Chapter 1:
Crisis Rise
"Don't worry, baby. Everything is going to be all right now, darling…" She knew that voice. It was so familiar, so close, but yet so far from having a name. "Shh…" She could feel a hand on her face, caressing her cheek, sliding down her neck, and lingering to trace her collar bone. "I'm going to make it all better."
She suddenly felt a pressure on her, but not an all-encompassing force. She tried to move, but she was trapped. She had been all along. And she couldn't even think of moving when the pain shot through her.
Irma awoke with a start and managed to stifle the blood curdling scream that threatened to rip through her. She put her hands to her face and wasn't surprised to find sweat seeping through her soft skin, even though she was shivering from a chill that seemed to come from her bones. She wiped her eyes and was relieved to see the Kamilla and David Addams posters still checkering the walls. It meant that she was home. It meant that she wasn't in that strange place with that strange voice and its strange touch. She took a deep breath and sank back down onto her bed. This was the eighth night in a row that she'd had the same dream, and in the eighth night in a row that it horrified her. Afraid to sleep, terrified of dreaming, she simply stared at her ceiling until her alarm went off three hours later.
Irma and her friends went through a relatively normal day at Sheffield Upper Institute, with one exception. The girls' history teacher—they had each managed to schedule at least one class with a fellow Guardian—decided that now was the time to assign a ten-page Wars of the World paper, in which each student was to pick a war and study some small aspect of it. As everyone else freaked, Irma feverishly wrote notes and started brainstorming. She had to find something, anything to keep her mind off her dreams, which seemed to be all she could think about anymore. So she was happy to be given such a huge assignment, which would end up counting twenty percent of her final grade, no less.
And so her lunch period—her favorite class, since the Upper Institute didn't offer Recess—found her at the library, organizing and categorizing her brainstorms into a more workable list.
Her absence was not unnoticed. "Where is Irma? It seems so quiet without her," Will noted.
"More importantly, I still have my dessert left. I almost don't know what to do with it," Cornelia chimed in. Hay Lin gave a small chuckle and nodded her head in agreement, excitedly finishing her pudding.
Taranee rolled her eyes. "I'm starting to get worried. Irma's been acting really strange over the last few days… I hope she's all right."
"Oh, don't be so dramatic, Taranee. She's probably just worried about finals coming up." Everything stopped. Forks and spoons clanked on lunch trays. Defenseless food dropped to the table. Everyone looked at Will and knew she had to have bumped her head somewhere.
"Okay since Will obviously ate some bad pudding, I'm going to go find Irma." Taranee rose and left. The last place she'd think to look, which happened to be the one place she didn't look, was the library. She thought she had exasperated all her resources, and it was time to go back to class. Fortunately, her next class was English. With Irma.
They took their seats next to one another, and Taranee wasn't surprised when Irma gathered her notebook and pen, but she was more than shocked when she actually started listening to the professor. And Irma could have knocked Taranee over with a feather when she actually started taking notes. "Irma? Are you all right?"
Irma nodded and refocused her eyes on the professor. She didn't want to have another one of those awkward conversations in which she couldn't voice her real fears. Irma expected a note, but was more interested in what the professor had to say. She was in the middle of assigning a short paper on Sophocles' Antigone, Irma's personal favorite from the reading list. Irma intended to make it a long paper. Anything to keep her occupied.
She was a little caught off guard when a piece of paper slid on her desk. She opened it and read, 'Irma where were you at lunch today? We were worried.' She scribbled back, 'In the library,' and slipped the paper back where it started. She happened to glance over just in time to see Taranee's eyebrows furrow. She even noticed Taranee stare at the paper and mouth, "Excuse me?"
While Taranee was busy trying to process three words, Irma was already on her second brainstorming session of the day, and was doing great work at that. When the teacher was done lecturing and the bell rang, Irma was the first one out the door. She had to shake Taranee, and when she saw the students left in her wake, she knew she did a good job. She smiled as she headed off to Advanced Algebra, her last class of the day. Hay Lin was her only friend in the class, and she knew well enough to stay away from Irma when she was feeling like this. Irma couldn't help but wish for more friends like her Hey-Hay.
And so it was that Irma went through her Algebra class, taking perfect notes, quietly solving problems, and just being a model student until that bitter-sweet moment when the final bell rang, and the girls were let free to roam Heatherfield as they pleased. Irma had other plans. She was heading straight home to start on her projects and study for her finals, even read ahead for next quarter. She was getting ready to try and fry her brain to the point where she would never dream again. Irma knew it was a tall order, but she also knew that she would do whatever it took to stop those nightmares. Correction, that nightmare.
She needed to act fast. She didn't drive her car today, so she had to make a quick escape. Irma rushed through the front doors of Sheffield Upper Institute and was halfway down the block with no intentions of stopping when she heard the shouts she dreaded. "Irma? Hey, Irma! IRMA LAIR!" she heard Will scream behind her.
'DAMN IT,' she thought as the girls and their respective boyfriends rushed over. Irma sighed heavily and tried to put on a happy face while the couples chattered amongst themselves on their way. She thought about turning and running away, but that would cause even more suspicion, which she did not need right now.
"Hey, Irma! Uh, how was school today?" Hay Lin asked tentatively.
Irma'd had enough. She raised an eyebrow. "You tell me. You were there." She crossed her arms and saw Eric tighten his grip on his girlfriend's hand as her lips trembled. She also noticed her other friends purse their lips, almost like they were holding something back. "Okay, if there's something you guys need to say to me, I suggest you talk now because I'm leaving in five, four, three, two—"
"You know what? FUCK THIS!" Cornelia erupted. "Irma, we have been worried sick about you for the past week. You've been quiet, nice, accommodating—the complete opposite of how you used to be and damn it we want to know what the Hell is going ON with you!"
