Standing at the stairwell door, Daniel struggled to make sense of all the emotions flooding in. At least a dozen people nearby, radiating manic euphoria, raging anger, confusion, loneliness, despair . . .
Daniel opened the door an inch and peered through the gap to see a brightly lit hallway, eight feet wide, solid steel doors evenly spaced along both sides of the hall. Each door had a small rectangular window, and beside each door handle was an electronic security card reader.
Daniel could hear no footsteps or voices in the area.
He stepped into the hallway and eased the door closed behind him, moved to the first door on his right and put his face to the window.
Jesus.
Thick padding covered every inch of the small room’s walls and floor. No bed, no toilet, no sink. Sitting on the floor, facing away from the door, a middle-aged woman in a heavy canvas straitjacket with thick leather straps, her pale head shaved, rocked forward and back, forward and back, forward and back . . .
This was a mental ward for those who got lost.
Daniel crept to the next cell, where a young man struggled against his straitjacket, his face contorted with rage. Yelling something, but the rooms were completely soundproofed and Daniel couldn’t read his lips.
And then Daniel heard his name.
22
Daniel wasn’t hearing with his ears, but in his mind’s ear. Still, he knew it originated from the last door on his left. He had no idea how he knew, but he knew it with certainty just the same.
A quick glance back to the stairwell, listening hard. All clear. He approached the door, focusing his attention on the emotion radiating from within. A sickening, howling terror, fight-or-flight response short-circuiting, resulting in frozen panic.
Daniel Byrne—Daniel—Daniel Byrne . . .
He forced himself to the window, coming face-to-face with the man just a few inches away on the other side. The man did not struggle against his straitjacket, but stood locked in place, body trembling, jaw clenched, breath shallow and strained, tendons popping in his neck and veins in his temple, face crimsoned and eyes bloodshot from the strain.
Daniel Byrne—Daniel—Daniel Byrne . . .
The man was repeating Daniel’s name like a mantra; it was not an attempt to communicate, and he stared right through Daniel, not seeing him at all.
Was this man one of the disappeared agitators Digger had talked about? And was he also Jay Eckinsburger, the Foundation field op who said Daniel Byrne was coming, and who was currently sedated in a five-star asylum on Earth? Could the consciousness bifurcate? Could a person be conscious in both Source and Earth at the same time?
Was that what snapped this man’s mind?
Whoever the man was, if this were happening on Earth, he would be dead inside a month. The human body simply can’t stay continually maxed out on adrenaline without breaking down. Most likely, the man would suffer a stroke or cardiac arrest, but the real cause of death would be unrelenting panic. Did it work the same way here? Regardless, the man was in desperate need of relief, and Noah was not having him sedated.
This was not a mental ward.
This was hell.
Summoning his will, Daniel kept his speed in check and his footfalls soft as he retreated to the stairwell, blocking out the emotional frenzy of the lost souls locked behind steel doors.
He spot-traveled up to the next landing, and the next, and the next, as fast as he could. How many floors of hell before all the lost had been straitjacketed and stored, locked and padded cells replaced by living quarters? Daniel didn’t slow down to find out. He focused his attention ahead, away from the madness, spot-traveling landing to landing, not stopping until he reached the top floor.
This was the floor where Digger had said they meditated, where Noah gave his sermons. Standing against the stairwell door, Daniel focused his attention on the other side.
But he felt no presence on the other side of the door. Nothing at all. He cracked the door open an inch and drew a breath.
The place was packed, more than a thousand people meditating together, not sitting lotus or zazen, just sitting, with perfect posture, on little red chairs, upturned hands resting on knees, sitting in rows that spanned the entire floor, wall to wall—no windows to provide a view that might distract. Every age and ethnic origin seemed accounted for. People plucked at random from every corner of the world. Like AIT, this crossing over—or waking up—whatever it was, it did not discriminate.
Everyone wore the same outfit. Black pants and red shirt, cut for comfort, like you might encounter at an exclusive Manhattan spa. Their meditative state was so deep that they did not notice as Daniel stepped inside and closed the door. Their eyes were open, all directed up at a bright light pouring down from what appeared to be a domed ceiling in the center of the meditation hall. The intensity of their concentration was unlike anything he’d ever seen, and the space above them seemed alive with energy.
Daniel forced a step forward while manifesting a pair of mirrored aviators in his pocket. He put them on and looked up. Even with sunglasses, he had to squint.
A holographic image—more solid looking than current technology on Earth could create—hung directly above the meditators, suspended in the light. Three-dimensional, stretching maybe thirty feet in each direction.
It looked like the interior of an old chapel. Tudor period, Daniel guessed. Dark wooden beams and colorful stained-glass windows. A large wooden cross on one wall. A suit of armor beneath a stained-glass window depicting Saint James the Apostle.
Portrait of the saint as a young man—alabaster skin, wavy blond hair hanging to his shoulders, wearing a red robe and a purple halo. Balanced on his left hand, an open book with a bright royal-blue cover.
Saint James held a large white feather quill, writing into the book. But he didn’t look at the page as he wrote, his sinless gaze directed heavenward to better receive the word of God.
