Discovery (Book One of the Dream Fighter Chronicles

You are about to read the first in the Dream Fighter Chronicles saga. This is where it all began for five cousins who would later go on to save the world. It’s a tale of adventure and exploration, and discovering how to believe in yourself.

  Other books in the Dream Fighter Chronicles Series:

  Book Two: Sarlak's Revenge

  Book Three: United They Stand

  Book Four: The Nowhere Kids

  Book Five: Hearts Burst Into Fire

  Book Six: The Heroes Among Us

  Discovery!

  (Book 1 of The Dream Fighter Chronicles)

  by Calvin Locke

  Dreamworld Publications (An Empire Strikes Imprint)

  Copyright 2015

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Daniel Stanley. You were only with us for such a short time, but the mark you left will stay with us forever.

  Chapter One

  The Last Normal Day

  Haley spun the basketball in the air in front of her, let it land and caught it as it came toward her. The ball spun in her fingertips as she grabbed it, just another part of the routine she had practiced all year. No one in the gymnasium spoke. She’d never experienced such silence in there before. It wouldn't have bothered her if she didn't know the silence came from everyone's attention focused on her.

  She cleared her mind, trying to forget that her friends sat in the stands, along with her parents, her brother, and worst of all, Mark Wyler. He liked to make fun of her. If she missed these free throws, he’d talk about it all day the next day. He’d write things on the blackboard like ‘Choker,’ or worse. She couldn’t worry about him, or anyone else. The basket, only ten feet away but looking much further right then, was all that mattered. In practice, the basket looked so much closer. Haley tried to shrug that thought off, telling herself this shot would be just as easy as in practice.

  If she could only really believe that.

  Her teammates looked at her from each side of the paint, smiling encouragement toward her. She knew the score. Her team needed two points. The elbow in the ribs the girl on the other team gave her still hurt, but the pain would be worth it if she sunk the two free throws and tied the game. Roryville North elementary school deserved to lose. They were the enemy, had been since Haley started school. Those kids in the north always thought they were better. She had the chance to show them otherwise.

  Breathe, she told herself, doing her best to focus on what mattered and not how the whole school would hate her if she missed, or what Mark would write on the board. And no, she couldn’t think of how bad the basketball uniform made her look. The basket. It mattered more than anything. She had a simple task. Put that orange ball into the basket, twice. Greater things had been accomplished. Heck, Tommy Skarolis took a shower. Anything was possible.

  She looked at the basket one more time, trying to imagine the path of the ball falling into it. It only took concentration, her coach said. Concentrate and the ball will do what you want. Funny, that didn't seem to work so well on her last jump shot, which missed the basket, the backboard, and everything but the opposing player's hands. Hopefully, it would be different this time.

  She flipped the ball again, caught it, and brought it up above her head. Focusing on the red rim of the basket and nothing else, she released the ball, watched it sail toward its target. It would go in, she knew that for sure, judging by the flight. Maybe it would hit the back of the rim, but it would go in.

  The swoosh of the ball going through the net broke the silence, followed by cheers from the hometown (or south part of the hometown at least) crowd. She heard her father say, "Way to go Haley!" in his booming, sometimes embarrassing, voice. She only needed to sink the next shot and then they'd go to overtime.

  How many times had she seen this play out on TV? Too many, she thought, and realizing it put more pressure on her. Those TV stars made the last basket, they even scored the final shot of overtime to win the game. Fellow teammates, parents, coaches, even the mascot came over to greet them afterward. They went on to become class president, prom queen, leader of the free world. All over one basket. One she wasn't supposed to be thinking about all so much.

  "Empty your mind," her coach had said as he attacked his chewing gum like it had done something wrong. How exactly does one empty their mind? She hoped there was a release valve or something to help with this strategy but of course there wasn't. She had wanted to say something back then, something like, "If I empty it, will all my thoughts fall all over the floor?" or "Won't I forget to breathe?" but Coach didn't exactly like responses. He just liked to talk and talk and see nodding from his players. Players talking cut into his hearing his own voice.

  Two bounces of the ball and she brought it up again, staring at that basket, willing the ball to fall in, giving it every ounce of concentration she had. The ball had a destiny to fulfill, landing in the basket. The universe would not recover if this destiny went unfulfilled. She played her part; now it was up to the ball to play his, or hers, or whatever it was.

  Before she launched the ball toward its purpose, she closed her eyes. When she did, bright images flashed before her. A wide open area, like a desert, lay before her. She saw her brother Jack falling and she tried to save him. It all flashed so quickly she couldn't make sense of it. Finally, a spinning sphere hung above her, pulling her toward it, not unlike the dream she had the night before. Then, like the dream, a voice echoed in her head.

