Finally, he pulled away and faced me. “I thought you were…” He couldn’t’ say it.
Dead.
I shook my head. “Dawn saved me. Pulled Ronnie, Maxine, and I up to Skyhome. I had… some health issues… so I couldn’t contact you.”
My ankle still hurt, as well as the wounds on my upper arms, but I was okay.
Best not to mention the possible “brain bleed.” His eyes ran over the stitches and staples dotting my shoulders from the skid bite and finally he sighed. “I tried to get to you by going to sleep, but they locked us out.”
A frown pulled at my lips. “Who locked you out? Out of the Dream War?”
He nodded. “I took a sleeping pill, passed out, and dreamed! Kit, the entire world was locked out, or in depending on who was already asleep at the time. When the breeders shut down your ability to open the portals, they shut down the Dream War temporarily.”
Holy shit. People… dreamed. It must be all over the news. That also explained why that guy who’d jacked my gun at the lake had been so frantic. He’d been trapped in there for days.
I asked what had been pressing most on my conscience: “Did you get citizenship for the Galadrias? Do they have food?”
He glanced around at the soldiers near us and pulled me into a thick grove of trees for added privacy. “Jeremy has discovered a synthetic mixture of aloe vera juice, any kind of cooking oil, and chlorophyll sustains them. Buckley is having barrels of the green stuff shipped over from Nevada.”
That was a huge relief.
“And the citizenship?” I could tell by his fallen expression that there was an issue with that.
He chewed at his lip. “That’s a work in progress. They’ve been granted temporary asylum.”
Rage flooded through me. “Ex-fucking-scuse me?”
Damien reached out and squeezed my hand. “Buckley was super impressed with what you could do with the portal and excited at the prospect of the breeders and sentries turning to ash. She’s given Jeremy full range over all intelligence to build whatever he needs, but…”
“But what?”
“But she still sees the Galadrias as aliens who don’t belong here. She will only grant them citizenship if you destroy the Dream War as promised.”
I was fuming. “And if I don’t?” How dare she give me a fucking ultimatum!
He winced. “They need to go back.”
“Their home was just destroyed! The giants ripped Skyhome down as we stood on it!” I was hyperventilating and my headache was worse than ever. I needed to relax and should probably go check on Ronnie and Maxine, see how Dawn and Clyde were, but this was too important.
“I’m going to speak with her. I’ll be right back.” I spun to leave, but Damien was right on my tail.
“Kit, that’s not a good idea! She’s fighting a lot of international pressure. News crews have shown up—”
I spun on him and faced him down. “Are you with me or against me?”
It was a shitty thing to ask but now was the time to take sides. This was it. The end. The big moment. I needed to know that if I died trying to end the Dream Wars, the Galadrias would be offered save haven on Earth. Forever. No matter what.
Damien reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “With you. Always with you.”
“Okay, then let’s go talk to Buckley.”
I stormed off with Damien at my heels. President or not, I would grind this woman down until she had no choice but to submit to me.
Eleven
Damien and I were waiting in a tent while Buckley finished up a press release on what was happening with the Dream War. We were told the press conference was happening at the opening of Trillium Lake, down the road, and a huge canvas sheet had been erected to cover the opening to the Dream War. Damien and I watched it live from his phone.
“Who is this woman who can… open a way between our worlds? Is she an American citizen?” one reporter asked.
