03

SAM

Sam snapped awake, his sudden movement tipping the boat out of its rhythm. The thick, humid air made it hard to breathe. He looked around and realised with relief where he was. He slunk back down feeling sluggish and sapped of energy.

Rapha was watching him carefully, one hand on the throttle of the boat’s outboard motor. ‘Bad dream?’

‘Something like that,’ Sam said, shaking his head a little and trying to make his voice even.

‘We’re running low on fuel but we’re almost there.’

Sam stood and looked at the view. A small city stretched out before them, the sun catching the tips of an endless expanse of roofs. The river was now busy with boats.

‘Welcome to Rio Branco,’ Rapha said.

‘It’s big,’ Sam said, ‘I thought we were in the middle of Amazonian nowhere?’

Rapha laughed. ‘Lots of people live in the middle of the jungle, my friend. There is an airport here and you can fly away with your Gear.’

‘Your Gear,’ Sam said. ‘You’re still a part of this, Rapha, I need you to come along with me back to the Academy, to see out the rest of this prophecy. Can you do that?’

Rapha smiled and nodded. ‘I’m actually glad to hear that. I’d like to learn more about this race.’

A heat haze rose from the hot tarmac of the airport, and Sam blinked away the memory of his nightmare. He had kept going over and over the details in his mind as they had travelled through the busy streets from the wharf to the airport in an old taxi.

Maria, in Cuba. She knows where the next Gear is.

Oh, and sharks. And Solaris.

Sam now paced the floor of the terminal, his backpack slung over his shoulder in readiness. He’d called Xavier and Tobias hours earlier, and they were on their way, but time seemed to be racing by while he could only keep pacing in frustration, waiting, doing nothing.

C’mon, c’mon … we have to get out of here before someone finds us. We have to keep moving.

Beside him, slumped in an uncomfortable chair, Rapha slept soundly with a baseball cap, newly purchased at the souvenir store, pulled down over his face.

Tobias hadn’t sounded too concerned about Rapha’s lack of belongings, passport or any identification. ‘We’ll take care of it, Sam,’ he’d assured him.

Sam kept walking around, looking out of the big glass windows at the tourists and commuters happily heading to their next destination.

‘What did you dream of?’ Rapha asked out of nowhere, making Sam jump. Sam looked down at him, his face still obscured by the cap.

‘Before? On the boat?’

‘Yeah.’

‘A little bit of who the next Dreamer is—where I need to be next,’ Sam replied, trying to recall the details. ‘I find it hard, without writing it down straightaway, to remember everything. It’s like I’m in this in-between world of being asleep and awake. I keep going over and over it, so I don’t forget the little things, but …’

‘So where do you have to go?’ Rapha asked, his voice still sleepy.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ Sam admitted. ‘But I didn’t know exactly where you’d be either, and look how that turned out.’

Sam could see Rapha’s chest moving, and it looked as if he was laughing quietly to himself under his hat. Then, from behind the row of chairs, towards the back of the terminal, Sam could see Tobias and Xavier hurrying down the busy corridor, looking at the faces of everyone as they rushed past.

‘Tobias!’ Sam called.

Sam saw the immediate relief on the faces of his old high-school teacher and classmate at the sound of his voice. They both waved across the room.

When they reached Sam, Tobias ruffled Sam’s hair in greeting and Xavier leaned forward, trying to give him a friendly pat on the back, but missing and tapping his shoulder awkwardly instead. Sam laughed.

Rapha stood up from his seat, adjusting the cap to now sit properly on his head. He held out his hand as Sam introduced him to his friends.

‘Good to meet you, Rapha,’ said Tobias, shaking the outstretched hand. Then he added, ‘Well, that’s the introductions done, let’s get going!’

Climbing into the plane’s small six-person cabin and buckling in, Sam felt relief wash over him again. His task in Brazil was over and he was with his friends once more, the Gear safely in his backpack. Looking at Tobias and Xavier climbing aboard, he reflected that it still felt odd seeing them like this. Not that long ago, Tobias had been lecturing about Newton’s laws at the front of the classroom, while Xavier sat a few desks away taking notes.

