Maryanne put her hand to her mouth as if fighting down bile. Horror clouded her gaze.
I shifted on the uncomfortable wooden bench. “He’s right. We have no proof. Nothing that will convict him in a court of law, and he has millions to spend on lawyers. But you can punish him. You can take away his daughter.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Some punishment. He spends—what, a few weeks out of every year?—with me. His company matters to him, not me.”
“That’s not true.” For the first time Kenneth Jones lost his smugness. He tugged at his hair, making it stand up. “Of course, you matter to me, Maryanne. You’re my daughter, my heir. Who do you think I’ve been building this empire for?” He waved a hand.
She gasped as if stabbed. “Your heir? That’s why you want to take down the violet-eyed, because you don’t trust me to compete with them. You’re worried that after you die I’ll squander your precious empire.”
He protested, but Maryanne crossed her arms and turned a stony face toward him.
“So do you still have those shares?” I asked casually. “If he was hit by a bus tomorrow, you’d be in charge?”
She blinked. “I guess so.”
I passed her Tad’s device, which I’d tuned to Kenneth Jones during my earlier stumble. “What about if he fell into a coma?”
Her fingers curled around it.
“It’s your choice, but I think he deserves a long vacation on a beach.” I didn’t mention the pit stop as a corpse.
“That’s enough threats! Give me that!” He held out his hand peremptorily. “Maryanne, you don’t know what that does.”
But he obviously did.
She lifted her chin. “I’m not a child. I’ll talk to you in a month, Daddy.” She triggered the shark.
The world flickered, dark to light.
I smiled in cold satisfaction as the Great White loomed behind Kenneth Jones, bit down on his shoulder, and dragged him down in the Pearl Harbor scenario.
Chapter Twenty-two
MIKE
Mike stopped counting his heartbeat, listening hard.
He could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing, but his instincts whispered something lurked in the darkness behind him. Something dark and implacable. Something hunting him.
The shark, returning to take another bite.
Your mind is playing tricks on you.
His pulse sped up anyway. Dread and terror grew inside him like a monstrous cancer, all the worse because he couldn’t flee, couldn’t even turn his head, helpless.
The Great White cutting through the water like a grey torpedo. Cold fish eyes blazing with inhuman hunger, jaws gaping open—
Lub-dub, lubdub, lubdub. His heart strained faster and faster, the sound magnified, lubdublubdublubdublubdub…
*ANGEL*
“His heartbeat’s speeding up!” Devon called from the raft.
My own pulse kicked. Not yet. I wasn’t ready. If Mike went through the portal now…
Maryanne looked at me with haunted eyes, but her voice was resolute. “I’m so sorry about Mike. What do you need me to do?”
I met her gaze fiercely. “I need Tad out of the Immersion, in custody and under Knockout so he can’t use his hacker Augments.” I had an idea how to get Mike back, but I dared not implement it while Tad was awake and could interfere. “I need it right now,” I added. In five minutes it would be too late; Mike would be lost through the portal.
“Done.” Maryanne gave a short nod. She removed a ruby ring from her father’s lax hand and tapped out a rhythm.
The waves froze, and the boats stopped their gentle up-and-down motion. The VR players went eerily silent and still. A white door appeared only two feet away.
“Sir?” A muscular Latino man in black body armour appeared in the doorway. I assessed him: professional bodyguard, high-grade equipment and at least one Augment.
“What is the emergency?” Before Maryanne could answer, he caught sight of his employer’s prone body and started swearing.
Maryanne stood up. “That man, Tadzhikistan Cole,” she pointed, “attacked my father. Administer Knockout and remove him from the scenario.”
“Not now, Miss. I’ll take your statement in a moment.” He tapped his earbud. “Get me Medical..”
Maryanne shrank at his dismissal. I tensed, ready to tackle the guard, but then she straightened her shoulders. “I am Maryanne Jones, principal stockholder of KJ Enterprises, and you will listen to me,” she said crisply, then rattled off a string of numbers.
