Virtually Dead

by Peter May

  He reached in front of him to the flat object lying on the desk and lifted its lid. As he turned it around, Michael saw that it was a laptop computer. The screen was lit up and displaying the Second Life welcome page. The SL eye/hand logo seemed to be mocking him now. The man nodded, and a shadow emerged from the dark, light catching the blade of a large hunting knife. Michael flinched as the hand that wielded it swooped to cut through the bindings that held his wrists and ankles.

  The red-haired man rose from behind his desk and walked around to the front of it. He took a folded sheet of paper out from an inside pocket and smoothed it open on the desk beside the laptop.

  “Quite simple, Mr. Kapinsky. Here you have the name of an AV. You log yourself in, and transfer our money into his account. Quite painless, and all over in sixty seconds.”

  Michael made no attempt to get to his feet, until rough hands grabbed him from behind and forced him into a standing position. He was breathing in short, sharp bursts, aware that there was only one possible way this could end. “I can’t do it,” he said.

  And a fist came from nowhere, like bunched steel, driving itself into his diaphragm. The pain was nauseating, and completely robbed him of the power to breathe. He doubled over and dropped to his knees, before the same rough hands as before pulled him back to his feet.

  “There is no such word as ‘can’t’ in our lexicon, Mr. Kapinsky.”

  Michael shook his head, trying to find breath to fuel his voice. Finally he managed what was little more than a forced whisper. “I can’t make the transfer because the money is no longer in my account.”

  All animation deserted the face of the man in front of him. It was as if he had laid eyes on the Gorgon and turned to stone. “Show me.”

  Michael was shoved forward to the computer. With shaking fingers he typed in his AV name and password, and there was Chas standing in the familiar surroundings of Twist’s office. If only he could just be subsumed into the virtual. Become Chas, and escape this hell. The man with the red hair leaned toward the screen to check out the linden total at the top right. There were less than two hundred Lindens in Chas’ account. He turned back toward Michael, who saw a blind fury in the cold green of his eyes, belied by the calm, even tone of his voice.

  “You’d better put it back, then.”

  “I don’t have it any more.”

  “You’ve spent it?” His voice became modulated by incredulity for the first time.

  “I paid off my home loan.”

  The man leaned in toward him, till Michael could smell the stale garlic on his breath. “Then you’d better take out another, hadn’t you?” He snatched the sheet of paper from the desk and stuffed it into the breast pocket of Michael’s polo shirt. “I’ll give you just twenty-four hours, Mr. Kapinsky. If you haven’t paid the money into this AV’s account by then, you will be seriously dead.”

  He turned around angrily and snapped the lid of the laptop shut, as light crashed through Michael’s skull, blinding him again before darkness fell and pain vanished with consciousness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The pain was the first thing to return. A thumping headache that felt like his head had been locked in a vice. From somewhere at the back of his skull he became aware of a different kind of pain. Sharp, persistent, throbbing. And even before he could open his eyes, he reached a hand around to the back of his neck and felt dried, sticky blood where it had run down from a wound in his scalp. Then came the awareness of an ache in his gut. A painful, muscular ache where a clenched fist had left its bruising. And then the stinging around his mouth where the tape that gagged him had been so unceremoniously ripped away.

  Finally he opened his eyes, and even the light of the overhead street lamps hurt him.

  He was completely disoriented, without the least idea of where he was, before slowly the familiarity of his SUV began to rez into his consciousness and he realised he was slumped in the driving seat. His nostrils were filled with the smell of stale food, and he turned his head to see his take-out pizza box on the passenger seat where he had left it. He checked the time. It was after nine. Somehow he had lost more than two hours.

  The memory of what had transpired sometime during those lost hours was slowly finding form in his brain, and with it came a returning fear. A fear that impaled him, keeping him pinned back in his seat. Twenty-four hours to find more than three million dollars. Jesus! He didn’t even want to think about it.

  He peered through the windshield and for a moment was unable to place where he was. A tree-lined street. A car park. And then he saw, next to a covered passage leading to the marina, the familiar blue canopy of Offshore West, Inc, opposite his dentist’s surgery. He turned his head and saw the windows of Stanley Armbruster’s surgery and waiting room one floor up. And he realised in a moment of incongruous irrationality that he would no longer be able to afford Stanley’s services. Not that it was likely to matter much. He would probably be dead by this time tomorrow.

  He forced himself to sit up and felt his stomach heaving. He fumbled for the door handle and threw it open, leaning out to empty the bile that rose into his throat in a sudden rush. As he looked up, he saw a passing couple watching him with horrified fascination. The girl averted her eyes quickly. But the young man was embarrassed and felt somehow obliged to nod in Michael’s direction. And Michael felt obliged to nod back. So the two men nodded acknowledgement of each other, and the girl tugged her lover’s arm and pulled him off down the tunnel toward the marina.

  Michael could see the lights of the waterfront restaurants, hear the sounds of diners laughing and talking, and he pulled the door of his SUV wearily shut. He felt completely dissociated from the world, dislocated and alone. He closed his eyes and wondered what the hell he was going to do.

