Welcome to the Dream (A Celeste Cross Book, #1) (22 page)

Celeste Cross

So
this
was Knight. Not that she'd seen much so far other
than the inside of her cell. Granted, this was a nicer cell than
the one in Gresham City; it was bigger, and the mattress on the bed
was just a little thicker. Still, it was a blasted
cell.

Things were happening
quickly now, and she was starting to get the impression that she'd
underestimated the Yaoguai threat, or perhaps she'd underestimated
how complex and organized Knight was. Headquarters was an enormous
campus of buildings surrounded by high electric fences. It was
smack bang in a section of rocky desert, and looked exactly like
the kind of place you didn't want to be stuck without any water or
shelter for too long. Not that Celeste had any designs on escaping
of course. No, because one look at Knight had hammered home to her
a fact: her life had indeed changed and that change was
forever.

She sat there on her cot,
letting her legs fall over the edge of it, her feet kicking up and
out as she tried to think about anything other than what was
happening to her. She tried to remember that she still had a couple
of library books she had to return, and that she had to reply to a
friend who'd suggested they go away on holiday to Spain next year.
She was also pondering how many jobs she had left to do at Susie's;
she had a lot of work to get through, and she had to plan the time
to do that too.

A part of Celeste knew that
she was avoiding the situation, but she didn't care. Entertaining
normal thoughts about her normal life was keeping her sane in this
less-than-normal situation.

Everything that was
happening to her felt like a dream – monsters made of energy,
fantastic secret agencies, and nightmarish threats.

She hadn't seen Jack since
they'd arrived, and it had been almost a whole day now.

The second she'd arrived,
she’d been checked over by doctors. Though she'd protested several
times that she was okay, she'd realized that wasn't why they were
checking. They'd taken all sorts of scans, bloods, and no doubt
they were checking for one thing – what made her different, what
made a demon afraid of little old her. They'd eventually released
her from the medical center and she'd been taken to her cell, given
food, and told to rest. She'd resisted at first, but after she'd
finished her food, she'd settled on her cot and had drifted
off.

She'd had plenty of dreams.
They'd been about the Yaoguai; they were prominent in her mind
right now. Though one had started as a nightmare, and she'd been
chased through the forest, dead soldiers littered at her feet, Jack
frozen before her like a statue, she'd snapped out of it. She'd
realized it was just a dream.

She knew the fundamental
principle of any dream: you create the whole thing, and everything
that happens to you is just a part of yourself. Whatever you
identify, whether it be a monster or a tree, it is just you
mistaking your illusion for reality.

When she'd seen that Yaoguai
in her dream, she'd stopped, and she'd felt the fear rush through
her. Her first instinct had been to run, however she'd pushed
through that, and she'd got on with it. Celeste had confronted the
monster and it had disappeared.

When she'd woken up, the
dream had given her a good dose of steely determination. Dealing
with the image of a monster in her dreams was not the same as
dealing with the real thing in everyday life though. She didn't
want to get too ballsy and overconfident here. The fact that the
Yaoguai appeared to be frightened of her wasn't something to be
proud of. It was a horrible mystery, and she knew enough about the
reactions of everybody else to realize it probably wasn't a good
one.

Just as she closed her eyes
again, wondering how long she'd be alone for, there was a soft
knock on the door. She didn't jump to her feet to let them in; she
couldn't open the door from the inside, and whoever was outside
would let themselves in when they were ready. She did sit up
however.

She wanted it to be Jack; he
seemed to be the only person who was on her side. Though McDougall
had mellowed some after she'd saved his life.

It wasn't Jack.

It was a guy in a white lab
coat. She didn't have to stretch her mind to imagine he was some
kind of scientist. When he looked at her, his eyes were filled with
such keen interest that she almost wanted to look away out of
decency. It was very clear he was looking at her as if she was a
specimen.

She got to her
feet.

‘
We need to run some tests,’ he
said, voice skipping with enthusiasm. He was a young man, maybe in
his late 20s, and he had horribly floppy hair. He didn't wear
glasses, had a clean-shaven face, and didn't look particularly
geeky, but he still looked fascinated by her. He stepped out into
the hallway, his shoes squeaking as he twisted to motion her
forward. She flicked her gaze to the two heavy-set guards beside
him – they both had guns. She wanted to point out she wasn't a
threat, but she really doubted they'd believe her.

‘
These tests won't take long,’
the scientist assured her.

She imagined the tests
would probably keep on going for the rest of her life, but she
didn't point that out to him. As they walked along the corridors
though, she kept gazing into any room they passed, trying to catch
a glimpse of Jack.
He was here, right? He hadn't gone back to Gresham City,
had he?
She thought, a
sick feeling pressing at the corners of her
belly.

She'd almost come to terms
with the Yaoguai, but it was easier knowing Jack was somewhere
close at hand. He appeared to be the only one who could accept she
had nothing to do with this, that she'd been caught up in the
situation, and that she couldn't possibly be a double agent or a
Yaoguai or anything. She was as an ordinary citizen.

Celeste sighed heavily as
they walked through the corridors, and it elicited quick and sharp
glances from the scientist. He looked at her, gaze calculating, and
no doubt he noted her move exactly, possibly even intending to run
away and write down what he'd seen on a clipboard.

They kept on walking, and
finally he led her into a large room. It was dotted with people,
and all sorts of machinery, computers, and whatnot. If she'd been
in a different mood, she might have glanced at the computers to
check out their hardware specs, but she was kind of
distracted.

