And then the presence spoke. His voice echoed through the room, seeming to come from everywhere at once, like some cheap cartoon version of God.
“Rick Dial,” he said.
At the sound of his name, Rick leapt to his feet. As he did, he sensed motion in the unseen outer reaches of the room beyond the lighted city: the Cobras. He could just make them out standing there in the shadows. They tensed at his sudden movement. They were watching him closely, ready to grab him again if he tried to escape.
The pink cloud of Kurodar shifted, and a sort of flickering darkness appeared and vanished within it.
“You are Rick Dial,” he repeated, his voice doing that echoing fake-god-thing. A fake god with a Russian accent. “You are the son of the Traveler.”
Rick answered boldly. He knew full well that Kurodar could have him snuffed out with a single command, but, weirdly, he wasn’t afraid. He felt more angry than anything. He didn’t like feeling threatened, or getting pushed around.
“That’s right,” he said up at the darkness. “I’m Rick Dial. And I guess you’re Kurodar, huh.”
Laughter. Kurodar’s laughter made the city beneath him shake. It filled the enormous room.
“As far as you’re concerned, I am life and death,” he said. “I am the foundation of the world around you. As far as you’re concerned, I am God.”
Eh. Not so much, Rick thought. But, for once, he managed to keep his sarcastic mouth shut. No sense antagonizing a guy who could vaporize you at will.
“You are the one who destroyed my fortress,” Kurodar went on.
“Yeah,” said Rick. “And it blew up real nice, too.” So much for keeping my mouth shut. I really have to work on that! Rick thought.
The sound that came out of the pink presence above him was like a distant rumble of thunder. Rick knew it was the sound of Kurodar’s rage.
“Look down,” Kurodar said angrily. “Look at the city in front of you. Do you recognize it?”
Rick glanced at the model. “Sure. It’s D.C.”
“Of course,” said Kurodar, his voice thick with hollow humor. “A good patriotic American boy like yourself would know the capital when he sees it.”
“That’s right.”
“After all, you were willing to come here and risk your life to protect your country, yes?”
“Yeah, I was.”
“You were even willing to risk your girlfriend’s life.”
His girlfriend . . .? Molly! Rick thought. He almost said her name aloud but managed to stop himself just in time. He didn’t want to show this monster anything that looked like weakness. But the thought of Molly in this hairball’s clutches made his heart turn cold.
Kurodar knew he had touched a nerve. His cloudy presence laughed again, the darkness expanding and retracting inside him. “It was all for nothing, Rick. The girl will die now. And the city . . . Within an hour, it will be in flames.”
Rick’s anger intensified. He wished he could reach up and grab that pink cloud by the throat—wherever its throat was—and squeeze the breath out of it.
Kurodar laughed again. “If you’re very nice, I’ll let you watch the city burn before I kill you,” he said.
Rick told himself to keep quiet. He told himself not to make Kurodar any angrier than he already was. He told himself to play it cool and meanwhile look around for some chance to escape, even though he was surrounded on every side by Cobra Guards and had exactly zero chance of getting past them.
He told himself all that, and then he said, “So that’s it, huh? That’s your big idea. All this Realm and MindWar stuff—and it turns out you’re just some squirrelly lunatic who likes to kill people.” He saw the black rage flash inside Kurodar’s cloudy presence, but he couldn’t stop himself. “You’re brilliant enough to build this whole amazing cyberworld, and all you can do with it is burn stuff down and commit murder. What, you think that makes you special or something? Hey, guess what, fathead? Anyone can kill people. An idiot with a hammer can kill people. An idiot with a match can burn stuff down.” He gestured toward the model of the city. “Building a city like that—doing a good job there—even sweeping the streets—that’s tough. People who do stuff like that—they’re more important in the big scheme of things than wigged-out murderers like you will ever be. How do you like that, Cloud Boy?”
Rick was so wound up he could’ve kept going for half an hour, but Kurodar’s thunderclap of rage cut him off.
