Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2 by Jody Wallace Read Free Book Online Page A

mattress.
    “The room’s for mentoring, not for status.” Sometimes Maggie reminded Zeke of that brainy girl from the kid wizard movies. The know-it-all. “You’ll have to bunk with the rest of us chumps if you aren’t training neonati.”
    “I train neos every day. I teach, what, five classes?” He was in charge of hand-to-hand groups at various levels and sometimes weaponry and field tactics. Not that he was the only trainer for those areas, but they were his specialties.
    “Mentoring,” she said. “If you’re not bed-sharing with a phase one on a regular basis, you’ll lose the room.”
    “Maybe not. Nobody else needs a private room right now,” he said. “Only L4s and L5s can mentor, and they’re all set. I’m safe till your brother graduates. He could be ready for students in a few months. Unlike you.”
    Her glare returned. They hadn’t even had breakfast, and she was attacking him…while he was responding as jerkily as he knew how. She was going to come after him hard in the four AM hand-to-hand class.
    He’d need to be careful she didn’t strain something. Two months of PT had increased her stamina, strengthened her muscles and trimmed her down a little. Not too much, thank God. She was still soft and pretty. But she hit like a cat. Quick, all claws, surface damage only. She might never be a front line field agent.
    Fine by him. He didn’t like to think of her facing monsters out on the streets. He just hoped she picked a job besides couch potato. They tended to ship couchers off to a couple facilities in California, and…
    And Adi and the other vigils had already mentioned assigning Maggie to the opposite side of the country. It didn’t matter if she picked a job she could do from the East Coast base. He wasn’t going to be able to see her after he trained her.
    She lifted her chin. Though it was approaching eleven PM, when most people were hitting the sack, she looked sharp, well rested, and full of piss and vinegar. That bruise from combat training barely showed on her arm. “I’m out of here.”
    “Aren’t we going to discuss how you did what you did with your shield?” He clambered out of bed and grabbed a T-shirt off the floor. Sniffed it. Not too awful. He kept talking to her through the material as he slid it on. “Think you can repeat it? What’d you do different?”
    When his head emerged through the neck, she was watching him with complete exasperation on her face.
    “What?” he asked. “Those are legitimate questions.”
    “I guess we’ll find out next sleep when I kick you out of my shield again,” she said before stalking out of his room.
    Around five AM the next day, Sean, an L4 orator on loan from the Aussie division, motioned to Zeke from the doorway of the dojo. When Zeke joined him, he didn’t waste any time. As soon as they were out of earshot, he said, “Got a code three ping for you, mate.”
    Each sizeable Somnium establishment kept an orator on duty in case information that couldn’t be trusted to technology needed to be disseminated. Phones, computers, and routine mail could be tapped and traced by governments, agencies, corporations, hackers—any number of nosy fuckers—but the dreamsphere was impenetrable to regular humans.
    The Somnium had no known enemies. That was because nobody knew the Somnium existed, except for the Somnium itself.
    “What is it?” Zeke asked. Pings were rarely good news.
    “Adishakti Sharma. She says you’re to report to the waystation ASAP.”
    Zeke didn’t need to ask which station—Adi spent most of her time at the large medical facility in Wyoming. The Somnium’s contracts with employees included long-term healthcare, even if that employee was a psycho who’d tried to murder them and had had to be ECT’d into a coma.
    “Do I need to trance out for details?” Zeke asked. Why would Adi need him at the coma station? Why couldn’t she use the telephone? Her request didn’t bode well.
    “No, Ms. Sharma just asked