Hearing the voice behind me, caused me to jump forward, twisting around and drawing my railgun before landing, aiming at the location the voice had originated from. Anath reacted in similar fashion, only that she drew her khopesh and moved towards the voice.
My mind insisted that I was hallucinating for a moment, when I saw what had spooked us. Leaning against a tree, wrapped in a silvery blanket to preserve warmth and possibly hide from infrared detection, was a tall, willowy woman, with an almost unearthly beautiful face. Other than the shape, nothing could be made out in the false colours of the low-light vision, but judging from contrast, her hair was either white or a very pale blonde.
Biting back a curse, I challenged her, “Who are you? And who told you where to find us?!”
“Peace.” the woman said in a calm and measured voice. “You can call me Isleen. The question who told me, is a rather complicated one with a simple answer. I don’t know.” she explained, with a melodic accent in her voice.
I was a little confused and logical thinking slowly asserted itself. If anyone who wished us harm, had the information this woman obviously had, there was no way that they would have approached us in such an obvious manner. Unless they knew far more than I did, in which case trying to outsmart them was pointless.
“Explain. Please.” I asked, my railgun still raised, but no longer directly pointing at the woman.
“I, as my mother and her mother before her, have a gift, the gift of dream-walking.” the woman, Isleen, started and I had to stop myself from already interrupting. I had researched Powers quite thoroughly and, while there were reports of extra-sensory perception-powers, I had never even heard of an inheritable power. “When I walk the dreams, I have little control, I am drifting on the current but a few months back, there was a change. I was drawn into another consciousness, at first it was strange but I got to know him. His power is similar to mine, linked to dreams. But where I walk the dreams of others, his dreams show the future.”
At that point, I was quite happy to have my mask on, or the look of shock would have given an insight into my thinking process. I had always been sceptical about precognition-powers, I could accept extra-sensory powers easily enough, even something like dream-walking was plausible when considering the manifestation-dreams that were shared by those with the same powerset. But to accept precognition was a step further and I had problems with it, even knowing about the more or less scientific studies about the topic. Sadly, there had been just as much evidence showing those that claimed such a power as fraud as there had been confirmations.
If one just thought in perfectly newtonian-mechanical terms, it was theoretically not impossible to calculate the position of every atom, every neutron in the considered system and, when taking into account outside influences, it would theoretically be not impossible to calculate future events.
But the discoveries of quantum mechanics threw that idea right out of the window, and even if one assumed that quantum mechanics might be completely wrong, that something was missed, there was the problem with the amount of calculations necessary to accomplish such a feat. Calling it staggering was putting it mildly.
While I was reeling with the claim she had made, she calmly continued talking, in her dreamy, rambling manner. For being interrogated at gunpoint, in the middle of the forest, she was extremely co posed. I got the feeling she was very much marching to her own drummer. No, not a drummer, too martial. More likely her own bagpipe, accordion or xylophone.
“When I first stumbled into his dreams, he was confused and didn’t quite know what to make of the things he was seeing and feeling. Some he could understand, a building that he knew suddenly going up in flames, that is an easy image to comprehend. Other images were harder to understand, a giant with a flaming torch in hand, guiding a wolf-pack towards a huge, ancient building, that was one neither of us understood. Or a shadow stalking after him, hunting him and striking him down, he didn’t understand the meaning, but knew that he had to escape.
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But his escape didn’t work as he wanted, while he found people who promised him help, their promise was duplicitous. They helped him, yes, but not to escape. They helped him to enslave himself to them, their attempts to help him with his gift were only supposed to let him be a better servant.
When I met him, he was despairing, seeking a way out but unable to see. Our powers combined, allowing me to see with him, allowing me to guide him. What we saw was a black blade descending from the skies, severing the shackles that bound him. We knew that I would have to come here, tonight, to find wisdom and cunning. Only then, could I help him to escape. Not even my mother, not even my father would be able to help.
Mother always taught me to trust my gift, that it would guide me wll. So, here I am, hoping that my gift has guided me well.”
It was a fantastic story. But, it somehow rang true to me. Or rather, I was lacking alternative ideas that made any sense at all. If anyone would have had the information this woman had to have had and wanted to do us harm, her approach was about the most unlikely to use.
“Let me get that straight, someone in your dreams told you that you find someone here that would help you to save him?” I asked, hoping that there was some hint of deception, something to make sense of this nonsensical situation.
“Yes. I don’t know why I had to wait until meeting you, and not just let my father help, but I trust my gift. And his gift.” There was no guile in her voice, just calm acceptance.
“What do you think?” I asked Anath, using voice-coms so she could not hear us.
“I… I don’t know, it seems insane. But at the same time, it feels right. I’d say, let her go with us. We want to rescue the girls you said were taken and put an end to their facility. Helping someone out is a good idea and if she is in our debt, she might not tell about our involvement.” Anath answered, while Galatea was ambivalent. There seemed to be no good reason not to accept her help and keep an eye on her.
“Alright. Our target is a training-camp, about a kilometer away. Maybe your dreaming friend is there. You can join us.” I told her.
“Yes, he is. He has shown me the facility in my dreams. I know my way around and can guide you.” the woman explained, when suddenly the clouds broke open and a bit of moonlight shone down on us, letting me see her appearance without the false colours. Her hair was indeed snow-white but her eyes were a surprise. They were ruby-red.
It was a surprising appearance, but I was thinking about her words. If she could truly guide us, great. But I would take at least an hour to scout the facility, before engaging. That meant we would likely attack them some time between wake-up and first coffee. If I wanted to plan an attack on me, that was exactly the time I would strike.
After introducing Anath and myself, to a snort of surprise from her, hinting that she knew the meaning of my name, we set off together, making our way towards the facility.
Isleen could keep up surprisingly well, maybe she had a bit of physical power to go with her dream-walker power, and soon we were walking into the valley that housed the training-facility. From our vantage, I could see that there were a few guards and the lay-out was just like the satellite-images hinted at. The satellite-dishes were on the other side of the facility, compared to the building I believed to be the armoury and I wanted to take out both, before entering the rest of the buildings. For the armoury, I planned to use explosives, but I had hopes that maybe Galatea could use the connections going to the satellite-uplink to infiltrate the place.
I was just about to tell the other two that we would go after the satellite-dishes first, when Anath pulled her second communicator-set out, handing it to Isleen. Just before she was linked in, I asked Anath not to mention Galatea, that I would like to keep her a secret. She agreed and a moment later, Isleen was linked in and we started our way down the hill, towards the first target of the night.
The exterior wall was three meters high and crowned with barbed wire, but neither Anath nor I would be hindered by the wall itself. Sadly, here they had overlapping security cameras, without any blind-spots.
After weighing the chances that nobody would see us or that they were lacking some sort of motion-sensing against the chances that a camera-failure would cause a full alert, I decided to induce a camera malfunction and hope for the best. Carefully aiming with my taser-gauntlet, I sent a weak charge into the system, hopefully enough to disturb the feed but not enough to fully fry the camera.
We quickly crossed the empty expanse and vaulted over the wall, Isleen being grabbed around the waist by Anath, which looked quite funny, as Isleen was roughly a head taller than me, and I was about a head taller than Anath.
Inside the compound, we quickly looked around, checking if there was any alarm being raised.
When none was in evidence, we continued on our way towards the satellite-dishes.