The Hidden Reality (Alex Pella, #2)

by Stephen Martino

  Boasting three different black belts and an amateur mixed martial arts title in his younger years, Jules was well versed in the art of self-defense. With Jules’ athletic build, height, and swiftness, the second guard had no time to defend against a direct kick to his throat. Gasping for air, he fell into his heliocraft and grabbed its steering handle. Fortunately for him, the effect of the quantum disruptor began to dissipate, and the craft took flight.

  Jules knew he would be unable to defend himself out in the open. In addition, with the effect of the disruptor diminishing, his position would soon be discovered by The New Reality within a few seconds. Though he did possess two different assault weapons in his vest, Jules understood they would be no deterrent against a heliocraft.

  Jules jumped and clung onto the back of the heliocraft as it sputtered into the air. Pulling himself up, he could see the WOG bend over the controls, coughing for air. Fortuitously, the guard had not seen him nor did it appear as if he had drawn attention from any of the other WOGs. Grabbing hold of a metal hand bar within the vehicle, Jules drug himself forward and grasped the WOG’s left leg. Stabilizing himself on the hand bar, he yanked the man from the vehicle. Now, about 30 feet above ground, the WOG plummeted to his death.

  Jules pulled himself up and grabbed the heliocraft’s controls. He had little idea how to operate it, and the vehicle buckled and swayed at his initial attempts to steer it. Though completely untrained, he managed at least to stabilize it enough to prevent it from crashing into the buildings around him.

  Other heliocrafts began to fly towards him. He could see at least two approaching from his left and another three closing in on him from behind. Getting his bearings, Jules realized that he was above the intersection of Marylebone and Baker Street.

  He grew up in London and knew all of its roads and alleys. In fact, while exploring the city as a child, he discovered an abandoned subway station about a quarter of a mile from his current position. He surmised that if he could make it there, he could possibly hide in its maze of forgotten tunnels that were hopefully devoid of sensors to detect his biotags.

  Jules pushed down on the steering wheel, and his heliocraft zipped forward. Looking down, he noted another heliocraft approaching from underneath.

  “Mister Jules Windsor,” a voice bellowed from the vehicle. “You are under arrest. Please land and surrender yourself.”

  “Like hell I will!” Jules shouted.

  Without flight training but with great ingenuity, Jules rapidly accelerated his vehicle downward until it smashed atop the other heliocraft, killing its unsuspecting driver upon impact. The other vehicle then spun out of control, hitting the ground in a fiery explosion.

  Jules’ victory was short lived as four new heliocrafts began pursuit. He was virtually surrounded. Descending even further, he began to fly his vehicle closer to the ground, hoping to gain distance from his pursuers just long enough to reach the abandoned subway station.

  The streets of London were packed with pedestrians and onlookers riding bikes. A few military police vans patrolled the area but otherwise it was empty of other motorized vehicles. As Jules soared just above their heads, they ducked for cover. A few of the people on their bicycles crashed into one another while others simply fell to the street.

  Despite the danger, many of the onlookers stood and cheered him on. Their contempt for the faceless WOGs mounted by the day. With complete disregard for the people of London or wherever they patrolled and without loyalty to their local territories, the WOGs were disdained throughout the world.

  Jules flew between a few tall buildings, attempting to control the heliocraft without colliding into one of them. Just as he was about to make a hard right down an upcoming street, he felt a paralyzing blast hit both him and his vehicle, sending them crashing to the ground.

  The heliocraft hit the street, and Jules went rolling over top of it flipping on the hard concrete for about 10 feet until crashing into a few pedestrians and their bikes. Luckily, he was flying only about eight feet above the ground.

  Though bloodied and scraped, Jules jumped to his feet. With adrenaline blocking out all sensation of pain, he began to run, albeit with a limp, down the street. Before he could make it 20 feet, he felt another searing blast tear through his body. About 10 people around him fell to the ground in complete agony after the blast. Jules kept moving, but at a slower pace.