Because there were more
Yaoguai in the room. More of those strange glass cages, these ones
a little thicker than the one she'd seen in Gresham City. The
Yaoguai looked different too. Even from across the room she could
see those strange blue, electric forms weren't the same ones she'd
seen before. They almost looked like they were halfway between man
and animal. Some of them had fatter faces, rounder eyes, snouts
that looked as though they were shaped like noses, some of them
stood up on their hind legs, and others had things that resembled
hands and arms.

The second she walked
further into the room, was the second they looked down at her and
started to move back in fear. These ones didn't slam themselves up
against the glass as the other kind of Yaoguai had though. They did
whimper, and they did back off, but they didn't shake around,
trying to escape from their glass cages.

Everyone in the room watched
her, and the scientist at her side stared, mouth actually dropping
open. ‘They were right,’ he said, voice piping high with
disbelief.

She didn't need to ask him
who they were and what they had been right about: it was obvious he
was talking about Jack's team and the fact the Yaoguai were
frightened of her.

‘
Can you just walk into the room
for me?’ the scientist gestured to Celeste, nodding towards one of
the cages.

She narrowed her eyes as she
looked at him. This entire situation was giving her a horrible
sickening feeling. Come to think of it, it was the same sickening
feeling she'd felt after she'd been complicit in the destruction of
those Yaoguais in the forest. It wasn't that she didn't understand
how much of a threat they were, it just felt so horrible to be used
to fight them like this. Yes, they were vicious creatures hell bent
on killing everyone, but it was still disgusting to be used to
elicit such a violent emotion from anything.

She didn’t move, her feet
flat against the cold concrete floor and knees locked. She didn't
want to see those electric blue creatures smash themselves up
against the glass, thrashing around the closer she got.

‘
You'll be okay,’ the scientist
assured her, nodding her way, his expression still animated with
obvious interest.

Celeste really had to stop
herself from judging. She had to remind herself that these people
had a horrible job full of responsibility. Just because they could
easily turn off their compassion was not an indicator of who they
were nor their lack of morals, it was a logical outcome of what
they had to do. She wasn't under the same pressure as they were,
and she didn't have to protect people as they did, so she couldn't
judge them.

With a sharp breath, she
took several steps forward, but she didn't look up at the cages.
They'd given her a pair of sand shoes, and they were a little too
large, so she shifted around in them as she walked. She
concentrated on some patch on the concrete, trying to block out the
sounds of the Yaoguai screaming around her. It was just horrible.
The more she listened to it, the angrier she got. She was a firm
believer that no living thing had to die for no reason. She
understood that sometimes people killed in self-defense, sometimes
people went to war, sometimes brutal acts took place, and it was
too easy to judge those involved from your armchair. Still, you
always had to hold onto the principle that violence and death were
the very last resort, otherwise what would you turn into? It was
relatively easy to resort to atrocious violence with the kind of
weaponry modern man had, and it was only self, and collective,
restraint that held everyone back.

This isn't
their fault – don't judge them.
Celeste repeated to herself over and over again.
You don't know the
full story, you don't know the first thing about the Yaoguai, you
have no real idea what is going on here, and you have no
responsibility to anyone.

She kept her gaze so locked
on that section of concrete that she almost walked into one of the
soldiers that stood in front of her.

He turned sharply. It was
Jack.

She wondered for a second
whether his expression mirrored her own, because he looked just as
disgusted by what was going on.

Celeste ground to a halt.
She was still probably a good two to three meters away from the
first cage.

‘
Keep moving forward, go up and
touch one of the cages. You'll be fine,’ the scientist called from
behind her.

Her face twisted up, her
nose crumpling, her lips clenching together.

‘
Seriously?’ Jack called out
quickly. ‘Here is close enough. You can see how they're reacting.
She doesn't need to get any closer.’

‘
Just go up and touch the glass,’
the scientist repeated, paying no attention to Jack.

Jack looked livid. ‘What the
hell are you doing? You already know how they react to her. We gave
you the report, and you can see it with your own eyes.’

Celeste knew that Jack
wasn't going to win. She knew that no matter what he said, she
would eventually be walking up to the glass and brushing her
fingers across its surface, presumably getting as close to a
Yaoguai as one would ever let her.

She stumbled forward, legs
stiff, feeling sicker every second. She reached the cage. She
didn't look forward. She didn't look at the Yaoguai for a second.
She just automatically brought out a hand and brushed her fingers
over the glass, trying to block out the scream of the creature
before her.

Perhaps people were mumbling
behind her, perhaps the scientist was nodding, clicking his
fingers, and scribbling something into a notebook, or maybe he was
just grinning and clapping his hands together wildly. Whatever
noise the people behind her were making, Celeste couldn't hear it –
not over the sound of the frightened creature before her. In
another moment, she yanked her hand back. She just couldn't keep it
there any longer.

She turned sharply on her
foot and walked away from the cage, coming to rest next to Jack
instinctively. He was the only person in the room that didn't look
wildly impressed at what she'd done.

‘
I'm so sorry, Celeste,’ he said
quietly, voice not carrying behind them.

She nodded at him, levelling
her eyes at his chest, and taking an age to look into his
face.

Jack West looked sickened by the
whole thing. As he looked at her, his expression hardened. He
straightened up. ‘Look, she's done what you wanted her to, so let
me take her back to her room.’

Celeste thought that ‘room’
was a rather charitable term for her cell, but she didn't pull Jack
up on that distinction. In fact, she just looked across at him
hopefully.