Staying quiet, that was my main concern, after all Yusuf and Arthur was the one going to get us back and forth between the universes and I didn't want to die.
"Do you guys need some help with setting it up?" Dom asked.
We were sitting in the back of my school's Gymnasium trying to set up this new tool Yusuf and Arthur had been working on for the team to use for extraction jobs. It was a large, black box with wires of various colours streaming down on every side of it. What Arthur had told us was this machine was going to be able to take us to various miscellaneous universes to make the dreamer believe that it is in fact a dream, while their subconscious doesn't keep changing the setting. This will help them to retrieve crucial information to complete the job, without the usual struggle with keeping the dreamer running off to do whatever it is they please. That is what the machine does, it takes you back to your childhood, all the things you loved as a child, everything form the comic books to an actual childhood experience, they could recreate.
"No, we can handle it, but thank you Dom" Yusuf replied.
"Alright, well how long will it take to set up the Universal Transporter?" Dom said hiding the whine in his voice.
"It should at least take a few minutes, Dom. Don't rush us, unless you want to get stuck in limbo for the rest of your life." Arthur said sarcastically, as if he takes these life threatening risks on a daily basis.
Right now they're working on the Stevenson job, they need to get him to spill about a pin to open an artillery vault at the Bullion Depository in Fort Knox, Kentucky. The entire reason I'm here is because I was snooping around in the back of my schools Gymnasium, curious to find out what these corporate looking people are doing in our school. I was especially curious because one of them looked to be around my age, but then again I could be wrong about that.
"Don't worry, Dom, we have plenty of time." said Eames reassuringly
"It's not time I'm worried about, it's about failing the job, we don't have our usual team with us today." His eyes drift over toward me.
It's true. Because I was snooping in on them earlier, being my usual stealthy self, I tripped over one of the mats lying on the floor, for the gymnast team who had been here previously, and landed flat on my face with this loud SMACK. When they saw me they were concerned I would gossip about them and their strange looking machine. So they told me if I was so curious to see what was going on, I would have to risk my own life to experience the dream world for myself. After the hostile treatment, we had our introductions and Ariadne, the girl who I thought to be about my age who was actually 19, explained to me what we were to do and what to expect when inside the dream. She out of the bunch, was a relatively a nice person and wasn't too disturbed over my being here. She explained to me about how this whole thing works and what to, and what not to do while in the dream.
"All right you guys" Arthur began. "Just for a minor test we will try travel to a random universe for 2 minutes, see how it goes and only then will we travel to Mr. Stevenson's universe."
The team agreed to this and soon Yusuf pushes a series calculations and all of a sudden we're all hooked up to the machine in their sterile looking suitcase.
"This will only give a slight pinch." Yusuf reassures me.
I was slightly comforted by this, after all he is the one to be staying behind and guarding us. All of a sudden my eyelids grew heavy and the world around me becomes blurry and distorted, when I find myself sitting in the back of a blue BMW, driving down a very bumpy dirt road in the gloomiest of day. The clouds were even darker than the sky itself, and even the grass was dull, but it was still green. I squint my eyes at the dust and debris coming in from the windows just before Arthur rolls them up.
"Everything seems to be alright so far, but stay alert for anything unusual." Dom told us
What is unusual here? I thought. Slowly I started to recognise the setting of this place, the looming grey sky and everything was dreary beyond compare, but it was all given away when I read the sign "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft And Wizardry". We were in the Harry Potter universe. I wasn't much of a Harry Potter fan but I couldn't stand being here much longer. I hated the way it felt being in this dream, everything so strange and wild and weird ( and not in a good way).
"When can we go back?" I complained. "We're in the Harry Potter universe."
"What? Is that where we are?" Dom asked "I thought we were in the Matrix or something like that."
"No, we're in the Harry Potter universe, we just passed Hogwarts." I replied.
I saw the look on Dom's face, he was astonished by this. "You really know your stuff don't you, Whatever it is? Huh, You maybe useful after all." Dom said.
"What? I don't get it, What can I possibly do that can actually be useful?" I asked.
"For starters, you can help us to identify our location and figure out where the dreamer's subconscious might be kept. I never got your name by the way." Dom asked.
"Nicole." I said. Maybe this is actually worth the risk I thought to myself.
"Well Nicole," Dom began. "You're now temporarily part of the team. Don't screw up."
It's only a few moments when I start to feel so undeniably weak, my head thumps on the back of my seat. When I wake up I'm back in the Gymnasium lying on the dusty floor.
End of chapter one. Chapter two coming soon.