The Children of Hypnos

[Vol. 2] Chapter 2: White Noise

The Asha Gilani Sleep Research Center sat east of the administration building. At night, the campus lamps illuminated the long paved front entrance and its carefully manicured shrubbery. Where other buildings on campus looked like Gothic revivals, pale stone and thick oak doors, the research center was all glass and modern angles. Activity around it picked up at night, when the students, both day and night division, attended sleep trials, performed experiments with sleeping sand, and pored over data. Emery slipped inside with a group of Class Fifteens who were at the end of their first semester of training, gossiping as they handed class notes between themselves.

"...why else would they call him the Sandman?" said a boy near the back of their group, close to Emery. "Of course he uses sleeping sand."

"Dr. Lupova made it sound like he had something else, though," said the girl next to him. "Something that wasn't sleeping sand."

"She probably wanted to scare us," said another girl at the front.

Emery held back a snort. Lana Lupova would try to scare her students, but Klaus really did have something at his disposal other than sleeping sand. Not that that information would be disclosed to students—students weren't even allowed to learn how to make sand until their very last year of school, and even then, that privilege was only given to dreamhunters going into the medical division of the Hypnos State. One of many restrictions the State had imposed on their learning after the dreamkiller coup.

The sleep observation rooms were all packed in the center's south wing. Most were empty during the day. At night, they filled with day division students who'd volunteered for studies to observe their dreams, and dreamhunters meeting their monthly sleep requirement, their dreams also monitored by students in training.

Only one room had been occupied all the time in the last two weeks. 143, the door closed and only a dim light on inside. There were no windows in the room. A dreamhunter pair stood guard outside the door; Grandpa Al's last-ditch attempt to prove he might care about Edgar's wellbeing. Emery nodded to the dreamhunters and pushed her way into the room. The dim light came from behind the headboard. Machines flanked the bed, monitoring vital signs, brainwaves, blood pressure. A white noise machine hummed beside the door.

Edgar looked tiny swaddled in his blankets. He and Emery had inherited enough from their mother to look like siblings: curly black hair, slate blue eyes, straight noses. Emery had gotten everything else, to the point where if she tanned, she was mistaken for her mother, while Edgar had a long time before he grew into their father's high cheekbones, lanky frame, and thick eyelashes. Like their father, he was so pale he couldn't tan, but now he looked translucent. Blue veins showed through his eyelids.

Emery bypassed the chair by the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. As she did, she took off her silver charm bracelet with her two silver-and-gold Peacemakers dangling from it and put it in her pocket. It was her guns that had gotten Edgar in this situation. It was her guns and her, telling Edgar to shoot his defenseless, underdeveloped doppelgänger. Her own voice rang through the cold air of her dream, the dreamform revolver clenched in Edgar's hands, his doppelgänger unmoving before him.

Shoot it, Edgar!

The flash of blue light. The unnatural absence of the sound of gunfire. The doppelgänger disappearing on the wind. Edgar collapsing.

Emery took his hand in hers. His fingers were already long; by the time he was her age, his hand would dwarf hers. He'd always reminded her a bit of a skeleton, and when he had their father's height and size, he'd be a walking grim reaper. His skin was cold now; she pressed his palm to her cheek and held it there for a moment, then leaned down and rested her head on his chest.