This dream wasn’t quite the world builder as my “Stinker” dream, but it certainly was more of an action movie. I’m gonna give a brief overview. It takes place in what appears to be a normal high school. What most of the student body and faculty don’t know is that an underground military facility is picking select students to become soldiers infused with nanomachines. These students are then used to combat monsters who are phasing into our dimension from a rift under the school, kinda like “Pacific Rim” or “Primeval”. (When I write it out like that, sounds like a bad anime haha)
It all starts off in the early morning. We are in a deathly quiet hall with almost no light. A squad of Special Forces, my partner, and I are carefully walking down the hall. As we scan the walls for any movement, we pass bodies of the previous response team covered in sticky, acidic green slime. Over our comms, the commanding officer is telling us that our quarry is a stealth hunter that uses that slime to capture prey and soften them for feeding. He also starts going over how we were supped up on advanced nanotechnology and we’re the only ones who can stop these creatures from breaking into our dimension. This triggers a flashback of this HUGE syringe filled with black gelatin being stabbed into my neck. Back in reality, I notice some slight movement on my motion tracker around a corner and we notice this green, insect-like alien eating a soldier on the ceiling. It sees us, screams at us, and begins to skitter towards a large room at the end of the hall. We pursue but cannot catch it before it disappears into the next room.
The creature escaped into what resembles a large archive room in a museum. Glass display boxes, large bookshelves, the whole shebang. Now the creature is nowhere to be seen, so we split into two groups to cover both rafters and ground floors. Before our teams separate, I look up out of instinct and notice a fan vent clawed open. I switch to my thermal just in time to see this beast lunge out onto a soldier farther down one of the walkways. As it tears him open, the rest of us open fire upon it. The creature dodges by quickly crawling along the wall towards me and another soldier. I see it prepare its acid, so I attempt to save the soldier by tackling him. Even with my heightened reflexes, I am not fast enough to save him. The slime hits the left side of his upper body harshly and it instantly starts to melt through his high-tech armor. I look up and the creature is crawling up the wall and breaks through another ventilation shaft. Calling for a medic, my superior replies that those soldiers are expendable and that creature needs to be killed no matter what the cost. He also barks that we are running out of time, the school faculty will be there within the hour.
Before I can say a snarky remark, the creature bursts through the ceiling and lands on top of my partner. She does her best to wrestle it, but the beast pins her and vomits slime right onto her face. The last soldier opens fire as it hovers over her body but the bullets bounce right off its shell. This upsets the creature so it begins to dismember the soldier. I interrupt by either shooting it or punching it in-between its body joints. Finally injured, it runs away over the tops of the book shelves.
It was about this time that the superior tells me that I am out of time and need to seal the room before someone sees this massacre. Conveniently, the control panel to do so is at the end of the room. This means a mad dash to the first floor as well as running right passed the creature’s new position. Knowing I don’t have a choice, I start my run by hopping over the railing and down to the first floor. I then break into a sprint to reach the control panel. With a screech, the creature attempts to catch up and leaps at me. Right before I reach the control panel, I turn around and capture the beast in a spherical prison with some wrist-mounted device. Once inside, it releases the slime that was intended for me and sprays itself in it. As it starts to melt itself, I start to shrink the prison until it completely vanishes. Once it disappears, I frantically smash several keys on the console and large metal shudders seal off the destroyed library. My armor and the console both disappear into the floor once the shudders close. And not a moment too late because the math teacher walks through the side entrance to my right.
He eyes me suspiciously, groggily takes a sip of his hot coffee and asks if the Librarian forgot to give me the key again. I casually shrug and say it must have slipped her mind again. Grumbling, he reaches into his pocket and fumbles for his keys. When he opens the shudder the entire library is spotless, almost glistening. As the math teacher turns around and walks towards his classroom, I think to myself *Thank you holograms*.
I lean up against the wall, thinking of everything that just happened and how easily it was covered up. Before I get too lost in thought, my CO (who is also the principal) starts reprimanding me through my microscopic earpiece. Something along the lines that I have multimillion dollars of technology coursing through my veins, some of the best military training and equipment, and yet the first creature I go up against, I lose my partner and a squad of special forces. So as a refresher / punishment, he orders me to improve my leadership skills by posing as a new recruit and earning my role as a squad leader. I obviously objected to this but he pulled the follow your orders card.
So around the end of school, I find a series of tables lined up in the hallway. A number of other students are already there talking amongst themselves. I look amongst them, seeing the obvious clichés, when I notice one of the maintenance doors open. Inside there are the body bags from earlier and a girl crying over one. Since other students are still roaming the school halls, I rush over and close the door. I turn to the groups at the tables “Why was this door open?! Were you not briefed on the secrecy?”
One of the other girls gives me a confused look. “What’s your problem? She just found out her best friend had died. Give her a chance to mourn.”
“Mourning is fine, but the sole purpose of this group is to keep this under wraps. Kinda hard when the whole student body can see twenty body bags plain as day.”
The jock stands up and gets in my face, “And who the hell do you think you are, telling people what to do loser?”
I look blankly back at him “I’m a person who takes secrets seriously. And unless you want to be cut from this project, I suggest you do the same.”
“You little nobody, you think you’re better than me? I could crush you and not a damn person would care.”
The principal slams a book on the front table, “That “loser” is right, secrecy is the utmost importance in this project. All of you better learn that or you and your family will be collected and…re-purposed. Do I make myself clear?”
The jock’s terrified eyes shift to me and they change to anger. He scoffs and sits back down. The principal gives his whole lecture about the school, the monsters and the…unconventional training we are about to receive. The principal orders us to move the tables as a group to a room down the hallway.
Suspecting there was more to this, I casually look into the dark corners of the hall while walking with some of the group. Sure enough, Special Forces in ninja gear were hidden amongst the corners waiting for the order to strike. To act like I didn’t see them, I turn back to the table room only to get elbow checked in the chest.
The jock laughs as he walks away, “Better watch where you’re going loser.”
Since the nanomachines in my body made me barely feel that, I could have ignored it. However, I felt it necessary to take him down a notch. Reaching for one of the tables, I feel a slight push against one of the sides the moment I touch it. Knowing that a ninja is hiding underneath it, I act as if I cannot lift it.
The jock notices this and uses it to his advantage “Are you that frickin pathetic that you can’t lift a table?” He pushes me aside and get ready to lift the table “Let me show you how it’s done!” Sadly, the dream ended the moment the ninja jumped from under the table.