Will tried to explain. "What Cornelia means is—"
Irma shook her head. "So there it is then… I'm going home. I have two papers and six more assignments." She turned around and started to walk away, but then she turned and said, "You wouldn't understand anyway… Just don't worry about me, okay?"
She left her friends frozen on the sidewalk, stunned. She knew she had been harsh, but there was just no way she could make her friends understand what she was going through. She had done a complete personality shift… and over some dreams? Irma couldn't believe it. Irma wouldn't believe it. After she fried her brain tonight, she decided, she would make a conscious effort to go back to the funny, spontaneous, carefree Irma that her friends knew and loved.
As she started to concentrate on her steps, Irma realized something was missing. She dug through the side pockets of her backpack and found her iPod. Favorite song, repeat, volume up. 'Much better,' she thought. While she nodded along and hummed to her preferred Kamilla tune, she didn't notice that another set of steps had started to keep time with hers.
Irma rounded a corner and did notice a strange shadow behind her, but she chided herself for being so silly. Heatherfield was a big city, so there were people all over the place. 'No need to spaz out over one shadow,' she chastised.
And yet she couldn't shake that overwhelming sense of foreboding that crept up on her. Irma had realized over her years of being a Guardian that her intuition was far better than everyone else's, but she rationalized her feelings as being yet another product of her recurring nightmare. 'Nothing to be afraid of,' she tried to reassure herself. Her heart wouldn't listen. It kept pounding and pounding, until she couldn't even hear her iPod anymore. She shook her head and took out her ear buds.
This time, Irma started to notice the unfamiliar steps. She tried something. She stepped. He stepped. She stopped. He stopped. She turned around, but she couldn't see anyone. Okay, her mind was playing tricks on her. She had just been hearing things. That's all. The phantom steps were just that. Phantom.
She swallowed deeply and started whistling another Kamilla tune. She didn't want to go back to listening to her iPod in case something WAS wrong, but she couldn't just walk in silence, either. 'Almost home, great,' she thought as she noticed the street sign a few neighborhoods from her own. She quickened her steps in response and hoped this irrational fear would melt away when she crossed her threshold.
She smiled as she thought about home. Things hadn't been so great in the last year and a half, but she didn't mind. Her father Tom had made Lieutenant and was working more than ever at Heatherfield Police Department. Sure, he wasn't home so much, but he always had the best dinnertime stories when he was there.
The only thing that had been troubling the Lair household was her step-mother Anna's new business. Anna—Irma never called her mom—had always had an eye for colors, patterns, and designs, and so she had decided to turn it into money. She opened up her own interior design firm, right out of their house. The only thing worse than random strangers appraising Irma's dirty room, her appearance, and her overall character, were the nights that she had to listen to Anna's sulking if she didn't meet that day's goal. For her own sake, as well as that of her step-brother Chris—better known as runt—Irma hoped her mother more than exceeded today's expectations.
Irma also couldn't help praying that Christopher had more than enough homework to keep him busy until suppertime. Ever since Irma had gotten her car—a new-to-her 2006 Honda Accord—as a sixteenth birthday present, Chris was always bugging her for rides. One of the conditions of the gift was that Irma had to oblige him in most cases, and furthermore run errands for her dad and step-mother when they needed her. The plus side, in addition to the overall freedom of a car, was that her curfew had been extended to ten o'clock on school nights, as long as she could show Anna that her school work was done—no matter how poorly—and she called Tom to let him know where she was. Considering how paranoid her father was about his "little baby girl," those were big concessions.
She remembered then that she hadn't told Tom that school was out and she was heading home. Irma knew that her father would think she had detention, so she reached in her pocket for her cell phone and sent her father a quick text. He replied instantly and hoped she'd had a good day. Irma couldn't help but smile. No matter what he was doing, Tom would drop everything for his first and only daughter. She couldn't say the same for her step-mother. It was always, "Hold on, I'm comparing swatches," or "Just a second, this fabric doesn't feel right." It was one of the many reasons they weren't as close as other step-mothers and step-daughters, and to be honest, Irma didn't even feel any love loss. Irma remembered her mother very well and was devastated when she died, so she always looked to Anna as a stranger, and that was not going to change.
Thinking about all that had made her forget her present settings. She didn't notice when her steps slowed down or when the stranger's had sped up. She didn't hear it when he had caught up to her. She only knew something was horribly wrong when she felt her backpack being ripped away from her. She gasped just in time to feel something slide through her arms. She stumbled back as the person pulled, and crashed into his chest. Before she could think to do anything, before she could release the scream that had been building all along, a hand crushed her mouth. But she still tried. She moved and screamed desperately, but it did no good.
As she tried to make sense of what was happening to her, the man pulled her back, and she felt some kind of pressure change. She couldn't even get a bearing on where she was, because her eyesight had suddenly… disappeared. Irma was now blind, and terrified. The only relief she could claim was the movement of the hand from her mouth. She was finally able to scream, to cry for help, to beg for mercy… but no one answered. Not even the man who was kidnapping her.
She closed her eyes tight and tried to keep the tears back. Tears meant she was really afraid. Tears meant that there was really something wrong. That this wasn't a dream. Tears meant that something awful was really going to happen to her now.
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Dead Reckoning
