Wishing he could stuff the words right back into his stupid piehole, Victor One stammered, “Well, you know, I’m just . . . just looking at her you can see . . . I’m just saying it’s kind of obvious . . .”
“Are you talking about romantic feelings?” said the incredulous Traveler. “But all that’s been over between us for a long time!”
“Uh . . . ,” responded Victor One.
He was rescued by the sound of footsteps on the leaves outside. Quickly, he set his grandma cup aside and jumped to his feet.
“Sounds like they’re on their way,” he said.
Just to be on the safe side, he put his hand on the holster of his gun as he moved to the dark window. But there was no reason to expect trouble in this isolated place.
Sure enough, he looked outside and saw the flashlights coming—and then there they were: Alpha Twelve and Bravo Niner escorting Leila Kent up over the hill.
Victor One opened the door for them. The Traveler got clumsily to his feet as Leila Kent stepped over the threshold. Victor One was amused to see that the Traveler’s cheeks turned bright red as he faced the elegant woman with her sleek clothes and golden hair. Now that the Traveler knew the truth, he could barely meet Leila Kent’s eyes. If Victor One could have slapped himself in the face, he would’ve.
“We have to move,” said Leila briskly. “Quickly. Now.”
A moment later, as the sky began to lighten with sunrise, they were on their way, Leila Kent and the Traveler hurrying down the hillside together, while the three bodyguards surrounded them, their hands on their weapons, their eyes scanning the trees in the new gray dawn.
A large black Mercedes was waiting for them on the dirt road at the bottom of the slope. The bodyguards escorted their two charges into the backseat. Then Bravo Niner slid in behind the wheel and Victor One got in the passenger seat beside him.
Alpha Twelve shut the rear door on Leila and the Traveler. He would stay behind on the mountaintop, waiting for the team that would come up to disassemble the cabin and remove every trace that the Traveler had ever been there.
A moment more, and they were rolling, the leaves and gravel crunching under the tires as they accelerated quickly over the forest path, heading for the road.
In a few minutes, they were clear of the trees and winding down the mountain. The road was perilously narrow; the drop over the side was perilously steep. Though the sky was growing lighter by the minute, it was still dark down here in the shadows of the towering pines. Victor One looked out the windshield. Saw the Mercedes’ headlights picking out a few yards of twining pavement as it rolled ahead. He glanced out his window and saw the frail, wooden railing flashing by him, the cliff beyond.
“You’re going awfully fast for this road,” he said to the driver.
Bravo Niner was dark and stringy, like a piece of beef jerky. He had hard eyes, and a permanent sneer on his mouth. He was a tough guy, Victor One knew, and had driven Humvees through some of the most battle-hot cities in the world.
“We’ll be okay,” he said, with a small smile at the corner of his mouth.
But now Victor One heard the Traveler in the backseat. “Are we expecting trouble?” he asked Leila Kent.
“We’re just being careful,” she told him. “The faster we move, the less chance anyone will catch up to us. We’re eager to get you to the new compound and out of harm’s way.”
After that, they raced on in silence. Victor One could practically feel the tension between the two passengers in back of him. Maybe he was just imagining it, but he didn’t think so. He pretended to check the rear window for following cars—and looked them over. He saw Leila Kent staring straight ahead, and the Traveler stealing sidelong glances at her. He was probably curious to see these signs of romantic attachment Victor One had stupidly told him about.
After a while, he heard Leila Kent say quietly behind him, “This is almost over, Traveler. You’ll be with your family very soon.” To Victor One, she sounded sad about it, but again, that might have been his imagination.
Just then, headlights appeared on the road ahead of them.
“Someone coming,” murmured Bravo Niner, working the wheel.
Victor One drew a breath, growing tense.
Behind him, Leila Kent said, “It’s a public road. There’s going to be some traffic. Just keep driving.”
