“Try again,” I said to Devon.
The second time she tapped with Mike’s index finger. Still nothing.
I lifted my head suddenly. “Where’s Tad?”
Devon swiveled. “He must’ve exited.”
“Go after him,” I said instantly. Even though I could’ve used another set of hands, it was more important that she keep an eye on Tad. “We’ll be fine. Go!”
She didn’t argue, quickly exiting to the Titanic scenario.
Alone, I struggled to reorient Mike’s limp body, then lifted his hand to the far right and tried to tap.
Nothing.
I gritted my teeth but didn’t give up. I kept trying, long after my legs ached from treading water, and my eyes burned with frustrated tears. Twenty times. Thirty.
At my fortieth failure I screamed in frustration, threw myself into a back float and pounded my fists on the water. Mike’s body resumed its lax dead man’s float.
Angrily, I swiped a hand across my eyes, then took a deep breath. This wasn’t working. Had Tad done something once he exited, changed the menu access?
I oriented myself to the east and stretched up. After only two taps the menu scrolled down across my vision. So why wasn’t it working for Mike? He’d come through in the shark’s wake just like I had—
Well, not quite. I grimaced. The shark had bitten Mike first.
Was that it? Had the shark’s bite infected his VR code somehow? It would be just Tad’s level of sneakiness to have the bite flip things.
The shark had bitten Tad, too, and he’d deliberately exited while we weren’t looking.
With renewed hope I faced Mike to the west and tapped again with his limp right hand. No dice. I tried twenty more times for west, south and north.
Arrrgh! I’d been so sure I was onto something. A simple flip. What else could it mean? Up and down? I would’ve noticed if Tad had performed synchronized swimming tricks. Right to left?
I stared at the stump of Mike’s missing left arm with growing horror.
Tad would pay for this.
I squeezed Mike’s hand one last time. “I’ll get you out of there, I promise.” Then I exited.
Chapter Twenty-one
ANGEL
I woke up sprawled on the raft. After I entered the under-scenario, someone, probably Ron, had fished my body out of the water before I drowned. The cold air nipped my skin, but I didn’t appear to be suffering from hypothermia. Some vagary of programming had resulted in my clothes being soaked with the warmer waters of Hawaii, not the icy Atlantic.
I looked first to Tad and noted with approval that Ron and Devon had him tied up and under watch.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, would you look at that?” the brawny VR carpenter exclaimed.
“What’s going on?” I croaked, sitting up.
“She’s going down.”
Thank goodness. That meant NextStep was almost over. We could get help soon. If the under-scenario reset, then perhaps Mike would stop being a corpse.
The lights on board the Titanic had been extinguished, but the programmers subtly lit the scene so that we could see the huge ship, tall as a skyscraper, standing on end. People screamed and began to slide off.
With a tremendous crack, the ship broke in half. The stern half smacked back down onto the water, briefly horizontal again. The resulting wave pushed us farther away from the Titanic.
I remembered my worries about the suction caused by a sinking ship. Game Overing now would separate me from Mike’s body. “Everyone paddle,” I ordered. “Use your shoes if you don’t have an oar.”
"The stern half is going vertical again," Ron reported a moment later.
I paddled as hard as I could with my leather shoes. My arms became wet to the elbow. I ignored the growing numbness. Pull with the shoe, again, again.
I couldn't resist looking back when the VR player said softly, "There she goes."
Even just the top half of the Titanic loomed over our pitiful raft, a black mountain in the moonlight. It moaned and shuddered as it plunged down, down, down. Men and women jumped or fell screaming as it went.
The final plunge took only about five minutes.
I waited for the lights to come back on.
“Should we go back for survivors?” Ron asked.
I no longer cared a fig about the stupid game. I almost snapped his head off. But that wasn’t fair. I’d promised him and Gerry a chance to win the money to pay off their education debt. “Of course. But no more than three or we’ll be swamped.”
I just wanted the NextStep scenario to end.
