“Oh, don’t be so modest, Doctor. We both know what you’re capable of. It is you, I assume, who sent the intruders here.”
The Traveler shrugged again. “My work made it possible for them to enter your Realm, that’s all.”
“Then you have sent them to their death, you know.”
For the first time, Victor One saw the Traveler’s calm demeanor falter. He grew pale. Victor One remembered Leila Kent saying to him back at the cabin, We’ve asked Rick to go into the Realm. He remembered the Traveler had lost his calm then, too, crying out, You can’t do that!
Now, the Traveler had to draw a deep breath before he could speak again. Now, Victor One knew, he was only pretending to be calm. He said, “You’ve killed them—the intruders? They’re already dead?”
“All but one,” said Kurodar. “We are hunting the last one now. He will be dead momentarily, I promise you.”
Victor One saw the Traveler begin to breathe normally again. “I see.”
“And now we are going to make it so your presence does not trouble the minds of the Assembly anymore,” Kurodar continued. “I am flying you to an island off the coast of your state of Georgia. I will set your plane down there, after which you and your laptop will be transferred to another plane, one of mine. You and your work will be brought to me, and we will review the work together. You will explain everything to me. You will show me this new program you have been protecting so carefully. You will demonstrate what it is capable of and outline what you are planning and how I can defend the Realm against whatever attack you and your masters had in mind. Then there will be nothing more for the Assembly to fear and the work of the Realm—the destruction of your country—can continue safely. It’s all very simple.”
“Very.” The Traveler nodded. “And if I resist or refuse or try to destroy the work on my laptop before it reaches you . . .”
“The planes in my control will crash into the city. All seven of them. Many thousands will die.”
The voice ceased. The plane was silent except for the thrum of the engine. Victor One’s eyes flitted from face to face. Leila, the other bodyguards, Jonathan Mars, the Traveler again.
He saw the Traveler give another nod, blinking mildly behind his glasses. “All right,” he said calmly. “I have no choice. I’ll do what you say.”
Then Jonathan Mars reached into his jacket, drew out a gun, and pointed it at the Traveler’s chest.
“I’m afraid I can’t allow you to do that, Dr. Dial,” he said.
Responding to Kaaf’s alarm, the alligator guards thundered toward the corridor. They came up from the cellar on the stone stairs. They left their guard posts by the doors and rushed across the Great Hall. They all reached the corridor at about the same time and, in a moment, the hallway was crowded with armored two-legged reptiles, their swords drawn, their fangs bared, their eyes shooting red light through the shadows as they sought the intruder.
But the corridor was empty. Kaaf was gone—and so was Rick.
The alligator guard had vanished as he died. And Rick had scurried up the wall.
Fear had spurred him on. He’d climbed quickly, his fingernails and sneaker-tips gripping every outcropping he could find on the uneven stones. He pulled himself up the face of the wall like a climbing chameleon. He was already halfway toward the far distant ceiling when he looked down over his shoulder and saw the guards flooding the corridor below him.
He knew it was only a matter of time before one of the alligators lifted its snout and pinned him with a pair of red beams. He couldn’t just hang around up here. He had to keep moving.
Clamping his mouth shut to keep from grunting with the effort, he sidled along the uneven rocks toward the end of the corridor. He crept around the corner and was now hanging high above the Great Hall. The rosette windows soared above his head. He looked down past the candles in the circular chandeliers and saw the statues and furnishings on the floor below.
He saw something else, too: All the guards had left their posts and rushed over to the corridor at the alarm. The Great Hall was empty.
The strength in his arms was beginning to give out. He couldn’t stay up here much longer. Soon, the alligators would decide he was gone and come back to their posts by the doors. This was the moment to make his move. He began to climb down the wall.
As he did, the iron door across the way—the door to the Generator Room—was flung open, and out flew the winged demon, Reza.