  Five heliocrafts landed around him, surrounding his position. Mustering all of his strength, he leapt onto the nearest WOG in front of him before the guard could leave his vehicle.

  They’re not going to take me. I’d rather die here than in a NewREMA camp.

  Jules reached into his torn vest and pulled out a knife. With one quick lunge, he stuck it through the WOG’s throat, piercing the man’s spinal cord. The WOG went limp and fell to the ground.

  As two more WOGs approached, Jules kicked the controls of the heliocraft and sent it soaring into them. The vehicle hit them head on.

  Jules reached into his vest and pulled out a molecular disruptor. Shaped like a silver pistol he aimed it at another approaching WOG and shot. The pistol misfired and produced only a few sparks; Jules suspected it had been damaged when his heliocraft crashed.

  Before he could attempt to fire it again, he was struck by another blast, leaving him almost paralyzed. Out of options, Jules began to feebly crawl away. Leaving a trail of blood behind him, he slowly edged himself a few feet down the street until a WOG placed his foot painfully on top of his right hand.

  He felt a sharp pain to his ribs as another WOG kicked him directly in the chest.

  “You ain’t going nowhere,” one of the WOGs gleefully shouted as he kicked Jules in the thigh.

  Jules reached with his left hand into his vest, hoping to find another weapon. The world went black around him as the WOG standing on his foot hit the back of his head with a metal club.

  Chapter_4

  “Alex,” a distant voice murmured. “I think he’s finally waking up.”

  Alex slowly began to open his eyes. At first he thought he was lying in a field, looking up at a mountain with the sun shining brightly down upon his eyes. Gradually, the face of a beautiful young woman came into focus. With her vibrant green eyes, long, brown hair, fair skin and angelic appearance, she smiled affectionately at him. “Alex?” she asked. “How are you feeling?”

  To say he felt well would be a total lie. In fact, Alex felt as if he had the worse hangover in his life. His lips were parched, his head throbbed, and his muscles ached. The stale lights of the room made his brain feel as if it were about to explode.

  “Turn off the light,” he began to mumble. Even the sound of his own voice made the pounding in his head worse.

  The ambient light in the room began to dim, and the room’s large bay windows provided ample daylight to keep the area well lit.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked again in a soft, comforting tone.

  Alex instinctively pulled the sheets over his head, almost like a child would do when asked to arise for school in the morning. Though wanting immediate answers, he needed a few moments to himself before becoming fully awake.

  The young woman smiled as she pulled down the sheets.

  Alex blinked his eyes a few times until the entire room fully came into focus. There were no mountains or trees. To his surprise, Alex found himself lying in bed in his own bedroom. Looking down upon him was his fiancée, Marissa Ambrosia. Her face and smile brought him immediate relief.

  He could not help at this moment but to remember how they first met three years ago. She had looked so beautiful then, as she did now. With her form fitting brown dress and svelte figure, she had instantly attracted his attention. Then, after working closely to find and distribute a cure for The Disease, they became inseparable. Within six months they were engaged.

  “You gave me some scare back at the office,” Samantha chimed in. “You look a lot better than you did yesterday,” she added, noticing that he had regained some of
his color.

  “What happened?” Alex asked. “And how long was I out?”

  “Almost a day,” Marissa answered.

  “A day!” Alex quickly responded. “How could I have been out for a day?” his strength slowly began to return as the shock of the situation made the adrenaline in his body flow. “And how did I get here? The last thing I remember was putting on a crown sent to me by Albert Rosenberg.”

  Alex quickly sat up in his bed. The covers fell to his waist, revealing that he was wearing nothing but black boxers. “Then I was in a field on a horse and looking up at a magnificent mountain.”

  “Alex,” Samantha answered sympathetically, “you were neither on a horse or climbing a mountain. After you passed out and were medically stabilized, you were taken here directly from your office.”

