head and stared back up at the sky.

  “Are you sure, Amelia? You won’t have the energy to go any farther if you don’t,” said Janine, holding the can out.

  I shook my head again with a whispered, “no,” and turned to face away from her. Eating was the last thing I wanted to do. The thickness in my throat would never have allowed me to swallow it, and the way my stomach was churning I wasn’t sure if it’d stay down anyway. Janine opened her can and joined Kaelee in eating.

  When they finished, Janine interrupted the silence. “Let’s try to get some sleep. As long as we get a few hours we can start off again.” Before she lay down, she pulled my blanket up over my legs and knelt down to my eye level.

  For the first time, I noticed the pink haze and red lines through the whites of her eyes. She too had been crying. She too had lost someone who’d meant a lot to her. I wondered… how many hours had she spent with Cameron trying to work out how to cure the Cambiar virus which was killing Dreamers and controlling Non-Dreamers? She’d probably spent more time with him than I had in the past few months.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss, Amelia. Cameron was a courageous and caring young man. And he must have loved you very much.” She gave me a quick hug before lying down to sleep.

  Kaelee lay down on her own patch of dirt and sniffled and sobbed herself to sleep. At first I wondered if she was sad Cameron was gone like Janine, but realised she wasn’t upset about Cameron. She was upset she’d been caught up in the situation with Janine and me. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d tried to sneak off while we were asleep. There wasn’t much hope of me sleeping, though, so I stared up at the patch of stars above me, wondering what happened to Cameron after we left him. What would they tell his family?

  Grief clutched at my chest and I pushed my questions aside, unable to handle the cascade of emotions that came with them. I’d chosen to leave him there. I couldn’t stay with him. So I didn’t have the right to know the answers to my questions. Noticing Janine and Kaelee had drifted off to sleep, I laid my head back, squeezing my eyes shut to tempt sleep to take me. I tossed and turned for a while before sitting up, wide-eyed.

  The hole felt small, tight, and I was too close to the others. I couldn’t draw in a breath and the trees above felt as though they were reaching towards me. The dirt walls felt as though they were inching nearer, threatening to close in around me. My throat tightened as though someone was wrapping their hands around it, cutting off my air, and I pulled at the collar of my shirt to allow myself to inhale. Nausea swept over me and my vision began to blur. I couldn’t stay there. I had to get out. I scrambled my way back up the dirt wall and through the shrubbery, stumbling my way through the trees until I came to a clearing of dirt, twigs and leaves.

  Taking large gulps of the cool air, I hunched over, leaning on my knees, thankful to be able to breathe again. Stretching up towards the sky before me were smooth ghost gums, their bark eerie in the bright moonlight. I reached out and stroked one of the trunks, allowing its coolness to seep into my hand and steady my breath. Walking forward to lean against it, I slid down until my backside found the dirt floor and I hugged my knees into my chest.

  He was gone. My smart, gorgeous, caring, boyfriend was gone. I hadn’t cried such painful tears before. They spilled fast but silent over my cheeks making my body shudder and my chest ache.

  The darkness closed in around me, weaving through my breath into my body. It was heavy and empty at the same time. Like a weight had been placed upon me, but I couldn’t make out what it was in the blackness. As if a projector had been started up, flashes of light filled my vision. Pictures of my time with Cameron blurred in and out of focus: his gorgeous smile as he sat beside my bed in the Sleep Room of the MMC building in the city, and the way he comforted me at our makeshift bush camp on Mr. Whitmore’s property. Our first kiss under the moonlight at Sandhaven Beach, and how safe I felt every time he held me close. The vision of our first argument at the Sandhaven Tavern appeared in front of me, the doubts and fears I’d had choking me. The night I’d decided I couldn’t call him because of a bad dream, my nightmares of him finding me, trapping me. And the vision of his body falling to the floor and bleeding out. His eyes glazing over, and his body limp and cold.

  “Amelia, Amelia. Wake up.” Janine’s voice pulled me from the parade of images, and I looked around to find it was still dark.

  My cheeks were sticky with tears and my eyes felt grainy and swollen. I mustn’t have been asleep for long.

  “What on Earth are you doing out here? You scared the crap out of me. I woke up and you were gone,” she snapped. Her stern look soon turned into one of pity as she relaxed her pursed lips. “Here, put this on. You look like you’re freezing. We should start walking again before the MMC guards find us. You’re lucky they haven’t found you already.”

