Dreamwalker

“How are you feeling, miss?” You could hear the accent in the doctor’s voice. German, you thought. A lot of the doctors sounded German, and most spoke it or English when around you. You didn’t know German and your English was okay considering you were Sokovian born. 

“Fine,” you croaked out. It had been a week since your encounter with the stone. After a day in that cell, they moved you into a different part of your prison. It was nicer. A softer bed with thicker blankets. You had a small television that only played two channels. It was better than the cell block at least. 

The boy had come back. You remember that. You stayed up despite your tiredness to see if he made it. The girl was taken the next day, at the same time you were taken to the new room. You don’t know if she made it back. You hope she did. The room felt far away from most people. You didn’t sense anyone near it besides guards and people in passing. 

“Good, good.” The doctor wrote something on the board she carried. She was always writing something. She didn’t speak much, and her mind was mostly quiet. You couldn’t hear anything from her unless she thought it was urgent. 

She was the one who ran tests on you every day since you left the cell. The guards would bring you into an office of sorts where she would poke and prod at you and ask so many questions. 

“What happened in the room?” She looked at you intensely. “With the stone.” 

You turned your head to her. Her eyes were brown, dark brown, and her hair was red. The red reminded you of the visions you had when in the room. Her eyes looked kind, but they weren’t always. Her face was sharp, angular and her glasses were pointed at the ends. 

“It is a special stone, if you didn’t know. I need to know what happened in order to figure out what other tests to run.” 

You looked away from her and at the medical equipment near her. You felt her growing impatient. The walls were white yet the counters in the room were blue. There were a lot of drawers on each of them and file cabinets in the corners of the room.

“Cooperate with me and I may be able to get you a few privileges. Like outside time.” 

Your eyes darted over to her and her lips curved into a smile. You had to wonder if she could really do that. You hadn’t been outside in weeks. Not since you were taken. 

“You said that you saw everything. What did you mean by that?” 

The prospect of going outside propelled you to answer. “The stone..it showed me a lot. I don’t remember much.” 

“Okay, well what do you remember?” 

“Colors. Red and green and brown. Snow. Destruction.” 

She began to write more, flipping to a new page on her clipboard. She continued this for a few minutes. “And what about after?” 

“After?” 

“A guard checked on you in your cell. He said your eyes were glowing yellow. Did you see something then?” 

You looked down. You were sitting in a chair covered with some crinkly paper that made a noise every time you shifted slightly. “I saw a girl.” 

“A girl? What did she look like?” 

“Brown hair, green eyes. She was in the room with the stone. She was walking toward it.” 

The doctor’s eyes widened. “Fascinating. Have any other abilities manifested?” 

“Abilities?” 

“Have you noticed things that you didn’t before? Have you done anything that you couldn’t before?” 

You didn’t know how much you wanted to tell her. How much you could tell her. So far, you know for sure that you’ve been having visions. Visions of the future. But they came at random. You could feel the presence of others and how they moved. The closer, the clearer you could ‘see’. You felt how people were feeling. You could hear the thoughts of other people, though that was unreliable. It was mostly pressing thoughts, strong ones that didn’t go away for a while. Ones that came in fast and hot. 

You told her an abbreviated version of it all. She started to write so fast that her pencil broke. 

You didn’t tell her about going into that guard’s mind. You didn’t tell her about the nightmares you’ve been having that weren’t yours. When you slept, you felt like a spectator in someone else’s dream. 

You didn’t tell her about being able to change a person’s dream. Like that girl who’d been in the cell next to you. She had a nightmare about her brother, even though he came back. Feeling bad for her, you accidentally took away the nightmare, forcing her into a dreamless sleep. 

“Am I done?” 

She looked up at you. “You’ve given me a lot to think about. You being able to see the future will come in very handy, I just know it. More reason to keep you around.” 

‘More reason to keep you alive,’ is what she didn’t say. 

“It sounds like you have both telepathic and empathic abilities. You’ll have to learn how to use those efficiently. We’ll also be watching out to see how your powers grow.” 