“This is nothing!” the presence boomed. Rick could hear his fury. “This is only the beginning. I do this only to show the council what MindWar can do, what it’s capable of. Once they know, once they give me the funding I need, it’s not just Washington that will burn. I will set the entire continent on fire. I will turn your country to dust and ashes. It would have happened by now, I would have shown them already, only—”
Again Rick couldn’t stop his smart mouth. He said, “Oh, right. Only I blew up your fortress. So sad about that, really. But look at it this way, Kurodar. I messed you up pretty good and I’m just one guy. What do you think is gonna happen when my dad sends an army of MindWarriors in here? You’re gonna be one unhappy vague pink mass of whatever you are then, my friend.”
Kurodar’s voice flashed back at him like lightning. “You are a joker, eh? You make fun of me? Me? Well, make fun of death then. Make fun of this!”
Suddenly, the pink cloud of madness expanded. As Rick watched, the blackness of the upper room seemed to open inward into a world of strange green light. Three-dimensional images began to take shape in the depths of that light. Rick realized he was looking up into a kind of movie screen—but what he saw there wasn’t a movie, not at all. What he saw up there was Real Life, the life that was going on right now while he was here in the Realm!
At first Rick could not understand what he was seeing. The images clarified only slowly. He was looking into some sort of large building. An airplane hangar, he thought. There seemed to be some thirty or forty airplanes arrayed in rows on the floor of the structure. Or wait, were they planes or were they . . .?
Drones! Rick thought. The missing drones.
He was looking at the rows of missing drones, each armed with both guns and very deadly looking missiles. And beyond the drones, there was an open door, a tall rectangle looking out on what seemed to be a forest on a starry night.
“They are coming,” said Kurodar.
As Rick watched, and as the images continued coming into focus, and as his eyes adjusted, Rick saw a light coming forward through the darkness of the woods. A flashlight. In its glow, he saw two people advancing toward the hangar.
“Molly,” he whispered. Molly and Victor One.
Kurodar instantly rumbled back: “Yes. Molly. Molly and your friend Victor One. They are coming to the barn. And my people are ready for them.”
It was only then that Rick noticed the killers, standing in the shadows of the barn, waiting.
And he understood that Victor and Molly were walking into a trap.
35. FIREFIGHT
THE BARN MATERIALIZED before Molly and Victor One like a vision. It rose up just beyond the reach of Victor’s flashlight beam: a hulking blackness in the brighter starlit darkness all around them.
“What is that?” Molly asked, instinctively dropping her voice to a whisper.
Victor One only shook his head in answer. He didn’t know.
They approached the place cautiously and soon understood what it was—or, that is, what it appeared to be: an abandoned barn in a place now reclaimed by wetland and overgrown with trees. In the flashlight beam they saw its unpainted wooden boards and its weak, lopsided structure . . . and also its door standing open, as if it were waiting for them, beckoning them to come in.
Molly glanced at Victor One and saw his expression had gone blank, and his blue eyes were practically gleaming with intensity. He was on the alert. But he kept moving forward slowly and Molly kept following.
The barn looked awfully good to both of them. A pla
ce of shelter; a place to rest. It was late now, deep in the night. They had traveled a long way and had faced terrible danger. Their energy was nearly gone. And in the darkness, they were not sure of the way. Victor One had left behind any electronic devices that might be tracked or hacked. He had no phone, no GPS, no Internet. He was relying on his memories of maps and his instincts to find the way. He knew—and Molly knew—if they could find a place to hide out and sleep until daylight, they would have a much better chance of getting out of this forest alive.
Walking slowly, carefully, quietly, almost on tiptoe, they reached the open door of the barn. Victor One shone his light inside. Molly expected to see nothing more than a dirt floor, maybe some old rusted farming equipment.
Instead, the sight that greeted her was so unlikely that she couldn’t make sense of it at first. And even as her mind was trying to grasp what she saw, a voice spoke to them out of the surrounding shadows. It was a voice that made her whole body tighten with fear. A voice she knew well, strangely high-pitched and hissing like a snake’s.