  Janine handed me a red flannelette shirt. For the first time I looked down at the MMC-issued shirt I was wearing. A large patch of Cameron’s blood had soaked into the front of it. The crimson reddish brown were a bright contrast against the stark white. The urge to get it off me was overwhelming, and I pulled at it to yank it over my head and throw it over the shrub beside me. Realising it was on my hands and torso too, I wiped at them hard, but it wouldn’t come off. My heart throbbed in my ears and bile rose in my throat.

  Cameron’s death was my fault. I was the reason he was dead.

  “Here, use this.” Janine passed me a cloth, and I scrubbed at myself until my stomach and arms were red and raw. Although the traces of Cameron’s blood were gone, I could still feel it burnt into my skin. An invisible tattoo to ensure I’d never forget what had happened.

  Why couldn’t I listen to Cameron and let it go? Why did I want to keep working on my Dreamer connection with Joe instead of working on what I had with Cameron? Maybe if I had he’d still be alive.

  Janine’s sympathetic face stared back at me.

  “You.” I pointed in her face, fury bubbling inside me.

  She looked taken back by my sudden outburst, and I revelled in the fear in her eyes.

  “If you and Kaelee hadn’t fallen over, Cameron would’ve made it. He’d be here with me right now and not lying on the floor of that godforsaken place.” I spat the words at her, yelling as loud as I could.

  She stood her ground but struggled to keep eye contact.

  “You and Kaelee are the reason all of this happened. If you’d left me alone in the Sleep Ward, everyone would’ve been happy. I could’ve started a real relationship with Cameron instead of one based on him having to save me at every turn. I wouldn’t have even started the stupid Dreamers Circle; I probably wouldn’t have been working at Dreamers Intuition in the first place. I could’ve been living with Cameron in the city, and we would’ve spent every moment we had together instead of fighting for it.”

  “I’m so sorry…” Her voice was tight.

  “Good. Because you killed one of the most amazing people who ever existed.”

  I stormed off in the direction of our small makeshift camp. I shoved my way through the shrubs and jumped down into the ditch, pain shooting through my feet and making me growl out loud. Picking up the backpack, I gathered up my blanket still laying on the ground and crammed it into the bag. As I swung it over my shoulder, Kaelee awoke from her sleep, rubbing at her eyes.

  “What’s going on?” she questioned as I climbed back out.

  Janine stood silently as I stormed off into the bushland. I weaved in and out of the trees until I decided Janine and Kaelee weren’t following, and stopped to open the front pocket of the backpack. Inside I found the GPS device Janine had been using. Trust Cameron to work everything out. He wanted us to be safe and took every measure to make sure we would be. That was right. He wanted us to be safe. My thoughts found their way to Janine’s hurt expression and Kaelee’s confusion. They’d both betrayed me in the worst possible way. But Cameron had seen something in both of them, something I’d seen myself
in Janine. They’d been used by the MMC as well, and he felt they were worth saving even if I wasn’t sure. I sat on the ground with my head in my hands. Could I live with myself knowing I left them both in the bush? What would Cameron think of me?

  The memory of Cameron risking his life for them forced me to rise to my feet and take a deep breath as I dusted the soil and leaves from my behind. I turned back in the direction of the hidden dirt ditch and walked back. As I pushed through the shrub hiding the dirt hole, I found Kaelee crying into her lap, being consoled by a teary Janine. My sudden reappearance made Kaelee jump up and wipe her tears away. Janine stood up next to her, sighing with relief.

  “I might be angry at both of you, but Cameron risked his life to save ours. I‘ll never understand why he felt he had to hide that you were his boss, or cover up that he liked you. And it doesn’t mean I ever will. But I don’t want his sacrifice to be for nothing because I left you here alone in the bush.”

  Crack!

  The sound of a snapping branch dropped Janine and me to a crouched position. Janine pulled on Kaelee’s arm to bring her down to our level. We looked into each other’s startled eyes, my ears searching for any sound out of the ordinary.

  “Have you found them yet?” The faraway voice of a radio sounded and we crouched down lower in the ditch.

  “Negative, but there are signs we’re close. It’s hard to see in the dark, you know.” The deep voice cut through the silence.

  We pressed our bodies to the earthy floor, attempting to avoid detection. The sound of the guard’s boots approached our hiding place, along with the noise of him sliding his radio back into its holster. Through a break in the leaves I could see his left hand resting on the handle of a gun tucked into his belt. I held my breath as best I could and looked towards Janine and Kaelee. Janine stared up at the bush like I had been. Kaelee’s nose scrunched up with how tight she was closing her eyes. The boots shuffled closer, arriving at the base of the bush I’d pushed through at the ridge of the ditch. I took Kaelee’s lead, closing my eyes and willing him to turn away.