Page 44 of Red Line

With keys in hand, Red turned to her car, but now she was somewhere with all grass and no streets for parking.

She had to find the car, and she needed to get going.

When people dreamed, was it always this much work? How did they wake up in the morning feeling refreshed?

“You could take the train,” Helper-woman finder-of-glasses said.

“Thanks,” Red answered.

Queasy and floaty, Red saw a children's train—the kind that takes kiddos back to the parking lot at amusement parks. When she climbed in, she was the only person on the train; there wasn’t even a conductor at the front running things.

The train chugged upward in a steep climb. The ride was rollercoaster-like. As she looked to her left and the right, there was no bottom. She would just freefall into nothingness if the train were to skip the track. Clinging to the sides, Red looked for a safety strap, a harness, something that could hold her in the car as it plunged down the rails. The car swooped down and rattled her back and forth as it straightened out.

“I don't dream. Thismustbe important,” she stuttered out through clacking teeth. Biting her tongue, her mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood. “I need to pay attention.” And with that thought, the train came to a sudden, lurching stop that threw her body forward, then back again.

As she winged around another loop, plastered to the side of the car by centrifugal force, she screamed into an empty sky that she really, really hated the sensation of being between the conscious world and this bizarro make-believe space.

She found herself in the car she’d parked earlier, her fingers wrapped around the steering wheel, the airbag deflating in front of her. She couldn’t feel her legs. “Are you okay?” she managed to ask the person beside her. When he didn’t answer, she reached a hand toward him. “Are you okay?” she mustered.

The dream stopped.

She was awake now, lying there with heavy lids, not knowing what to do. Not knowing how to feel normal in her body. What was wrong with her?

Think! What’s happening here?

Her brain didn’t feel like her own. Red remembered the meeting that Color Code had about Havana Syndrome and the pressure that CIA victims felt in the atmosphere, and then something happened in their brains.

Red hadn’t paid close attention the day of that lecture. The attacks came at embassies. John Green should be worried. He worked out of the embassy in Bratislava. But she was a field officer, and nobody focused a secret brain-destroying weapon attack on her.

No one knew who she was.

And as meanspirited as her assessment felt, it was better that Green get hit with the danger waves and not her. The CIA didn’t treat women well when they showed up with a job-related disability. Yeah, things went really badly for them. And some even died from that inattention.

Now that Red had moved her thoughts to illness, she remembered she was in recovery. She’d been in an explosion on top of being sick.

This stupid dream about losing her car and getting stuck on the kiddie train from hell must be a fever dream.

Red hoped that once she was well again, she’d go back to her dreamless sleep.

And with that thought, Red blinked her eyes open to green tiles and fresh white sheets with not the slightest pink tinge from the Lebanese river water.

Did she slide into a new dream?

What was all this?

She skated her hand over the surface of her sheets. They weren’t soft, but they weren’t thin and rough like at the hotel.

An I.V. was stuck in her arm. That was it as far as medical equipment went—no heart monitors, no automatic cuff that would check her blood pressure every so many minutes.

She’d woken up to that before. This setup told her she wasn’t in a life-or-death fight for survival. Whatever her situation, she was stable.

Then she remembered that in her dream, she was in some kind of event that left her without sensations.

Was that real?

With a sudden jerk, eyelids held rigidly open, Red threw back the covers and looked down her body. The visual of legs and toes wasn’t enough. She curled up and touched her body parts, pinching until the sensation registered. Ten toes, two legs. Fingers, hands, arms. She touched her ears and felt her face and neck for bandaging.

Her eyes felt wild in her head as she looked around. She was so disoriented. So fuzzy.

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