The Children of Hypnos

Chapter 21: The Fenhallow Underground

Lana Lupova carried a ring of keys on the right arm of her motorized chair. Emery had only seen her remove it when she didn't want to make noise, or for special occasions, like school fundraising events and important meetings.

There would be no special occasion today.

"It's a fat ring of keys and Lana's going to notice me taking it off her chair," Emery said to Wes as they pushed their way through the doors of the Asha Gilani Sleep Research Center. They skirted the edge of the lobby, avoiding the gazes of the researchers coming in to start work for the day. "You'll need to make a distraction. Lana's office is in the north wing; her lab is in the south wing. She'll have been in the lab all night, so she's probably in her office now. The lab doors have tamper alerts—if someone tries to break into them, an alarm goes off."

"So I need to tamper with the locks."

"Exactly. I'll go to her office and start talking to her." Emery held up her phone. "When I message you, run down to her lab—it's number three—and set off the alarm. When she hears it, I'll take the key."

"Don't they have cameras? They'll come after us when I do it."

"Hide yourself." She flicked the hood of his sweatshirt.

He pulled it up and glanced behind him, down the south hallway, turning his phone over in his pocket. "Make it quick," he said.

They split up. Emery strode down the north hallway with quick but controlled steps, smiling at anyone she passed. She knew Dr. Lupova's office by the cute little flower pinned to the nameplate outside the door. She knocked.

"Come in."

Lana sat in front of a bank of monitors displaying high-resolution images of the human brain. The stark light washed her face and hair in a ghostly blue. Her keys, the group of them as thick as Emery's fist, hung motionless from the chair arm. Attached to them was her school ID card.

Emery sidled up close to her. "What's up, Lupova?"

"It's impolite to read over someone's shoulder, Emery." Lana's tone was pleasant, and she continued her work. The screen to her right flipped between images of a brain with different sections lit up in bright orange. At the corner of each image was a label, a date and time and the name Warwick. "What variety of trouble are you getting into today?"

Emery kept her phone in her hand turned toward her leg, her finger hovering over Send. "I really resent the assumption here, I want you to know." Emery paused, looking down, and scuffed her foot on the floor. She made her voice small. "Actually...I was wondering, um..."

Lana looked around.

"So, Wes and I were in the Dream for a while. I know it's not good for dreamhunters to spend a lot of time there. I was just wondering if, like..." Emery let her fingers play along the arm of the chair. The keys hung from a carabiner; she'd have to be quick.  "Things have been weird since we got back. Time moves too slow, and I feel this weird weight on my chest. Does being in the Dream for that long really hurt you? Like, put you closer to your Insanity Prime?"

"Oh, Em." Lana took her hands off the keyboard. "It's certainly not good for you. I've known hunters who have spent longer in the Dream, but they were older than you, and much more experienced in how to handle themselves inside, not to mention more prepared. If you're worried, we can run some tests—"

Emery hit Send. A heartbeat later, an alert siren blared from Lana's computer, and a bright red indicator lit up on the top left of all her screens. She whipped around, eyes darting from one screen to the next, and snapped, "Oh, not again! But we caught him!"