“Stop!” Molly pleaded with him, holding the gun on him unsteadily.
Smiley McDeath didn’t even look at her. He lifted his gun and pointed it at Victor One’s head. His smile flashed downward in a frown of hatred as his finger tightened on the trigger.
The sound of the gunshot filled the barn, louder it seemed than all the previous gunfire combined. The blast seemed to sweep away everything else until Molly’s mind was filled with nothing but that echoing explosion.
When the noise faded away, Smiley McDeath lay dead at her feet.
The pistol was smoking in her trembling hands.
36. WATERSLIDE
RICK, IN THE heart of Kurodar’s WarCraft, never saw what happened in the barn. He never saw Victor One kill the gunmen. He never saw Molly shoot Smiley McDeath. He was still standing under Kurodar’s misty and thunderous presence, still looking up to watch his two friends in RL approaching the barn’s open doorway, when a sound reached him. A voice. A whisper.
“Rick.”
He blinked. Had someone just spoken his name? Startled, he tore his gaze from the scene in RL and looked down at the model of Washington, D.C., that stood before him.
“Come to me, Rick. Now.”
Another moment passed as Rick, confused, afraid for Molly, unfocused, tried to puzzle out what was happening, where the voice was coming from.
Then he knew. The river. The model Potomac—made of real water flowing through the miniature city.
Rick let out a startled murmur: “Mariel!”
And her silver hand flashed up out of the water.
“Now!” she said.
Rick hesitated only a second. Something inside held him there. He wanted to be with Molly. He wanted to help Molly. But she was beyond his reach, in RL, another world. There was nothing he could do for her from here.
He had to go, get out. He had to stop the attack on the city. That’s what he was here for.
And even in that single second of hesitation, his chance to escape had begun to slip away. The Cobra Guards stationed around the walls had also heard Mariel’s voice. Puzzled by the sound at first, they were now alert, beginning to catch on. Rick could hear them hissing to one another.
“Whaaat wassss thaaaat?”
“Did you hear ssssssomething?”
He could see them coiling forward out of the darkness, coming toward him. Some were already slithering between him and the river, just about to block his way.
He focused. He flashed.
Like Favian, he became little more than a body of light, a meteoric streak over the white crosses of Arlington National Cemetery. His insubstantial hand extended toward Mariel’s silver hand.
Above him, the pink presence of Kurodar thundered, “Stop him!”
The nearest Cobra reached for him. The others charged forward.
But he was already past them—that fast. He became solid again at the shore of the river and Mariel’s hand grabbed his. Rick felt himself yanked down into the freezing depths of the water.
On the instant, Mariel was all around him and she carried him away. Her liquid-metal presence was strangely warm, and he knew from experience that he could breathe while under her protection. But in fact, they raced along the stream so swiftly there wasn’t much chance to breathe anyway.
In the air above them, he heard Kurodar’s raging shout: “Get him, get him now!”
Then he and Mariel were gone, racing through the heart of the model city, dashing into the water outlet on the far side so quickly it was as if they had both turned into a Favian-style flash of light. There was an instant of mindless motion, a sensation of hurtling through the dark.
Then with a splash they broke free, broke out into the open air.
Rick found himself up to his neck in a cistern full of the Realm’s silver, mercury-like substance. All he could see was the water bubbling around him and an iron ceiling high above.
And then there was Mariel, rising out of the water beside him. As always the sight of her—her queenly presence—rocked him somehow, touched him deep down even now. He had a sense that she was almost a part of him, the other half of his soul . . .
“Go on!” she commanded, her voice taut with urgency. She gestured toward the cistern’s rim. “They’ll be here any second. Go, Rick.”
“But how . . .?” he said. “How did you get here?”
“I stowed away in the supply ships. In the water. There’s no time to explain now. Go!”
He obeyed her. Swam to the edge of the cistern. Grabbed the rim. Hauled himself up, wrestled himself over, and tumbled down the other side to the floor. Dripping silver, he looked back. There she was, rising over the edge of the container, an imperious metallic spirit looking down at him.