Daniel squinted deeper, above the hologram, into the light flooding in from the top of the dome. This light was not glimmer, but it was more than just light. It powered the hologram, providing the meditators a common focus. It was sent for this purpose.
Sent by Noah.
The light pulsed, just barely, but Daniel spotted it.
Shit.
He sprinted for the stairs.
Bursting into the stairwell, Daniel spot-traveled down to the next landing and froze, the hair standing up on his forearms, his scalp electric.
He could feel the presence of Noah’s soldiers closing in. Eight of them—hostile, driven, predators honing in on prey—three in the stairwell above, three below, and two now in the meditation hall, almost at the stairwell door.
Daniel spot-traveled down to the next level, yanked on the door handle, and burst into an empty white hallway, running blindly, feeling for a gap, a way between the predators.
He drew the pistol from his belt as the stairwell door behind him slammed open and two men ran into the hall, closing the distance. Daniel squeezed off a round behind him, and as they ducked for cover he skidded left around a corner and ran down a hallway to the other stairwell.
Worse. Dozens of them here, surging into the stairwell above and below, now filling the hallway he’d just left, coming from everywhere, so many Daniel couldn’t begin to keep track of them.
Footsteps echoed through the stairwell as Noah’s soldiers closed in and even more joined the hunt. Daniel glanced at the pistol in his hand. It may as well have been a water pistol.
He aimed down the stairs and fired a round at nothing, just to buy a few precious seconds.
But there was no way out. Today would have to be a good day to die after all. And the dream of a future with Kara, either here or on Earth, would now die with him in this stairwell.
If you can see a place, you can be there.
But there were no windows in—
If you can see a place, you can be there.
Daniel drew a deep breath and closed his eyes.
Daniel let out the breath he was holding and filled his lungs again. He was standing in the bedroom of his apartment in Source, just as he’d visualized, still holding the pistol. He’d spot-traveled miles from Noah’s tower, to a place he could only see in his mind’s eye.
“Holy crap,” he said aloud.
Daniel sat on the edge of the bed and collected his thoughts. He returned the gun to the nightstand drawer, then walked through the living room to the apartment’s front door.
Every time he’d tried to open the door on his early visits to Source, the vision (as he’d thought of it then) had ended and he’d returned home. During their dinner conversation, Digger had speculated that it wouldn’t happen now that his whole consciousness was present in Source.
He turned the knob. The door opened.
Daniel shut the door and returned to the bedroom. He lay on his back on the bed, closed his eyes, and folded his hands across his chest.
I am sitting in a car.
In Belgium.
The air smells of coffee.
23
Daniel Byrne.
Always Daniel Byrne, again and again. It was as if they were locked in perpetual battle, compelled by some absurd circular destiny.
This time it had to end.
Noah walked to the edge of the rooftop and looked straight into Primordial Reality.
The people called it glimmer.
The glimmer made them feel ill.
They couldn’t even look at it.
They would never be able to look at it, because they would never be fully awake. Not even close. They’d never even be half-awake, most of their consciousness forever stuck in the dream of Earth. Which made them useful, if lesser, beings.
But Noah was fully awake.
And Noah loved the glimmer.
The glimmer didn’t appear to Noah’s eyes as a painfully bright light. To his eyes, it appeared as a vast kaleidoscope of fractals—shimmering and shifting, growing, expanding, shrinking, merging together and splitting apart, an infinitely complex dance of electric snowflakes.
It was, after all, the very stuff of creation.
Noah loved the glimmer so much, he’d completely surrounded his rooftop palace with glim. Standing here, there was no sky above, no seaside town below, no sunset in the distance. Just a dance of fractals, a womb of energy and potential, from which entire universes could be born.
If . . .
If Noah proved successful with the claim he’d been staking since he first awoke in Source. His claim to true godhood.
Not if, he corrected himself. Not if, but when.
And soon.
Noah stepped closer, right to the rooftop’s edge. He held his right hand up, fingers spread wide, and watched as the skin on the back of his hand began to shimmer and shift in harmony with the dancing fractals, so close to such beautiful force, mere inches from the infinite.
He lowered his hand and stepped away from the glimmer, turning to face the elevators. It was cruel, of course, to summon Elias up here, to make him face the glimmer, but this was the man’s third consecutive failure, so a little pain was in order.
The first failure in the alley was forgivable, really. While Digger’s disdain for Noah had been plain to feel, Elias had warned all the stragglers away from Daniel and had visited Digger in the dream to warn her a second time. That should’ve been enough. Elias couldn’t have foreseen her risking her life to help Daniel, in the face of Noah’s power. She’d made an unnatural choice.
The failure in the dream—in Barbados—however, was less forgivable, and there simply could be no excuse for this latest.
And all the while, Daniel was becoming—and would continue to become—more awake. And more powerful. He’d been in the bloody meditation hall—one floor down—before Noah even felt his presence. He’d spot-traveled from a windowless stairwell. And after crossing back into the dream, he’d completely vanished. However hard Noah tried—and he’d focused his entire mind on it—he could no longer see Daniel Byrne in the dream.
Damn it to hell.
