Part 78 (1/2)

It's the kind of dream where she can hear things around her, but when she tries to speak, no sounds will come. Instead, she's talking inside her head.

I'm afraid. I'm just afraid.

”I can still try to get you out, but you have to help. I waited for you last night but you never came.”

She wants to say, yes, get me out, but she can only speak in the dream.

Now the lighting changes and she feels like she is falling. No, she realizes, she's just on an elevator.

”Talk to me, Ally,” whispers the voice one last time. ”I can try to stop them, but I have to know what you want.”

Then a door opens and she floats through it and out. Then comes the clanking of a door that reminds her of the steel air lock she'd gone through last night looking for Kristen. The smells. She's in the laboratory.

”We can take her from here,” comes a voice, drifting through her reverie.

She fantasizes it's Karl Van de Vliet. Or maybe he really is there. In her dream state it's hard to know. But he isn't alone.

”You said you'd make one more attempt to create the antibodies. Is . .

It's Winston Bartlett. Or at least it sounds like him.

”I said I would do all I could, W.B. The first attempt ... you know what happened. I got almost no results, but I gave you an injection of all I managed to garner. Today I spent the day doing simulations. We're working closer to the edge than I thought. That's why I needed her down at the lab tonight. I want to run some more tests and then try to make a decision. Tonight. There's just a h.e.l.l of a lot more risk than I first thought.”

The voice trails off and Ally finds herself trying to comprehend ”risk.”

She hears ”beta” again and it floats through her mind, but now its meaning is unclear. It's something she'd heard but can no longer place.

”Ally,” comes a ghostly voice. Surely this is a dream, and she recognizes it as her father, Arthur. Now she can see him. He's wearing a white cap and they're boating in Central Park. He shows up in her dreams a lot and she feels he's the messenger of her unconscious, telling her truths that she sometimes doesn't want to hear.

”Ally,” he says, ”he's going to perform the full Beta procedure on you.

He didn't tell you, but you know it's true. He thinks he's finally calculated everything right. Can't you see? Is that what you want?”

She isn't sure what she wants. And right now she isn't entirely clear where she fits on the scale of sleeping/waking. It is so bizarre. The two parts of her mind, the conscious and the unconscious, are talking to each other. Her unconscious is warning her about fears she didn't even know she had. Or at least she hadn't admitted to yet.

Then she hears Winston Bartlett's voice again.