by Zara Zenia
“The AI’s are having a difficult time breaking the code on the de-activation panel,” I explained. “They are worried that if they punch in the numbers, that the entire fortress will erupt into flames.”
“Well that’s not good,” David said, but I instinctively calmed down slightly when I realized that he didn’t appear to sound as terrified as I felt, and Ariana looked.
The color had drained from her face again and she looked mentally exhausted. Dark circles were forming around her eyes. I wanted nothing more than to give her the royal treatment and pamper her, but we had to get out of here alive in order for any of the lavish attention to begin.
“Can you help us?” I asked and waited with bated breath.
“Yes,” David said. “I am getting really claustrophobic in here and I’m ready to be released.” He chuckled. “I will do anything I can to get you guys out of there so that the triggers can be deactivated as quickly as possible.”
“I can’t imagine what it feels like to be locked into a tight box,” I mentioned in an attempt to add a little dose of compassion to his situation.
“We are both in a hairy sticky spot right now,” David reminded us humbly. “And we need to make sure you can wake up in the chamber safely.”
“Right,” I said and looked at Ariana who was still pale but had a hopeful shimmer in her eyes that I wanted her to cling to forever.
“Follow us,” the pink fairy said as she scurried through the air animatedly. “We can take you to the IT room where Nora has her monitors and servers in place.”
“Okay.” I nodded and glanced at Ariana. “Are you with us?”
“Absolutely,” she said with a flare of inspiration and determination enhancing her features. “I want to get the hell out of here.”
I grinned. She was zesty and I loved it.
“Good.” I took her hand and we raced to follow the fairies to the virtual castle.
Once inside, they led us down a narrow hallway and down a set of stairs that had stone steps and cobblestone walls. It was poorly lit with only the occasional lantern on the wall.
“I can barely see,” Ariana said.
“Nora wanted to make sure that anyone who happened to stumble upon her secret lair had difficulty in visualizing the space,” the blue fairy mentioned.
Suddenly I saw the soft golden glow of the third and golden fairy a few strides ahead.
“At least we have you all to help illuminate the path,” I said with a charming smile aimed at the fairies. Their cooperation and assistance were vital to this operation and I wanted to make sure they knew it.
When we reached the servers, the monitors were hooked up to all kinds of wires that we had no idea what to guess their functions were.
“These are the ones making us nervous,” the golden fairy said and pointed to a back and red wire coming from one of the server towers.
“Are you afraid that if we don’t get the code right that the place will implode?” I asked the obvious question.
“Yes,” the three fairies responded and nodded in unison.
I reached out to David on my communicator device once again. “Are you there Yadav? We need your help now.”
“I’ve been going through the servers trying to locate the IP address for Nora’s computers,” he said, relieving my mind as soon as he answered.
“Wonderful,” I said and looked at Ariana. I didn’t even want to breath or move a single muscle until I was certain we were in the clear.
I could hear David diligently typing and clacking away on his portable laptop. “Are there a black and red wire hooked up to the mainframe?” he asked.
I exchanged a grin with Ariana. Yadav to the rescue once again. “Yes,” I said. “That is what the AI fairies are worried about.”
“I am trying to decode now,” Yadav said with a chime of concentration ringing in his voice.
“Take your time, but hurry up,” I teased, attempting to lighten the mood and my efforts paid off for the moment. Everyone, including David relaxed a little and chuckled. It wasn’t exactly a situation where we could feel at ease, but we were optimistic about David’s capabilities.
“Remember,” Ariana added, “you are smarter than Nora. She is careless and makes mistakes.”
“True, but she is also ruthless,” the pink fairy said and visibly trembled.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said. “Don’t worry. David is extremely talented, and he will get us out of here.”
I noticed Ariana and the three fairies exchanging a somber look with each other, one that was laced with chagrin. Once David finished his decoding sequence, we would be free to race back to the exit portal and go back to real life. It would be time to leave the AI fairies behind, but you couldn’t really save something that didn’t exist in the first place. Could you?
“While we wait, I am going to call my brother for reinforcements in rescuing the rest of the men out there on the island outside the chamber,” I said.
Ariana nodded. “That’s a great idea. We need all the backup we can get.”
I was excited when I was able to get through to Lortnam right away.
“It’s me,” I said. “I have Ariana with me, but we are trapped in the virtual world. Yadav is working on that part to free us, but I still have quite a few troops of men who are on the island and need help getting released from some of Nora’s various traps.”
“Don’t say another word,” Lortnam said. “I’m on it. We’ll come right away.”
“Thank you so much,” I said and sighed with relief.
“I will call our brothers, as many as I can who are nearby and able,” Lortnam said. “We will help you all because we know that you would do the same for us.”
Ariana was watching our conversation. She looked at me with admiration and pride as I hung up with Lortnam.
“Well that’s good news,” I said with a smile to which she returned warmly.
“Thank goodness we have love on our side, right?”
“Right.” I kissed the side of her cheek. “Something that a villain like Nora will never have.”
