Chapter 4-Enthralling Dreams

Her heart pounded and her legs ached as she flew down the never-ending hallways. Every corner that she rounded, they were there, those eyes, watching her, burrowing into her soul. It wasn’t them that she ran from. She probably could never escape them. "So what am I running from?" she wondered and forced her legs to stop. Behind her, she could hear soft breathing. She forced herself to turn around and she found herself staring at, herself. She felt her jaw drop in amazement and the image of herself in front of her just grinned. Suddenly its mouth, her mouth, spread wide revealing ivory fangs that shone in the dim light around them. "No!" she cried. "Never!"

Suddenly Karin awoke, drenched in sweat. Around her there was a redundant beep…beep…beep as the alarm in her bed signaled the beginning of a new day. She groaned and asked sleepily, "Time?"

"The time is Seven Forty-Two A-M," replied a mechanical voice.

"What?" she exclaimed, sitting up in bed quickly. "How long has the alarm been going?"

"The alarm has been sounding for Forty-Two minutes," it responded.

"Man," she said, pressing her hand to her forehead. The image of the teeth haunted her vision but she pushed it away quickly and leapt from her bed. She threw on a pair of insulated, blue gortex pants in a bellbottom style and a white t-shirt, over that was a blue gortex vest that matched the pants. Embroidered on the back of the vest was a peace sign. She shoved her V-Screen into a long pocket on the side of the pants and quickly put all her scattered texts into the small holder that contained her school discs. She finished by grabbing her wallet and zipping it in her vest, after removing her pod card.

Fortunately, her father was still asleep and her mother had left for work much earlier, so no disapproving looks met her as she grabbed a mocha from the dispenser and head out to her metallic blue pod that was sitting beside an empty space and a beat-up truck. As she stepped outside, she felt a shiver run down her spine and she glanced around quickly. The thought that there were vampyre still out there, hiding, chilled her to the core. Even the protecting rays of sunshine did little to comfort her. Karin found herself making a dead run for the pod and yanking the side open manually, having no time for the fancy, automatic opening. She sat in it quickly as it began to start around her, dials flashing bright colors and her music of the day starting up. It was Friday and that meant classic punk from the "90’s", or roughly 15-5 BU. "Do you know about his strength of conviction? Or how she puts all her faith in religion? Do we take the time to really discover how little we know about each other?" sang the band Less Thank Jake.

She wondered what it would have been like to be able to see them live. Everything was synthetic now and she didn’t see how people could stand it. Even vocalist groups, like the boy bands some of her friends still dug up albums from, were better than the artificial sounds. There were a few underground clubs that had live bands, which she frequented with her friends, but for the most part they had vanished from pop culture. A few people played musical instruments individually, but they too were fading away. It was a complete travesty.

Karin sighed as the pod started up and latched onto a cable above her. She set her hand on the speed controller and as she pulled it down, the pod gradually gained speed and rushed above the city on a network of cables. Below, cars crept along on the congested city streets. Karin was glad she didn’t have to be down there right now. She would have been undoubtedly late for school. There was a good chance she still would be.

Ten minutes later she was ducking into the door of her first class and into a seat next to her best friend, Min. She glanced at the clock and sighed with relief. 7:58 blazed in bright red numbers, signaling that she had managed to make it with 2 minutes to spare. She pulled out her V-Screen and disc-container out of her pockets and set them on the desk. Beside her, Min looked at her questioningly. Her short black hair was cut in an elfish hairstyle around her almond face and her brown eyes were scrunched slightly in the curious expression.

"Where have you been?" Min asked quietly.

"I didn’t wake up until 15 minutes ago," Karin replied.

Her eyebrows went up and she replied, "Is your alarm malfunctioning or was it set wrong?"

Karin shook her head, unruly curls waving. "Neither," she said. "It went off. I just didn’t wake up."

"How long was it going?"

"About forty minutes."

"Yeesh girl! Why didn’t you wake up before that?"

Karin thought a moment about what to reply. She wasn’t entirely sure what she even could reply. Had the dream not allowed her to wake up until it showed her something? No, that was impossible, she must have simply been very tired from the night’s insomnia. She wondered if she should tell Min about Demian. If she couldn’t tell her, who could she tell? She should be telling someone, everyone, the vampyre were dangerous. "We were all once human. Just like you," she heard Demian say in her mind. No, she wouldn’t tell anyone yet. She realized she couldn’t tell anyone yet, though she had no idea why.

She glanced up from her thoughts to see Min looking at her expectantly and she just shrugged. "I’m not sure," Karin replied. "I probably stayed up too late."

Min nodded understandingly. "Finishing the loads of lesson’s Nerima assigned you?" she asked.

"Oh no," thought Karin. The disc that should have held her homework for Mr. Nerima was empty. After Demian had left, she couldn’t concentrate on anything and had ended up spreading her discs in their previously scattered position out of frustration.

Min must have seen her shock because she asked, "You did do your lessons didn’t you?"

Karin swallowed and shook her head. "No," she said.

"What were you doing then?"

"Not sleeping," replied Karin sharply.

Min looked a bit taken aback and she shrugged. "You don’t want to tell me, fine," she said with a slight bit of anger in her voice.

Before Karin could reply, Mrs. Dexter stood up in the front of the classroom, calling for it to quiet down. She began lecturing on mathematical concepts that Karin knew she would never remember. Her mind was a million miles away, thinking of the night’s events. She managed to pull herself into reality but found she still couldn’t focus on math. She stole a glance to make sure Mrs. Dexter wasn’t looking and quickly popped her vampyre homework into her V-Screen, the screen for math in place to be easily brought back up. Then she pulled up her text and got to work. She found she could concentrate on this.

Karin had the three lessons from the Origins done by the time the bell indicated that 1st period had ended. She sighed and packed the V-Screen and discs away, making sure she had recorded the weekend’s homework in her electronic calendar. Min had begun walking briskly toward the skywalk to the next building, which housed the liberal arts classes. Karin rushed quickly to catch up with her.

"Min," she said. "I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you."

"I know," she said with a sigh. "I just wish you wouldn’t hide whatever it is you’re hiding."

"How-Why do you think I’m hiding something?"

"You either are underestimating me or overestimating your own ability to keep your feelings hidden, or lack thereof."

Karin walked beside Min in silence for a few moments, who was staring at her with a compassion and intensity at the same time. "Min.." she began. "You know that if I could tell anyone about this, it would be you, but I don’t know that I can right now."

Min sighed heavily but nodded. "I understand Karin," she said. Karin pulled her into a hug right there in the hallway and after a moment, Min returned it. The two girls smiled at each other and headed to Literature.