1 The Dream Rider (6 page)

I shoved the bleeding man forward and jumped backwards,
high into the air. I felt myself flipping over the top of the car and stared
down at it with wide eyes as I sailed across its metal frame in slow motion,
landing on the other side. Everything sped up again and I could hear bullets
thudding into the driver’s side of the car, but I didn’t dare look over. The
whirring sounds of the automatic weapons finally died off for a moment, so I
risked a peek over the hood. They were reloading their guns. I only had a
second to move. My normal instinct would have been to run to the far wall.
Instead, I leapt up onto the roof of the car and pushed off hard with my right
foot, sending my body in the direction of the top step. One of the men had just
cocked his weapon and looked up when he saw me hurling at him. He tried to lift
the gun but it was too late. My leg extended out with a sidekick to his chest.
His body armor caved in from the force of the blow, and he was sent reeling
into the glass door.

The man next to him spun his weapon around, keeping it at
his hip. Again, his movement was too slow. I lurched at him, bringing my
forearm across the front of his neck. I felt the soft tissue of his throat
collapse under the bone. His body did a complete flip, landing face down on the
ground at my feet. The last two were standing next to each other, raising their
guns, aiming at my chest.

“Halt!” one of them screamed in a panicked voice. The
officer’s hands to the right were trembling, causing the metal components of
the gun to rattle slightly. I could see the outline of one of the other men’s
weapons lying at my feet. Slowly, I raised my hands, feigning surrender then I
kicked the gun hard, sending it right at their heads. It struck the two
simultaneously in the face, cracking their visors and sending them toppling off
the concrete steps.

I looked around for a second and took a deep breath. I
blinked hard at what I saw. Four men lay unconscious, possibly dead. I didn’t
know how I had done it, but it felt exhilarating. I wasn’t a fighter. What I
had just done defied the laws of combat training. More than that, it defied the
laws of physics. I glanced back at the police car and where I’d jumped. It was
a good thirty feet. Then I remembered how I’d killed the bald man in the
forest.

“How is this possible?” I wondered quietly. Then a mischievous
smile crept onto my face.
I had some kind
of super power.
I backed up and started to run to leap over the smoking
police car when a voice from above stopped me.

“Don’t move!” I heard a man yell. My eyes crept up the
side of the building all the way to the top where I found the source of the
order. Twenty armed police stood on the edge of the roof with their guns
trained on me. “If you even lift a finger, we will cut you down!”
 
I could tell from the sound of his
voice that this guy meant every word.

Two flying machines appeared overhead and flew into
position behind me, held up by two jets that emitted a blue light. They were
equipped with rail guns on each side and aimed directly at me.

“Okay,” I yelled. “But what did I do?” I still didn’t know
what I was being arrested for.

“Shut up and get down on the ground now!”
 

“You just told me not to move. Do you want me to get on
the ground or stay still?”
 
I
somehow doubted the sarcastic comment was appreciated.

“Get down now!” he answered and shook his weapon
menacingly.

I wasn’t going to ask twice. I eased myself down onto the
ground next to the guard I’d hit in the neck. He was still not moving. The idea
that I may have killed him began to sink in. I’d never killed anyone before.
But it was just a dream. It had to be. A nagging thought kept pulling at my
thoughts: why wasn’t I waking up?
I shook my head vigorously, hoping I would
find myself back in the dorm at any second.

Instead, the glass doors opened again and six more
officers rushed out, some with guns, others with heavy chains. They bound me
again, tightly wrapping up my wrists and feet with the thick metal bonds. After
they felt that I was secure, two of the men stood me up onto my feet. I looked
up again and saw a new figure this time. It was a man in a black cloak. His
thick, black hair reached down just passed his ears. A dark mustache and beard,
matching eyebrows popped out on a stern, chiseled face.

“Impressive,” he shouted down as he rested his hands on
the edge of the building. “Most impressive. Send him to the game master to be
processed for the games.”
 
He
turned away and disappeared from view.

The guards grabbed me violently and forced me to scuffle
my way into the building.
Process me?
For games?
What games?
This
dream was getting stranger by the minute. For some unsettling reason, I didn’t
like where this was going.

The inside of the facility was just as plain and ordinary
as the outside. Variants of gray, monotonous and dull, contrasted only by a
luxurious black marble floor that stretched all the way to the back wall of the
lobby. I say it was a lobby, though it barely qualified as that. There were no
receptionists or doormen, just dozens of police guards lining the walls with
their automatic weapons pointed at my head as my escorts shuffled me along. My
eyes darted back and forth in a panic. I wondered if I could break the chains
on my wrists and ankles. Such a move would be futile. There was nowhere to run.

