Paranoia (The Night Walkers) by J. R. Johansson

again and try to alter the dream. Start small, nothing big.”
    I leveled my stare at him. “Right—I saw how well you did that.”
    Jack’s jaw closed with a click and he looked down but didn’t respond.
    Taking a deep breath, I focused, and my fingers passed into Mom’s head with no resistance. I felt nothing but a slight tingling sensation at my fingertips. Ignoring her thoughts, I came up with something small, something I’d seen her do every time I’d stopped by her office for a visit. Then I tried to mingle my thought with hers and send them back to her: Coffee sounds really good right now.
    Mom kept flipping through her papers, but after a moment, she reached out and punched a button on her phone. “Cindy? Could you grab me a coffee?”
    Cindy’s voice came back through the phone. “Sure, no problem.”
    I dropped my hand back to my side and faced Jack as the ramifications sank in. “So I can alter any dream that way? I can make someone switch from a nightmare to a good dream? Make my mom stop making out with Mr. Nelson? Anything I want?”
    “Mostly.” Jack shrugged. “Some dreamers are more resistant, and sometimes you’ll do more harm than good … like you saw before.” He winced, then continued. “Again—I’m sorry about that, really.”
    I nodded. “Okay. I get that it wasn’t intentional.”
    “Sometimes I just think … ” Jack hesitated and then hurried on. “There’s so much that you don’t understand about him and his life.”
    I held out my hands. “Like?”
    Jack’s face flushed with anger. “Like that he lived with other Night Walkers before he met your mom. He was involved with a Builder there. Her name was Sarah.”
    I stared at him for a minute. “So?”
    “So she loved him and chose him to be with, to dream with. She made him stronger. He never loved her, though, and she knew that, but they were happy together. Until he met your mom. Then he left.”
    “Left the Builder?”
    “Left everyone.” Jack popped his neck on one side and watched me. “He was important to the cause, a leader in starting the rebellion against the Takers. Then, a year in, he met your mom and left all of that—along with his chances for a long life—to be with her. And then to be with you.”
    My hands fell to my side, but my jaw twitched with anger. “What am I supposed to say? I’m sorry? Well, I am. I’m sorry he’s unreliable. The only thing this history lesson teaches me is that he’s had years of experience at leaving people he’s supposed to care about.”
    “Oh, poor, poor Parker.” Jack spat out my name as he stood and started pacing back and forth on the other side of my mom’s desk. “You can be so selfish sometimes. I don’t know how I’m supposed to trust you with information when you don’t understand so much about our world. So many like us have sacrificed, have been murdered. The Takers became monsters, so we rebelled. Even after your dad left the rebellion, he still worked on the drug to help us beat them. But that failed spectacularly, and he stopped making it the moment he realized what it actually did. Now we’re nearing the end—either they win and force him to make Eclipse, or we find a way to defeat them once and for all.”
    Stopping, he pressed the palms of his hands flat on Mom’s desk and stared up at me with wild eyes. “This isn’t about being happy, Parker. Screw being happy. For us it’s about survival. But your dad—he risked survival for happiness. He sacrificed everything, left everything and everyone he knew and called family, all to make a new family with your mom. The only thing that forced him to leave you two was when he found out the Takers intended to hurt you to get to him.”
    I didn’t know what to say to any of this. It was so much information that I still couldn’t really understand. I knew nothing of their world, of their code. And I didn’t appreciate the way Jack acted like I didn’t have a right to my own emotions