Pause, then his eyes widened. “Identity confirmed. What are your orders?”
“Secure the prisoner, then…”
While she gave instructions, I stepped from the lifeboat back to the raft—a much easier prospect now that both were level.
I sat cross-legged and lifted Mike's head onto my lap. I stroked his brow, hoping it would have a subliminal soothing effect. “Shhh, calm down. Hang on.”
Devon laid her ear against his chest and listened. She shook her head. “It’s still racing.”
My back muscles tensed. Three minutes until the portal opened.
The guard didn’t bother with the boats, walking across the surface of the ocean. Tad took one look at him and held out his already-bound hands. “No need to knock me out.”
The guard looked at Maryanne.
“Do it,” she commanded.
Mumbling something about paperwork, he produced a Knockout patch and pressed it to Tad’s neck. Seconds later, Tad slumped into unconsciousness.
Two minutes before we lost Mike. We had to act now.
“Take off his shoes,” I ordered Devon while I scratched the back of Mike's ear with my fingernail. I watched him closely, praying for an involuntary twitch. Some reaction.
My idea for communicating with Mike was simple. Mike’s physical body lay in front of me, but he couldn’t feel anything because the VR program had turned his nerves off. What I was hoping was that the program had missed some tiny spot of sensitivity.
Devon quickly figured out what I was doing. She pulled off Mike's leather shoe. "I'll try the skin in between his toes." She methodically poked all four areas and then went on to the next foot while I ran my fingers over his scalp.
"Nothing," she said, strain in her voice.
One minute.
"Inner surfaces next," I said. I opened Mike’s mouth and started to stick my finger in. On impulse, I kissed him instead, running my tongue over the roof of his mouth and his teeth.
"He moved!" Devon said. "Whatever you did, do it again!"
I kissed Mike's cold slack mouth once more, tenderly, then started tracing letters on the roof of his mouth with my pinkie.
*MIKE*
Something tickled the roof of his mouth.
What the—? Had he swallowed a bug? Despite its grossness, he welcomed the possibility because it would mean sensation was returning.
Like magic, a window shimmered into existence in front of him. Or was it a mirage? He still couldn’t turn his head or see anything around him, but he could see through the shining portal into an inviting world beyond: A sparkling beach bordered by lush green jungle; blue ocean waves rolling in while people in bikinis and swim trunks surfed or strolled by holding ice cream cones…
Relief washed through him. Angel had done it, somehow, provided a way out. Now he just needed to get there.
He still couldn’t feel his body, but he imagined swimming forward, and the portal grew larger. Yes! It was working!
He searched the beach people’s faces, looking for Angel.
The tickling raced across his gums, then returned to the roof of his mouth. Maddening.
Comprehension dawned. Angel was trying to communicate with him. Still straining forward at an agonizingly slow rate, he analyzed the sensations. Were they Morse code? No, letters. W-A-I-T-D-O-N-T-G-O-T-H-R-U-P-O-R-T-A-L.
What the heck? Why didn’t Angel want him to go through the portal?
The shining window shrank. He watched it gr
ow smaller with a surge of panic. What if the mouth message wasn’t from Angel? What if he was letting his last chance slip away?
The beach scene looked like paradise. Except for one thing: no Angel.
He stopped straining. A pang went through him as the portal snapped shut and the horrible, claustrophobic darkness returned, wrapping around him like shroud.
He paid fierce attention to the tickling strokes. Some letters he missed, but fortunately the message repeated twice more. W-A-I-T-F-O-R-G-A-M-E-R-E-S-E-T-T-H-E-N…
The plan that followed sounded like Angel.
He settled into waiting, heartbeat calm again, and shark hallucinations banished. For her he could endure a little longer.
*ANGEL*
“Is there anything else you need?” Maryanne asked after both her father’s limp body and Tad’s had been removed from the scenario.
I closed my eyes and thought hard. “A palmtop to phone out, and I need you to skip to the end of the Titanic program, then reset it to the beginning.”
