“What happened?” Sejal croaked.
“Look!” she replied, pointing upward.
Sejal obeyed and saw the darkness hadn’t vanished after all. From horizon to horizon, the entire sky had gone black. Thunder rumbled hungrily. The sky began to descend and he resisted the urge to fling himself flat.
“They’ve begun,” Katsu said. “They’re going to devour every mind in the Dream.”
“Mom will-” Sejal began.
“Not quickly enough,” Katsu interrupted. “There are thirty-no, twenty-nine-of them left, and look how easily they cover the sky. They will devour Rust, and our parents will lose interest in the cryo-units.”
Not far away, a thick pillar of black dropped down from the sky like a finger as big as a city. The ground shifted and bucked where it landed. Uncountable minds cried out in despair.
“They’ve taken a planet,” Katsu said.
Another pillar dropped near the first, and the ground shifted again. More cries like an ocean wave. Tears ran Sejal’s face in sympathy.
“We have to stop them!” he cried. “All those people-”
“We aren’t strong enough,” Katsu said dispiritedly. “I can’t force them, only persuade them. You are able to push them, but only a little.”
Thunder rumbled, a demon clearing its throat. Another pillar crashed down. There was a feeling of horrible exultation in the gesture.
Sejal grabbed Katsu’s arm. “We need help.”
“Who? There aren’t many Silent in the Dream right now, and we’d probably need-”
“-all of them?” Sejal said in an odd voice.
Katsu looked at him. “Can you do that?”
“We’ll find out.”
“There must be a faster way,” Vidya puffed. Sweat plastered hair and clothes to her body and her muscles felt shaky. There were still twenty-eight more children to go.
Prasad stabbed the controls and the lid on the cryo-unit slid shut over the squirming child. The viewplate fogged over. Without speaking, he moved to the next bed.
“Sedatives?” Vidya said, moving next to him and disconnecting tubes.
“I don’t know where they would be,” Prasad told her, “and I wouldn’t know the dosage. I’d be just as likely to kill them.”
Vidya swiftly removed the last tube. “Perhaps, my husband, that would be the best choice.”
“No.” There was iron in Prasad’s voice as he slid the cryo-unit from under the bed and undid the child’s restrains. “They are my sons and daughters. They cannot help who they are and what they are doing.”
They wrestled the child into the unit. An arm cracked Vidya in the face. Pain exploded and for a moment she saw stars. She forced her hands to keep moving, however, until the cryo-unit slid shut and condensation gathered on the viewplate. Then they moved to the next bed, and the next. Vidya moved in a sort of fog, losing all track of time. Twenty-six left. Twenty-five. Twenty-four. Twenty. Her exhausted muscles were shaking so badly she fumbled at the tubes. Her aching body was covered in bruises from the hard hands and heels that struggled against her. Nineteen left. Eighteen. Now they were in the final Nursery. Sixteen left. Fifteen.
“Freeze!”
The command startled Vidya out of her trance. A stab of terror went through her chest as she spun to face the door. Prasad straightened from the child they were working on, then took a step forward, placing himself between Vidya and the four armed guard standing at the door to the glassed-in area. The door to the main laboratory stood open behind them. Vidya thought Prasad was being stupidly romantic until he gestured sharply behind his back at the cattle prod dangling from Vidya’s belt. Hiding her motions behind Prasad’s body, she eased it off the loop and slid it into her waistband under her shirt.
“Who are you?” Prasad demanded, though the black-and-scarlet guard uniforms made that obvious. Dr. Say’s emergency alert had done its work. “What do you want?”
“You’re under arrest,” the lead guard snapped.
“What for?” Prasad snapped back.
In answer, the guard fired. Prasad collapsed to the floor.
Sejal closed his eyes. Katsu’s hand was cold in his. All around him, pillars of darkness dropped from the sky in an avalanche of pain and misery. Fully a third of the Dream was gone. Every so often a bit of the darkness would vanish-his parents at work-but that didn’t seem to decrease the children’s power. In the Dream, the Silent were limited only by willpower and self-concept. The twisted children, raised apart from humanity, did not know they were supposed to have limits. Sejal had the sinking feeling that he was dealing with an infinite set, and that one child was just as powerful as a hundred of them.
“Go, Sejal,” Katsu said.
Sejal stretched out his mind. The Dream fabric stretched in all directions around him. Where the pillars touched the ground were great gaping holes. Normal people felt like threads, and here and there were the bright, sharp minds of the Silent. Only a very few were actually in the Dream.
A pillar crashed to the ground.
Swiftly, Sejal sifted through the fabric around him. It felt easy, it felt right. Wherever he found a Silent mind, he touched it and pulled. A crowd of Silent from dozens of races, hundreds of species, appeared around Sejal, all bound to him by the gleaming Dream fabric. Their bodies milled and overlapped like ghosts and their thoughts crowded his mind with questions, demands, terror, fear.
— Who are you?~ ~What are you doing to me?~ ~How dare you!~ ~Help me!~ ~Leave me alone!~ ~What’s happening to me?~
Their voices rose and fell around him, threatening to engulf him. Katsu squeezed his hand, and he drew serenity from her.
Serene must you ever remain, he thought.
He found more Silent, and more and more. Padric Sufur’s mind abruptly joined the pack, as did Chin Fen and Dr. Say. And then he felt another mind, a younger one that he didn’t know but who felt a tiny bit familiar, but he couldn’t say why. It was on a planet named Klimkinnar. Then he felt two more, both on a planet called Drim. All three were slaves. Their voices joined in with the rest, rising into a fever pitch.
— No!~ ~Let go of me!~ ~What the hell?~ ~Sejal, you work for me! I order you to-~
Another pillar crashed to the ground. Sejal yanked the Dream fabric with a sharp jerk. The multitude fell silent, and Sejal continued gathering. He felt Ben and Kendi’s minds and ruthlessly added them to the pool.
— Sejal, what-?~ Kendi yelped, but Sejal ignored him. Silent after Silent fell into his pool. He felt swollen with them. Lights sparked around his body. He felt like he was drinking electric water until it threatened to burst out of him. Only a few minds were left, a tiny handful. He reached for them.
“Sejal, look out!” Katsu cried.
Sejal’s eyes snapped open. A black pillar was dropping straight for them. Reflexively, Sejal yanked on the Silent around them, took them into himself, possessed them fully. As one mind, they all reached up with arms suddenly grown god-like in size. The pillar landed on their shoulders. It was cold as winter, heavy as snow. But Sejal had the strength of nearly every Silent in the universe behind him, and he pushed back. His shoulders rose like Atlas, pushing the pillar back to the sky. The children stormed angrily above him, but Sejal held them back. Then he reached out with one giant hand and grabbed one of the pillars that had already reached the ground. With easy strength, he lifted it back to the sky and added it to his burden. A billion minds cleared and a thousand Silent pulled themselves out of the despair of separation. Sejal added them to his strength and reached for another pillar.
His brothers and sisters fought back, pressing down with their full weight. Sejal lifted despite their power. A small part of him marveled at what he was doing, relished in the strength. He lifted another pillar clear of the Dream, and another, and another, adding more and more Silent as they were freed. Every mind added to his own made the burden easier and easier to lift. The children howled mindlessly above him, clawed at his back, tore at his face and hair. But they did no damage. Sejal lifted the final pillar and stood with the black sky on his shoulders. Katsu was small and far below.