Rick froze where he was, clinging to his precarious perch on the wall by his fingernails. Looking over his shoulder, he watched the demon cross the expanse of the hall below, heading to join the guards in the corridor. He hung on—hung on—his arms aching, his muscles beginning to quiver with the effort. He feared he would lose his grip and drop right into the winged demon’s path.
But now Reza entered the corridor and moved out of sight. Rick quickly scrambled down the wall—dropping the last few feet to land quietly on the edge of a rug.
The moment his sneakers touched down, he spun and started running—running for the double doors that had been left unprotected. That was the way into the domed room. He knew he needed to get there fast, get out of sight before the guards started pouring back out of the corridor and spotted him. But he was amazed at just how great this Great Hall was. It must’ve been as far across as a football field at least, maybe two. By the time he got to the other side of the hall, he was panting hard.
As his hand closed around the handle to one of the double doors, he glanced back over his shoulder. He couldn’t see very far into the corridor across the way. He just caught a glimpse of the demon’s lashing tail in there—a glimpse of movement as the alligator guards milled around, looking for him.
Quickly, he pulled the door open a crack and slipped through.
He closed the door. Turned. Looked up.
His mouth opened at the stunning sight. The monumental room. The lofty columns. The statues several stories high. The seemingly endless dome of stars above, its moving streaks of light, its moving lines of darkness that seemed almost alive.
But more than anything, it was the vision at the center of the place that gripped him, held him, made his eyes go wide.
A misty and somehow animated presence hung in the air high above him. Its tendrils reached out across the dome, twining and spiraling in places here and there. And, swimming in the depths of that strange disembodied presence, there were images—the images he had glimpsed from the corridor across the way. Jonathan Mars—sitting in a canvas seat along the wall of what looked to be a plane. He was holding a gun, Rick saw now, pointing it at one of the passengers across from him.
They—the others—were visible, too, in this floating, living 3-D image. There was a shifty-eyed tough guy with skin like jerky. An elegant woman with swept-back golden hair. And then . . .
“Dad!” Rick whispered.
His father, Lawrence Dial, was there as well! Large as life—or small and bald and yet somehow impressive in his serene and unshakable inner strength. Rick stared up at him, his lips parted, thoughts and emotions twining and spiraling through his mind and heart like the twining and spiraling tendrils of pink mist above him.
He saw his father look across the plane’s cabin at Commander Mars and he realized: that gun in Mars’s hand—it was pointed directly at his dad!
“What are you going to do, Jonathan?” Rick’s father asked calmly—his voice was audible throughout the vast domed space. “You going to shoot me dead in cold blood?”
Commander Mars looked at him for a moment, silent but unmoved.
Then he said, “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“No!” Leila cried out over the grinding noise of the airplane’s engine. “What do you think you’re doing, Jonathan? Put that gun away!”
“I can’t do that, Leila,” said Jonathan Mars in a steady voice. “The Traveler’s program is the only way to destroy the Realm. Everything we’ve done has been done to keep the technology out of Ku
rodar’s hands. I’m not just going to let him turn it over.”
“You can’t just shoot him!”
“Yes, I can.” Mars continued to train the gun on the Traveler. The Traveler watched him calmly.
Kurodar’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “I’m not bluffing about crashing those jets, Commander. Pull that trigger, and I’ll bring them down.”
Mars slowly shook his head. “I know you’re not bluffing about crashing the jets. I just think you’re lying when you say you won’t crash them if we hand over Dial and the laptop. Whatever happens, you’re going to slaughter all those people and we both know it. Why wouldn’t you?”
“He won’t, because my work is encoded,” said the Traveler quietly. “He has no chance of understanding it without my help, and I won’t give him that help until I can see for myself the planes have landed safely.”
“All the same,” said Mars. “We can’t let him have your equations. The Realm would be unstoppable then. The MindWar would be lost. All of us, the whole country, would be lost.”