We picked up three people, all VR, but lost an oar in the process. There followed a hideous ten minutes of shutting our ears to the increasingly faint cries for help. I had to keep chanting under my breath that it wasn’t real. It helped that I could hear the sound effects in only one ear.
The final silence that fell was both a relief and a horror.
My throat ached, not for the VR reenactment, but in remembrance of the real tragedy. So many dead.
Most ships foundered in a matter of minutes. The Titanic had stayed afloat for over two hours. So many more could’ve been saved if they’d had enough lifeboats, if some hadn’t been launched half-full, if nearby ships had been listening for radio distress calls… I wondered idly if the Immersion would do better or worse for loss of life while I waited. Any second now—
“Why isn’t it ending?” Devon demanded, speaking my own fears. “Why are we still here?”
“Maybe we don’t get survival credit until we’re rescued?” Ron offered. “This raft is pretty flimsy. If the waves pick up, we’re 100% toast.”
I gnashed my teeth. “The Titanic’s survivors weren’t picked up by the Carpathian until the next morning. We can’t wait that long.” My fingernails dug into my palms. The thirty minute condition had to have been fulfilled by now. How long before Mike panicked in the dark and passed through into the third scenario where I couldn’t reach him?
“The programmers will probably compress the time,” Devon said.
“Not enough!” I yanked at my hair. “If I Game Over, maybe I can convince—“
Devon made a rude noise. “They won’t listen to you. I say we motivate Tadzhikistan here to rewrite his code.” She eyed him balefully.
“No time,” I said tersely. And I wasn’t convinced Tad could or would do it.
Devon and I were still arguing about what to do next when someone called out, “Ahoy, there!”
Peering into the dark, I made out the shape of a lifeboat. Much larger than our humble raft, it came equipped with real oars and crammed with people, mostly women.
I didn’t want to explain our prisoner, but one of the new VR characters, a young sailor, replied before I could stop him.
“We’re over here!”
“Are you in need of a tow?”
“Are we ever,” the sailor said fervently.
“Tie on.” A coil of rope flew out of the darkness, and the sailor neatly knotted it around an iron spike I hadn’t even noticed.
“Angel? Is that you?” Maryanne leaned over the side of the boat.
“We’re all here,” I said. Exhaustion weighted my limbs. I didn’t mention Mike.
“See? I told you she’d be fine,” Kenneth Jones said, an edge to his voice.
His presence snapped me out of my lethargy. As the owner of NextStep, he had the power to shut the Immersion down. Which made him Mike’s best chance.
I raised my voice and appealed to him. “Mr. Jones! I need you to shut the Immersion down. Mike needs help.”
“What happened to him?” Kenneth Jones peered over the side of the boat. “He doesn’t have X’s over his eyes.”
“He’s trapped,” I told him. “I don’t have time to explain. Just shut the simulation down.”
“Being unconscious in NextStep doesn’t mean he’s unwell,” Kenneth Jones said condescendingly. “If he were injured in truth, the safety protocols would kick in.”
I gritted my teeth. “He’s trapped in an under-scenario. Please take my word for it. You need to end the Immersion now.”
“Daddy,” Maryanne touched his hand, brow furrowed.
“I’m sorry, sweet, but I’ve committed a lot of money to the HoloTV networks. I can’t cut the scenario short, on the say-so of a bodyguard.”
His face was obstinate; he wasn’t going to help me.
I wanted to scream. I’d always thought Kenneth Jones was a very smart man, but he was being stupid now. His argument didn’t even make sense. The disaster was over. What was the point in filming a bunch of people huddling on a raft? No one would want to air hours of anti-climax.
I blinked. Kenneth Jones was a very smart man. The words bounced around my mind and acquired nasty ricochets.
I nudged Devon. “Pass me the device.” I held out my hand behind my back.
Her eyebrows twitched, but she complied.
“Take out one of your VR earplugs and monitor Mike’s heartbeat. Let me know if he starts to panic.” I stood up. “Balance me,” I told Ron. As I moved to the edge closest the lifeboat, he shifted his weight to the other end of the raft.