Noah caught himself and snorted a sharp laugh.
A simple shift of perspective was all he needed. There was actually some satisfaction to take from the fact that it would be Daniel Byrne’s resistance that would provide the test to Noah’s claim to godhood. From the perspective of a god, Daniel was not an enemy, but a mechanism for advancement—a stepping stone leading to where Noah deserved to be.
Even before Noah had awakened, even when he’d been locked in the dream, he’d always burned with the desire to become more. To not only serve God, but to partner with him.
And once he awoke, he’d learned how close he was.
Noah thought back to the moment his Earth dream ended—the moment of his awakening in Source. He remembered it often. He considered it the moment of his true birth.
A birth in blood—his own blood—yet he was born here undamaged. Born powerful beyond imagining. The only being in Source who stood completely outside the dream.
Only Noah could look directly into the glimmer and see that it was the source of the dream, and only he could bend the glimmer to his will.
While the lesser, half-awake beings marveled at their ability to manifest insignificant baubles, Noah had built a magnificent tower topped by a glimmer womb. And then he’d explored his power further, giving the glimmer his full attention, and he realized he could make . . . anything.
He supposed this was how the dream of Earth began. Perhaps some other god before Noah had set it in motion and left it for Noah to make perfect.
Daniel Byrne was the last obstacle. Daniel was becoming more awake with each visit and had already exhibited power far beyond the others. Could he become fully awake? Like Noah? That very risk was why Noah had forbidden Elias to kill Daniel in the dream. What if he woke up here with greater power?
But time was running short. The dance with Daniel Byrne had to end.
The elevator chimed and the doors slid open. Noah waited.
After a few long seconds, Elias emerged, forcing his legs into halting steps, fear radiating out in front of him, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, hands forming a visor against his forehead in a desperate attempt to shield himself from the glimmer. He managed four steps out onto the rooftop before falling to his knees, as if the glimmer were pressing him down. His stomach heaved twice. The third time, he vomited.
Noah watched until Elias had completely emptied his stomach.
“Had enough?”
Elias jerked a nod. “Please, Lord. Mercy.”
“Oh, all right.” Noah manifested plain white walls and a ceiling, temporarily sacrificing the beautiful fractal dance.
Elias wiped his mouth with his sleeve as he got to his feet. With ill-disguised trepidation, he removed the sunglasses. He said, “I know I let you down, Lord—”
“‘Sir’ will do nicely,” said Noah, “when we’re alone.”
“Yes, sir,” said Elias, clearly honored by the privilege just awarded him, but confused by the close proximity of pain and kindness.
Noah said, “You did let me down. Did I not warn you in advance?”
“Yes, sir, you did.”
“I told you not to underestimate him.”
“Yes.” Elias winced. “But he did something nobody else can do. I mean, nobody but you.”
“Don’t make excuses, Elias. It’s tiresome. Your mission in life is to remove nuisances from my sight. Daniel Byrne is a nuisance, and the longer he continues, the more tenuous your value to me becomes. That’s not too difficult a concept for you, is it?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. Because I am done making allowances for failure.” Noah softened his tone slightly to shift the man’s focus to the task at hand. “Clearly Daniel possesses abilities, when awake, that you do not. So I’m rescinding my earlier edict. You may now kill him in the dream, where you’re on equal footing.”
Profound relief radiated out from Elias. “Th
ank you, sir. I’ll go right now. Where in the dream can I find him?”
Noah waved that away. Bad enough that Daniel was performing magic tricks of his own to awe the natives; no way would Noah admit he couldn’t even find Daniel in the dream anymore.
“I have something else in mind,” he said. “Instead of sending you to Daniel, this time I’ll arrange for him to come to you.”
24
Daniel awoke in a bed, but not his bed in Source. That bed had a hard mattress and a wool blanket. Daniel now lay in a soft bed, under a down duvet.
This presented a problem, because Daniel couldn’t remember how he got here, and he had no idea where here was. The last thing he remembered before waking was folding his hands across his chest, lying atop the wool blanket in Source, with the intention of returning to the car in Belgium.
He spent another minute with his eyes closed, trying to remember, but nothing came. He opened his eyes and looked to his right.
A modern, elegantly appointed hotel room, cast in the warm light of silk-shaded lamps. He couldn’t see any detail outside the window—the sheers were drawn—but he could see that it was nighttime.
While the hotel room was unfamiliar, everything looked normal enough. But something wasn’t right; something about the room didn’t quite feel real. Daniel felt as if he were asleep—like waking up in this room had been the start of a dream that began with waking up in this room.
That way lies madness.
He pushed himself up to sitting. Digger had taught him that sensory input smoothed the transition of crossing over, so he began pleating the bedsheet between his fingers. But the signals his brain now received from the nerve endings of his fingers felt . . .
Muted.
Because now you’ve felt the real thing in Source.
Because Earth is just a dream.
Daniel slammed a fist into the pillow beside him. “Shit,” he said aloud. “I don’t know what’s real anymore.”
“Who does, brother? Who the hell does?”
The Savior's Game (The Daniel Byrne Trilogy Book 3) Page 13