A/N: Here y'all go! I hope you can make sense of this chapter. I had 5 minutes to write the middle segment's first draft, the part with the dream, so I hope I polished it up enough to make it legible. I'm babbling now, aren't I? So, without further ado, I present you with—

THE GREAT BREAKING (SECRETS OF AMERICA)

-Rael-

I got to the airport, and I should have known that he was going to do something so that I wouldn't get away. He wanted answers to his questions—answers I couldn't tell him. Answers that would violate balance, answers that would make America dictatorial in rule with power over everyone and everything.

He didn't know what he was asking, and I didn't know what I was asking, either.

When I saw the in suits and ties taking IDs from everyone that walked in the door, I turned and ran, my heart pounding. I would have to find another way out. The weight I was carrying wasn't that much—I had studied weight distribution in school, so I was a pro at making heavy things light—and I could run for a while without stopping, but I stopped anyway. Running would just make me conspicuous.

I began to walk slowly in the dark. This city, Gingerwatch, has people from all over, so at any one time a quarter of the city is awake and moving. Most things are open 24 hours, so that people from different time zones are treated fairly with restaurants and other things open during their day. Even when the sun sets, because of this city's unique situating, it never really gets dark. Some people like their day in the semi-darkness, and go to sleep in the semi-light. The sun never fully shines here nor never fully disappears.

I walked along the streets until I entered a park and walked the trail. I had been awake for over twenty hours, and my body still didn't want to go to sleep. I finally sat down on a park bench and examined my fingernails. They looked old and crooked, and I usually looked to my fingernails for omens as a last resort. If this was an omen, then all was not well.

I looked around. There was a cool breeze around, which helped my sweating self cool off. I might just want to rest here, just for a moment…

Before I knew it, I was out cold.

I had the strangest dream. There was Reuben, there was I. We were standing in the middle of a glade, and the waterfall was all around us, enveloping us. Somehow dreams work like that, I guess. We were talking.

"I need to go now," Reuben said after a long conversation in which nothing happened at all in the very least. What was this, a departure of his? Was it my fevered, overhyped imagination trying to sort things out? Was it my brain trying to put myself in his shoes four years ago? In the middle of a secluded glade, of all things. What was happening?

I said, "Where do you need to go?" We never used each other's names at all; only when others were around to hear and listen in on the conversation.

"Away," was his only answer. Away. Far, far away. Was that how I sounded, crooning in my letter? I just have to go away…

No, I didn't sound like that. That would sound utterly stupid and distraught. I was not utterly stupid and distraught when I wrote my note. I had scribbled it in anger and it was not 'distraught', like he was sounding now.

So maybe it isn't a playback. Maybe it's how it might have been.

"Why?" I asked. The waterfall sounded nice and tranquil. I like nice and tranquil things.

"Because that is how it has to be," he said. "I have been attacked, and I must leave. I don't believe you were the cause of it—you can't be the cause of it, I won't believe so—but that means someone is after me. I must leave. I'm sorry, Rael. Goodbye."

He was gone. I was awake.

I was in the semi-light, blinking. I was seeing black for a moment, and then the park came into focus. There was someone nearby. I straightened up and winced, realizing how much my back had stiffened during the night, and grabbed my backpack off my lap and held it close, cradling it. All I had was in there, so whoever was nearby better not steal it.

"I'm not going to take your stuff," a completely unfamiliar voice said a bit to my right. I turned around and less than five feet away was a man in a black trench coat, sitting on the ground with a tin can fire in front of him. A tin can fire is a fire made by lighting a bunch of sticks in a tin can to contain it. Tin cans are specially made so that they didn't heat up when you lit the inside, so that you could hold it and not get burnt but put your hands over it on a cold day and it was heaven. This man, though, had a tin can with a tin lid on it, on fire, so that it shone bright as the sun. My guess was that he was using it as a lamp. "I'm just watching you, wondering about you, guessing your backstory."

Stalker. I groaned and stretched my neck, swinging myself around so that I was sitting on the park bench, not lying down on it. I could see him better now. He wasn't tall or lanky, so I could reasonably bet that I was the same height or taller than him. He had black hair and a prominent, red, swelling scar on the right side of his face. When I squinted I saw that it looked like it had stitches and they were recently removed. He definitely talked like he was not trying to bother that side of his face.

I pointed to it. "What happened to your cheek?" I asked.

The man grinned with his left side and said, "Long story. What are you doing sleeping out here in the park?"

I grinned, getting the feel for this conversation. "Long story. What are you doing watching me?"

He shrugged. "Nothing, really. Just went walking in the wee hours of the morning and found you here, like a seriously misplaced hitchhiker."

I groaned. "Is it that obvious that I'm carting around my house on my shoulders?" I asked.

He looked at me and nodded.

I winced. "Not good," I groaned. I stared into the tin can lamp and said, to myself but aloud, "I can't go home, I can't travel, I can't stay out here indefinitely until they release the airport—Lord, what do I do?"

The man said, "Well, I can cook well, so as long as you're with me, I suppose you could stay out here indefinitely."

I squinted at him. "You can cook?" I sounded incredulous.

The man scoffed. "Of course I can. I'm Guy the Master Chef, after all!"

"Your name's Guy?" I said. In the modern world, no one was named Guy. It was a medieval name.

He looked at me, a bit annoyed. "Of course not, it's Danny," he said. "But I am a master chef. Want me to cook you something? I have a stove around here somewhere."

I looked at him and shook my head. "You look like some sort of cook that got kicked out of the Cooking University and needs a customer, even if it's a free one."

Danny looked a bit bashful. "Kind of true," he admitted. The time from there ran quickly. He was skewering cold sausages and now he was turning them over his tin can fire (cap off) like a spit, and now we were both eating one. Now we were talking. He was rambling on and on about nothing, and I was rambling on and on about nothing. I think we both came to the conclusion that we both were good at talking about nothing for hours and hours on end and not telling anything roughly at the same time, at which case we just stared at each other, shaking our heads ruefully.

I was beginning to think that maybe my journey, my escape and my life might not be so bad after all.

Hah. How delusional I was.