  ***

  By the time he got back to the house in Dolphin Terrace, all his aches and pains had receded to a dull background discomfort. Foremost in his mind was a deep depression, closely followed by the fear that snapped constantly at his heels. He clicked the remote on his sun visor and the garage door lifted to allow him access. He drove in, cut the engine, and eased himself stiffly out of the vehicle, taking his pizza box with him. At the door leading to the utility room, he hit the switch to lower the garage door and went through to the house.

  He felt for the light switch on the wall and nothing happened. The room remained in darkness. Michael cursed and felt his way down the steps into the kitchen, banging into the pots and pans that hung on hooks from the wall on his left. Mora’s idea for keeping them easily accessible, but out of the kitchen. They clattered in the still of the house. There were more light switches at the foot of the steps. None of them brought light to his world. The house stayed stubbornly dark. And for the first time ever, Michael felt less than secure in his own home.

  Faint, flitting moonlight, and the reflection of streetlights drifting up from Balboa Island below suffused the kitchen and living room with almost enough light for him to see by. He felt his way across to the black marble breakfast bar and laid down the pizza box. The fuses were at the other end of the house. For a moment he wondered how there had been light in the garage. And then he remembered that the electrician had wired the garage door and lights to a separate breaker box in the garage itself.

  He waited by the breakfast bar and listened. There was no sound, not even the hum of the refrigerator. At the far end of the hall he could see that the lights were also out in the fish tank. The house was completely without power. An airplane passed overhead, its engines vibrating in the warm night air, and after it had passed, the same silence filled the house once more.

  But in spite of that silence, Michael had the sense that he was not alone. He was not sure why. Was it some sixth sense? A faint, unfamiliar scent in the air, or some sound that he was not even conscious of hearing? He waited until his pupils were dilated enough to make full use of all the available light and began moving cautiously through the front hall. Normally light would be spilling into
it from the courtyard, but that, too, was in darkness.

  At the end of the hall he glanced to his left, toward the office. The door stood open, but the room was mired in the deepest shadow. There was no movement, no sound. The breaker box was in the bedroom at the far end of a corridor that ran behind glass the full length of the courtyard. He turned along it, passed the open door of his bedroom, pausing only briefly to listen, before carrying on down. Soft footsteps on thick-piled carpet. He climbed the three steps at the end of the corridor and moved away from what little light filtered down from the open skies above the courtyard, into even deeper shadow.

  Now he knew that he smelled something. Something disconcertingly familiar. Some scent that hung in the air, a low note of something musky, almost sweet. There was someone here, of that he was certain. All his pain was forgotten as fear filled every available space in his body and mind, pushing everything else aside. And now he heard something, too. Someone breathing. A shallow, rapid breath. He held his own to listen more intently, and heard the soft scuff of a shoe on carpet.

  He reached out to touch the wall, a guide to help him keep his bearings, and moved cautiously along it, inching toward the bedroom door. The breaker box was set into the wall just inside the doorway. He could tell that it was open, and as he felt for the door jamb he heard the click of a switch, and the house was suddenly flooded with light.

  “Surprise!” Janey stood grinning at him, wearing a crimson basque and fishnet tights, her hair tied up in red, silk bows.

  “Jesus Christ, Janey!” Michael’s legs almost buckled under him. “What the hell are you doing!?”

  Her face shone with amusement. “You wanted to know how sex worked in Second Life. I thought I’d dress up as Doobie Littlething and give you a real life demo.”

  “For fuck’s sake! You just about gave me a heart attack!” He went storming off back along the hall. Janey teetered after him on perilously high heels.

  “Oh, come on, Mike. It was a joke. Where’s your sense of humour?”

  He growled back at her over his shoulder. “Janey it wouldn’t have been funny at the best of times, and this is not the best of times.”

  “Aw, hey Mike, it was a little funny, wasn’t it?”

  “No!” He spun around. “First of all it was a mock murder at your place. Now this. Where do you get off thinking scaring the shit out of people is funny, Janey?”

  She frowned and peered at him more closely. “What have you done to your mouth?”

  He turned into his bedroom and switched on the light above the mirror. A rectangular area of skin covering his mouth, an inch above and below and two inches on either side, was red and raised like a rash. He touched it and felt the sticky residue from the tape that had gagged him come away on his fingers. Then he heard Janey gasp.

  “Oh, my God, Mike, what’s happened to you? You’ve got blood all over your collar and the back of your neck.”

  He turned around and held out his open hands, heel to heel. “Yeh, and you might like to take a look at the rope burns on my wrists. I’ve probably got them on my ankles, too.”

  She looked at him in disbelief, for once at a loss for words. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ve been drugged, bound, gagged, beaten up, and threatened by a bunch of thugs who figure I stole their money.”

  Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, God, Mike. The three million?”

  “Three million, one hundred and eighty-three thousand—and a few extra dollars thrown in.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They said if I didn’t pay it back within twenty-four hours they would kill me.”

  He pushed past her and out into the hall, heading for the kitchen.

  “Well, pay them back, then.”

  “How? I used the money to pay off the debt on the house.”

  “Take out another loan.”