“Mariel! I think I know who you are,” he blurted out breathlessly.
But she only answered: “There—over there—quickly—go.”
There was never any time with her, he thought bitterly. They were always under attack, always racing off somewhere. He never got a chance to really talk to her.
He stayed stubbornly where he was. “You were part of the MindWar Project, sent here like me,” he said. “You were trapped here. You and Favian and someone else, the man who died.”
“Please, Rick! Hurry! Once you’re in the drains, keep to the right. It isn’t far.”
“I won’t let you grow old again. I won’t let you die, too.”
“I’m not afraid. I’ll be fine. Just do what you have to do.”
“My father says if I can find your body, your real body, he might be able to bring you back. Favian too.”
“Go on! Now!”
In spite of her words, Rick thought he saw something come into her eyes, something that softened that regal and distant face.
But she looked down at him, her frown dark. “If you don’t go now, they’ll get you. Through there. See it? Where that grate is. It will take you where you need to go. Quickly.”
He glanced over his shoulder. He was in a cramped room full of pipes and wires and small turning cogs and wheels. From here, the water from the cistern was being recycled back to the model river, and some of the WarCraft’s energy was being pumped through the lines into the main room.
And yes, he saw the grate on the floor. Some kind of drain. Runoff from the cistern was flowing into it.
He turned back to Mariel. The longing to be near her surged through him. He knew he had to go, but he couldn’t.
“Listen to me, Mariel.”
“No. Go. Now,” she said.
He opened his mouth to speak again. He was about to tell her . . . what? He wasn’t sure. But he heard the hisses and slithering noises of the Cobra Guards approaching out in the hall.
“This isn’t over,” he said.
She glanced at him. He thought—he hoped—she inclined her chin in a little nod of agreement. He wasn’t sure.
He left her. He ran to the grate. He knelt. Wrapped his fingers through the crisscrossing metal bars. He thought it would be heavier than it was, and he pulled up hard. But the grate was light. It nearly flew up and out of his hands.
“Thisssss waaaaay,” came a Cobra voice from the hallway beyond the door. Very close. Footsteps and slithering whispers were getting closer every second.
Rick glanced back toward Mariel, but she was already melting away, raining back down into the cistern. Gone.
He turned back to the opening before him. He worked his way into the drain and pulled the grate back into place on top of it.
Then he let go—and he was gone. The narrow passage descended sharply and was slick with water. It was like a slide at a water park. It carried him away. He slid on his back, sluicing this way and that. Above him, he heard voices and slithering and footsteps—but the noise of the Cobra Guards rapidly faded as he swooshed down.
There was a juncture up ahead. Keep right, Mariel had said. He turned his body, putting his weight on the right side of his butt. He hit the fork. He sluiced right—plummeted with breathless spee
d into the cold puddle at the bottom.
Crouched beneath a low ceiling, in freezing water to his knees, he saw a grate just above his eye level. He shoved it and out it went. He climbed up into it and tumbled out the other side.
He wheelbarrowed his way out onto a hard floor. Climbed to his feet. Looked around him.
He saw at once where he was. He knew at once what he had to do.
He had seen the drones in the barn in RL. They were here before him also. He was in another of the great ship’s enormous bays. Fighter planes were lined up here just as the drones were lined up in the RL barn. The planes here were Realm bots, analog creations of Kurodar’s imagination, responsive to Kurodar’s mind. The terrorist would control these fighter planes here in the Realm, and the planes in turn would control the drones in RL. The real drones would do what the bot drones do. And so, using only his imagination, Kurodar would be able to launch his strike on the capital.
Rick knew he had to destroy the fighting machines before they took off. But how? With what? There were so many of them. Forty? Fifty? He wasn’t sure. And they were big, too. Not like drones, but like real planes.
