Race the Darkness (Fatal Dreams, #1)(60)

“I’ll help any way I can.” Alex stepped inside Xander’s cabin, his gaze taking in all the surroundings while he moved to the chair Xander still pointed at. “You’ve really fixed this place up. Never thought it could look so quaint and cozy.” Alex was worming his way in via her. And she was going to let him as long he didn’t hurt Xander or her ever again.

“One topic only. The dreams.” Xander’s voice held no room for argument.

She and Xander moved toward the couch. They walked as if they were a long-married couple engrained in each other’s manners and ways. It felt so real and right to be close to him like this. “And there is no question about her dreams.”

They settled on the couch, and she told his father about her dreams of Simon Smith and William Goodspeed. And Xander explained his interviews with the two men. His father asked a few clarifying questions, but never once indicated any disbelief.

The thing no one mentioned was her dream of Gran. Just as well. She wasn’t certain she could speak about it anyway.

“If this is a recurrent pattern, do you realize the implications?” Alex aimed his question at her. Her mind conjured no implications beyond the horror of it all. “Lives that could be saved. Simply from a dream. Do you know how revolutionary that would be? And if I can document—”

“She’s not your guinea pig or your favorite new toy.”

“That’s not my intention.” Alex spoke directly to her. “Gale and I founded the Ohio Institute of Oneirology.”

“Oh—what?” Isleen asked.

“Oneirology. We were pioneers in the field of dream research. We were the first to theorize that dreams were more than just a waste product of the brain. That they could be essential to cognitive functioning, creativity, mental health, and even psychic phenomenon. Did you know Gale was a sleep-talker?”

“Yeah.” Her voice brightened, thinking about Gran. “She was always that way.”

“She was also skilled at mutual dreaming. She could enter another person’s dream—without them even knowing—and observe.”

Isleen felt her eyes grow weirdly wide. “That’s a real thing? Are you serious?” If Gran could enter another person’s dreams… The things she dreamed about with Xander were not things she wanted her grandmother to see.

“Very. Her ability was incredibly fascinating. We were able to document her experience in the dream and compare it with the person who had the dream. It blew people’s minds. Either that or they cried hoax and claimed we weren’t conducting proper scientific studies. The one downfall to Gale’s mutual dreaming was that after every dream, she had a seizure. Have you had a seizure after one of these dreams?”

Alex was asking her, but Xander answered. “She’s never had what I’d call a seizure. When it happened in the hospital, she passed out for a few minutes, then came to and was cold and sleepy. When it happened here, she got the headache, but then it went away, then she got sleepy and cold again. The night Gale…” Xander didn’t need to say it. “She passed out that night.”

Fuzzy, fringe-of-her-mind memories matched up to Xander’s words.

“Seizures come in varying forms. During a precognitive dream, your brain is doing double duty. It’s guiding you through the cycles of sleep and operating as normal, but on a different plane of reality.”

“Different plane of reality? What does that mean?” Isleen asked.

“The reason precognitive dreams are so hard to prove is because that different plane of reality only exists inside you. It’s not something any test can measure or any scientist can observe. Only you can access it and learn from it. Your physical body remains here, but your mind is operating in two places at the same time. When you wake up, the brain can’t handle the overload and shorts out—a seizure.”

She stared into Alex’s eyes, looking for even the slightest hint of humor, the joke, the punch line. Because if this wasn’t a joke, then he was serious and she was going to have to decide if he was crazy smart or just plain crazy.

“The seizure is the price for being psychic.”

Now she was leaning toward just plain crazy. “I’m not psychic.”

“During your waking hours, you are correct. But in the midst of a precognitive dream, you are being given access to insider information about another reality—which makes you psychic.”

Xander nodded his head as if he were receiving great understanding. “You’ve seen the interrogations. This is real.”

“You’ll need to spend a few nights at the Institute so we can measure and record your brain activity during the dream cycles. It would be groundbreaking to record a precog dream.”

“Is there a way to cure it?” she asked, her voice soft and steady.

“Cure it? Why would you want to make it go away? You have a powerful gift.”

“It doesn’t feel like a gift. The things I’ve seen…” She trailed off, not wanting to access those particular memories.

“An innocent little boy, his mother, and a woman just doing her job are alive today because of that dream you had. Would you trade their lives just so you didn’t have to experience that bad dream? How many other lives could your dreams save?”

That was a direct hit on her morality center. There was another way to look at her dreams. They weren’t just horrible things she had to witness. They were important—a means to save people. No way would she trade lives for the ability to not dream. She could never be so selfish.