Blood - Chapter 9

Nico doesn't know how long he has been lying back in the light-water or what has really happened. He feels for the first time in his life that nothing at all matters. That there is nothing to worry about. He thinks back to the panic he felt when the blood machines went wrong. How anxious he was being loaded onto the transport with the others. How he worried the whole way and he laughs at himself. What were those worries?

Why did he feel like that? He wonders if this is really Dreamworkspace and this will be how he will feel for the rest of his life. How wonderful. The real world of the Unit and the Academy and Invigilators has melted away. Just gone. Like it was never there, or was an idea that someone put in his head. Invigilators! He laughs when he thinks of their stupid gliding, their reptile eyes. Surely there not be such a thing as punishment. People didn't drop to the floor, rigid, at one touch from those ridiculous, ugly creatures.

He's been asleep and is was the best sleep of his life. No nightmares. Pure, deep, relaxing. He wouldn't mind if he had to sleep like that forever. He thinks of the stories he's heard about WorldBefore and how people then believed in something called Heaven which is where they went when they died. It was makde of cloud and blue sky and something called Angels were there, pure and good and with wings. He wonders if this is it. What they called Heaven. He smiles to himself, wondering this, hoping he might see the beautiful pale, good creatures called Angels and be this happy forever. But there was another place the WorldBefore people went to if they were bad. But he can't remember.

“Nico,” he hears Lara call, but gently. Her voice pulls him through the light-water and he seems to be falling very slowly. “Nico” she's calling, “wake up!” He becomes aware of something more solid under him, like a bed. He doesn't want to leave the beautiful soothing light-water and he tries to ignore Lara's calls but she is insistent. He feels her hand on his arm, her voice closer, the bed more solid. “Nico!” she is shaking his arm. He is waking, properly. Even though he doesn't want to. As the light-water clears, it feels like it is actually clearing inside his head and body, not outside. He opens his eyes slowly. They are droopy, lids heavy. He doesn't want to.

“Nico, look where we are!” and he can see Lara, she is bending over him. It takes him several minutes to come round properly but as he does he becomes aware of the room. White walled. Nothing it in but five bed, curved to suit the bodies lying on them. There is Denny, still sleeping. Lucky. The Mystic and the Warrior girls, whose names he still doesn't know and Lara beside him, her bed empty.

“We're in a building, high up!” she says. “You can see out.” Her voice sounds excited, delighted. She is pointing to a space in the far wall. Glass. A window or a screen. Nico tries to sit up but his head is woozy. Not like it usually is. He wonders how he got here from the light-water. He wishes he was still there.

Eventually he is sitting upright, looking round him. He can see the other beds seem to be floating in the air. He jumps down onto his feet but his legs are wobbly. Lara laughs at him.

“I was like that,” she says, offering her arm for him to steady himself. He feels like the tiny Dreamers at the Unit who stagger round on unsteady legs. He takes Lara's arm and she guides him across to the glass. It is transparent and what he sees amazes him. They are very very high up. Outside are rows and rows and rows of tall buildings, he supposes just like the one they are in. with regular patches of glass which must be windows like this one.

Nico looks down and it is dizzying. Down there at the feet of the buildings tiny things like boxes are moving in straight lines between the buildings.

“Look, Lara! Down there. They must be the transports.”

“Yes.” They both stand transfixed at the window. Looking out. Above them is an astonishing blue sky. Palest blue. Small white clouds travelling slowly across it.

“Do you think we're in ...” Lara says.

“ ...Ultraspace?” Nico finishes for her. “That's what the man said.”

“It's beautiful,” Lara breathes, pressing her nose against the glass as if to get as near as she can.

Just then they hear a croaky sound and turn to see the Mystic girl stirring.

“I can't see,” she is saying in a voice that sounds like she hasn't used it for a hundred years. Nico and Lara go across to her and she turns to look in their direction. “I can't see!” she says again but she doesn't sound upset about it or worried.

“We're here,” Lara says, touching the Mystic's hand. “We're in a white room, there are five of us ...”

“Yes I know,” the Mystic girl laughs, looking Lara directly in the eye. “I can see that. I mean I can't see.”

Mystics, Nico knows, are the ones who can see things that others can't. Wraiths and spirits. They can talk to them. One Mystic told him it's like seeing two worlds at once. Realworld and Greyworld they call it.

“Weird!” the Mystic girl says, shaking her head as if to get water out of her ears. She looks directly at Nico and he can see the unsettling green eyes that all Mystics have. “Is this how you guys get the word?” she asks and shakes her head sadly for them. As if they are missing something.

“I wouldn't want to see wraiths and spirits,” Nico says to her, “why would anyone want to?” Imagine seeing the world as it is and then another population of wandering see-through people bumbling about and sometimes passing right through you. “Imagine reaching out and your hand going right inside some dead guy's guts or head? No thank you.” The Mystic laughs and Lara laughs too.

“It's really weird,” the Mystic says, looking round at the others still flat out on their floating beds. “Cool,” she says, “look at the beds.”

“Come and see out,” Lara says and helps the Mystic off her bed. All three of them stand at the glass looking out.

“Get the sky!” the Mystic exclaims. “How perfect is that?”