“What are you doing?” Kenneth Jones asked sharply.
“I need to talk to Maryanne without shouting,” I said.
“Please,” Maryanne said.
I didn’t wait for permission, jumping aboard. Accidentally-on-purpose, I bumped into Kenneth Jones.
I squeezed into a seat beside Maryanne, forcing the plump woman beside her to make way or have me on her lap.
“So,” I smiled at Maryanne with manic cheerfulness. “Have you found out yet why your dad was in such a lather to save you?” I directed a look at Kenneth Jones. “You daughter thinks you did it because you think she’s incompetent.”
“Angel!” Maryanne hissed.
“What? Of course, I don’t think you’re incompetent,” Kenneth Jones interrupted. “I have faith in you, baby.”
She smiled, but her shoulders stayed tight and hunched.
“So why did you do it?” I smiled coldly.
“I was worried about Maryanne’s safety.”
“So you thought blowing her cover and exposing her as your daughter was the best way to make her safe?”
“Of course not.”
“You knew I was with her. A trained bodyguard. So what was the problem?”
He didn’t have an answer; I could see it in his eyes. He smiled condescendingly. “Parents don’t always act logically when their children are at risk. When you have one of your own, you’ll understand.”
I addressed Maryanne. “He means he panicked—because he knew standing beside someone with violet eyes would be a dangerous place to be.”
Silence. Maryanne frowned, but calculation flashed in Kenneth Jones’s gray eyes. He was, after all, a very smart man. If every second hadn’t counted against Mike’s chances, I would’ve taken more time to plan my strategy. Instead, I’d have to wing it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kenneth Jones said smoothly. “Has there been another incident with Nations Against?”
“Why, yes,” I said brightly. “Someone named Tadzhikistan, a member of my own team, whom I knew only as Tad, turned out to be involved with them.”
Maryanne gasped. “I never liked him.”
Kenneth Jones frowned. “Is this the same Tad that you campaigned to be given a golden ticket?”
“Yes.” The admission galled me; my hands clenched into fists. “Funny how his name didn’t trigger any alerts.”
Kenneth Jones kept his cool and replied courteously, playing it perfectly for Maryanne. “I’ll have a word with my security division, but to be fair there were a lot of names to be checked. The agent might not have recognized Tadzhikistan as the name of a former country, or known what that signified.”
I didn’t press the point, moving on. “Tell me, what exactly made you decide to hold the Culling in a debt-detainee prison? The very same prison which held Tad? It seems like a rather large coincidence.”
Maryanne grabbed my arm, squeezing painfully. “Angel, what are you implying?”
“I just have a few questions for your dad,” I said, without taking my gaze off Kenneth Jones. The sound of oars slapping the water seemed very loud.
He stroked his moustache. “I don’t recall. A number of sites were proposed. I expect it was some magic combination of being able to obtain permission and the relative cheapness because most of the facility was already under surveillance. We wanted some place constrained so that only the second-tier ticket holders who showed creativity would make the Cull.”
“Any chance you have a record of that meeting to show who initially made the suggestion?” I asked.
“Sorry, no.” He raised an eyebrow. Birdie back in my court.
I lobbed another missile. “The background file you gave me on Jordan failed to mention his change of name. Yet, curiously, Ms. Rodriguez did have the information. It can’t have been hard to come by.”
Kenneth Jones relaxed. “Again, my security did not know to watch for Nations Against names at that time. If that’s all the proof you have…” he shrugged.
I turned to Maryanne. “Listen to him. He’s already stopped denying the charges and started talking about proof.”
Maryanne bit her lip. “Charges? What are you driving at, Angel? Do you suspect there’s a spy on his staff?”
“Nations Against is a small-time hate group, the type that will shoot at someone violet-eyed from a distance. So where did they get the funds to infiltrate not only the Golden Ticket Event, but also the 1960s Historical Immersion? Those things cost money. They needed financial backing.”
“Very few people knew we would be in the Historical Immersion yet both Nations Against and my clone found us.”