“Even though we are trapped in here, it still makes us the lucky ones,” Ariana said.
I squeezed her hand and smiled. How was she so perfect?
“I think I’ve decoded the sequence now,” Yadav said at that moment. “Can you disconnect the black wire first and then wait on my cue to do the red one?”
“Absolutely my friend,” I said and nodded at the fairies. “Count of three?”
“Yes,” they squeaked and shut their eyes tight as if waiting for blunt forced impact.
“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “One…two…three!”
I unplugged the first black wire. Nervous sweat made my shirt cling to my back. I held my breath and waited. Nothing happened. There was no intense heat in a combustion of flame anywhere.
“It worked,” I finally said after several seconds.
“Good,” Yadav said. “Now unplug the red one.”
“Okay here we go,” I said and counted off to three again. I ripped the red wire from the server and waited. Again, nothing happened. We were home free.
Ariana and I immediately began hugging each other and jumping up and down. I was beyond thrilled that the plan had worked with David’s assistance. But more importantly, I was extremely grateful to the fairies for having the mindset in the first place to question the coding before just spontaneously pulling the plugs and blowing us all up.
“It’s time for us to go now,” I said. “My brother Lortnam will be getting on a plane soon and we need to help free all of my soldiers.”
“Okay,” Ariana sniffed, wet eyed and gave a glance to her fairy friends. “Thank you so much for everything,” she whispered softly.
“We will turn off the traps now,” he said. “We know how. And don’t worry about us,” the golden one said with a grin. “We’ll be just fine.”
Ariana glanced at them over her shoulder one last time. We jogged across the lawns an
d entered the portal hole together.
“When we come out the other side, we will be lying next to each other in the chamber,” I explained. “From there, I can help unhook you from the monitors.”
“I can’t wait to start over with you,” she said and gently touched the side of my cheek and stroked my skin tenderly with her thumb.
“If we can get through this, we can get through anything,” I said.
Once we were on the other side and had freed ourselves back to the island, we noticed that the AI’s had held up their end of the bargain. We met up with Yadav on the lawns of the castle and most of the chaos and turmoil had ceased.
“Unfortunately,” David said when we approached him. “It is believed that Nora is long gone.”
“I don’t even care right now,” I said. I glanced at the blue skies, happy to be breathing real Earth air again. “My brother is on his way to help us with the troops.”
“Good.” Yadav gave me a respectful nod.
“I’m just over the moon that I’ve found Ariana,” I admitted.
I felt like I was bouncing from the clouds. The euphoria effect that we had made it out of the virtual reality chamber alive and in one piece together was enough to harbor gratitude for the rest of our lives.
“While you were traveling back, I called in an evidence team to go over the fortress inside the virtual world and out,” David said. “We can comb through that information and see if it will point us in any direction or find any clues or crumbs that Nora might have slipped up and left behind.”
“That’s great,” I said.
But before we were able to make any other plans to be proactive in the search for missing soldiers or any that were still trapped, along with the beginning preparations to aid with David’s evidence team, a robotic female voice began to drone over loudspeakers coming from all sides of the castle on the roof.
“What is that?” Ariana’s eyes widened in fear as the computerized voice began to grow increasingly louder, more monotonic yet shrill at the same time.
“We need to get out of here!” David yelled. I had never seen him appear so frazzled in all the years I had known him. “If you can move, you need to do it now!” he called to the soldiers who were injured.
“What’s going on?” I shouted to David over the sound of the female voice counting down from sixty in a rhythmically slow tone.
“It’s time to evacuate, get back to the runway and on the plane now!” David said. “There’s no time to waste. Nora must have activated a self-destruct sequence we missed after Ariana left the virtual reality chamber.”
“Shit,” I said and took Ariana in my arms. I scooped her up with hasty urgency and ran through the jungle carrying her, bouncing along. I wasn’t going to take any chances of losing her again. I charged ahead as fast as my legs could transport me, even when my muscles began to ache and burn. Soldiers were moving as quickly as possible around us. We were getting off this island before the entire thing detonated into a ball of orange fire.
Chapter 18
Ariana
It seemed like everything I had experienced in the virtual world created from Nora’s mindless creativity had all been a sensationally vivid dream. I was still trying to piece together the puzzles in my mind of what was real and what wasn’t.
We had miraculously made it off the island and we had flown overnight back to Jinurak’s palace ship in Baltimore. On the plane ride back to the real world, or, how it was perceived to me, I felt broken, dirty, and exhausted mentally and physically.
I didn’t know how I was ever going to recover from the mental grip that Nora Morse had taken over me, even though she was out of the picture now and long gone. The remnant effects of her wicked mind control games were lingering and abusive to my psyche.
At least I had Jinurak by my side now. He was the blanket of comfort and solace that I had been desperately waiting for all this time. They said patience was a virtue, well it’s true what they said. He was well worth the wait.
He was amazing, a natural gentleman. Everything he had had done after rescuing me from the virtual fortress was to pamper me and fret over me.
