Mars’s craggy, frowning, Mount Rushmore of a face turned red with rising fury. He raised a stiff finger and poked the smaller man hard in his narrow chest. “I expect loyalty from you, Dial.”
The Traveler could not help himself. He had not lifted a hand in anger since he was a little boy, but he swatted the commander’s finger off him. “I’ve got nothing but loyalty,” he said. “I’m loyal to my God. I’m loyal to my family. And I’m loyal to my country.”
“I am your country!”
“No, sir. You are my government. That is in no way the same thing. My country is the collection of free and sovereign individuals who make up the United States of America and the Constitution under which they live. You just work for them. And so do I. And that means we have to behave as they would have us behave.”
“That’s ridiculous. The people don’t know anything about this! It’s a secret operation, remember?”
“All the more reason for us to do what’s right,” said Dial.
Mars’s face turned even redder. He stepped up close to the Traveler, as if he meant to intimidate him. He did mean to. Mars intimidated most of the people he dealt with. But he didn’t know Dial.
And he didn’t get to know him any better now. Because before he could start talking, the door to the amphitheater opened and Dial’s son Rick was standing there. There was a look in the big kid’s eyes that said he was ready to tear Mars’s head off and use it for a basketball.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, Mars thought with disdain.
“What’s going on?” the kid said.
Lawrence Dial turned to Rick. He gave a curt nod of his head down the hall.
“Come on, son,” he said. “We’re getting out of here.”
6. OUTLAW VOLLEYBALL
RICK KNEW FROM the look on his father’s face that this was serious business. But what business? That, he couldn’t guess.
He stood in his dad’s office in the low-ceilinged attic of their house. Normally, the house would have been empty around this time. Mom and Raider would’ve been at the small schoolhouse at the far end of the compound where Mom helped tutor Raider and five other kids whose parents were on the compound staff. But the school’s Christmas break had begun just the day before, and Rick could hear the bink-bank-bonking music of Super Mario Brothers filtering up to them from Raider’s room on the second floor. Mom was busy with some sort of Mom-thing on the floor below.
About ten minutes ago, Victor One—Dad’s pet tough guy—had appeared on their front step as if summoned by some kind of secret Victor One signal. Now he and Rick and Dad all stood shoulder to shoulder in the cramped attic office, gathered around Dad’s desk and his computer.
“What’s going on?” Rick said.
But his father didn’t answer. Leaning over his keyboard, his fingers flew over the numbers and letters rapid-fire.
“This entire compound was built for cybersecurity,” he explained as he tapped away. “It was constructed over the course of months to my specifications, fashioned to be the one place where I could modify our defense systems without any danger of Kurodar breaking into my computer and stealing or destroying my work. So far, that security seems to be holding up well. But the minute I explore beyond the systems here . . . well, there are vulnerabilities. Every morning, for instance, I visit an information sharing site to keep up with the latest discoveries in my field. When I went there today, I found a message waiting for me. The message was written in a code that only a very few people could have understood. I understood it, and I followed its links through a series of further security blocks so complex they would have eliminated pretty much anyone but two people on earth—me and Kurodar. Finally, I was able to unlock what you’re about to see.”
He pressed one final key and stepped back. As Rick and Victor One watched the monitor, an image appeared, the image of a man.
“Who’s that?” said Rick. “He looks like a troll.”
His father held up a finger to silence him.
But it was true: the man on the screen was definitely troll-like. His flaming red hair somehow emphasized the spotty pallor of his face, which in turn emphasized the enormity of his head, which in its own turn made his small but muscular body seem even more misshapen than it was. Even before the Troll spoke in that sliding-gravel voice of his, Rick could see the rage and agony in the man’s huge eyes.
“Professor Dial,” he rasped, “I’m speaking to you as a messenger from your colleague, the man you call Kurodar. He sends you his compliments. He was very impressed with your cleverness in inserting your son into the MindWar Realm—and with your son’s ability to avoid the security bots designed to stop him from causing damage. In fact, Kurodar was so impressed, he respectfully requests that you not repeat the effort. From now on, he wants you and your son to stay completely out of the Realm.”
Rick snorted. “Yeah, right. We’ll be sure to do that.”
Again, his father held up a finger: Listen!
“In return for your restraint,” the Troll continued, “we will restrain ourselves as well. We will refrain from bringing this young lady’s life to a premature and very painful conclusion.”
The scene shifted—and Rick felt a weight drop inside him like an elevator with a broken cable.
Molly!