“Will do.”
It wasn’t quite that easy, of course. Maryanne had to reestablish her bona fides every time she got transferred up another layer of command. Twenty-five excruciatingly long minutes passed before the Carpathia steamed up and began the rescue process.
My only consolation came from the thought of Kenneth Jones dead in the water, experiencing the same misery he’d put Mike through. Only no rescue would be coming for him. Kenneth Jones struck me as someone with little physical endurance. By now he’d probably panicked, gone through the portal and was trapped.
Maryanne’s lifeboat evacuated first, then our raft. Devon refused to leave with the others, and I didn’t insist.
In minutes the scenario would shut down. I was gambling that when it did, the same thing would happen in the Pearl Harbor under-scenario. Mike’s VR corpse should come back to life and revert to having a left arm to access the Escape menu.
The logic worked, but I wouldn’t know if I was right until Mike either woke up or didn’t wake up.
S-O-O-N, I wrote on his palate, then L-O-V-E-Y-O-U.
A small twitch was his only response. As a method of communication, this sucked. I longed to hear his voice.
I rolled my shoulders, unable to relax. My nerves were keyed to a high pitch. I hated that my part of the plan was essentially done. Gabriel’s fate was up to Mike. All Devon and I could do was sit and wait. I couldn’t even pace.
From her death grip on the palmtop, Devon was going crazy, too.
"I'm sorry."
Her voice was so soft, I almost didn't hear what she said. My head whipped up. Almost, almost, I rejected the lame apology. Sorry won't bring Mike back.
But looking at Devon was like looking into a mirror. Her hair, like mine, was wet from the constant spray and hung in rat's tails. She’d removed her contacts so her eyes were violet and streaming tears. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she sobbed.
I did one of the hardest things in my life. I boxed up my anger and listened as the words spilled out of her.
"I know it was crazy," Devon whispered painfully, "to trust the same people who’d put Gabriel in a coma to let him go. I just wanted to buy some time to think, to get him free, and to find the people responsible. I told myself it didn’t matter if the hate-crimers got to more of us through me, because I’d wake everybody up when I saved Gabriel.”
You had no right to risk Mike’s life.
I swallowed down the self-righteous words before they could bubble out of my throat.
Ever since Devon had pulled her little stunt, endangering both Mike and Maryanne and getting me arrested, I’d been furious with her. Mike had tried to explain why Devon had acted the way she had, but I’d shut my ears, riding on my high horse and staking out the moral high ground.
But when the shark killed Mike, what had I done? I’d let my emotions control me and almost drowned Tad. I was holding it together now, yes, but if this didn’t work… The thought of what I might be capable of frightened me. And this was after only an hour. Devon had been under this strain for weeks with Gabriel in a coma. Was it any wonder she hadn’t acted rationally?
I spoke carefully. “You weren’t wrong to try to save Gabriel, but you were wrong to betray us. If you’d asked, we would’ve helped you. We could’ve worked together to minimize the risk.” Like, say, giving us all body armour to wear to the amusement park.
She flinched. Opened her mouth.
I held up a hand. “And don’t say you couldn’t take the chance of us saying no. That’s the kind of thinking Nations Against uses to justify themselves. ‘People with violet eyes might grab all the pie for themselves, so let’s eliminate them all, including the innocent.’ Never do that again.”
A miserable nod. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, more tears leaking from her swollen eyes.
I reached out and squeezed her hand. “Trust Mike. He’ll get Gabriel out. In the meantime, why don’t you tell me about your partner? Or do you think of him as a brother?” Like Leona did Vincent.
Devon rolled her eyes. “Gabriel’s not my brother. I don’t know where you got that idea. I was eleven when we first met. We were instant best friends.”
Mike and I had been instant enemies, largely because I’d fought the attraction between us with every fibre of my being. A smile tugged at my lips. “Let me guess, you got into double the mischief?”
“Yes. Our teachers tried to separate us, but that just made us more determined to stick together.”