“Welcome,” said Smiley McDeath. “Come in.”
As he spoke, the lights inside the barn came flickering on. Molly let out a quick, sharp breath as she saw the lines of drones arrayed on the smooth stone floor, their deadly missiles bristling. She saw the steel walls that had been hidden by the wood facade. And she saw Smiley McDeath himself standing on a balcony set high on the wall. Beside him stood another man, his face masked with a balaclava. The masked man was holding a machine gun, training it on Victor One.
Victor One and Molly stood still in the doorway for a moment.
And Smiley McDeath said, “Actually, that wasn’t an invitation. That was an order. Come in.”
At that moment, another masked man stepped out of the darkness behind them and put a pistol against Molly’s head.
“Oh and, you know, hands up and all that,” said Smiley McDeath.
Victor One lifted his hands to show they were empty. The pistol man gave Molly a shove.
Victor and Molly stepped into the barn. They came forward under the bright lights until they were standing at the edge of the drone array.
“Quite a collection,” Victor said, scanning the miniature planes.
“It is, isn’t it? That one I sent after you was the least of them,” said Smiley McDeath. He leaned on the balcony, relaxed, his diamond-shaped face grinning down at them over the rail. He surveyed the drones with admiration. “It had a nice tracking device in it, but pretty minor guns. I didn’t want to waste the missiles on you. We’re saving them for the strike on the city.”
Victor One nodded, as if thinking along with him. “Washington?” he asked.
Smiley McDeath only shrugged. “Who can say?”
Victor One went on surveying the field of drones. “It’s a lot of firepower. I’m sure they’ll do plenty of damage wherever you send them. Use those missiles right and you could kill a lot of people—tens of thousands—not to mention the damage you’d do to the government.”
“Well, thanks for your vote of confidence,” said Smiley McDeath casually. “Coming from you, it’s quite a compliment, seeing as you’ve done a fair amount of damage yourself.”
“Aw shucks,” said Victor One, stone-faced.
“Speaking of which . . .,” said Smiley McDeath. “Your gun. Would you mind giving it over to my friend there? The backpack, too, while you’re at it.”
Before Victor One could answer, the pistol man jammed his weapon against Molly’s head so hard, she felt the ache behind her brow. She grunted and stumbled forward a step.
Victor One turned and showed the pistol man a big, friendly grin. “No need for that, friend,” he said pleasantly.
It was at that moment Molly knew there was going to be a gunfight. Victor One was smiling broadly, but there was pure, simple murder in his eyes. She felt her body tense. Her heart sped up. She got ready to hit the floor when the moment came.
Still smiling, Victor One drew his gun and handed it to the pistol man at Molly’s back.
“Be careful with that. It’s loaded,” he said. “I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.” Molly saw Victor One’s eyes scan the barn as he spoke. He was searching for any other gunmen, figuring his odds. Meanwhile, he stripped off his backpack and dropped it to the floor. The pistol man kicked it away.
When Victor One turned back to look up at Smiley McDeath on the balcony, he said, “You guys must be feeling pretty confident. All this expensive weaponry lying around, and you only have two guards in the place.”
“Well, we had four originally,” said Smiley McDeath. “Two have gone to meet the reinforcements and lead them here. They should be back any minute. They’re bringing a veritable army to assist us.”
Molly’s eyes flicked from Smiley McDeath’s face to the masked man with the machine gun beside him to Victor One, relaxed and grinning. She could feel the violence coming any second. She could feel it building inside Victor One. Her breath was short and her heart was pounding so hard she was afraid the noise of it would give her away.
But Victor One only nodded pleasantly. “A whole army, huh? Just to defend yourself against little old me? Why don’t you just let your pal here shoot me?”
When Smiley McDeath laughed he sounded like a rattler in the grass. “Oh, we’ll get around to shooting you, don’t worry about that. But first, our employer would like to meet you. Ask you some questions. Cause you some excruciating pain. The army will escort you to him.”
Victor One laughed out loud—and Molly had to grit her teeth to keep from gasping with suspense. It was coming, she knew.
