Ryven got out of the hospital bed, pulling his communicator off the charger.
"January 6th, 2055"
"11:33am"
"7 new messages."
Ryven tilts his head, inputting his password and opening his messaging app.
"2, 2, 2, 2 doesn't seem like a very reliable password." Abel commented, peeking over Ryven's shoulder.
"Tsk." Ryven mutters, ignoring his ghostly counterpart.
Dad: 2 new messages.
Evelyn: 2 new messages.
Vale: 3 new messages.
Ryven stared at the screen for a moment, debating which to open first.
Dad
"Hey, I won't be able to check you out and take you home today since I'm picking up a few extra shifts at the department."
"Don't worry though, Sylven said she'd be able to drive you home tonight, so just sit tight."
Reading his father's message, Ryven couldn't help but frown.
"Alright☹️" he responded, opening Evelyn's messages next.
As she requested the day before, he and her messaged each other last night with Ryven explaining his experience on this fake moon that all dreamers dream of, and Evelyn telling him of all the drama and work he was missing in school.
"Heyyy 😝"
"You're coming back to school tomorrow right??? 🧐"
Ryven smiled.
"Yes ma'am 😚"
Opening Vale's message, Ryven finds himself gleeful with a bigger smile than before.
"Hey, I'll pick you up at 12 so that we can put Abel back in his body."
"We could also start testing at the lab to see what your powers entail."
"If your hungry, we'll grab some grub too."
Ryven turned to look at Abel, his face displaying a great sense of delight.
"Looks like I'm finally getting you out of my head bubba."
Ryven puts his communicator down, walking to the little closet present in his hospital room.
He turns toward Abel, giving him an awkward look.
"Could you like… turn around. It's awkward knowing someone could be watching you change."
Abel merely chuckles.
…
The pair stand on the top floor of the parking garage, watching the sky.
"The sky is quite cloudy today, ain't it?" Abel asks.
"She's late." Ryven mutters, checking his communicator.
No new messages.
Ryven sighed.
"There she is." Abel muttered, pointing toward a cloud.
Ryven shaded his eyes, watching as Vale's blue and white transporter pierced the clouds, descending in a wide, banking arc that caught the grey light and threw it back in flashes of white and cold blue. The wing-like fins adjusted as she came down, tilting against the wind that swept across the open levels of the garage, their azure edges brightening as the craft slowed. A pulse, then another, steady as a heartbeat.
"I still can't believe she can afford something like that on a part time teachers salary…"
Abel chuckled. "Dreamers earn a lot in various military and research fields. If there abilities are useful, there's no doubt that they'd be paid well."
The transporter swept low over the neighbouring rooftops, its speed slowing to a crawl as it hovered over the landing pad.
Dirt, dust, water and snow flew as the aircraft dropped the last twenty feet in near silence, its hatch-side fins flaring outward like the spread fingers of an open hand, the azure glow shifting and deepening into something closer to violet as the landing system engaged.
Touching down without a sound, the duo watched as the sound of steam filling pipes blessed their ears.
The hatch slowly rose, revealing Vale who was dressed with in a large red puffer with black cargo pants.
"Hey!" She called out, exiting the vehicle. "How is my schizophrenic little student doing?"
Ryven scoffed. "We both know I'm not actually a schizo, there's actually a separate conscious in my brain."
"Mhmmm." Vale responded jokingly. "Now come along, I found a good bagel spot a few blocks from here." She beckoned
"I though we were gonna fly there." Ryven complained.
"God forbid someone get a bit of exercise." Abel chuckled.
"They don't have a landing pad. It's a small family owned buissness." Vale responded, calling the elevator.
"Now come on, let's go."
…
The elevator opened onto the street level with a tired groan, and the city swallowed them whole.
It was loud in the way that January cities are always loud, a particular kind of noise built from layers. Boots on salted pavement, the hiss of passing vehicles, the low mechanical hum of storefront heaters breathing warm air out onto the cold street. Ryven pulled his collar up. Vale walked ahead of them at a comfortable pace, unbothered by the cold the way she always seemed unbothered by everything.
"How far?" Ryven asked.
"Three blocks." Vale said, not turning around.
Ryven exhaled a small cloud of frost and said nothing else.
The further they walked, the thicker the crowd became. At first it was gradual, just more bodies on the sidewalk than usual, people slowing their pace, craning their necks toward something further up the street. Then the sound reached them. Not traffic. Something else. A low, rolling murmur that grew steadily the way a storm does, you hear it long before you see it.
Vale slowed.
The street ahead was completely blocked.
A crowd stretched from one side of the road to the other, dozens deep and still growing at its edges. Some held signs, hand-painted on cardboard or printed on stiff backing and fixed to wooden poles. Police cruisers sat parked diagonally across the intersections on either end, their lights turning lazily in the grey morning air. Officers in high-vis stood at intervals along the barrier line, watching with the particular expression of people who have been standing in the cold for too long and have already decided nothing is going to happen.
"Lovely." Abel muttered.
Vale stopped walking and surveyed the scene with calm, practical eyes. "Bagel spot is just on the other side. We can cut through the side street."
Ryven wasn't listening.
He was reading the signs.
DREAMERS ARE NOT HUMAN.
PROTECT OUR CHILDREN FROM DREAMER INFLUENCE.
GOD MADE MAN. NOT DREAMERS.
HUMANITY FIRST.
The building anchoring the far side of the street was a church, old stone, its facade darkened by decades of city soot, a wooden cross fixed above its arched entrance. On its broad front steps, elevated above the crowd, stood a man in a black coat with a white collar and the kind of voice that had clearly spent years learning how to carry.
He was already mid-sentence when the words reached them clearly.
"…and I ask you, I ask you sincerely, where does power come from?" He paused, letting the crowd settle into the silence he had made. "It comes from God. It has always come from God. Every gift, every grace, every ability that a man possesses, it flows from the Almighty and from nowhere else."
A chorus of agreement rippled through the crowd nearest the steps.
"So when a man tells you he can walk inside another man's mind while he sleeps," the pastor continued, his voice climbing, "when a woman tells you she can bend what is real and what is not, when these people stand before you and claim abilities that no scripture ever promised to mankind, I want you to ask yourself one question." He raised a single finger. "If it did not come from God, where did it come from?"
The crowd answered before he could.
Vale touched Ryven's arm. "Don't."
"I wasn't going to say anything." Ryven said flatly.
"You had the face." She replied, and kept walking.
They peeled off the main street and onto the narrow side road that ran alongside the church's outer wall, the pastor's voice trailing after them, bouncing off the brick.
"They are not afflicted! They are not to be pitied! They are to be recognised for what they are! If the power does not come from the Lord then there is only one other source, and every soul in this city knows whom I refer to!"
Abel drifted alongside Ryven.
"You know what's funny?" He asks,
"Hm?" Ryven responded.
A man of the lord dehumanizing and demonizing a group of people as if they are single handedly destroying the quality of life for ordinary people. Sure, there are various factions and dreamers whom wish to use their powers for evil, but most had no wish for such abilities. Most just wish to live a normal life, unlike the corporations that have been lobbying against dreamer protections for the last decade. Not the weapons manufacturers who would lose billions in government contracts if dreamer operatives kept doing the job cheaper and better than anything they can build." He paused. "But sure. It's the dreamers. They're the demons."
"Oh brother," Ryven mutters 'there he goes complaining about these corporate hegemonies again.'