“Are you suggesting that I helped kidnap my own daughter?” His face reddened with outrage. “You’re insane.”
Maryanne straightened, the worry lines on her forehead relaxing. “Daddy would never do that.”
I was skeptical, but I didn’t risk alienating Maryanne by insisting. “Maybe the kidnapping was Devon’s idea, one of those right-hand-doesn’t-know-what-the-left-hand-is-doing things. After all, Kenneth Jones wouldn’t want Nations Against to know he was funding them. He’d prefer to remain in the background so when they were, inevitably, arrested they couldn’t implicate him. He used them as pawns.” My gaze bored into Kenneth Jones’s eyes.
He stared back, unflinching.
“You’re not making sense,” Maryanne said. “If my dad was prejudiced against the violet-eyed, he would never have hired you as a bodyguard.” She sat back, pleased with her argument.
Kenneth Jones lifted an eyebrow, content to let his daughter defend him.
“It’s true he doesn’t foam at the mouth when he talks to me,” I conceded. “Maybe he fears the competition. Maybe Leona crossed him with one of her environmental projects, or another violet-eyed whom I’ve never met did him wrong.”
He crossed his arms, confident of victory. “You’re grasping at straws. You have no proof—because there is no proof. I am not connected to Nations Against,” he added for Maryanne’s benefit.
“And everything that’s happened is just an unfortunate accident?” I asked.
“I’m sorry your friend is in a coma,” Kenneth Jones said. “It’s a tragedy that this occurred during the Golden Ticket Event. I’ll be happy to donate money to help defray medical expenses, but Nations Against is responsible for these crimes, not me. If I hadn’t already turned off the recordings, I would sue you for the insinuation.”
While I would’ve loved for the broadcast to still be Live, I’d known there was only a remote chance of it. Kenneth Jones was not stupid.
“Oh, I won’t be taking you to court,” I assured him airily. “Maryanne is your judge.” I paused then smashed the birdie back in his face. “How did you know that Mike was in a coma? All I said was that he was trapped.”
“Oh, no, Mike’s
in a coma?” Maryanne gasped.
I kept my gaze on her father. The sudden attack had caught him flat-footed. He blinked. “When you said Nations Against instigated the attack, I inferred it was similar to the one that felled Gabriel Braive several weeks ago. It was on the news.”
Slick.
“Maryanne, would you say your dad stands back and lets his managers run his businesses for him?”
She let out a short laugh. “I wish. He knows all his businesses from top to bottom and has all the details at his fingertips. He knows his employees: faces, names, families.”
“How likely is it that he knew nothing about Project Renaissance, which ran for a decade in his 1970’s and 1980’s Historical Immersions?”
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t know.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Not very,” she admitted.
“I’m guessing there was some backlash following the revelation of all those hidden cameras that I exposed? Some revenue lost?”
She winced. “Yes. Quite a lot. He almost filed for bankruptcy. I remember because he transferred a lot of shares to my name, in case. I had to sign about fifty documents.”
“Voila. Motive. Means. And I think he created his own opportunity. Tell me, who first mentioned that I’d opened a bodyguard business?” A guess, but a logical one.
Her voice sank to a whisper. “My dad.”
He snorted. “So now keeping tabs on my daughter’s friends is a crime?”
I stared at him and shook my head. “With every word, you prove the type of man you are.”
“And what type is that?” he fired back.
“The type who notes every detail, who would never put up with incompetent staff, the type who holds a grudge. You knew very well about Tad and Jordan’s connection to Nations Against.”
He rolled his eyes. “Speculation.”
Back to Maryanne. “You’re his daughter. Ask him. You’ll know if he’s lying.”
“Please, Daddy,” Maryanne said tearfully. “Tell me it isn’t true.”
“Isn’t what true?” He looked close to exploding with frustration. “That your little friend cost me millions? That she and her kind are arrogant and dangerous—” Too late he realized he’d said too much and broke off. “You have no proof.”
Angel Eyes Page 24