“Well, I’m flattered,” said Victor One. “Flattered you feel you need an army to deal with one guy.”
“Oh, it’s not flattery,” said Smiley McDeath, still smiling. “After all, you’ve already killed four of my men.”
Victor One gave another pleasant laugh. “Actually, it’s eight. There were four in the woods, then one back at the inn.” He paused, and Molly could see Smiley McDeath trying to figure out what he meant. Then Victor One added: “And then, of course, there’s you three.”
And with that, it began.
Victor One started moving, moving so fast that it was only afterward that Molly could slow it down in her mind and reconstruct what happened.
He pushed her, driving his elbow into her shoulder, hard. She stumbled to one side—and, tense and ready as she was, she understood the signal and dove for the floor. She hit concrete and rolled, turning onto her back so that she saw the rest.
Without a break in his motion, Victor One kept turning. The pistol man had instinctively tried to move his weapon to follow the falling Molly. That was a mistake. In a split second, Victor One had grabbed his arm and snapped the pistol from his hand.
The machine gunner on the balcony was in the process of tightening his finger on the trigger when Victor One swung the pistol around and shot him. The noise of the shot filled the barn, deafening. A dark circle appeared just above the bridge of the machine gunner’s nose. He threw his hands in the air and collapsed forward. His midsection hit the balcony railing and he bent forward hard and pitched over and tumbled through the air.
Before the machine gunner’s body even thudded to the floor, Victor One was turning back to the pistol man. The pistol man had stumbled away and was fumbling to get a grip on the Glock he had taken from Victor One.
No chance. Victor One was too fast. There was another deafening blast and the pistol man dropped to the floor, dead.
“Victor!” Molly screamed.
She saw Smiley McDeath on the balcony. She saw his hand flashing into his jacket, coming out with a black weapon, a pistol. She saw him pointing the pistol down at Victor One.
Victor spun and the two pistols went off at once—his and Smiley McDeath’s—a single, unified explosion.
Molly saw Smiley McDeath wheel backward, grimacing in pain, clutching his shoulder. Then she turned and screamed Victor’s name again as she saw the warrior sink
to his knees. Blood was burbling out of a small, wicked, black hole smack in the middle of him.
The entire gunfight had taken a second, maybe two. Molly had watched it unfold from where she lay on the floor, propped on one arm. Now she saw the pistol drop from Victor One’s slack hand. She saw him tilt to the side, flinching in pain. He fell over and rolled onto his back, blinking up weakly into the high lights.
Molly rushed to him.
This time, when she spoke his name, he turned his head and blinked at her weakly. He tried to smile but couldn’t. He had to lick his lips before he could force out a whisper.
“Run.”
Molly heard a footstep behind her. She turned and looked over her shoulder. There was Smiley McDeath. He was coming down the spiral stairs that led to the balcony. He was wounded, his shoulder bleeding. His steps were slow and uncertain. But he was still gripping his pistol in his hand.
Molly saw Victor’s pistol where it had fallen on the floor. She swept it up. She had never held a loaded gun before and the weight of it surprised her.
“Run,” Victor One urged her again, his whisper barely audible.
But Molly did not run. She stood up, facing Smiley McDeath.
The killer had now reached the bottom of the stairs. He was shuffling toward them. His eyes were bright with pain, but he was still smiling. He came closer and closer.
Molly lifted the weapon, holding it steady with both hands. She pointed it at Smiley McDeath.
“Stop right there,” she said.
“Oh, put that down,” said Smiley McDeath. He didn’t even hesitate. He just kept coming toward them, carrying his gun.
“I’ll shoot you,” said Molly.
“No you won’t. Stop talking like an idiot,” he told her.
Molly kept the gun trained on him, but he continued to ignore her. He truly didn’t believe she would shoot him. And, in truth, she herself didn’t think she was going to be able to pull the trigger and destroy a living man.
Smiley McDeath limped toward her steadily. Now he was very close, very close to Molly and close to where Victor One lay wounded and helpless on the floor.