May Hawaii and the Dreamhunters
¡Special! Double chapter
Minerva
“Shit, shit, shit.”
Minerva Pérez sprinted across the rooftops of Sotopeña, pursued by a flock of toucans whose feet were replaced by hands. Worse still, their beaks were lined with teeth, forming a sinister grin. Luckily, the houses were separated by narrow streets, allowing the young woman to use her blink technique to jump from one to another without plummeting to the ground. However, even though blinking didn’t require much Aerena—unlike the jump—at this rate, Minerva’s reserves would be drained.
“Shit.”
Pérez reached the edge of a rooftop. Below, some of those ugly skeletal dogs were barking. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the plaza, where more hooded figures with masks had gathered. The Cabildo was just two rooftops away. She glanced at the ledge across from her. Blinked. In the split second her eyes were shut, an uncomfortable anxiety rose from her chest to her throat. She hated blinking. When she opened her eyes, she was where she had aimed. Everything had gone smoothly. But the toucans were still after her, and she wouldn’t have enough time to cross the entire rooftop running. She needed time. The access door to the building’s interior was nearby. She could make it there, but if it was locked, the toucans would catch her.
“Rotten shit.”
She turned around and dropped her backpack. From it, she pulled out a device resembling a speaker. Normally, she used it to distort frequencies, but she figured she could rig it to emit a sound annoying enough to repel the toucans. Fortunately, she had already modified it to include a port for a transducer module, which she dug out of a side pocket. She would have to estimate the frequency by eye—better to do quick sweeps. She attached it. Connected it. The toucans were nearly upon her. She powered it on and inserted her earplugs, one almost falling out in her haste. She twisted the modulation dial back and forth while cranking the intensity lever to maximum. She felt the device silently siphon her Aerena.
Minerva didn’t hear a thing, but the toucans reacted as if they’d hit an invisible wall. One lost its balance and tumbled into the street below. The rest screeched and scattered, their cries alerting the kabus and humans in the plaza. Two gunshots struck the ledge close to Minerva.
“Shit!”
She’d alerted the hooded figures. The speaker trick had bought her some time with the toucans, but now she needed a more creative solution to reach the Cabildo rooftop without being overwhelmed. She could already imagine a pack of those skeletal dogs smashing through the windows on the first floor and battering the rooftop door until it gave way. Thinking about it made her head spin and drained her focus. She had to stay calm. She ducked under the ledge for cover and dumped her backpack’s contents onto the ground. All her devices were modular by design. She strapped on a wide white belt, pulled out suspenders to form a harness, and pressed a button on her augmented reality goggles to switch modes. The lenses began reshaping themselves as Pérez attached gadgets to her belt and harness: two graviton cylinders on either hip, two reinforced shoulder pads with hooks, and her remaining three drones.
The hooded figures hadn’t stopped shooting. The door was shaking under the dogs’ attacks. The toucans hovered at a safe distance, calculating the speaker’s range.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit.”
There was no time for a helmet. Or knee pads. Or elbow guards. She attached two console controllers—one for each hand—to telescopic rods deployed from her belt. Then she unzipped her backpack, spreading it out like fabric, and anchored it to her shoulder pads. The rush made adjustments difficult. She had never done this so quickly. The dogs broke through the door just as her glider was ready. It was small and strange, like her, yet wonderfully versatile. She bolted, activating the graviton cylinders. The dogs sprinted after her.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
She took off just in time to avoid a snapping jaw. The cylinders left behind a crimson cloud with purple glimmers. Minerva hadn’t practiced flying in dreams—a discipline most lucid dreamers were eager to try first. Her gravitational glider moved unnaturally slow. In the waking world, she’d have fallen from lack of lift, but that’s what the cylinders were for. The sluggish pace made her an easy target for the masked Devotees of the Mist, who fired relentlessly from the plaza.
“Shiiiiiiiiiiit!”
Minerva let go of one controller and yanked the intensity lever to maximum. The graviton cylinders emitted twin pulses like heartbeats, creating an invisible shield around her. Bullets slowed as if moving through jelly. Her augmented reality goggles flashed warnings of overheating and excessive Aerena consumption. The cylinders began spewing black smoke instead of crimson clouds, with purple particles streaming out uncontrollably like gas under pressure.
“Shit, no.”
She’d have to make an emergency landing on the Cabildo rooftop. With one hand on the intensity lever and the other on the controller, she adjusted as one cylinder ignited in violet flames. Minerva didn’t have time to extinguish it; the waste of Aerena was unavoidable. Her glider began spinning and accelerating. She descended as close to the rooftop as she could, unbuckled the harness at the last second, and rolled onto the surface as the glider crashed into the crystal pyramid over the courtyard, shattering it and plummeting to the floor below. Months of research and development gone. Pérez slammed her hand against the ground.
“Shit!”
She struggled to her feet. Aside from some bruises, scrapes on her knees and elbows, and a strange twinge in her side, she was fine. Lifting her goggles, she pulled out her tablet and activated her three drones, detaching them from her belt. The smell of burning filled the air, but it wasn’t from her cylinders. It was far more organic. Minerva peered through the shattered glass and saw a man with blackened, burnt skin, wearing only pants, leaning against the railing. He carried a massive golden sphere under his right arm and leapt toward her.
“Oh, shit.”
The Little Quantum Clock
“Valdés?”
The burned man looked at her without recognition. Steam still rose from his torso.
“Peres!” he said in his distinct accent.
“Don’t call me Pérez!” she snapped, as if she’d told him a hundred times.