Now, here we are, going from one adventure to the next, danger and death around every corner, trying to save the world … what a difference a month makes!

Tobias asked, ‘How are you?’

‘Yeah, been OK,’ Sam said. ‘You know how it is.’

‘Ha, I sure do,’ Tobias said, buckling into the pilot’s seat.

Wow, is there anything he can’t do? And I used to think he was just a science teacher …

Xavier sat down beside him in the co-pilot’s chair and started pressing buttons.

Tobias playfully smacked Xavier’s hands away. ‘First stop, Miami,’ Tobias said, ‘and then a flight to London. There’s a storm rolling around in the Gulf, from the northeast, but we should be able to skirt round it, maybe head closer to Cuba.’

Sam smiled. The plane’s engine started up with a loud roar and the propeller engaged. Tobias soon had them taxiing to the end of the runway, where he powered up and lifted them into the air.

Sam felt like a seasoned air traveller now. Before the last few weeks, he’d only been on a few flights, the longest one to Europe and back, and a couple of interstate trips, all family holidays. Now he’d been on long-haul flights, in helicopters and on supersonic aircraft loaded with stealth technology. Sam thought back to his recent ultralight flight over the Amazon Rainforest with Rapha.

I guess I can add that to the list now.

‘I’m gonna miss Brazil,’ Rapha said, seemingly for the millionth time since they’d arrived at the airport.

‘You’ll be back,’ Sam said, looking across the aisle to his fellow Dreamer. ‘Soon as all this is over, yeah?’

Rapha nodded.

‘Least you’ve had your dream,’ Sam added, then looked out his window at the land below that became more and more distant and indistinct. ‘Mine happen every day.’

‘But you’re still useful,’ Rapha replied. ‘I’m just along for the ride now.’

‘You’re still useful too,’ Sam said, snapping out of his reverie. ‘All the 13 Dreamers are important, right up to the end, you’ll see.’

‘I’ll second that,’ Xavier said, grinning as he unbuckled and climbed through to the little cabin, passing around packets of snacks. ‘So, sleepyhead, you know where we’re headed next?’

‘Cuba,’ Sam replied.

‘Cuba?’ Tobias said. ‘Wait—you’ve had your next dream already?’

‘I didn’t tell you?’ Sam teased.

‘Ah, no,’ Tobias said. ‘And the next Dreamer?’

‘A girl, Maria,’ Sam said. ‘I recognised the Cuban flag in my dream.’

‘A girl named Maria somewhere in Cuba …’ Xavier repeated, nodding his head earnestly. ‘Great, that probably narrows it down to half their population.’

‘Once we plug into the dream-recording computer at the Academy, we’ll see more,’ Sam said, then he looked at Tobias. ‘Unless we head straight to Cuba?’

‘Hmm,’ Tobias said, scratching his chin.

‘You know what puzzles me most?’ Xavier said. ‘It’s, well, I mean, what if you don’t dream about it again? And it’s not like they’re recording it, because you’ve already had the dream.’

‘They can retrieve dreams—go back in and see more,’ Sam said. ‘There can be places or names that get missed while you’re dreaming.’

‘They can really do all that?’ Rapha said, dumbstruck.

‘Yep,’ Sam said. ‘Sometimes. They can go back in and look around.’

‘That’s …’

‘Incredible?’ Xavier offered. ‘Scary, weird. And you know what?’

‘What?’ Rapha said.

‘That’s not even the scariest thing about all this, or the weirdest.’

‘So what is?’ Rapha said, looking genuinely spooked.

‘Scariest? Solaris,’ Sam said immediately. ‘Weirdest is how the thirteen of us have our dreams. I mean, why us? How is it that we’re dreaming about the Gears for the Bakhu machine, hundreds of years after da Vinci invented it? That’s the mind-bender.’

Rapha looked from Sam to Xavier, searching for more. Finally he asked, ‘So, what does this Bakhu machine do?’