I nodded. “I’m going to find a way to end the Dream Wars, and once the dust has settled, I want to offer Dawn and her family a home here on Earth. I trust that Jeremy will find a way to feed them, but I need the government to openly offer them safe haven here. Do whatever you have to in order to get that deal in writing, then I want it discussed openly on the nightly news.”
Damien’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re not messing around.”
“I’m not. They had you on a kill list. I’ll never fully trust them.”
His face clouded. “Yeah I remember.”
They’d also blown up our mine and publicly taken credit for making the plasma cuffs. I trusted the government about as much as I trusted Ronnie’s cat.
“But I want to be with you…” His fingers trailed along my neck and I stepped closer to him.
“I just don’t have anyone else with the skills for this, Damien. You’ve run a billion-dollar business, you’ve negotiated contracts… it has to be you.”
He stood straighter, smoothing his shirt.
“I’ll get it done, but you get back to me in one piece.”
Leaning forward, I brushed my lips across his mouth. “Promise,” I whispered.
When I pulled back, I inquired about Josephine and Mr. Han.
Damien shook his head. “They’re fine, they’re off in town trying to find Jeremy mac and cheese and hot chocolate.”
“It is dinner time,” I said.
That caused Damien to smile. “Sometimes I think the universe sent me my brother so I wouldn’t take life so seriously.”
He was right. We were in the middle of a very intense situation and Jeremy needed his mac and cheese and hot chocolate. It was comical. And speak of the devil himself, Jeremy popped out of a nearby tent and looked around until his eyes landed on me.
He was holding a phone and beelined it right for me, bypassing all greetings. “So I found the lizard I want,” he declared, and my stomach dropped.
That fucking lizard promise! I’d forgotten all about it.
“Oh?” I asked, as Damien winced. He’d forgotten too.
“It’s a desert spiny lizard. They are usually in Arizona. So you can go there to get me one.” He shoved the phone in my face and I looked at the picture of a brownish lizard with teal and red under its neck.
“Alright, buddy, you got it. Just as soon as I save the world first,” I joked. I knew the joke would be lost on him, but he nodded as if he understood.
“Obviously, I don’t expect you to get it until you collapse the Dream War.”
Damien and I stilled at the same time. We’d both picked up on his wording.
“Collapse?”
He nodded looking at my forehead. “When they came here, the breeders… opened the Dream War and laid it over our own. When they leave, they collapse it and take it to another place. You are like the breeders. Your brain is like theirs. You can collapse it.”
Adrenaline shot through my body. “They collapse it? Are you sure? How do you know?”
It sounded like it made sense. It matched up with what the Galadrias described as well.
“I just know,” Jeremy said. “I’ve run the numbers. I’ve pored over your brain scans. I know.”
“But there are hundreds, maybe thousands of breeders that work together to do it. How can I do it alone?” I wondered aloud.
Jeremy looked at my shoes, his voice becoming very small. “You could do it, but I didn’t say you would survive.”
Fuck.The brutal honesty he laid out stung.