Bravo Niner obeyed, but Victor One discreetly drew the pistol from underneath his arm. He kept his eye on the windshield, sitting very still as the headlights of the oncoming car grew bigger and bigger, brighter and brighter. There was enough daylight now to see that it was a red BMW. It came toward them on the far side of the narrow two-lane. It was about to pass by.
But it didn’t pass.
Suddenly, the Beamer swerved in front of them. Its tires screeched as it braked to a halt before it could crash through the railing and go flying off the side of the mountain. It lay across the road now, cutting off the way.
The tires of the Mercedes let out an answering screech as Bravo Niner reacted. He hit the brakes hard and spun the wheel to the left. The Mercedes turned to the side and stopped, just before it struck the other car broadside. For a moment, it sat parallel to the Beamer. Victor One looked out and saw men—four men—pouring out of the Beamer’s doors. All of them were carrying machine guns.
Bravo Niner threw the Mercedes into reverse. Victor One swung around to scream into the backseat. “Get your heads down, both of you!”
But the Traveler didn’t duck. Instead, he reached out and grabbed Leila by the back of the neck. He pulled her down and toward him so that her head went beneath the level of the windshield. Then he bent his body protectively over hers.
Right, thought Victor One. He would.
At the same time, the Mercedes straightened out and started to back up fast—and the men with machine guns opened fire.
Leila let out a scream, muffled by the Traveler’s body. Starbursts appeared on the Mercedes’ windshield as the bullets struck the reinforced glass. As the Mercedes kept careening backward, Victor One ducked his head, buzzed down the window, then popped up and leaned out, firing off several rounds in answer to the barrage.
“Stay down, stay down!” Bravo Niner shouted. He stopped the car short, smacked it into gear, and hit the gas.
The Mercedes shot forward, straight into the hail of bullets from the machine guns. Victor One heard Leila scream again. Then a starburst appeared on the windshield and his arm flared with searing pain.
“I’m hit!” he shouted, falling back against the seat.
He felt the Mercedes swerve to avoid the Beamer in its path.
Then they were past the ambush. They were speeding down the winding road again. There were a few final shots as the gunmen tried to stop them. Then the sound of gunfire fell away completely.
Victor One held his arm, grimacing with pain. He turned to look at the passengers.
“You all right back there?”
Slowly, carefully, the Traveler sat up. Leila sat up beside him. They looked over their shoulders out the rear window to see if they were being chased, and Victor One looked, too. The attackers and their car were already out of sight around a bend.
Victor One faced front. He saw dawn lighting the sky ahead. Good thing, too: both the Mercedes’ headlights had been shot out.
“Will they come after us?” asked Leila Kent, her voice trembling.
“They can try,” said Bravo Niner. “But it won’t do them much good. I can outrace them in this baby easy.”
As if to prove it, he kept his foot down hard on the gas pedal, twisting the wheel this way and that as the Mercedes rocketed around one narrow curve after another.
The Traveler spoke now—and Victor One was impressed by his calm, steady voice. He sounded like a man who got shot at every day.
“You said you were hit,” he said to Victor One. “Is it bad? We have to get you medical attention.”
Victor One was already examining the tear in his windbreaker and
his sleeve, and the hole in the seat behind him. “No, I’m good,” he said. “It just burned me as it went past. There’s nothing in me. I’ll be fine.”
“Soon as we’re down within cell range, we’ve got to let MindWar know we’re heading for B Site,” said Leila Kent.
“Better be careful who you tell,” said Victor One.
“What do you mean? That’s ridiculous . . . ,” Leila Kent began to say, but her voice faltered as the Mercedes’ tires let out another screech and the car took yet another curve at high speed. When it steadied, she continued, “We haven’t sent out a single electronic communication in months. There’s no way Kurodar could have used the Realm to intercept any intel.”
Victor One nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “Which means someone must have told him.”
“What are you saying?” said Leila Kent.
Victor One was about to answer her, but the Traveler had already figured it out.
“It means someone in the MindWar Project is working for the enemy,” he said. “Someone very high up. Mars. Miss Ferris. One of us.”
