“You! Dial!”
At the sound of that unmistakable voice, Rick closed his hand into a fist and shoved the fist back into his fleece pocket, hiding the flash drive away. For another long second, he and his father locked eyes.
Then he turned and saw Miss Ferris striding toward him. Even in this winter weather, she was wearing her usual uniform of dark slacks and a dark jacket.
Of course, Rick thought, you can’t freeze if you have no blood in your veins.
“Where have you been?” she said—her eyes were angry, but her voice was its usual monotone. “We’ve got to get you back into the Realm. Right now.”
22. THE DARKNESS
THE GROUND BROKE beneath her like thin ice, and Molly’s foot plunged into cold swamp water. She tried to keep her balance, but she was already reeling. Tired, stumbling. When her foot sank, she went over like an axed tree, hitting the earth hard with her shoulder. A thin layer of freezing mud splashed up over the side of her. She lay where she fell.
She was finished. She knew it. Out of breath, out of strength, out of hope. She started crying again, but there were no tears anymore. She was all out of those, too. She merely lay there, sobbing, trembling, praying fitfully—for her parents again, for Rick, her friends. Not for herself—not for her safety, anyway. She no longer believed she had any chance of getting through this ordeal alive.
All the same, after a few moments of praying, she found she was calmer. She caught her breath. She lifted her head off the frozen ground and looked around her. The forest was nearly dark now. The shadows were gathering beneath the trees and blending together and deepening every second. The rays of the setting sun were nowhere visible. She could barely see more than a few yards in any direction. Wherever she looked, there was nothing but wood and water and mist.
She had lost the killers for a while. They had fallen behind as she raced ahead. But they were closing in again. Once more, she could hear their voices. Calling to one another. Coming steadily closer. They still sounded confident. They still sounded unstoppable. Tireless. Merciless.
“You see her trail?”
“Oh yeah. See how the leaves are turned over. She went this way.”
“It’s all swamp up there.”
“It’s all swamp everywhere in these woods.”
“That’s the whole point. The swamp hems her into this narrow corridor of dry land. She can’t get away. She’s got nowhere to go. All we have to do is follow.”
“There’s her trail. This way.”
At first, the voices were distant, soft. But the killers came on, steady and relentless. Very quickly their voices grew louder, and more distinct. Very soon, she could hear their footsteps again.
Turning her head, Molly saw a fallen tree a few yards away from her. Using what little strength she had left, she got up on her hands and knees, feeling the damp cold earth on her palms and through her pants. Breathing hard from the exertion, she crawled to the big trunk and lay down close to it. Maybe it would hide her from the killers. Maybe they would march right past her.
Maybe. But she doubted it.
The footsteps grew louder. The voices grew nearer.
“Don’t rush. We don’t want to step on her traces.”
“I can barely see.”
“Use the flashlight. Move it back and forth slowly.”
“We could lose her in the dark.”
“Believe me, we won’t lose her. She hasn’t got a light. She’s not going anywhere.”
Molly lay as still as she could, breathing as softly as she could. The dark grew even darker. The cold air grew colder still. She hugged her own shoulders, but the chill ate into her and she began to shiver. Her lips grew stiff and raw. Her jaw trembled. She struggled to keep her teeth from chattering.
The footsteps and voices were very close now. Molly thought that if she lifted her head above the log and peeked, she would see the five killers looming above her just a few feet away. She didn’t try. She didn’t dare. They might spot her. So she lay still, shivering, more and more miserable with every passing second.
“This is no good,” said one man. “It’s too dark to track her.”
“I can’t see anything.”
“We’re gonna have to—Ah!” The man cried out.
“What’s the matter?”
“Stepped in water. It’s all swamp here.”
“I’m freezing.”
“Me too.”
Molly was now so cold and was trembling so hard, she had to bite her lip to keep from groaning aloud. The cold was taking her over, filling her inner world. The world around her seemed to be sinking away into unreality. The voices of the killers—so close to her, in fact—were beginning to seem like something from a distant dream.