Rick looked around for a weapon, for anything that would help him destroy the fleet. There was nothing. The room was just an enormous holding bay. He wondered: was there time to disassemble the fighting crafts one by one before they launched?
Even as the question went through his mind, the answer came: there was no time at all. There was a wrenching screech above him. Startled, he looked up and saw: the bay’s enormous ceiling was coming open, parting in the center, the two halves slowly drawing away from each other. Beyond, Rick saw the living blackness of the night. He felt the draw of the darkness, felt it pulling him upward off the floor. His sneakers seemed to grow light beneath him.
The drones were about to be released.
37. FIRE ESCAPE
SMILEY MCDEATH DIED with a look of surprise on his face. He truly hadn’t believed Molly would shoot him.
And the truth was: It sickened her to have done it. All this violence sickened her. Standing there in the barn, surrounded by corpses, guarding the badly wounded Victor One, she wanted nothing more than to get out of there, get home, and never have to fight again.
With God’s help, she would, she thought. But not yet. There was still more to do.
She knelt next to Victor. She set the gun down on the floor beside him. Victor lay still. His eyes were closed. But when Molly spoke his name, they fluttered open.
He tried to shake his head at her. It barely moved, but Molly knew what he was trying to say. He wanted her to run, get out, escape, before McDeath’s army of reinforcements arrived and she was captured again.
She wanted to do that, too. To run. To get away. But she couldn’t.
She would not leave Victor One as long as he was still alive. If there was any chance of saving him, she would carry him out of the forest on her back if she had to.
But even before she could do that, she had to try to find a way to destroy these drones.
Victor One had guessed they were going to attack Washington. Tens of thousands of people would die, he had said. Molly couldn’t allow that to happen. Not if there was even a slim possibility she might stop it.
She reached down and touched Victor One’s shoulder gently, reassuringly. Then she stood up. She didn’t know how much time she had before Smiley McDeath’s army arrived. Not much, probably. She had to move fast.
She crouched down and took Victor One by his wrists. She expected him to cry out in pain when she started to drag him across the barn floor. But he didn’t—which was even worse. He was hurt so badly he couldn’t even scream. His eyes fell shut again. He made faint wheezing noises, barely breathing. As she dragged him, his body left a trail of blood on the stone floor.
Molly worked Victor One to the door of the barn and then dragged him out into the night. She dropped his arms and let him rest on the earth a small distance from the structure. She knelt beside him again.
“I’ll be right back,” she told him.
Victor One didn’t answer. He never opened his eyes.
She hurried to the edge of the forest. Quickly, she began gathering wood—as many dry twigs and branches as she could carry in her arms. This being winter, there was plenty of kindling around, and she was almost staggering under her burden as she brought her armload of it back to the barn.
She stepped inside. It was eerie in there with all the dead bodies: the pistol man sprawled on his back, the machine gunner crumpled at the bottom of the balcony, and the fallen Smiley McDeath, whom Molly herself had destroyed.
She could not think about it now. She could not hesitate. She kicked her way past the drones, moving to the center of the array. She dumped the wood down on top of the drone at the center. She hurried to Victor One’s backpack where it lay on the floor near the fallen pistol man. Ignoring the corpse—all the corpses—she fixed her concentration on the pack. Knelt down beside it. Unzipped it. Rummaged in it until she came out with what she needed: a plastic cigarette lighter.
She returned to the pile of wood and flicked the lighter’s wheel. As she held the flame to one of the smaller twigs at the bottom of the pile, a tear fell on her hand and she realized she was crying. She didn’t know why. Maybe it was grief over Victor One or terror at the oncoming army or sorrow that she’d had to act so violently or just exhaustion. She didn’t know, but she couldn’t make it stop.
The twig caught fire and Molly dragged her sleeve across her eyes, drying her tears. She stood a moment and watched as the fire rose up through the bundle of dry wood. She didn’t know how the drones were powered, but there had to be some kind of fuel inside them. If she was lucky, the fuel would explode and consume as many of the drones as possible.