  “The thing is,” Alex insisted, “I felt as if I were on a horse next to a mountain. The scene was just as real and vivid as this is now. I’ve had dreams before, but this experience was absolutely nothing like I’ve ever experienced. I swear it felt as if I were transported to another place, if not time.”

  “If you’re trying to tell me you want to go horseback riding,” Samantha jested, hoping to make her old friend feel better, “we’ll all go this weekend.”

  “That’s odd,” Marissa interjected.

  “What?” Alex asked, ignoring Samantha’s comment.

  Marissa placed a silver disc called a virtual cerebral imager or VCI for short on his forehead. A transparent hologram of Alex’s brain appeared between the three of them. Rapidly changing colors, the image began to rotate.

  “You see this one bright red spot here?” Marissa said, pointing to a C-shaped portion of the holographic image directly in the middle of the brain. “This area is called the posterior cingulate cortex.”

  Both with a neuroscience background, Alex and Samantha recognized the anatomy but failed to realize its significance.

  “The PCC as it’s called for short,” Marissa went on to explain, “is the most metabolically active portion of the entire brain, and on average has a 40 percent higher blood flow than any other area of the organ. However, as you both can observe by the bright red color of this area on the VCI holograph, Alex’s PCC is garnering well over 500 percent more blood flow than the rest of the brain.”

  “Is that why I passed out?” Alex asked.

  “There’s more to it than that,” Samantha answered, realizing where Marissa was headed. She then stood up from the bed and grabbed the golden crown sitting on an adjacent end table.

  Marissa took the artifact and pointed to two, small, gold-colored circuit boards attached to opposite sides of it where it rests on the head.

  “I didn’t see these,” Alex said aloud, immediately realizing their significance.

  He then took the crown and began to inspect it for other surreptitious items.

  “We already did that,” Samantha said. “There’s nothing else on it. The only thing we found were those two electronic doo-hickies there and a few strands of hair. At first I thought they were yours because they looked the same, but under closer inspection they appeared much older and brittle. I sent them to the labs for some genetic testing. Maybe it will provide a few extra clues.”

  “They’re certainly not doo-hickies,” Alex said, quickly putting together everything that transpired and why they occurred. “These are PCC accelerators directly attuned to a person’s unique subatomic quantum vibration frequency.”

  “In English,” Samantha answered.

  “The New Reality uses something similar,” Alex quickly responded, “when priming someone’s brain to enter their virtual reality world. That’s why when you placed the crown on your head nothing happened.”

  “Because the PCC accelerator was attuned only to Alex’s quantum frequency,” Marissa added, “it could only effect his brain and not yours.”

  “But why?” Samantha asked, “And who placed them there?”

  “Albert Rosenberg,” Alex answered. “I don’t know for what reason he had this crown sent to me three years after he died or why he had these accelerators place on them. But I do know this: it was certainly no accident.”

  “How can you just assume it was from Albert?” Marissa asked. “Just because the card had his name on it, that doesn’t mean he sent it.”

  “I would normally agree with you,” Alex said. “Except that there was one thing on the note that mentioned breaking the pound. During one of the last times I spoke with him before he passed away, he said the exact same thing. I didn’t know what he meant, and I assumed his dying mind was simply wandering. He said it then, and now I see it once again. This is no coincidence. Nothing’s ever a coincidence with Albert Rosenberg.”

  The PCC area of the holograph suddenly began to turn a thicker shade of red. Then, certain areas of the surrounding brain began to change into a darker orange color.

  Alex clutched his head, dropping the crown to his lap. Beads of sweat began to trickle down from his brow and all other color in his face vanished for a brief second.

  Slowly, the PCC and all the other areas on the brain began to turn back to their original colors as Alex moaned in agony.

  Marissa grabbed a puck-shaped device from the black medical bag hanging around her shoulder and placed it against Alex’s chest. A holographic image of his body then appeared next to the bed with each organ system highlighted a different color and digital readout quickly changing adjacent to them.