The next voice she heard was Smiley McDeath’s: his high-pitched whisper. “All right. All right. Quit complaining. We’ll go back to that clearing we just passed. Set up camp for the night. Two men on patrol in shifts. I don’t want her slipping back past us. I’ll call in and tell the head office what’s up. They won’t be happy.”
“They’ve got nothing to worry about. I’ve tracked plenty of people. She’s not going anywhere in this dark.”
“Yeah. Well, neither are we.”
Molly lay shivering, listening. The footsteps receded, the voices grew softer. The killers were moving away from her. Was there some chance she might escape them now?
Slowly, she reached up with a quivering hand. She gripped the rough log and drew herself up until she could peek over the top.
The forest dark was very deep now. The woods were no more than a tangle of black shapes. The only light came from the men’s flashlights. Molly could see their beams crisscrossing as they moved here and there. In the outglow, the silhouettes of the men themselves were just barely visible.
The killers went on calling to one another. Their flashlights darted and crossed. Their footsteps crackled in the brush, and sometimes Molly could see an illuminated hand clutching branches. She understood. They were gathering wood. They were going to build a fire.
Soon, Molly saw the first spark. Then there was a blue flame. Then the flame grew orange. It grew bigger. The flashlights went out. The fire snickered and rose.
For Molly, it was a kind of torture. She could see the flames, but she couldn’t feel the heat, and her body was racked with shivering as the cold invaded every inch of her.
She kept an unsteady grip on the log, holding herself up as she watched the black shapes of the men arrange themselves around the flames. Their faces leaned in to the orange glow. Their eyes gleamed brightly. Their voices murmured to one another. One of them laughed.
Molly’s strength ran out. Too weak to keep holding on to the log, she lowered herself back down to the ground. She rolled over and lay on her side, hugging herself, shivering. She listened to the warm sound of the fire. She heard other sounds. Paper crinkling. Voices becoming thick and muffled. The men were eating. The thought made hunger come on her, sudden and severe. Her mouth watered so that the saliva ran over her chapped lips and chilled her chin. She listened to the men talking with their mouths full. Laughing with their mouths full.
After a while, she heard more crunching footsteps. A couple of the killers were moving away from the fire, moving off into the woods. She saw their flashlight beams sweeping through the darkness over her head. She understood: They were patrolling the area. Watching for her. Making sure she wasn’t on the move, trying to escape. If she budged from her hiding place, if she tried to make a run for it, they would catch her in seconds. But even if they didn’t, even if she somehow got past them, where could she go? She was exhausted. She had no strength left at all. She had no idea where she was. And the night was black as black. Swamp everywhere. There was no chance of escape.
Molly trembled uncontrollably. Her head was swimming. Her thoughts were becoming unclear. She tried to think of warm things, good things. Her room at home. Her family around the dinner table. Her friends hanging in the student lounge
, talking, laughing. Those moments after a game, when all the girls were cheering, slapping hands, triumphant. That time Rick kissed her . . .
Funny, she thought. She had spent so much of her life worrying over things. Did she love Rick? Did he love her? Was she training hard enough? Would her team win? Where was her life going? What was she going to do? All those questions that were in her mind constantly. But now . . . now that she was here—now that she was nowhere with nowhere to go, with little chance of living through the night—all those questions were gone. There were no worries in her memories. There was only light and warmth and people together talking and laughing. What had they been saying? What had been so funny? What had been so important that she had to send a text right now . . .? She couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. It had been the fact that they were there—her parents, her friends, Rick, all of them—just the fact that they were together meant more than all the words in the world.
And now, here she was, alone. No company. No phone. No Internet. Just dark. Just cold.
Molly blinked slowly. The voices of the men had blended into a single murmur. She was getting sleepy now. Reality was slipping away.
Molly was not an outdoorswoman, but she thought she remembered seeing in a movie that you shouldn’t fall asleep in the cold. It made your body temperature drop or something and you died. Was that true? She didn’t know. She just knew she couldn’t fight it. She was getting sleepier and sleepier. If she could just stand up. If she could just move around, jump around, warm herself up. But the flashlights kept crossing above her. The men kept patrolling, watching for her.
