Falling Awake

was that the extreme dreams had become increasingly disturbing. It had gotten to the point where he avoided going to bed, dosing himself with caffeine and other stuff to stay awake. But sooner or later he always crashed, and when he finally went under, the dreams were waiting for him.
    The chronic sleep deprivation, combined with the unsettling effects of the surreal, ultra-vivid dreams, had left him too edgy to study. If he hadn’t dropped out, he would surely have flunked out.

    What he had not known was that Lawson’s tiny, secretive government agency paid for the experiments using Frey-Salter as its guise. The sleep research conducted on the campus where Ellis was attending college was one of many such projects that Lawson had commissioned. Lawson was looking for people like Ellis.
    Forty-eight hours after the results of the sleep research project were on Lawson’s desk, Lawson himself was at Ellis’s door, a dazzling contract in his hand. But it was not the promise of a lucrative job offer, tantalizing as it was, that swept Ellis off his feet; it was Lawson’s reassuring conviction that, whatever it was that happened when Ellis dreamed, he was not going crazy.
    Lawson had tossed out a second lure as well. He gave Ellis the chance to join a small, clandestine organization that was doing exciting work. For a nineteen-year-old who had been orphaned at twelve and who had spent his teenage years bouncing from one foster-care home to another, the offer was irresistible. For the first time in a very long while, he felt that he belonged somewhere.
    Looking back, Ellis thought, it was probably no big surprise that Lawson had become a sort of father figure to him.
    “You know, I’m going to miss the old man,” Lawson said, sounding unusually wistful. “Martin Belvedere could be a pain in the ass but he was brilliant and he knew how to keep secrets.” There was a short, meaningful pause. “At least, I think he knew how to keep ’em.”
    “You’re worried that he might have said too much about you and your agency to Isabel Wright, aren’t you?”
    A rhythmic series of small squeaks and squeals sounded onthe other end of the line. Ellis could almost see Lawson leaning back in his government-issue chair, swiveling slowly from side to side while he talked into the phone.
    “It’s a possibility I can’t afford to ignore,” Lawson admitted. “Let’s face it, she worked closely with Belvedere for the better part of a year and she’s obviously damn smart. Got to assume she picked up a few clues.”
    “I don’t think you need to panic here. You’re very good at keeping Frey-Salter in the shadows. Ms. Wright could not have learned much and even if she did make a few insightful guesses, what harm could she do?”
    “Problem is, with Martin Belvedere gone, the situation has gotten real murky. I need to get Isabel Wright back under control and I need to do it as fast as possible. I can’t afford to lose her. Also, I need to know if she’s told anyone about the kind of work she did while she worked for Belvedere. Might be necessary to do some damage control.”
    Ellis gave a short, harsh laugh. “What are you afraid of, Lawson? Think Isabel Wright might take her suspicions to the media?”
    “It could complicate things for me.”
    “Not a chance. The only news outlets that would pay attention to such an off-the-wall story are the supermarket tabloids. I can see the headlines at the checkout counter now: ‘Secret Government Agency Tracks Killers in Dreams.’ ”
    “I’ve got my funding to protect,” Lawson growled. “I don’t need that kind of publicity. You know how much heat the CIAand the FBI take whenever some enterprising reporter discovers yet again that they occasionally use psychics. Hell, they had to shut down the remote viewing project at Stanford back in the nineties because of the embarrassing press. Duke University closed its parapsychology research lab for similar reasons.”
    “The government has a long and extremely lurid history of financing psychic research,” Ellis reminded him. “It’s no secret.”
    “Yeah, but it isn’t always fashionable. In the current funding climate, I can guarantee you that if certain people in Congress find out what’s really going on here at Frey-Salter, they’ll start screaming about how I’m wasting taxpayer dollars and I’ll end up with serious budget problems.”
    “I’ve got great faith in your ability to secure funding. You’ve been