Read Online Paranoia (The Night Walkers) by J. R. Johansson - Free Book Online Page A

questions, I don’t care what you do.”
    “So ask.” He sat on one of the wrought-iron benches and folded his arms over his chest.
    The ball felt rough and cold in my hands. I knew what I wanted to ask next, especially after the violent thoughts Darkness kept pelting me with. I just wasn’t completely sure I wanted the answer … but Jack might be the only one who could ever tell me for sure. Darkness shook his head from the shadows and I decided to go for it. “Is it possible to kill someone in a dream?”
    From the corner of my eye, I saw Jack’s eyebrows fly so far up they almost melded with his hair. “Why?”
    “Just answer the question.” My grip on the ball was so tight my knuckles hurt. I hurled it toward the basket and the collision made a clanging noise so loud it echoed back through the neighborhood around us.
    Jack’s shoulders hunched forward as he watched me, as if they could guard his secrets. The ball rolled across the pavement and came to rest at my feet, but I didn’t pick it up. I just waited. It was a full minute before Jack responded. “I need to know you aren’t going to use what I tell you to try to hurt anyone.”
    I swallowed hard and shook my head. It felt like someone had turned on a faucet and filled me from bottom to top with disgust. “That’s not the problem.”
    Jack nodded. “Good. It’s very difficult to do, almost impossible—especially for someone like you, one of the Divided.”
    I didn’t need to ask for clarification. I knew what he meant. “That’s what you call it? Divided?”
    “You have a better name?”
    “No. That seems about right.” I picked up the ball and rubbed my thumb along the seam. “How do people become … like this? And what does me being Divided have to do with the question?”
    “It happens when a Watcher gets extremely sleep-deprived before finding a Builder to heal them.” Jack gave me a look that almost held pity or regret before looking away and continuing. “There’s a line somewhere that if you cross, you can’t go back. Once you become Divided, a Builder can’t fix it. They can still heal you, but you’ll always be Divided. It’s like your brain decided you couldn’t handle the situation and it broke off a piece of you that only cares about survival.”
    Only survival. That sounded pretty accurate. I nodded but didn’t speak. Then a thought bubbled to the surface that made me so angry it took several seconds before I could even form the words.
    “You—and my dad—you both knew what was coming?” My tone dropped to a low and dangerous whisper. “And you just sat back and let it happen?”
    “No!” Jack sounded so appalled it mollified my anger a bit. “We didn’t even know for sure you were a Watcher. Let alone that it was this bad. It can vary widely—when or if someone develops into a Night Walker. We weren’t sure.”
    I didn’t respond, and Jack closed his eyes before finishing.
“You were good at covering your tracks, much better at continuing on with a normal life than we expected. I didn’t even know for certain you were a Night Walker until I saw you screaming at the passenger seat in your car … just before your accident. At that point, you were already Divided.” Opening his eyes again, he stared hard at me. “It was too late. I was too late. For that, I’m very sorry.”
    The sincerity of his statement was hard to argue with, but I was still too upset to admit to any forgiveness. So I sat, letting him squirm with discomfort while I tried to sort through the mountain of new information that every conversation with Jack deposited into my brain. Finally, he changed the subject.
    “Anyway … back to your question. In order to do that kind of damage to a Dreamer, you have to mean it. You can’t have any doubt or distraction. Your mind must be one hundred percent focused on destroying them. In the Divided, the two sides rarely have the same plan or goal in mind—so it doesn’t really