章 14: All eyes on him

Ivo looked between the three pairs of eyes staring at him. Yet again they had found something different about him. Something else to make them suspicious of him.

He lowered his eyes and picked at his plate listlessly, suddenly no longer hungry. He would never have brought the dream up if he had known this was the reaction it would get him.

"What did you dream about?" Thiago asked, trying to sound casual.

Ivo's eyes flickered briefly towards Davi before dropping to his plate again. No way was he telling them about the red star. With the revelation that he wasn't supposed to be dreaming at all it felt suddenly too intimate.

"The fall," he said, looking up at Davi again. "I dreamt I was falling from that balcony again."

Davi raised his eyebrows at him with a dismissive shrug.

On the other hand Alina's eyes grew wide as saucers. "Falling to your death used to be a very common dream!"

She grinned very wide, and laced her fingers under her chin, giving Ivo a studious, very serious look.

"You know, dream research is my passion. I spend a lot of my free time in discussion boards talking with other people who are also interested in the subject. Our goal is to find out why no one is dreaming anymore, try to find whatever information we can on dreams from when people were still researching them, and hopefully, one day, bring them back without using meds!"

It was obvious it wasn't the first time she had talked about it. Thiago looked benevolently amused, as if he thought her dream research was charming. As expected, Davi looked unfazed by the whole thing, if not a little bored.

It was a surprise then, when Davi took a sip of his dramatically pink juice and pointed at Ivo with a glass. "Speaking of meds, the lux are the only ones who use them to dream. It's the only way nowadays, but no one else has the money to spare on such a pointless luxury."

Alina snorted. "Well, they might think they're dreaming but really they're just hallucinating while sleeping," she rolled her eyes, "it's not the same thing, but trust the lux to not know or care, about the difference."

Davi's pale eyes remained trained on Ivo. It wasn't hard for him to guess the accusation circling around behind his circuitry.

"Well I didn't take any pills," he said. He stabbed the fork into this folded tapioca, and cut off a slice, shoving it into his mouth aggressively, still glaring at Davi. "This is really good," he told Thiago, who fist-bumped the air with his chrome arm and a kind smile.

"I'm sure you didn't take any pills," Alina said, elbowing Davi who rolled his eyes and got up from his seat, taking his empty plate to the sink.

She went on, "Usually the dreams the lux brag about online all coincide with the typical exaggerations caused by drug-fuelled hallucinations. They're easy to tell apart from real dreams. For instance, dreaming about falling is usually a sign of anxiety, which is to be expected, considering your present circumstances, but more than that, you feel like there's no solid ground underneath your feet."

Ivo nodded thoughtfully. It was just too bad he couldn't ask her what dreaming about the red star tattooed on Davi's back meant.

"You need to tell me if you have any more dreams, this is a huge breakthrough."

He felt compelled by Alina's hopeful look to nod in agreement.

Hopefully he would have no more dreams, or at least no more dreams about elusive red stars. All things considered, he didn't think dreaming was nearly as exciting as Alina made it out to be.

"He's not going to tell you anything because he's not going to stay here," Davi said, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

Ivo turned around on his stool and gave him an accessing look. "If you turn me out on the street what's stopping me from telling everyone what you did? You killed two people."

A muscle jumped in Davi's jaw, and the very next moment Ivo had the barrel of a gun pressed under his chin. "I would be very careful about making those kinds of threats if I were you."

He loomed in closer to Ivo, forcing his neck back with the gun. "Like you said, I killed two people. Not to mention the many others you don't know about. Do you really think I wouldn't kill you too?"

Ivo swallowed drily, throat tight. "No, because it would be a bitch to clean."

Davi frowned. "What?"

"If you kill me, the three of you will spend the rest of the day cleaning off bits of brain out of your kitchen." He turned his face to the side, away from the muzzle.

Thiago let out another of his booming laughs. "This kid has balls of steel, you have to hand it to him."

Davi holstered his gun in the back of his jeans. "I don't have to hand him shit."

Just when it seemed the tension was about to clear, something banged loudly on the apartment's door.

Davi, Thiago and Alina were immediately on high alert. Davi moved slowly towards the door with his gun in hand. Alina reached under the counter and pulled out a huge machine gun she shouldered with ease.

Thiago took two huge knives out of the kitchen board. Ivo just backed away from the line of fire.

"We don't want to buy anything," Davi yelled towards the door, as the other two assumed positions, weapons at the ready.

Someone laughed outside, the sound clear and crisp. "No, no, I'm not here to sell anything. You've already taken my money. I'm here to collect what I bought."

All eyes turned to Ivo once again.

So, this was the person who had wanted the box Ivo had been found inside. The question was: did they know Ivo would be in there?