  “What’s going on?” Samantha asked.

  “I don’t know,” Marissa responded. “It seems as if the effects of the accelerators on the crown have not yet resolved. In fact Alex’s PCC suddenly became even more hyperactive.”

  “The mountain,” Alex said as the pain subsided. “It was more than just in my head,” Turning to his fiancée, he said while catching his breath, “Marissa, as an esteemed physician and former member of the National Institutes of Health medical team, correct me if I’m wrong.”

  Marissa nodded her head.

  “The PCC is the anatomic portion of the brain that generates human consciousness,” Alex continued. “And because human consciousness lies on a subatomic level, it would make it the brain’s greatest quantum field generator.”

  “So what you are trying to suggest is,” Marissa surmised, in disbelief at his presumed conclusion, “that somehow you connected to someone else’s quantum field and were experiencing what he was experiencing?”

  “More than that,” Alex said. “Because time exists on a quantum level and isn’t linear, maybe I was experiencing something that has not happened to me as of yet.”

  “Or maybe happened in another lifetime?” Samantha added whimsically.

  Though stated facetiously, Alex agreed. “You’re right,” he said bright eyed. “It almost seemed as if I were not only a different person but also in a different time.”

  Alex grabbed the puck-shaped device off his chest, terminating the holographic image of his body. Then he took off the disc on his forehead and handed it back to Marissa. Feeling a little stronger now, he moved over to the edge of the bed, despite his fiancée’s disapproving eyes.

  “So what’re you trying to say?” Samantha asked skeptically. “That you are reincarnated?”

  “I’m just saying that I can’t rule out any possibilities.” Alex became a little lightheaded and placed his hands on the bed to stabilize himself.

  “And before I forget,” Marissa announced, changing the subject, “your aero-bike tournament is completely out of the question. As both your doctor and fiancée, I am confining you to light activity for the next few days.”

  Though Alex had certainly looked forward to the race, he could not argue with Marissa. He still felt much too dizzy to walk, let alone fly. Plus, Marissa was an internationally respected physician. Besides helping to find the cure for The Disease, she had distinguished herself many times for her outstanding fieldwork in the most poor and medically underserved areas of the world.

  Before
he finally attempted to stand, Alex noted his best friend William Fowler sprawled out on a recliner fast asleep. Two pizza boxes, bags of empty snacks, and a few containers of soda littered the area around him. Apparently intoxicated by the massive amount of food he had eaten, William remained in a deep slumber despite their conversation.

  “How long’s William been here?” Alex asked.

  “All night,” Marissa responded. “Once I told him about your medical mishap, he insisted on coming right over to see you.”

  Alex smirked as he pointed to all the trash on the floor. “I assume he brought his appetite with him.”

  “He said he wouldn’t leave until you woke up. Then, after about 15 minutes of waiting, he got a little hungry and ordered some food.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “You know what’s an understatement?” Samantha said, looking at both of them. “That this is the most time any of us here in this room have spent with you in almost two years. You’ve been cooped away in your office like some hermit, working on God-knows-what all the time.”

  She pointed to Marissa and William, “And for God’s sake not only have you neglected your business but you’ve been neglecting your fiancée and best friend. What’s so damn important that you’d forsake everything you care about?”

  Freedom, Alex thought.

  He wished he could tell his three closest companions the truth, but he knew that to do so would jeopardize their lives and his plans. With the ongoing demise of all personal freedoms and the rise of the New World Order, he knew that somebody needed to act to save humanity from a future of serfdom.

  William finally awoke. “What’s going on?” he muttered, slowly regaining his wits. “How’s Alex?”

  He sat up on the recliner. Napkins and a few bags of chips fell to the floor in the process. Wearing a dirty, red hat with only the letters G and R visible above the brim, a wrinkled striped polo shirt and equally wrinkled tan shorts, he looked as if he had been sleeping in his clothes for months.