Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2 by Jody Wallace Page B

down the corridor.
    He wasn’t sure if she was in a hurry to reach their destination or avoiding the discussion. He and Maggie followed her deeper into the facility, traversing stairs, elevators and two more checkpoints.
    When they reached zone ten, Zeke realized why there’d been nobody at ground level.
    Everyone was here.
    Maggie snatched his arm and hung on as if fearing she might get lost in the crowd. Employees in scrubs, fatigues and street clothes hustled through the hallways, in and out of rooms. Medical equipment lined the walls along with gurneys and carts. Doors, opening and closing, revealed coma patients in beds, hooked up to monitors and tended by facility staff.
    “Is this normal?” she whispered.
    “No idea. At least we know it ain’t about you.” Two large, heavily armed soldiers marched past them. Kevlar vests added to their bulk. Mail gorgets protected their necks. For these guys to be fully suited up, in a hospital full of comatose dreamers and other patients, made him wonder how many manifestations Adi would consider out of the ordinary.
    Perhaps he and Maggie should have indulged in contingency planning, like she’d suggested, instead of a grope session. It didn’t shock him at all that she was right and he was wrong at this point. Maggie was really smart.
    “Probably should have listened to you earlier,” he admitted.
    “Two months earlier,” she replied in an equally quiet voice.
    “One thing will never change.” He wasn’t sure how much fallout there would be from his lustful lapse in the SUV, but he couldn’t dwell on that. “I don’t want you to get hurt. You and me—we’re gonna get through whatever this is. Right now this, and later this. All of this.”
    She glanced up at him. He hoped she understood his awkward reassurance. He wasn’t used to talking about feelings, but he sure as hell had feelings for her.
    Damn, he really wanted to kiss her again. The schmaltzy kind of kiss, not the one intended to lead to something more.
    Their brief moment was interrupted by a loud, shrill beep. Several scrub-clad employees rushed into a room, yelling things about paddles and ECTs and adjusting something or other in the drip. Zeke didn’t recognize half the words.
    “Down here, you two.” Adi, at an intersection, waved impatiently. She took off to the right, braid flapping behind her.
    Zeke and Maggie dodged people and machines. They had to stop again for two orderlies pushing a gurney with a body on it.
    The body’s face was covered. Maggie’s fingers dug into his arm.
    “We better go,” he said, though it was hard to tear his gaze from the gurney as he wondered who was beneath the sheet.
    An alucinator who’d recently been in a coma? A fatality from some other injury? Most often, a coma was induced by physical trauma from a wraith attack. It wasn’t usually related to a dreamsphere struggle or the ECT. With the uptick in new dreamers—more neonati meant more manifestations—there’d been more patients for the coma station overall. The coma station also functioned as the morgue for all deceased Somnium employees.
    Zeke wasn’t privy to the numbers and wasn’t a freaking statistician anyhow. His area had sent six unlucky bastards here in the past couple of years, not including Karen and not including bodies. Alucinators with routine hospitalization needs weren’t housed in Wyoming.
    He and Maggie caught up to Adi at a final checkpoint. This corridor was quieter. The rooms must be empty since the rest of zone ten was a madhouse.
    The guard, a young man with a blond crew cut and a scar on his upper lip, nodded at Adi and smiled. “Ms. Sharma. You doing all right tonight, ma’am?”
    “Hello, Blake.” Adi handed her badge to the man. This was the guy Zeke had talked to, then. “This is Ezekiel Garrett and Margaret Mackey. I preapproved their passage this morning.”
    “If you could all initial the roster?” He handed Adi a tablet computer, and she signed something with