Victor One’s mind raced as he watched the confrontation. The ramifications were impossible for him to figure out. If the Traveler refused to hand his work over to Kurodar, then Kurodar would crash the planes into the city, sure. But Mars was right: he would probably crash them anyway. And if Kurodar got hold of the Traveler’s equations or whatever they were, he would be unstoppable and God only knew what damage he could do then. At the same time, Victor One had been assigned to protect the Traveler’s life. He didn’t see how he could just sit there and watch while Mars put a bullet in him . . .
Even though his arm still throbbed from his wound, he went to his hip and drew his weapon quickly.
“I’m gonna ask you to drop the gun, Commander,” he called across the plane.
Mars’s eyes flashed to him, then back to the Traveler. “Don’t be an idiot, Victor One,” he said. “This has to happen. We can’t let Kurodar get that laptop. I’m telling you: he may kill thousands today, but a lot more—millions more—will die once the Realm is fully operational.”
Victor One hesitated. He was a simple guy. He never claimed to be anything else. He couldn’t work all this out; he just knew it couldn’t be right for Mars to kill the Traveler in cold blood. He just knew it was his job to stop him.
“Listen—” he said.
But before he could finish the sentence, the plane keeled over.
It happened with shocking speed. The engines roared, the nose of the U-28A jerked skyward, the left wing went up and the right wing down, and for a moment it seemed the plane would flip completely.
Mars was thrown forward against the straps of his seat so hard that the gun was jolted out of his hand. It flew across the cabin and landed at the feet of Bravo Niner. But before the wiry bodyguard could grab it, the plane had swerved again, still climbing, and the gun spun away across the floor.
Victor One was hurled back into his seat canvas. He nearly lost his weapon, too. It slipped from his grip, but hit his leg as it fell. He grabbed it, first with his left hand, then with both, and held on. His stomach rolled as the plane leveled out fast.
Leila Kent clutched her stomach. Her high cheekbones had taken on a greenish tinge. Mars’s face was red with fury as he watched his pistol skitter across the cabin, out of his reach. Only the Traveler’s expression remained the same. He didn’t seem afraid. He didn’t even seem particularly excited. Victor One wondered if that was because of his faith or just because he had guts of steel—or maybe both.
Kurodar laughed—and his laughter filled the plane.
“So much for your gun, Mars,” he said. “Now we continue, and when we reach our destination, Dr. Dial, you will give me what I want and I will safely land those seven planes. Agreed?”
The Traveler nodded once. “Agreed,” he said.
Rick saw all of this, playing like a three-dimensional movie in the mist that was Kurodar’s mind. As he watched, his thoughts and feelings veered and dove and rose like the plane. Jonathan Mars ready to shoot his father dead in cold blood! His mild-mannered dad, so cool and unafraid. Then the plane going crazy . . . the last-minute rescue that was really not a rescue at all . . . Rick didn’t understand everything he was seeing—but he understood enough.
He understood, in a single moment, that he had lived these last months of his life lost in a fog of lies. The lie that his father was unfaithful. The lie that his mother was broken and in despair. The lie that he himself was helpless. It had all been untrue—all of it. In fact, his father had given up everything he loved in an effort to protect his family and his country. His mother had been sorrowful, but faithful and strong. And he, Rick—despite his pain, despite his injuries—he had held the power to help them in his spirit all along.
He had let the lies imprison him. Now, in a moment, the truth had set him free. He had to act. He had to help his father—he had to save his father—he was the only one who could. He had to do it no matter what it cost him, no matter what it took—even if he had to sacrifice everything he loved to save everything he loved.
For another second, Rick stood where he was, there on the floor of that soaring domed room, his head tilted back as he looked up into the computerized mind of Kurodar. There was no way to touch that mind, no way to stop what he was doing—not here.
His face set and grim, he turned away—turned to the Sky Room’s double doors.
He knew what he had to do.