Leila Kent could only turn and stare at him as the car continued racing through the day’s first light.
“Someone can’t be trusted,” said the Traveler.
25. MARS
IMAGES FLASHED THROUGH Rick’s mind as he swam in and out of consciousness. The ceiling tiles passing overhead as he lay on a gurney rolling through white halls . . . Doors, endless doors . . . Faces leaning over him. Voices shouting . . .
Have we lost him?
Stop the bleeding!
We’ve got to download his memory before it fades!
The bleeding first!
Tell me we haven’t lost him!
He’s still with us . . .
Thank God, thank God.
He was still with them, yes. He remembered who he was now, too. It came back to him in stages.
I’m Rick. Rick Dial . . .
That was his name, anyway. But who was Rick Dial?
Ceiling tiles . . . Frantic faces . . . He swam in and out of consciousness.
Number 12. Rick Dial was Number 12. He was a quarterback. No. He was a cripple with ruined legs. No. He was a MindWarrior of the Realm . . . His dragon was falling and falling out of the sky . . . He had failed . . . failed at everything . . .
What are you doing?
The gurney had stopped. A closed door. Miss Ferris was barking in that hard, weirdly emotionless voice.
Not through there . . .
I thought they said he was . . .
That door is never to be opened without my express permission! Ever! Do you understand?
On they went. Into a room. Monitors. Faces. Someone attaching electrodes to his temples. Someone cutting off his T-shirt with a knife. Hands gently bathing the wound in his shoulder. Hurt . . . it hurt. Miss Ferris’s face was hovering over him. Strange . . . her blue eyes looked almost gentle . . . Not like her. Rick thought he must be dreaming.
He swam in and out of consciousness.
He thought he saw Miss Ferris standing at the foot of his bed. Was he awake? Was he dreaming? He wasn’t sure. There was Commander Jonathan Mars—or was it the hologram of Commander Mars? It was the hologram, yes: a weirdly illuminated figure in the darkness. He was talking quietly and Miss Ferris . . . had to be a hallucination because Miss Ferris was weeping. She had her head bowed. Her fingers were pinching the bridge of her nose. Her shoulders shook and tears poured from her eyes, ran over her hands, and dripped to the floor.
Mars watched her with the crags of his face pulled down in that fixed frown of his, his bushy silver eyebrows knitted together.
“You can’t let yourself care this much, Barbara,” he told her.
She looked up at him, her damp eyes flashing and furious. “Don’t you dare tell me that!” she said.
“You know what’s at stake. Everything. The country could go up in smoke in an instant.”
“You can’t send him back in there so soon. It’s inhuman.”
“He knew the dangers—”
“He’s eighteen years old! He’s hardly more than a boy! He’s too young to understand what will happen to him, what it would be like if . . .” Her voice broke. She looked down again, the tears spilling off her cheeks. Rick knew he had to be dreaming. It was impossible that Miss Ferris could have so much emotion in her. “I couldn’t stand it if we lost another one,” she said.
The scene—dream—hallucination—whatever it was—faded away. The next time Rick was aware of anything, he was alone, staring up through the darkness at the ceiling.
He remembered now. The Realm. The fortress. Mariel. Favian. Falling from the sky on the back of the dragon.
I’ve failed at everything . . .
He lay there for a long time, thinking about that. His family—broken. His body—crushed. His football career—over. And he had nearly died in the Realm . . .
He felt something changing inside him. Something growing harder. Tougher. A fever of impatience rising into a fire of anger . . .
As full consciousness came to him, he sat up in bed. He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth as the pain struck him. There was pain everywhere. His head was pounding. His shoulder throbbed. His legs felt as if they were being stuck full of pins.
Where was he?
He looked down at himself, touching himself to make sure this was real now, not a dream. He was wearing nothing but sweatpants, no shirt. There was a bandage wrapped around his left shoulder.
Mariel! Favian! They’re going to die in there. I’ve got to get them out!
