Chapter 1

Kevin hadn't told anyone about the dream for two weeks. Not that it mattered. As Victor would say, a dream was only the brain processing information in the unconscious. Of course, he would say that, being a man of science. What business did Victor have interpreting nonsensical processes? He was a surgeon, not a psychologist. The man had made a comfortable life for himself already, opened his own hospital in Landow, Sraledo, and settled down. Eighteen hours of his life a day were dedicated to logic - to the things he saw in front of him. Kevin's dream had never seemed that logical to begin with.

The first time he'd had it, he just remembered a place. It was a strange place at that, more like a hall, or a singular room, but he couldn't remember any doors. There were huge purple columns carved from a luminescent rock of some sort. Kevin had looked online best he could, but glowing purple rocks didn't seem to exist, so he figured that it was paint, or more likely – just part of the nonsense that made up the dream. The next night, there had been people in the place. They looked mostly human, perhaps just a little taller. Only, like the rocks, their skin glowed. Every single one of the bioluminescent people had a unique array of swirling colours adorning their skin. Purples, gold's, silvers, greens, pinks, blues, oranges – any colour you could think of. It even wove its way into the hair of some of them. Similarly, their clothes were adorned, but this was definitely painted. The third night, the people spoke, but it was not English, so Kevin could never understand what they were saying.

By the end of the week, the dream had become a fully fledged scenario. A young woman would burst through the doors (which had appeared in the room on about the sixth night), and yell something in her strange language. The chattering would die away into screams and panic, and then an explosion would sound with no obvious cause. The young woman would stroll over to the centre of the room, and lift something up. That's when Kevin would be able to see her face. It was a soft, kindly face, with the most beautiful blue eyes he'd ever seen. Silver swirls wound their way up her cheekbones, giving her an angelic appearance, like she was something more than mortal. Then, they'd be more of that strange language, softly spoken. She'd walk once, twice around the room, and place the object she was carrying into what looked like a large egg shaped rock. She'd whisper two words. 'Prixeth Corveilis' and then there'd be nothing but an array of colours. Every colour of the rainbow would pass over Kevin's vision, and he'd get the strangest sensation of falling. He always woke up before he hit the ground.

Of course, he'd spoken to friends at school about it, but a bunch of teenage boys weren't giving quite the right answers behind Kevin's questions.

"Maybe it's from a film you saw once?" Robert had suggested.

"I think I'd have remembered it if I could recall all that. And why would I have watched a film that I couldn't understand?"

"It could be a secret message, like maybe you need to find that place or something?" Shaun piped up.

"It might be sort of hard to find a place with glowing purple rocks and people with glowing veins .."

"Orrrrrrrrrr what if it's a leaked government tape that's somehow found its way into your brain?" Gary whispered.

The other three friends glanced at each other. Gary had a tendency to slip government conspiracy theories into conversation, so much so that they weren't exactly sure which were ironic any more.

But Kevin shook his head at all three.

"It's just so incredibly ... bizarre. If it had been a one off I'd be ok, but it's been happening every night"

"Have you spoken to Victor about it?" Robert asked.

Kevin pulled a face. He trusted Victor on almost every level but this one. The man had found him abandoned outside of his surgery one night 17 years ago. There was no note, just a small wicker basket and a strange contraption lying on the pillow. The surgeon had taken the baby (Kevin) into his care, and raised him as close to a son as possible.

Kevin drummed his fingers on the table, mulling over the possibility of discussing an appointment with a dream therapist. The metallic sound echoed off the wooden desks. Ah yes, the strange contraption lying with the baby had in fact, been ... a hand. Kevin's actual left hand, for an unexplained reason, was missing. It wasn't particularly gross, and there were no medical records that might explain its reason for absence. All he had was a tiny prosthetic. Victor had noted, after observing it, that the technologies were incredible. Far more so than anything he'd seen in his own surgery. Both the wrist and fingers could be extended in such a way that they'd adjust to his wrist size no matter the age. From this, Victor had concluded that whoever had left Kevin must have been a genius pioneer of technology, and couldn't afford raising Kevin, so had left him for someone else to raise. There was no proof to confirm, but it seemed logical. Kevin hadn't been particularly upset with this theory as he'd grown to see the surgeon as a father figure long before Victor confessed his suspicions. If their bond was really that close, Kevin hoped he'd be willing to help.

The teenager decided to ask that very night, over dinner. It was Spaghetti Bolognese, one of his favourites, and a speciality dish from Angel (who happened to be Victor's wife). Victor had initially frowned and was going to gently start his lecture again, but he knew Kevin wouldn't ask if it wasn't serious, so he decided to let it go just this once.

"And you say this has been happening for weeks?" He rolled his r's around his mouth through his thick Cuban accent, contemplating the logistics behind his ward's dream.

"Like clockwork" Kevin nodded. "Surely with all our recent developments, there must be someone who can interpret it"

"Well" Victor sighed "I do not know my friend. If you have this dream again tonight, I will take you somewhere this weekend"

Kevin smiled gratefully, hoping he would get answers at last. He also hadn't been lying about the recent advancements with technology. With the uprise of robots and humans working side by side, and NASA reaching out further and further into the depths of space, all sorts of wondrous things had happened, so much so they were almost the norm. Why only earlier, Kevin had sat in front of the holographic TV and watched an interview with (the lead scientist at Sraledo Geology centre) about an interesting meteor that had fallen a couple of weeks prior. The team had not yet identified the elements inside the rock, and breaking into it had proved almost impossible, even with diamond cutters. If they could discover all of this, surely there had to be someone that could interpret a silly little dream.

Kevin went to bed that night, deciding to try and think of different things before bed. Perhaps the over thinking was causing the reoccurrences. Before he slept he thought about the new hover board spin master 3000, which he'd been saving his pocket money for, for the past few months. Even Robert, Shaun and Gary didn't have one yet, and he couldn't wait to be the first to ride one. Never the less, the dream returned to him that night. Only there was one difference. When the woman walked to the centre and picked up the thing from the middle, Kevin could see what it was. And it was a baby.