Pressing his wings down against the air, Reza lifted himself above the crowd of guards milling in the corridor. He glided over them, looking down as they searched for any signs of trouble. He could hear their voices growling and buzzing.
“False alarm.”
“No problem here.”
“We should return to guard the doors.”
“We should return to the cellar to search for the intruder.”
Reza considered the situation. The alarm had come from Kaaf—a quick, sharp cry for assistance over the communicator: “Intruder in corridor C.” And yet here they were in corridor C and—never mind the intruder—Kaaf himself was nowhere to be found. Where had he gone?
Reza’s eyes played over the heads of the alligators. What if the intruder had somehow killed Kaaf? That would explain why the guard-bot was gone. But how could the intruder have gotten away? There were only two exits from this hallway: down the stairs to the cellar, and out to the Great Hall. If the intruder had left in either direction, the incoming guards would have spotted him . . .
Hovering there, Reza lifted his eyes to the wall. It was a rough surface with a lot of outcroppings. He supposed if someone was particularly resourceful and athletic, he could have climbed up the wall somehow, but . . . Well, it didn’t seem likely.
He called out to the guard-bots below him: “Return to your stations. Resume patrol.”
At once, the crowd of two-legged alligators began to disperse, some heading down into the cellars again, others returning to the Great Hall to take up their posts by the doors.
Thoughtful, worried, Reza drifted above them. What if the intruder had climbed up the wall? He couldn’t have reached the stairway from there . . .
Flapping his wings slowly, Reza moved back into the Great Hall. He hung in the air, looking around. The guards were returning to their posts at the various doors. One placed himself before the Generator Room. Another moved to the doors leading into the Sky Room—and just as he did, those doors swung open.
To Reza’s surprise, out came Kaaf! The chief guard was not dead at all! He nodded once to the alligator taking up his post and quickly moved away along the wall.
He was heading toward the Generator Room.
Still on the other side of the Great Hall, Reza contacted his minion through the communicator: “Kaaf! What’s going on? Why did you raise the alarm?”
But Kaaf didn’t respond. He didn’t even stop walking. Reza started flying toward him, calling again, “Kaaf. What’s the matter? Where are you going?”
Kaaf reach
ed the Generator Room. The guard there stood aside as his superior approached. Kaaf went past him and unbolted the room’s small iron door.
Reza flapped his wings and flew toward him more quickly. Overriding the communicator completely now, he simply shouted to him, “Kaaf! Wait! Where are you going?”
But Kaaf did not wait. He still did not respond at all. He ducked into the Generator Room.
A moment later, Reza reached the door himself. The guard there nodded at him. Reza ignored him and flew past. He flew directly through the open door and entered the Generator Room.
At first, he saw nothing. Only the metal walkways winding around the walls. The immense Disperser Wheel turning. The flashes of lightning as the energy fed into the bottom of the wheel three stories down and was dispersed into various outlets on the way up.
And then, startled, Reza saw Kaaf. The chief alligator guard was standing right beside him, right behind the iron door.
“What are you doing?” Reza barked at him. “Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused?”
Without an answer, Kaaf pushed the iron door shut and threw the inner bolt, locking both Reza and himself inside.
“What—” Reza began.
But before he could finish, Kaaf began to change—change impossibly—before his very eyes.
That was close! Rick thought.
It couldn’t have been any closer. He couldn’t have kept the Kaaf morph in place another second. Exhaustion and fear had eaten away his energy to nothing. He was sure Reza would reach him before he’d gotten through the door. As it was, the demon-like assassin had come in before he could shut him out.
Now the morph gave way in an instant. Rick’s alligator size and shape melted away into his old humanity. He was just Rick again, clothed in the armor Mariel had given him, with Mariel’s blade in the scabbard by his side.
He turned from the door to face the creature who hovered in the air beside him. He saw Reza’s expression change from one of puzzlement to a look of such red, smoking, offended rage that it would have been almost comical—that is, if Rick hadn’t known it could be deadly.