  Michael’s laugh was entirely devoid of humour. “Janey, the reason the bank was about to foreclose was because I couldn’t keep up the payments. They’re not going to give me another loan when I still can’t afford to pay it.”

  “Go to the cops, then.”

  “And tell them what? That I took money that wasn’t mine and spent it. Besides, if I do go to the cops these people will probably kill me anyway. You weren’t there, Janey. These were very serious people, and I have no doubt that they will very seriously kill me.”

  He took a wad of cotton wool from the medicine cabinet, ran it under cold water and started dabbing away the blood from his neck.

  “Here, let me do that.” Janey took the wad and began carefully washing away the blood from his skin and hair, working carefully through it to the cut on his head.

  He winced. “Ouch.”

  “Hold still!” She poured disinfectant on to the wad and pressed it to his scalp.

  He nearly went though the roof. “Jesus Christ, Janey! That hurts!”

  But she continued to hold it firmly against him. “Don’t be such a baby.” Then, “So what are you going to do?”

  “Somehow I’ve got to get the money back and make that transfer. Though I have this really bad feeling that they’re going to kill me anyway, even after I’ve done it.”

  “Transfer?

  “They want me to put the money into another SL account.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the crumpled sheet of paper that the man with the red hair had stuffed into it. “That’s the AV name they want me to transfer it to.”

  She snatched the paper from him and looked at the name. “Balthazar Bee. Hah! They’re not as smart at they think they are, Mike. They just made their first mistake. Come on.”

  By the time he looked around, she was already halfway along the hall, still teetering on her ridiculous heels, and he thought how absurd she looked in her outfit, breasts and butt bulging out of her basque, holes in her tights, and too much make-up smeared across lips and eyes. He knew that she had meant it that way. As a laugh, not a seduction. And as she wobbled past the fish tank, he found a wry smile creeping up on him unexpectedly. In spite of everything. He was glad that she was here, that he wasn’t facing this alone.

  When he reached his office, she had already begun logging into Second Life. He stood behind her as Twist rezzed at the agency. Janey ignored her avatar and pulled up the Search window. She typed in Balthazar Bee. There was only one. The profile had no photograph and no description in the About window. But it did reveal that this particular AV had been born just six months previously. Janey navigated her cursor toward the Groups window and stopped dead.

  “Jees,” she whispered.

  Michael leaned in to see, troubled still by the loss of his reading glasses. “What is it.”

  “There’s only one Group, and guess what it is.”

  Michael’s heart seemed to push up into his throat, pulsing there and almost stopping his breathing. “Virtual Realty,” he read. “That’s the Group Arnold Smitts used for his land transactions.”

  Janey turned to look at him, pale as a ghost. “Oh. My. God, Mike. You’ve stolen three million dollars from the mob.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  What little moon there was seemed to have vanished. The night was black as ebony, the sky studded with tiny jewels of light that reached out to them from millions of years in the past. There was something about that vast, timeless cosmos that made Michael feel very small, and his troubles less than insignificant. But he knew that as the sun rose tomorrow and the first twelve hours of his twenty-four had passed, those troubles were going to loom very large in his mind and seem anything but insignificant.

  Janey poured them each another glass of Syrah and set the bottle carefully back down on the stone tiles of the terrace. The silhouettes of tall palm trees bowed in the breeze against the lights of the island below, and a yacht under motor power chugged its way slowly up the channel, leaving shards of shattered light scattered in its wake.

  “That money must have come out of Smitts’ account when his AV was destroyed. Transferr
ed to another account that transferred the money to you before it was erased.”

  Michael shook his head. “But why would anyone want to put it into my account? Didn’t they know I was broke and liable to spend it?”

  Janey laughed. “It must have been a mistake, Mike. The money must have been destined for someone else. Someone made a mistake when they were tapping in a name or a number, and it went to you instead.”

  Knowing that it must have been an error did nothing to improve Michael’s mood. He sat clutching his glass, already partially anaesthetised by the wine, and felt himself slipping into an even deeper depression. “They’re going to think I killed him.”

  “Who?”

  “Smitts. If they think I engineered the theft of the money, they must think I killed him, too.

  “Did you?

  “Ha. Ha. Ha.”

  “Where were you the night of the murder, Mike?”

  “Pole dancing at Minsky’s.”

  “No, I’m serious. Where were you?”

  He turned to look at her. “I was here.”

  “On your own?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great alibi.”

  “I don’t need an alibi, Janey.”

  “Well, if someone’s setting you up for this, you might.”

  A chill ran through him, in spite of the warm night air. “You think I’m being set up?”

  “I have no idea. It doesn’t really matter, either way. Whether you’re being set up or if it’s all just some horrible mistake, you’re in deep shit.”

  Michael slipped further down in his chair and took a long draught of his wine. “Thank you for those words of comfort.”

  They sat in silence, then, for a long time, before finally Michael turned and looked across at Janey in her ridiculous outfit. She was deeply lost in some distant contemplation. But he needed a change of subject, something to take his mind off the same thoughts that kept going round and around his head in never-ending circles.

  “So tell me about SL sex.”