  "The time is coming." The voice sounded recognizable, but she couldn't place it.

  “You okay?" her friend and teammate, Jessica, asked.

  Haley opened her eyes.

  "Yeah," she lied. "Fine." She was anything but.

  The basket seemed even further away now. Her hands shook a little and she steadied them, sending the ball to the basket. It was high enough, for sure, and on the proper line to the basket. It sailed through the air slowly, as if suspended by her hopes, getting closer to the rim.

  It hit the left side of the rim with a thud. It bounced up and over to the right side, hit that, then went off the backboard. It would not fulfill its destiny, Haley realized, and she, along with the other nine players on the court, rushed toward the basket, hoping to grab the rebound and shoot it in the basket.

  Maybe she could be like one of those TV stars. She could grab her own rebound and win the game with one shot. It would be nice to be the star, if only for one night. Nailing the shot to beat the dreaded North team certainly would put her in that role. She moved quickly, shoving left and right to push opposing players out of her way. They pushed back but she remained determined. This would be her time.

  The ball came down toward the players. Haley watched it closely, judging where it would go and when she had to jump to get it. Someone to her right drove a knee into her leg and she almost screamed out in pain. She held it in, forcing the pain from her mind if only for a moment.

  The ball dropped toward her. She timed her jump and reached up, the tip of her finger touching its both rough and slippery surface for a moment before someone else snatched the ball out of the air. Haley came down with a crash, the pain in her knee sharpening as she did so.

  When she looked up, she saw Jessica shoot the ball into the basket. Everyone from the team put their arms around her. Perhaps a little disappointed, Haley did feel glad one of her friends got to be the star she wanted to be. Not everything works out.

  With a moment to think, Haley considered what had happened, the vision just like the dream she had the other night. Something certainly was up. What sort of person has daydreams like that and hears voices telling them the 'time had come'? Crazy people, Haley figured, and she de
cided right then not to tell anyone about it. Unless, of course, the visions became stranger, like if she saw something like she and Jack actually getting along.

  Then it would be time to worry.

  Braden had run out of challenges. He knew he shouldn’t feel so confident but none of the enemies in the game could really beat him. They had a pattern, one he saw easily, and they never deviated from it. Defeating them became nothing more than running through the same strategy over and over; the faster he could memorize it the faster he could kill the zombies and move on to the next level. He felt like he could see the programmer’s code and know what the enemies would do before they did.

  That’s just bad game design, Braden thought.

  He learned not to say things like that too often in front of his parents. His talk of wanting to program games only made them talk about him being a doctor or lawyer when he grew up. They said game design was a nice hobby. He tried to show them how many game designers were millionaires, but they had him saving the world already. That was too much for an 8 year old to have on his mind.

  His game wouldn’t suffer from bad design. It wouldn’t have simple, silly stories like most, nor would the coding be so easy to see through. Sometimes Braden wondered who made these games, if they knew what it was like to be a kid. The fun of playing a game came from feeling like you’re in the game. Once inside the game, it was all about doing something a kid would really want to do. Repeating the same moves over and over didn’t fit that. Sometimes, Braden thought some of the game designers who made games didn’t like games at all. Or maybe they didn’t like kids. It was tough to tell.

  He decided not to give up on the game. Perhaps after the ending, he would think differently about it. The controller rumbled in his hands as he attacked zombie after zombie, all of whom disappeared in a cloud of dust because the game was rated for kids and not adults. He didn’t mind that so much, but he could see through it, and that part of it bothered him. Zombies came at him from all sides, and for the first time, he didn’t see an easy way to victory. Only, it wasn’t fun. Instead, he got frustrated. The only way the developers could make the game challenging was to make the character have to fight off an uncountable amount of enemies. No strategy came into play; instead he just had to mash the buttons faster and faster, at a pace almost no one could accomplish. He threw the controller on the couch in disgust.

  He didn’t mind the fighting; he liked it. Looking at the game closely, Braden saw through the developers’ intention and felt disappointed. They could do better. He’d played games with parts he just couldn’t get through, ones with sneaky enemies who actually thought about what they did. It was rare, but he liked when something like that happened. Why couldn't more designers make games like that? Why did it seem they were so lazy? Braden didn't understand. If someone decided to make games for a living, he figured they actually wanted to make games. Surely there was a way to make them right.

  Sinking into the couch and leaning back, he thought about what a game should be. Images of kids fighting off hordes of bad guys came to his mind. They fought with a variety of weapons and powers, and splashes of color danced across his eyes as he imagined it. He didn’t see things clearly, just brief images that came and went. Still, something about what he saw felt so real, so possible.