Η πραγματικ?τητα υπερτιμ?ται
Aric was suddenly aware that he was dreaming.
Up until that point he hadn’t questioned where he was. In his time in the US Army he’d been in more wooded clearings that he could count, but in those instances he hadn’t been alone, and any idea of a campfire was completely out of the question. The clearing wasn’t rge. Certainly not big enough for a ptoon of men and their armored vehicles. He had no memory of arriving, or making the fire, he was simply here, sitting on the ground tossing an object in the air before catching it—repeating the process over and over as he sat by the fire. The sky above him was dark, but the light from the fire—which wasn’t giving off any heat despite the fact that he was sitting quite close to it—didn’t obscure the consteltions overhead. Which it should very much have done. But the sky was filled with stars, just as they were on many nights when their training relocated them to one of the many areas in West Germany reserved for such activities.
When his lucid mind informed him of what was happening his hand caught the object and held it firmly. He held it into the light of the fire.
Ed Martell’s cricket ball. Huh.
The wind moved through the tops of the trees but, aside from the crackling of the fire—there was no other sound. The fire burned steadily, and now—perhaps because he had pierced the veil of the dream—he could smell the wood smoke, as he could also see it drifting up slowly, unbothered by the air currents that did not seem to reach the small clearing. Next to it was a nondescript piece of equipment which dispyed a handful of red blinking lights. Next to it, on the low stump of a tree, sat a motorcycle helmet.
Alex’s helmet, and the signal processing controller from the b.
It wasn’t the first lucid dream he had—far from it. But all the others had meant something specific, and he’d been able to identify immediately what it was. The things from the b were familiar, but they had no pce out here.
This is no pce I’ve ever visited. Or even imagined. So why am I here?
He was given almost no time to consider that question before his ears heard footsteps in the forest, the sound of footsteps crushing pine needles or leaves beneath them. When Edith appeared he was surprised. He hadn’t felt her approach, which he should have done—like her mind was completely shielded.
She looked at him and he looked back. Was she still submerged in the dream, or had she broken the surface just as he had a moment earlier. He had no way to tell. Except possibly one.
“Catch,” he said just before lobbing the red leather covered ball to her.
The forest was quiet except for the sound of the chain slipping over the gears and the crunch of dirt beneath her tires. Edith kept pedaling, her feet moving rhythmically up and down, the bottle dynamo beside her front tire powering the single mp that lit the path ahead.
She had no recollection of how she’d come to be in the middle of a forest of oak and beech, with the occasional rowan or hawthorn mixed in—gripping the handlebars of her Raleigh Superbe like it was a normal commute from ft to b. The ground was sparsely covered in moss and dried leaves, and when she looked down, she finally noticed what she was wearing.
Brilliant choice, Edith. Flip-flops—for a midnight ride through… wherever the bloody hell this is.
Ahead, a warm orange glow flickered through the trees. Between the trunks, she glimpsed a figure seated on the ground, tossing something into the air and catching it again.
The fire glowed invitingly as she drew closer, but the wind must have been carrying the smoke away from her—she smelled none of it. She kept riding until she reached the edge of the clearing. There, she dismounted and finally got a good look at the man sitting cross-legged by the fire.
Aric turned—and stopped when he saw her. His surprised expression told her everything: they hadn’t pnned to meet here.
She was just about to speak—what words, she had no idea—when Aric spoke first.
“Catch,” he said, just before tossing something into the air.
She watched it arc gently upward, catching the firelight—and then, almost as if by magic, it nded in her hand.
The truth of it arrived all at once: she was dreaming. She looked at the contents of her hand.
Dr. Martell’s cricket ball.
Behind Aric she caught a glimpse of red fshing lights. She lowered her hand and released the ball, giving it just enough momentum to roll to Aric before stopping at his crossed feet. Edith walked around the fire to the Honeywell DSP 5/24 signal processor that had no business being here, or anywhere else that didn’t have electricity. She stood motionless for a few seconds, studying the fshing red lights, then reached down and pressed the small round button that reset the system and erased its memory of any previous errors. The steady green lights illuminated an equally incongruous item that sat nearby.
She had just lifted Alex’s motorcycle helmet when Aric’s voice reached her from across the fire.
“Catch.”
She turned just in time to see the ball arc through the air before nding at Delphine’s feet.
Delphine would have sworn she heard someone speak, though it had been brief—just a murmur, like a breath beneath words—and could have been her mind pying tricks on her. Or perhaps it was the snap of a branch overhead, where the trees swayed in response to a breeze that didn’t seem to reach the forest floor. The night was warm. The sky—what she could see of it through the treetops—was clear, unobstructed by clouds.
She stood motionless for a moment, her head tilted back as she admired the view. It reminded her of her youth in Saint-Christol, where even now the evening sky remained untouched by light pollution.
