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IT HAD BEEN FOUR MONTHS, FIVE DAYS, SIX HOURS and twenty-odd minutes since the night the Virtual Realm was lost to us.

The night that the one person I’d looked up to had betrayed us all. Fox, a brilliant Guardian who’d made a deal with the Shadow Casters and then she died by my hands.

The night that Sophie, a sweet, smart, curly-headed girl died. The night that the only guy I would ever love was tossed into the unknown.

They’d given up on the search and today was the day that they were going to switch off the machine. It didn’t matter to them whether he still existed or not, but he existed inside my dreams. My beautiful, colorful dreams.

I was lucky that my cat Shades, or Mr. Grey as the Reverians knew him, a talking cat who only I could hear, hadn’t died.

He was alive and still as grumpy as ever with his snarky comments but he truly had become one of my best friends.

He said that the Virtual Realm was huge, and that Lover Boy might still be alive. Well sort of, as Leigh was part of the Virtual Realm. Technically he didn’t exist, he was like a computer program, just way more advanced, or what Reverians would call, a Jumper.

He gave me hope and now they were just going to plunder it, killing the only guy that I would ever love.

It was also four months, five days, six hours and now seven minutes that I’d been living a lie.

I dreamt of Leigh every night, it was the one place he still existed, and in these dreams, well we’d gotten to know one another pretty well.

I’d crushed deeply for him, and the worst part of it was that I had no idea whether it was my imagination or whether he was really there.

Dreams inside Revera were not like the dreams that the humans in the Domain were used to. Here they could be used by someone like Leigh to have a private conversation or they could be used for a silly girl’s fantasy of a boy she could never really have, but they were real, you experienced the full dose and not just twenty percent the way my mother, Vinicola Sodivic, a name the Light Casters feared, and one of the best Shadow Casters alive, told me.

Leigh and I kissed many times in my dreams and each one felt so real, but again, it could be all my doing and have nothing to do with Leigh whatsoever. Like I’d said, a big lie, which didn’t matter one bit because whichever way I looked at it, it was going to be over.

Footsteps rushed up the stairs and a head with blonde scruffy hair peeked into my room with a huge grin on his face. I hadn’t recalled ever seeing Max grin like that before.

“What?”

He just smiled and stared at me like an idiot. “They found him.”

I sucked in a breath. “What?”

“It’s just a voice, but they think it’s Leigh.”

I ran out of my room and down the stairs with Max right behind me. “A voice. How?”

“It was when they just exited the Virtual Realm, they were about to make it final, to shut down the entire world and then his voice just popped through.”

We ran back toward the science building that housed all the people who were hard at work trying to save anything that had been destroyed inside the Virtual Realm when we finally entered.

“The frequency was not clear and we couldn’t make out a single word, but it’s him Chas.”

I sprinted up the steps. I’d never run so hard, just to hear his gibberish for myself. If his voice was there, he was fine. It was the sign that I’d been praying for these past four months.

We’d spoken about this day so many times, which always led to my insecurities about all of this. How it was only my imagination.

He’d just laughed at me.

The gallery windows were blocked by everyone standing against them to see better. The scratching while they tried to find the right frequency was all over the speakers.

“Leigh, can you hear me?” One of the scientists said.

There was no response and more scratching began as they tried to find a better frequency. It drove me insane every time they spoke and there was no answer.

After the umpteenth time I got up; I seriously could not do this – go through this again. He wasn’t there. He was gone.

“Chas,” Max said softly.

I couldn’t look at him and touched the knob of the door.

The scratching noise stopped and a voice came through. My stomach flipped as I knew that voice. It was him. It was really him. I ran to the window and didn’t care who I had to shove aside to get a better look at how the technicians were working.

One word was said and then scratching again, another half of a word, more scratching. I started to giggle. It was Leigh, it was really him. What he said wasn’t clear as they tried to tune into the frequency to hear him better. But none of that mattered as I knew he still existed.

Then he spoke again.

“Tell Chas…” The voice disappeared.

Everyone stared at me, even Margot. I didn’t like her look at all, the way her lips thinned and the soft muscles alongside her jaw started to pull slightly.

I looked away and back to the technicians.
Tell me what?

They fine-tuned the frequency, trying hard not to lose him. My heart was pounding.
Tell me what?

His voice came again. “…cat is always right.”

The cat is always right.
I started to giggle and knew that somehow my dream wasn’t a figment of my imagination. He was really there and the past four months had been real, even though it was only in my dreams. It
was
real and he really did feel the same for me.

Adrienne Woods was born and raised in South Africa, where she still resides on the East side of Johannesburg with her husband and two little girls. She’s been writing for the past four years and in her free time she likes to review books of new and upcoming authors.

www.authoradriennewoods.com