“I’ve got the clock.”
He lifted the heavy golden sphere, nearly as big as Minerva herself. It was a gyroscope housing an hourglass that always stayed upright. Minerva lifted one goggle lens for a closer look, curiously tracing the runes engraved in the metal. One of the glass capsules was cracked, and its wooden frame didn’t close like a typical hourglass. The crack seemed intentional. The gyroscope kept it upright, filled with fine Aerena particles glowing scarlet. They didn’t evaporate but filtered slowly into the lower capsule, accumulating like a normal hourglass.
“It’s magical… I have no idea how it works.”
Valdés shrugged; he didn’t know either. But that wasn’t his concern. He scanned their surroundings. They had to escape and secure the clock. He identified three imminent threats: the flying kabus closing in, skeletal dogs tracking them to the rooftop, and the Mist Devotees coordinating the attack. Two drones reactivated and emerged from the shattered glass.
“With these and the three I’ve got, I can build a quadcopter,” Minerva said, “but there are two problems. First, I need time to assemble it. Second, for it to carry both of us, I’ll have to ‘boost’ the fuel. That’ll drain me dry.”
Valdés nodded, understanding perfectly. Without a word, he scooped Minerva up like a sack of potatoes, ignoring her protests, and ran to the edge. Her yells, punches, and kicks did nothing to deter him as he leapt to a nearby rooftop. Moving farther from the monstrous birds, he kicked open a door and bolted down the stairs to a 1990s-style dining room. He set Minerva on the couch, lowered the blinds, and began piling furniture against the door.
Minerva activated her drones’ lights, pointing them directly at Valdés’s face.
“Don’t ever do that without warning. I mean it.”
Valdés nodded. Minerva wasn’t sure if the giant understood, but she set to work clearing the table for assembly. One by one, she enlarged her quadcopters, joining them together. The fifth drone could fold its blades like a diaphragm and was fitted at the center. Without her lost backpack, the seating had to be improvised. She would sit on the floor, strapped in by a belt, while Valdés hung onto the frame.
“Sorry for scaring you,” Valdés said, seated in an armchair.
His skin was returning to normal, releasing faint scarlet vapor. Minerva remembered their first meeting when May had introduced her to Don Gregorio and Valdés, saying they’d be working together. She’d been annoyed at the interruption, turning to bump into the giant’s leg. “Sorry for scaring you,” he’d said back then, helping her up and gathering her fallen gadgets. Minerva smiled. How silly.
“Just warn me next time,” she said.
“I’m going to find a shirt,” Valdés replied, disappearing down the hall.
The clock sat beside the armchair, its cracked capsule nearly empty of Aerena. Minerva put down her screwdriver and examined it closely. It was a “miniature” replica of the Azarias Quantum Clock housed in the Hall of Time.
“The upper capsule is cracked,” she muttered, reading her tablet’s data. “When it’s upright, it collects Aerena samples from dreamers within range, filling in a half-cycle. Then the clock flips—what’s called the ‘bell toll’—emitting a destabilizing shockwave.”
Chronomancers and Aerena Engineers, the device’s creators, hadn’t been able to prevent this side effect, which disoriented untrained dreamers. After the bell toll, the cracked capsule drained its Aerena back to each dreamer, syncing their sleep cycles: eight waking hours corresponded to seven dream cycles. It was this synchronization that enabled civilization, as unsynced dreamers experienced chaotic temporal relationships.
Valdés returned, wearing a Bart Simpson T-shirt.
“We’ll need to flip it when it’s full. We’ll have to hang it somewhere.”
But Valdés moved to the window, raising the blinds.
“We’ve got to go. They’ve found us.”
“But the quadcopter’s not ready! Shit.”
Minerva hurried to finish assembling the anchor points, connecting her tablet to the control system after losing the console controllers. Barking and footsteps echoed from below. A door gave way with a crash. Minerva secured the gyroscope and started the engines. The quadcopter lifted ten centimeters, hovering steadily. Shots rang out, splintering the door. Minerva guided the drone through the windows, shattering them in its path. Shaking off the glass, she shouted:
“Get on!”
Valdés sprinted to the window and grabbed the harness Minerva extended, securing himself to the frame. He clung to the drone’s base, gripping the telescopic rods connecting the drones. The added weight caused the quadcopter to sink, but Minerva burned Aerena in bursts, regaining stability.
The craft was improvised—small, awkward—but it flew.
“It’s too slow!” Valdés shouted, watching the skeletal dogs burst into the dining room.
“Sorry! I still need to improve the flight capabilities!”
The dogs couldn’t reach them, but two hooded figures leaned out of the window, pistols aimed. What happened next was a chain of events no one could have predicted.
The hooded figures fired.
Valdés leapt toward them, spreading his arms to shield Minerva, abandoning the craft.
The weight shift caused the quadcopter to soar suddenly, sending a toucan straight into one of the propellers. It was instantly shredded.
The toucan’s beak shot out, striking the clock’s gyroscope and jamming it.
The clock tilted, not fully rotating, triggering a distorted bell toll.
An uneven shockwave rippled outward, and time seemed to freeze—or multiply. Minerva saw duplicates of herself, the craft, and Valdés, trailing in the air like the infinite reflections of a stuck computer window. She reached for the toucan beak to free the gyroscope, but suddenly she felt as though her body wasn’t her own.
It was a vehicle. One she was piloting from somewhere else.
A vehicle piloting another vehicle. Minerva smiled.
“How had I not thought of this before?”