Up ahead, a set of bronze elevator doors were the only
accents in the otherwise plain wall pattern. I was drug in that direction,
struggling to move in the restraints. They shoved me into the opening, almost
causing me to trip over the heavy chains, and I nearly hit my head on the
elevator wall. The two guards who had been waiting inside the elevator grabbed
me and spun me around quickly as four others stepped aboard. The doors closed
and I noticed a digital keypad where a typical set of buttons should be. One of
the guards punched in a few symbols I didn’t recognize and we started moving
downward.

My head was spinning. Everything was happening so fast. I
tried to piece together what I knew. The fight in the forest had to have been a
dream. But instead of waking up in my dorm room, I woke up in on another
planet. It couldn’t be real. There were strange moons, futuristic cars, and the
city was a place the likes of which I’d never seen or heard about anywhere.
Even more
bizarre, I’d exhibited incredible strength and agility. I had snapped the
handcuffs with surprising ease. I’d jumped thirty feet through the air and
beaten up what I assumed were highly trained, armed men. I may have even killed
a few. And I’d done it all as if I were unconscious, like something inside of
me had taken control of my body.

My face itched but I couldn’t scratch it. I hated that
sensation and it seemed like the ride wasn’t going to end. After a long
descent, the elevator came to a sudden stop. The doors opened to a tunnel-like
hallway that extended a few hundred feet then curved out of sight. The place
looked like an underground mine, or what I thought a mine would look like from
what I’d seen in movies. The walls were carved out of dark gray rock, cut with
laser precision, yielding completely smooth surfaces. I wondered what kind of
machinery could produce such a result. Off to the side, a set of railroad
tracks followed the corridor down and around the bend. A short line of mine
cars rested on top of the rails. The light blue train had bench seats and a low
profile to make getting through low-ceiling areas possible. There was a guard
in the engine car operating some levers and buttons. Two others stood next to a
car in the center of the line and swung open a waist-high door.

I was shoved forward again and steered towards the open
car. There were two men in the rear car and two more in the car behind the
driver. For whatever reason, they were taking no chances with me. When I
reached the mine train I couldn’t step up into it so the two guards nearby
lifted me up and into the thing. They motioned to sit down and I obeyed without
protest, plopping down on the hard plastic seat. The two guards who had loaded
me onto the little train sat down across from me and stared, issuing a
non-verbal warning that they were watching.

I peered beyond them to the tunnel ahead. “Where are we
going?” I asked, half expecting at least one of the guards to answer.

One gave a sickly smile. I imagined his eyes smirking
behind the dark visor of the helmet. I also wondered how they could see
anything. They had on dark visors, in the depths of the planet. It struck me
then that I didn’t call it “the depths of the Earth.” I was clearly not on
Earth.

“You’ll see soon enough, frag.”
 
The grinning guard’s answer came in a raspy, menacing voice.
I didn’t know what the word
frag
meant but I had a feeling I was going to find out when I found
out where we were going.

“Keep your mouth shut,” the other ordered in a more
commanding tone. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to
me or his
partner
. Either way, we both stayed silent as the electric engine whined
to life and jerked the transport forward.

The transport picked up speed as we headed down the long
passageway and around the bend, disappearing from sight of the elevator and the
few remaining guards that stayed behind. There were lights every ten feet that
cast an eerie, pale glow in the tunnel. Several minutes passed as we wound our
way through the seemingly endless underground channels. The entire time, the
guards in the car just in front of us never took their guns off me. I assumed the
ones in the back were doing the same with their weapons. My little exhibition
in front of the building earlier must have rendered me a serious threat. And a
serious threat was something I had never been before.

I considered the things that had happened since I’d found
myself in this strange place as I silently watched the pale, orange lights whiz
by. Honestly, the only reason I hadn’t freaked out up to that point was some
part of me believed I was still dreaming. It was the only explanation. After a
several more minutes of contemplation, the train began to slow down, and I
could see brighter light pouring into the tunnel up ahead.

“End of the line, frag,” the chattier of the two guards
said through clenched teeth.

The train slowly eased to a stop just outside a wall of
prison bars that stretched from floor to ceiling. Beyond the bars, I could see
men and women in ragged clothes sitting on the floor along walls made of stone.
There were bright lights coming from the ceiling, spotlighting the
captives.Some
were eating soup from wooden bowls. Others
just sat against the wall, staring ahead. Their hair was frazzled and long. A
few of the men had thick, scraggly beards.

The door to the train car swung open again and the guards
across from me yanked me to my feet. Two more stepped over from a pack of at
least a dozen that waited near a gate in the center of the barred wall. The two
in my car shoved me forward, and I tripped over the chains, tumbling head over
heels onto the hard ground below. The landing hurt, but fortunately I’d landed
on my side. I was more surprised at how quickly the pain had subsided.

The guard who’d shoved me stood in the train car,
laughing. “Welcome to your new home, frag. Enjoy it while you’re still
breathing.”
 