Then the breeze found her. It caressed the bare skin of her back, and with it came awareness. She was standing in the wooded middle of nowhere in a bck, low-cut, backless, spaghetti-strap evening dress—her stiletto heels in one hand, a slender satin clutch in the other.
She knew without checking that the purse contained a stick of Clé de Peau Beauté Camellia Noir—Silken Wine No. 15—and a folded card with an address written in her own cursive hand. That card should have taken her to the H?tel de l’Arc Minuit, where émile Varennes—haute couture visionary—was hosting a private (though vish) celebration of Delphine’s newly minted PhD.
But she wasn’t at the hotel.
She was standing barefoot in a forest she had no memory of entering.
Turning slowly, she noticed it: the glow of a fire—and, strangely, blinking red lights.
Her steps were silent as she moved toward it, pcing each heel with precision before rolling onto the balls of her feet, her gait as fluid as a mountain lion prowling its territory. Just before she reached the clearing, the blinking lights turned green.
When she finally stepped through the trees, she stopped.
Aric sat cross-legged on the ground near the fire, an object in one hand. Edith stood nearby beside the box that had emitted the blinking light—its glow now a steady green, illuminating her face while firelight brushed her back.
Delphine turned to Aric, who seemed to notice her only then.
“Catch,” he said, and lobbed the object toward her—apparently unaware that both of her hands were full.
She instinctively stepped back as it arced through the air and nded softly at her feet.
She stared down.
A red leather cricket ball.
Something clicked into pce.
I’m dreaming.
The three friends and colleagues stood—well, in Aric’s case, sat—motionless for a moment, each one surveying the strangely arranged scenery that all of them assumed was a product of their own imagination.
At that exact moment, all three were thinking some variation of: How the hell did I ever come up with this?
For Aric, as his gaze swept over the firelit clearing and nded on the stunning woman whose intricately styled hair revealed a swath of luminous skin from the nape of her neck to the small of her back, his thoughts veered toward the kind of reckless desire that dreams so often permitted. Where consequences were suspended, and curiosity could be indulged.
But something in him pulled back. A quiet instinct.
Instead, his attention shifted—to himself. The weight of familiar fabric. The muted stiffness of worn boots. He looked down and frowned.
Fatigues?
Olive drab. Dirty. Sweat stained. Trousers bloused into old combat boots. He hadn’t worn these in over a year.
A sound behind him—a low crunch of forest floor—made him turn. Edith was sliding Alex’s motorcycle helmet over her head.
“Going somewhere?” Aric asked.
“Me?” Her voice was slightly muffled by the full-face helmet. “No. Why do you ask?”
“No reason.” He shook his head, smiling.
He turned his attention back to Delphine—and the cricket ball resting at her feet. Only now did he notice she was barefoot.
“Did you walk here like that?”
Delphine gnced down, then nudged the ball with one toe. It rolled zily across the moss until it stopped beside Aric as he stood.
“I seem to have.”
“Ow, ow, ow,” Edith muttered, tugging the helmet off and resting it again on the tree stump.
Aric caught her expression—and the slightly tangled state of her hair—and smiled.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got a brush in that tiny purse?” Edith asked Delphine.
Delphine shook her carefully sculpted head. “No.”
“You look absolutely amazing,” Aric said to her.
Delphine smiled and executed a short curtsey with a one-quarter turn, her movements pyful, theatrical. It was a performance—but the smile was genuine. Because it was Aric.
"Merci,” she said, her eyes drifting over Aric’s clothing—dirty fatigues and scuffed combat boots she had only ever seen him wear photographs. “I wish I could say the same for you.”
Edith gnced down at her pale blue knit sweater, dark corduroy scks, and the pair of old flip-flops she’d noted earlier. She was about to make a quip about overdressing for the occasion, but never got the chance.
“What was that?” Aric asked, his head turning toward a sound all three of them had heard.
It wasn’t quite a growl—though part of it was, that part that was not a moan. And beneath that sound was a sharper one: a wet, deliberate click click click—like a tongue striking the roof of a mouth and the low, rhythmic thump of wings.
Each of them scanned the dark treeline surrounding the clearing. Aric, trained to detect motion in darkness, caught the faintest flickers at the edges of his vision.
Something. A shadow. Moving just beyond the firelight. Circling them. Counter-clockwise. Deliberate.
Delphine shivered as goosebumps lifted the skin of her exposed back. Edith rubbed her arms through her sleeves, mirroring the same unease. From the trees came a huff of breath—thick, damp, and wrong.
Aric swallowed, knowing instinctively that if he reached for his powers now, they wouldn’t be there.
They were defenseless.
“We need to go,” he said quietly.
Both women nodded in silent agreement.
And in the next breath, the world dissolved.
In Surrey, in the nd of the living, three people awoke in separate beds, separated by walls and distance but bound by something unseen.
They turned almost in unison to gnce at the clocks beside them.
2:16 AM
