Prologue

Dreams are a strange thing. There are a number of theories as to why people dream, but none of them have ever been fully proven or disproven. They connect to key sensory sections of the human brain, giving people the same input as during their waking hours. At a glance, it can be nearly impossible to distinguish a dream from reality. The watermark of a dream, which allows it to be easily separated from reality, is the lack of logic.

Mr Cairn, a wiry substitute teacher with glasses like magnifying glasses that both clashed with and complimented his plaid suit, had told this to Lydia's grade 9 gym class in the middle of a lesson on CPR. No one had paid him much attention, the students were far too busy on their phones to pay attention to a lesson taught at the start of every month. The few people who had heard what he said quickly forgot it, subconsciously filing it away in their minds as 'random shit some old man said'. Then, out of the dark closet in the back of her mind, that memory returned to Lydia. 

She was sitting on the floor in her living room, watching TV while her mom braided her hair. Her dad was in the kitchen, cooking dinner for the three of them. On the TV, the news was reporting the latest updates on the war. According to the broadcast, two kinets had hit major enemy targets that morning, allowing for the ground forces to continue to advance. The station played footage of large craters where cities had stood before they were wiped from the map. 

The memory snuck up to her, before forcing its way into her head, and she thought about that gym class for the first time in years. It had been foolish of her to believe that she could escape into this dream. The watermark of a dream, the lack of logic, was so blatant and obvious that Lydia felt insulted by the dream for thinking it could fool her.

Her dad hadn't learned how to cook until her mom had died in a kinetic attack two years earlier. It was earlier in the war, when they were less common. She was in Boston for a business trip, and then, the day before her flight home, a kinet had hit the city, leaving half a million dead. It was a big news story, everyone around the world knew about it. In history classes, it was known as the first time an enemy kinet hit a target in mainland America, and a turning point in the war.

For Lydia and her father, it was not knowing anything. Her mom was on a missing persons list for a year, until her body was found, identified by her prosthetic leg. A man had come to their door, dressed in a clean suit like some chipper salesman from the 2000s, to tell them that the body had been found. It had never been sent to them, as it was mostly dust and bone, and the rubble was nearly indistinguishable from the parts of her that survived.

Over the next year, civilian casualties had skyrocketed to never before seen numbers. It had become strange to have not lost someone to the war, and many people had been far less fortunate than Lydia.

Even though she knew it was a dream, she wanted to stay in it as long as she could, if only to sit next to her mother like this. She wanted to, but she knew it was a bad idea. Recognizing a dream for what it was was dangerous, as Walkers would start to gather if she was dreaming for too long. 

She gathered the willpower to wake herself, and opened her eyes, looking up at the ceiling above her bed. A narrow ray of sunlight shone into the room from her window, forcing her to squint. Nothing to do now but go to school.