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but
I didn’t
have time to ask as two more men grabbed me and pulled me towards the gate of
what I realized was some kind of prison. My feet dragged along the rough
surface. I had to get out. My eyes searched for a way to escape, but there were
too many guards, too many guns pointing in my direction.

A guard on the other side of the bars opened up the gate
so we could pass through. Once inside, they propped me up on my feet.

“We’re not going to carry you the whole way, frag. Get
moving.”
 
The guard’s order came
with a blow to my lower back with the butt of his gun. I lurched forward,
stumbling along, nearly tripping with every step I took in the heavy shackles.

We moved past a skinny man with a shaved head who sat on
the ground sipping liquid from a bowl. His clothing was so tattered it was
almost falling off his body. There were several doors in the corridor; inside
each one was a narrow cot and something that looked like a toilet. I passed
another man who stood with his back against the wall, arms crossed. He was huge
and sported a bushy, reddish beard. One lock of his matching long hair was in a
braid off the side of one ear. Their tattered tunics were smattered with dirt
and grime, many of them torn or fraying in several places. The bearded man eyed
me, full of suspicion, but said nothing as we continued down the passageway.

Everyone had the same look of despair, desperation, and
destitution. Their eyes were sallow, I assumed from not seeing the light of day
in a long time. I found it strange that women were mixed in with the men. One
woman was sitting in her cell staring down at the floor, her oily blonde hair
was matted to her head. I thought I saw a solitary tear fall to the hard stone
beneath her.

The tunnel took a sharp turn to the right and we halted in
front of another set of bars. A room to the left was empty, save for an
olive-green cot in the corner. Just beyond the passage entryway, a vast room
opened up. The ceiling was at least forty feet high with huge stone pillars
jutting upward every twenty feet. The roof itself was carved out of rock, the
coloring of which reminded me of sandstone back on Earth.

What caught my attention was what was happening on the
floor of the massive room. The place had to be the length of a few football
fields. In different areas, several men and a few women were paired against
each other, fighting with wooden swords while several guards looked on. A man
in a long, black jacket stood in a balcony overlooking the whole scene. He
appeared to be making notes on some kind of electronic tablet. I also noticed
gun turrets hanging in several places. Since they were unmanned I assumed they
were automatically operated
;
a way to keep the
prisoners in line.

Some of the men were huge, and extremely muscular. They
parried and thrust their faux weapons at each other. The thin, athletic women
did the same but moved a little faster than the bulkier men. The sounds of the
wooden swords clacked off the walls incessantly. Another line of trainees took
turns throwing blunted spears at a dummy target stuffed with straw. Only one
man looked out of place in the entire scene. He was the only older person in
the room, standing in the far right corner, watching two men dancing back and
forth with their faux blades flying at one another. His long, graying hair
matched his beard.

I frowned in disbelief. A bad feeling was starting to
creep its way back into my stomach. “What is this place?” I asked, mesmerized
by the different activities going on around the area.

One of the guards turned to me and laughed. “This is the
training facility for the arena games,” his voice sounded a little slurred.

“What are the arena games?”

“You don’t know?”
 
He looked at the other guard. “Where did this one come from?”
 
An evil grin snuck onto his face. “We take
criminals like you and pit them against each other in a fight to the death. Of
course, a skinny little frag like you never makes it through the first fight or
two.”
 
He finished his dreary reply
with another sickening laugh then shoved me into the empty cell I’d noticed a
minute before. This time, I did trip over the shackles on my ankles and hit the
floor hard. The other guard moved quickly to unlock my chains and then slammed
the metal door shut. I scrambled to get up but it was too late. I could see through
the square window of the door that they had already moved beyond the bars into
the training area.

I rubbed my wrists, happy to finally have the irritating
bonds off. The relief was only temporary, though. It was replaced by something
worse:
 
dread. I paced around for a
few minutes, trying to figure out what was happening. “It’s only a dream,” I
told myself. But that did little to comfort me. I couldn’t figure out why I
hadn’t awakened.
Most of my dreams never lasted this long.

The clacking noise from the training room continued for a
little longer until, finally, I heard a man’s voice over a speaker system call
for the end of the day’s activities. The metal gates just outside my room
squeaked open, and I could hear the warriors scuffling past my door. They said
nothing, only allowing the sound of their feet to make their presence known.
Staring out through my square hole, I saw one person turn their head in my
direction as he passed. The rest kept their heads down, but this man clearly
locked eyes with me. It was only for a second, yet it almost seemed like those
steel, blue eyes understood my plight. They narrowed in a smile as if to say,
“it’s going to be okay.” I don’t know why, but for a few seconds, I felt a
small amount of comfort.

When all the prisoners were gone, I heard metal doors
slamming shut just before another voice yelled, “lights.” Then everything went
dark.