I nodded my understanding and kept to myself the suspicion that the threat had been reverse psychology on the clone purchasers’ behalf.
“We were the perfect team.” Devon clenched her fists.
No, Mike and I were the perfect team. Perhaps, even too perfect. Genetically programmed to fall in love?
Except if that were true then I ought to have been attracted to any boy with violet eyes—and Vincent had always left me cold.
Relieved, I shook the thought off and concentrated on Devon. “Tell me about Gabriel. What’s his favourite food?"
"French fries and gravy," Devon said, sniffing. "He won't touch ketchup; it has to be gravy, the thicker the better."
“Mike doesn’t like ketchup either, but he douses them in salt and vinegar. Blech.”
We paused as the game reset and our raft turned into a beautiful white-paneled dining room on board the Titanic. Determinedly, I resumed the conversation. “Does Gabriel like baseball?”
*MIKE*
Saltwater and light stung Mike’s eyes. His arms and legs flailed in the buoyant water. He raised his head. Breathed in sweet air.
He lived.
The relief of being able to move again brought tears to his eyes. Angel had come through for him.
The first thing he did was raise his left arm and tap as per her instructions. An escape menu appeared. Relief made him feel positively light-headed. It took considerable willpower not to hit Escape and scarper before another shark appeared, but he made himself settle in to wait for the prescribed thirty minutes to pass. He owed his clone that much.
Besides, this wasn’t so bad. He could see, he could move his arms and kick his legs, and the water was warm. Angel had asked him to keep an eye out for Maryanne’s dad, but he was alone in the water. Two boats lay moored a little ways out from an island, but the sailors on board ignored him. He alternated floating on his back with bodysurfing until he got bored.
Surely half an hour had passed by now. So where was the portal?
Oh, right. The elevated pulse thing. Better try some exercise.
He backstroked at top speed toward the hexagonal quay, then pushed off and swam out again. His breath had started to labour when distant explosions made him raise his head. Plumes of smoke streamed from both the island and the mainland. Moments later a squadron flew overhead and the first torpedo fell. It whistled as it plummeted through the sky, then exploded upon impact with the deck of the large naval vessel, the USS Utah. The noise was incredible.
<
br /> Mike dived underwater and swam a prudent distance away before surfacing to watch. More torpedoes fell from three-man planes with red circles on their wings. Some missed, but another battleship was also hit. Another Disaster scenario, then. Just swell. Though it would certainly help with his pulse; he felt jittery from adrenaline.
Unlike the Titanic, the Utah sank fast. The boat boiled with activity, men leaping from the deck as the ship rolled over. A load of timber toppled over. Within minutes the mooring lines snapped and Utah floated hull up.
Mike watched with alarm as more WWII-era Japanese planes swooped low and began to shoot at the survivors. Including him. Crap. He hastily swam toward the safety of the quay.
Nearby explosions sent up waterspouts and shockwaves. Machine guns rat-a-tatted, the sound cutting in and out as his head dipped in and out of the water. The crewman ahead of him cried out, then vanished below the surface.
Fear goosed down Mike’s back. He could end up dead in the water again.
Mike swam faster, heading toward the island shore, arms churning, breathing in gasps, heartbeat accelerating.
The portal appeared in the water off to his left, where, of course, there was zero cover. Mike angled toward the utopian vision of verdant green jungle, blue ocean and a sugar sand beach.
Another little green plane whined overhead, bullets stitching toward him.
Mike gritted his teeth and slashed his arms through the water, kicking hard. Made it.
He reached into the portal, waving his hand, but stopping his body short of following through. This close the portal gave off a tiny electrical charge, humming with power.
Three bullets slammed into his back. Mike grunted. No! Not now! But blood clouded the water like silt. Water flooded his lungs. Worse than the crippling pain was the fear that it might happen all over again. In moments he would die and become stuck as a corpse. Again.
No. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.
He slapped the far left corner of his vision. The menu appeared.
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