He looked around the room. A bare, windowless cell. No lamps. No furniture. Just the bed. It would have been pitch–black in there but for the light seeping in around the edges of the door.
Was the door locked? Was he a prisoner here? Where were his crutches? How was he supposed to get out of bed? Was anyone near enough to hear his voice if he shouted?
He tried it: “Hey! Hey! Is anybody there? Where am I? Hey!”
He listened, hoping to hear footsteps running to find him. Nothing. He stared at the door.
“Hey!” he shouted.
“It’s all right, Rick.”
Rick was so startled, he nearly jumped right off the mattress. There, out of nowhere, was Commander Mars: his hologram, at least, glowing in the shadowy darkness!
“Mars,” Rick snarled. The man who had gotten him into this. The man in charge. “Where am I? What’s going on?”
“Just take it easy,” said Mars—coming from him, it sounded like a command. “You were wounded in the Realm. You’ve been taken to our medical wing to recover. You’re going to be fine.”
Rick drew a breath, trying to keep his impatience—his anger—under control. There were so many questions he wanted to ask this guy, he didn’t know where to begin. He touched the bandage on his arm. He remembered the sword fight.
“Wounded,” he muttered, trying to get it all straight in his head. “By a crocodile. A man with a crocodile head. With a sword. Crazy.”
But Commander Mars didn’t seem to think it was crazy. He merely nodded. “We’ve scanned your memory. We know what happened.”
“That makes one of us,” said Rick, still fighting off his lingering grogginess. “Who were they? Those alligator guys . . .”
“Security bots. Kurodar has brought in a man—an actual human being—named Reza, to run them. When you climbed on the dragon, Reza felt it was time to send out his army and bring you down.”
“Reza,” said Rick.
Mars pointed to the wall and another man appeared there suddenly, startling Rick again. But in a moment, he realized this was just a three-dimensional picture of a man, not a living hologram like Mars. The image turned this way and that so that Rick could see the long, slender figure and the sharp, dark, Middle Eastern features.
“That’s Reza,” Mars told him. “Former terrorist and professional assassin—now chief of security in the Realm.”
Rick stared at the ma
n. He seemed familiar to him. “I know him. I’ve seen him.”
“I doubt it,” said Mars. “He’s not the sort of person who—”
“He was there!” Rick broke in. “In the Realm. On the ramparts. I saw him.”
Mars’s craggy features gathered like storm clouds. “Are you sure?”
“It was him. Except he was . . .” Rick hardly knew what word would describe him. “He was like a demon there. He had this kind of pink-purple skin. Wings and claws. He was giving orders to the archers who shot down the dragon I was riding. It was the same guy. I recognize his face.” Rick could hardly believe the words coming out of his own mouth: demons, crocodile men, dragons. It sounded like some kind of nutty joke.
But Mars didn’t crack even the hint of a smile. He nodded slowly. “If you’re right—if that was him—you’re lucky to be here. The man is deadly.”
Rick looked at Mars a long moment—looked with that new toughness, that new impatience inside him.
“I’m risking my life in there for you, and you haven’t told me anything,” he said.
“You’re risking your life for your country, and there’s not very much I can tell you.”
“What does the MindWar have to do with my father? What does it have to do with the truck that ran into me, that busted my legs?”
Mars’s expression remained thunderous and unmovable. “If I could tell you, I would. I can’t.”
A frizz of static went through his holographic image. It brought back another memory to Rick: a sickening memory of how the Realm had started to dissolve as his time ran out, as his mind began to disintegrate. He gingerly touched the side of his head.
“I nearly lost my mind in there, didn’t I?” he said.
“Yes,” said Mars. “You stayed too long. Another minute or so, we wouldn’t have been able to bring you back.”
“And then I would become . . . ,” murmured Rick. “Like that creature I saw . . . a person . . . dead . . . only not dead . . . stuck in a web in the spider-snake’s tunnel. That’s what happens to you when you get stuck in the Realm, isn’t it? Your body goes into a coma here, and your spirit is trapped over there.”