As soon as we had safely landed and arrived at his palace, he had nurtured me. It had been nearly an entire day after Nora Morse had activated detonating bombs planted across the island to destroy any evidence that would implicate her. She was a corrupt individual who didn’t deserve to walk among society, and now she had compromised our ability to bring justice to the terrors and nightmares that had brought me immense suffering.
I tried not to stew in angry resentment and bitter frustration. She had disappeared, seemingly off the face of the Earth. Again, apparently. I knew that Jinurak and his brothers had their team of experts working on uncovering her. For the moment, I had no choice but to accept the fact that the matter was in capable, intelligent hands.
If we never found her, then so be it. I would just have to find a way to move on with my life, basking in the gratitude that Jinurak ultimately found me and rescued me from the virtual prison. I was ready to take the next step and absorb all his incredibly positive attention. I couldn’t dwell on my problems or the issues of my past. It was unhealthy for my healing brain.
When I looked into Jinurak’s eyes, that’s where I saw true light and love and I wanted to focus on the shimmering chemistry blazing like a wildfire between us.
He was even more handsome in person. He let me be exhausted from the ordeal. He didn’t press me to recover quickly. He let me be free to be my own person and allowed me to process everything in my own time.
Speaking of his humbled hospitality and much needed welcomed generosity toward me, as soon as I opened my eyes and blinked, he entered his bedroom with a handsome grin. He had asked me to sleep in his room, in his bed, so that he could take tender care of me and keep an eye on me. He didn’t want anyone else being able to disturb me during my time of rest.
I was eternally grateful for a real bed with a soft mattress that I had agreed without a moment of hesitation.
Jinurak’s master bedroom was private, and no one was allowed access aside from him, and now me of course. That guaranteed that I wouldn’t be bothered by family, friends or staff as they moved and worked throughout the palace during the course of the regular and routine day.
“Good morning, beautiful.” Jinurak’s eyes were kind and sparkled with adoration as he entered the room and drifted toward me with a tray of delicacies for breakfast.
There was a lavish spread of fruits, eggs, toast and bacon on the plate and a piping hot, fresh cup of coffee. I inhaled the glorious scent of the roasted coffee beans and thanked my lucky stars that I had gotten out of this mess alive. I had raced straight into the loving care of Prince Jinurak of Trilyn. It was surreal, like a fairytale.
“Good morning,” I chimed with a return smile and pushed myself up to a sitting position in his bed.
My body was tucked under the sheets. The bed was cozy and warm and seemed to perfectly mold and conform to my shape. I sagged into the pillows. The funny thing was, I felt comfortable here. I didn’t feel out of place at all in the prince’s bed.
It was a wonderful revelation for me to have such positive emotions about being in his palace with him. It was the reassurance I needed to know that I was right where I was supposed to be all along.
“I am glad to see you are awake,” he said with a grin. “I had my chef prepare a wonderful breakfast with American, human food that I know you will love.”
“You aren’t wrong about that.” I chuckled and picked up a fork, ready to scoop up the eggs and devour the bacon at once.
“In the simulation, I didn’t really eat much,” I mentioned, flickering my gaze to Jinurak and then back down at the plate.
A melancholy mood suddenly washed over the room and a brief silence. Jinurak placed his hand on my shoulder and cupped it, squeezing me soothingly.
“I’m sorry you had to go through this, love. I want to do everything in my power to ensure
you have the best recovery possible.”
I gave him a warmhearted smile. “You are going above and beyond what your duty should be to help me.”
The truth was, I was still trying to get myself accustomed to the fact that he was a prince who lived in a palace. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t seen the signs before I met him. How could I have missed something like that?
I didn’t want him to think that I only wanted him for his wealth and status, but he had reminded me that when I agreed to journey on the plane to Baltimore to meet him and be courted by him for a few weeks, I had no idea he was a prince. He told me that was all the encouragement he needed to know that my intentions were pure from the very beginning.
We were getting into a rhythm together, enjoying each other’s company and getting to know each other without all the noise and trials from the events over the past few days standing in the way.
Jinurak plucked a strawberry from the plate and gently placed it next to my lips. I parted them and took a bite, giving him a tantric smile, noting the fire of desire flickering in his alluring gaze.
The sexual chemistry hung over our heads, thick and heavy. I suddenly felt like I was in a jungle swamp. It was steamy in the room. My heart pounded and an excited sweat broke out over my forehead and chest.
Jinurak eased back slowly, giving me a concerned gaze. “You should enjoy your breakfast.”
I swallowed hard, feeling suddenly parched. I felt a flood of pleasure, a throb between my legs which pulsed with excitement.
I nodded and glanced down at the plate, suddenly feeling hungrier for him than for the actual food in my lap.
“That is a good idea,” I said, swallowing down my feelings of impulsive desire for the moment.
I wanted to follow the doctor’s orders anyway. He had me examined by his own private medical team. They had cleared me of permanent damage, but I still felt like something was missing inside my own head.
It was almost as if my body hadn’t had a chance yet to work out the kinks and recover from what I had endured in the virtual reality space.