And she didn’t want to be around when that happened. She had to go.
She had taken one step toward the door when a loud grinding noise startled her and stopped her in her tracks. As she turned toward the sound, she saw . . . well, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. It was beyond belief.
The wall in front of her seemed to be dissolving. In the next moment, she was looking right through it, right into the woods on the other side. The moment after that, the wall was gone completely. The winter chill of the forest was washing over her.
And now . . . more amazing still . . . the forest itself was vanishing. The trees, the swamps, the starry skies themselves were flickering and going out like images on a broken TV. In place of reality, there came a blackness, blacker and emptier than anything Molly had ever experienced. It seemed to go on forever. And it seemed to have a kind of life inside it that drew her to it, tried to draw her in.
At the same time the grinding noise continued. And when Molly looked up, she saw that the roof of the barn was rolling open. She felt a stirring at her feet and looked down. The drones were starting to shudder and come alive. One or two of them were starting to lift off the floor.
It’s happening, Molly thought. It’s happening now.
The fire she had started continued burning. Any minute now, the drone beneath the wood might explode. Any minute now, Smiley McDeath’s reinforcements might arrive, an entire army intent on killing both her and Victor One.
She couldn’t wait around to watch this happen. She had to get out of here.
As the bizarre blackness pulled at her, as the ceiling of the barn continued to open, as the drones bounced and lifted at her feet, Molly moved with long, swift steps to the door.
She stepped out into the night again, pulling the door shut behind her. She moved to where Victor One lay still in the dirt. As she hurried to him, she heard a loud thump inside the barn. The fire had done its job. A drone had exploded.
Good, she thought.
She hoped there would be more.
Molly knelt down by Victor One. He lay still and silent, barely breathing. She had had brave plans to get him out of the forest, but she knew now it was impossible. She could never move him. Even if s
he could, he wouldn’t survive.
It was over. She had done everything she could do. Exhausted, she sank down to the earth and sat beside him.
The barn’s ceiling continued to rumble open. There was another explosion inside: another drone down. The blue of the night sky grew red with the rising flames.
Molly took Victor One’s head onto her lap. She stroked his hair with her hand. She looked down at his still face. All the vitality had gone out of the handsome, craggy features. He was dying, she knew.
Molly lifted her eyes again and looked at the barn. A new noise reached her over the grind of the opening roof and the snicker of flames. At first, she couldn’t figure out what it was. Then she understood: it was the buzz of the drone propellers.
Molly’s hand rested in Victor One’s hair. She looked up to the top of the barn, its roof now opened wide, the light of the fire within flickering upward as another drone blew.
But it was not enough. Because now other drones began emerging from the flames. One and then another and another and another . . .
Molly watched as they rose into the night. Then they darted off across the sky on their mission of destruction.
38. WARBIRDS
THE CEILING WAS opening in the Great Bay of the WarCraft, too. Rick felt the blackness of space pulling at him. He saw the fighter planes beginning to rise, ready to launch.
Kurodar’s attack was under way.
Rick could hear the Cobra Guards at the door. He knew he had just seconds before they burst in on him. He did the only thing he could think of. He rushed to the nearest plane. He pulled the cockpit door open. If he could take control of one of the fighters, maybe he could shoot some of the others out of the air. Not all of them. But some. He’d be able to save a few lives, at least.
He was about to step into the cockpit of the fighter when the craft burst into flames. He had no idea what caused it. It just seemed to happen. He didn’t know what was going on in RL. He didn’t know that Molly had set a fire and some of the drones in RL were burning.
Crying out in surprise, he reeled back from the blazing fighter plane, throwing his arm up to protect his face. As he did, the fighter gave a little cough and exploded. The blast knocked Rick backward onto his seat. The wreckage rose above him in a burgeoning fireball. Flinching at the heat on his face, Rick leapt up and moved quickly to the next drone—just as the next drone burst into flames as well.
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