She closed her eyes . . .
23. GEARS OF WAR
“WE’RE OUT OF time,” said Commander Mars.
They were now in the big steel-walled elevator, descending into the underground MindWar facility. Mars was standing by Rick’s right shoulder. Miss Ferris was by his left. Mars wore a dark suit, sharply creased. So did Miss Ferris. Mars’s silver-haired, craggy countenance seemed carved out of rock. Miss Ferris’s expressionless expression seemed set in stone.
“We’ve been through the data from your immersion,” Miss Ferris told him. “That flying outpost you saw—that WarCraft: It seems almost complete. We detect only a few last unfinished places in it, anyway. That means it could be operational in hours, if it isn’t operational already.”
“That means Kurodar could launch his attack at any time,” said Mars.
“Unless you stop him,” Miss Ferris said.
“You have to stop him,” said Mars.
Rick stood between them, silent with confusion. His mind was still reeling with what his father had told him.
You’re not the first MindWarrior.
The others didn’t make it out.
I need to know who they were in order to extract them.
This flash drive will help you find the answers . . .
It was all about Mariel and Favian. His father hadn’t said exactly that, but Rick knew it was so in his heart of hearts. Mariel and Favian had been the first MindWarriors—they and the other man who had died in the Spider-Snake’s tunnel—before the project enlisted Rick. Somehow they had gotten trapped inside the Realm and could no longer remember who they were. Without that information, Rick’s father couldn’t extract them. They would simply remain in there and continue to bleed out energy until they entered the living agony of decay that was death in the Realm.
Unless Rick could find them. Find their names. Find their bodies. Find their identities.
But first . . .
“You have to get on board that WarCraft,” said Commander Mars brusquely.
“You have to find out what Kurodar is planning,” said Miss Ferris.
“You have to find a way to put an end to it,” said Commander Mars.
“Our guess is you’ll have about two hours,” Miss Ferris said.
Rick turned to her, his eyes widening. Two hours? he wanted to say.
It was too much time and it wasn’t enough.
It was too much time because immersion in the MindWar Realm was hard on the brain. An hour and a half in there was just about all a person could tolerate before his mind began to come apart at the seams. Rick had felt the disintegration start when he’d stayed too long. It was a horrible sensation: disorientation, nausea, reality pixilating around you. When he finally had come back to RL—just in time—he was so far gone, he couldn’t even remember who he was for a while. And even now, the headaches and bad dreams continued to plague him.
It’s as if you were becoming part of the Realm yourself. As if Kurodar’s imagination were somehow connecting to yours.
So how could he last for two hours this time? he wanted to ask.
But he didn’t ask. When he turned to Miss Ferris, her blank expression didn’t change—it never changed—but she turned away from him, averting her eyes. And Rick understood. He could go in for two hours because they just didn’t care what happened to him. Mars didn’t care, at least. Who knew what Miss Ferris was thinking? Mars didn’t care whether Rick’s mind fell apart or his face fell off or his head exploded. He didn’t care if he had killing headaches for months or for the rest of his life or even if he died. All Mars cared about was that Kurodar was planning to unleash a massive attack on his country. He was about to wipe out thousands of people, maybe millions. They had to stop him, and if they lost another MindWarrior in the process—and if Molly was kidnapped and killed—that just didn’t count for much.
“Two hours,” Rick finally said aloud as the elevator continued its long descent.
Miss Ferris didn’t face him—wouldn’t face him—and didn’t answer.
“Two hours,” Mars barked back without apology.
Too much time; not enough.
It wasn’t enough because the battleship was immense, so huge it darkened the Realm’s yellow sky, and the giant octopus-like humanoid that was grafted onto it was ready to fight off all invaders with its vast tentacles. Two hours to get on that thing and dismantle it? Make it five hours, make it ten. No matter how long he had, the chances were slim.
