False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(51)

“Anyway, I realized where I was pretty fast,” he says, swigging again. “Found a way out, but then I saw those demon things. They were surrounding the building, like a barricade. Twisted little f*ckers.”

“Yeah. A lot of them had faces of the people I grew up with.”

He shudders. “I fought my way through them but it wasn’t pretty. Then the drug hit me pretty hard, and I saw all the people I wouldn’t mind dead. That took a while as well.” He drains the drink.

“Wait, so you affected the Vervescape too?”

He stops at that. “I guess I did.”

“You’re a lucid dreamer, then, or you could become one.” I set down my glass with a clunk. “If you can lucid dream, you don’t need me.” Can I quit? Can I stop this before it’s really begun? The hope is painful.

“I’m untrained, and I can’t do what you can. I couldn’t get rid of these ones. It seemed like they almost killed me. I ended up having to kill them all. Cut them to pieces.”

I swallow.

“Most of the people I saw deserved it. A few have been put in jail and then quietly locked up in stasis. Doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes wish I could have had the honor of actually killing them myself.”

“Everyone has a darker side,” I whisper, echoing his earlier words.

“That they do. Still, the shared dream should have worked better, even if it was Verve. I should have appeared right with you. I should have guessed that she’d be so strong. She was raised in the Hearth too.”

“When she was there, the Meditation stuff wasn’t as common,” I say, almost distantly.

“Really?” Nazarin leans forward, interested. “When did it really start?”

I stare off, remembering. “Maybe a year or two before Mia left, so like … fifteen years ago now? Mana-ma became obsessed with the idea that we could all become one, and when we did, that’s when God would speak to her even more clearly. So we trained. Before that, it was more Meditation to clear the mind, not to try and impact anything. But maybe that still gave Mia a foundation to start being able to control the Vervescape.”

“And did it work, this Meditation?”

“It did. By the end, we could take a pill and connect into one large shared dream world populated by every member of the Hearth.”

Nazarin’s mouth falls open, almost comically. “What was the drug?”

“I don’t know. Mana-ma kept her secrets. Maybe it was God, after all.” My voice drips with sarcasm.

Nazarin’s forehead furrows as he turns over this new piece of information. I’m sure he’ll follow it up with the SFPD, but I have a question of my own.

“What would have happened, if Mia had killed me in the dream?” I ask him.

“If she was lucid and knew you weren’t a part of the dream? She could have found a way to kill you there that would have been … permanent.”

“I could have died?” I want to throw my glass at him. “I didn’t sign up for death.”

His eyes spark at that. “This whole thing started with a death. With your sister killing a Ratel hitman.”

“Accused of killing.”

He makes a noise deep in his throat. “You still so very sure she didn’t do it?”

I say nothing. I’m not sure why I still defend her, when her chances of innocence seem to dwindle the more we follow the clues. If she did kill him, though, I have to cling to the fact that murder and self-defense are two very different things.

“You knew this would be dangerous going in. You knew full well death could always be a possibility, and don’t pretend you didn’t. You’re going into the underworld of San Francisco, Taema, you can’t have expected not to get your hands dirty.”

I glare at him, and he glares right back.

“Here’s how it’ll go,” I say. “When we do something, you tell me what kind of danger we’re facing. Don’t just let me barrel into it headfirst without knowing what the hell I’m up against. OK?”

He’s the first to look away to take another swig. “Deal. If it’s any comfort, I didn’t think today would be dangerous. It wouldn’t have been if it was Zeal and not Verve, because Zeal is so much more static when you’re in someone else’s dream.”

“What a lovely surprise for us.”

“It means we have a problem, though.”

“Don’t we already have lots of problems?” The SynthGin has made me irritating, but I can’t seem to stop the sarcasm.

“If the Ratel have spiked the Zeal with Verve, they’re going to try and eavesdrop on the dreams.”

Oh God. “And if they have a lucid dreamer see Mia’s dreams, then our whole cover is blown.”

“Exactly.”

“We’re screwed then.”

“Not necessarily. One: the other Zeal lounge they spiked, the one I was security for? It didn’t work. They couldn’t get the levels right; no one could mine even a millisecond of a dream. Second: they might not be recording the dreams, but trying to find lucid dreamers based on physiological reactions. That might mean that Mia comes to their attention, but they’ll likely discount her because of her ill health.”

I can’t banish the mental image of Mia sobbing. “She’s afraid of someone. She told them about Tila. She could be in contact with the Ratel already.”