“Can I go outside?” 

The doctor frowns. She stands up and moves to the door. There’s a button right outside of the frame like a doorbell, only inside. 

Your focus was on the door. You could feel two people walking towards the room. They were coming from kind of far, faint yet growing closer. 

“If you tell me when to open the door, you can go outside.” She stands with her hand on the doorknob. 

The presence of those people grew stronger. They were guards, that much you could tell. You felt the annoyance of being called. It seemed as if they were on a break, but forced to answer. Once they were right outside the door, one of them lifted their hands to knock. 

You nodded your head at the doctor and she opened it right before knuckles hit wood. The guard looked nonplussed, but feigned indifference. 

Feeling the excitement of the doctor growing, she turned to you. “I’ll send for you in one hour.” 

You lifted yourself off of the table and walked toward the guards. They led you to the new room. 

Telepathic and empathic abilities. It was nice to get a name for what you were experiencing, but you couldn’t help but want nothing to do with them. These abilities were only going to keep you here longer. The only other way out that you knew of, though, was dying. 

You sat on the bed you were given. It was still small, as was the room, but bigger than those other cells. The television sat there, screen black. You didn’t really want to watch it. You were antsy to get outside. To finally breathe air that isn’t stagnant. To see the sun instead of having to rely on fluorescent lighting. To maybe try to find a way to leave. 

An hour later, or what you think is an hour later, you feel someone coming up to your door. You got off the bed and stood at attention. The door opened up to that guard who stood outside your cell. He came with a jacket and boots. 

“Put this on.” The sound of someone speaking Sokovian was a relief to you, even if it was a guard. You followed his instructions and put on the jacket. He led you down several different corridors. Any one walking around, doctor or scientist alike, stopped to look at you. You kept your eyes down, but you knew you’d be able to feel their eyes on you anyway. 

You went up a flight of stairs with the guard before you reached a door. It was the only door in the empty hallway. On your right, you saw a concrete wall with a long rectangle of glass. You could see a guard inside that room looking at a bunch of screens. The guard leading you knocked on the window, startling the other. 

You heard a buzzer sound and the door opened slightly. The guard in front of you opened it wider and stepped outside, waiting for you to follow. You did. 

The sun was out, hanging high in the sky and almost blinding you. When your eyes adjusted, you looked around. It was just a small area with a metal bench to your left, but also surrounded by a fence. The ground was covered in snow, snow you haven’t seen in so long. You stepped further out and almost crouched down to touch it when you sensed the presence of people on your right. 

“Fifteen minutes.” The guard left you with the other two people and went back inside. The door closed, locking you outside. 

The first person you really noticed was the girl. Her eyes. They were the green eyes you saw in so many of those visions. Her hair was stringy and brown, like you saw in the vision in your cell. Her lips were pink and drawn together in a line. She didn’t say anything and you were too awestruck to have even found her. 

You must have stared at her too long because you heard someone clear their voice next to her. Your eyes followed the sound to see the boy looking at you. The one who came back, like you.  

“Hi,” the boy said first. You guessed it was his sister standing next to him. She fiddled with her hands in front of her. You could’ve sworn you saw them spark red. 

“Do you speak?” The boy walked closer to you, causing a spike in the anxiety his sister felt. 

“Or maybe you speak English? What is your name?” 

‘Why is she not talking? Is she deaf?’ His voice filled your mind as the thought raced across his. 

You frowned at his words at the same time his sister smacked his arm. 

“Pietro, don’t be rude,” you heard her whisper-yell at him. 

“I am not being rude! This mind reading thing of yours has already gotten old, Wanda.”  

Your head turned to her. She could read minds, too? 

‘Too? You can read minds?’  Her eyes met yours again. 

Pietro turned to his sister, then to you. “My name is Pietro. And hers is—” 

“Wanda. My name is Wanda.” 

You didn’t get to respond as your breath was stolen and your eyes widened. Another vision was overtaking you.