The elevator touched bottom. The heavy doors slid open with a grinding whirr. Mars broke out of the box without a backward glance. Miss Ferris hurried after him. And Rick, flinching a little at the pain in his legs, followed last, limping awkwardly. They hurried past two armed guards into a faceless hallway, then down the hall toward the Portal Room. They were moving so quickly, Rick could hardly think. As the door to the Portal Room loomed in front of him, one idea after another, one anxiety after another, crowded through his brain. He thought of Mariel and Favian, stuck in the Realm. Of Molly, lost and alone somewhere with men who were threatening to kill her. Of Kurodar, on that monster ship planning an atrocity. And of himself, his head already throbbing, his dreams already twisted and terrifying, preparing to let Mars and Miss Ferris project him back into the nightmare world of MindWar.
And could he trust them? Mars and Miss Ferris? Were they even on the right side of the war? Rick remembered how his father had kept looking around, this way and that, over his shoulder. Fearful there was a traitor in the ranks. Maybe Mars. Maybe Miss Ferris. Maybe Leila Kent. Or maybe Victor One, who was supposed to be rescuing Molly . . . Which one had gone over to the other side?
Thoughts within thoughts, fears within fears, each connected to the other, each moving the other, like the gears of a great machine churning inside Rick’s brain, a machine so complex he couldn’t understand it, couldn’t control it or figure it out. How did life get so complicated so quickly? How could he know how to do the right thing when the situation was beyond his understanding?
The door to the Portal Room stood open. Mars charged through. Miss Ferris went after. Rick came to the threshold and looked through the entranceway.
Some darkness of foreboding spread over him, like storm clouds spreading over the sky. He stared down the length of that narrow room, over the flashing machinery, over the faces of the technicians who had turned from their monitors at
his entry. They had all turned in their seats to watch him, their faces harsh with the reflected glow of their machines. Rick could see the expressions in their eyes. Was that compassion they felt for him? Admiration? Pity? All of the above? The MindWar technicians knew—probably better than Rick knew himself—the risks he was taking going into this place again so soon and for so long. And yet, like Mars and Miss Ferris—like his own father—even like himself—they were willing to let him take the risk, on the chance he could stop the horror that was coming.
Rick swallowed hard. His gaze came to rest on the glass box set in the far wall, the stairs leading up to it, the great hulk of a bodyguard—Juliet Seven—standing by it with his rectangular arms crossed over the massive square of his chest. That glass box—the portal: it had always reminded him of a coffin. Ironic, right? Because it was probably going to be his coffin for real this time. Just another MindWarrior sacrificed to the battle with Kurodar. Like Mariel. Like Favian. Like that unknown other in the tunnels beneath the Realm.
Rick hesitated there at the threshold another moment. And what came to him then—what broke through the gears of fear grinding together in his mind—was the 3-D image they had shown him of that Arkansas factory, the one that had gone up in a ball of fire and smoke after being attacked by a renegade drone.
What if New York City went up in smoke like that? he thought. Or St. Louis or Chicago, Philadelphia or Los Angeles? What if hundreds of thousands of people were consumed in such a fire, merely because Kurodar in his madness imagined the disaster into being?
Maybe Mars was right, Rick thought. Maybe the life of one washed-up high school football star wasn’t too big a sacrifice to make to prevent such a mass murder.
He stepped across the Portal Room threshold.
The glass box in the wall—the coffin—slowly opened to receive him.
LEVEL FOUR:
TIME RUNS OUT
24. BATTLE BEAST
OF ALL THE many strange aspects of Rick’s adventures in the MindWar Realm, the strangest by far was this: when he was in Real Life, the Realm seemed to him like a dream; but when he was in the Realm, it seemed more real than Real Life itself. In his home, in the compound, in his bed at night, the bizarre colors of this cyberworld, the deadly monsters that roamed its fields and forests and flew across its skies, the flashing blue form of Favian and the majestic silver beauty of Mariel—all seemed like some fantasy he’d had in a fever, impossible to believe. Even as he ached from the wounds he suffered there, even as he worried about Kurodar’s threats and plans, even as he yearned to look into Mariel’s eyes again, the truth of their existence faded away from him until he felt as if he was aching, worrying, yearning for what lived only in his imagination. Half the time, he was unsure whether any of what he remembered had ever really happened at all.
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