She was kneeling on a hard wooden floor. She was dressed in a black running outfit, her light brown hair held back with a band, her gentle face so pale the soft freckles stood out darkly. She was in an empty room. The room was shadowy, harshly lit by the camera’s spotlight. There was a grate on the window behind her and tree branches visible through the glass. There were black scratches gouged into the chipped paint of the walls. Rick could tell Molly had been crying, but she wasn’t crying now. She was looking directly into the camera, her eyes fierce, her arms bent out from her sides, her hands braced on her thighs.
“Go on,” a high-pitched male voice prompted her from behind the camera.
Molly licked her lips nervously, but her voice was strong and steady. “Professor Dial. Rick, if you’re watching this. These men took me from the university after my jog,” she said—and Rick noticed she gave her thigh an angry little tap with one hand on that last word. “They want me to tell you that I’m all right. For now. I’m being held prisoner. Which is hard,” she continued, giving her thigh another angry tap. “But they want me to tell you that they won’t hurt me as long as you do what Ku . . . Ka . . .”
“Kurodar,” prompted the voice behind the camera impatiently.
“What Kurodar wants you to do,” Molly said.
Molly hesitated, and the high-pitched voice offscreen was thrown at her like acid: “Tell them the rest. Go ahead.”
“Oh, right,” said Molly. She looked straight into the camera. Something dry and ironic about that glance, Rick thought, as if, even now, Molly’s typical tongue-in-cheek sense of humor was still in play. “I’m supposed to tell you how scared I am, and then I’m supposed to cry and beg you to do whatever they said.”
Rick felt a warm wave of admiration wash through him. Molly was speaking the words they told her to speak and making a mockery of them at the same time with her brave, unflinching tone. Kneeling there, helpless, under threat of death, she was totally defiant, practically spitting in her captor’s eye. And the thug behind the camera knew it, too: Rick heard him let out an angry curse of frustration before the picture suddenly went black. Rick’s admiration turned to fear and he prayed silently that the thug wouldn’t hurt her.
Now the Troll returned to the screen. “She is a brave girl. It would be a pity for her to die so young. But she will die. If the police come after her, we’ll kill her. If you try to rescue her, we’ll kill her. And, most importantly, if you make any further attempts to interfere with the Realm, we will kill her—very slowly and very painfully. So do her a favor, Professor Dial. Keep quiet. Keep low. Stay out of the Realm. You and your son both. The MindWar is over. We win.”
With that, the video ended.
>
In the silence afterward, Rick raised a hand to his mouth. The hand was trembling. Thoughts and emotions were crashing together inside him like a forty-car pileup on the highway.
Molly. His Molly. He could barely believe it, barely take it in. She and he—they were so alike, they had so much in common, she was almost like his second self. They were both athletes, both fierce competitors, both the unlikely children of brainy professors. And they’d been on the verge of becoming more than friends when everything went wrong . . . the truck crashing into his car . . . his broken legs . . . his bitterness . . . the MindWar . . .
And Mariel.
There had never been any promise between him and Molly, but, all the same, Rick knew that something important and deep between them had been interrupted by all the trauma and adventure of these last months. It was as if they had been two vines growing side by side, slowly twining together into one—and they had suddenly been ripped apart. Even so, maybe they would’ve gotten past that interruption, maybe they would have started to grow together again, but now . . .?
Now there was Mariel. It made Rick feel confused, not to mention rotten. He felt as if he had betrayed his friend, turned away from Molly because he had developed a crush on . . . on what? What was Mariel, anyway? Was she even human? He didn’t know. When he was in the Realm, her silver, spirit-like appearance was so real, so captivating. And his desperate desire to rescue her from Kurodar’s slow death compelled him to think about her all the time, kept her image in the forefront of his mind. But what was she really?
Now Molly was in danger, too. She was definitely real! And the thought of her overwhelmed everything. The desire to help her was like a fire in his spirit. It suddenly reminded him just how much he cared about her.
He came out of his thoughts and noticed that both his father and Victor One were looking at him. They were waiting for him to speak.
“I’ve got to help her,” was all he managed to say. “I’ve got to find her.”
His father shook his head. “You can’t. Kurodar has the means to launch a devastating attack on this country. He may be only a few days away from pulling it off. And you’re the only one who can stop him.”
“But . . . if I go into the Realm, they’ll kill her. They said so.”
“The Realm is a big place. Kurodar’s mind can’t be everywhere at once. We don’t think he’ll even know you’re there at first.”
“But . . .”
“And if you don’t go in, thousands, maybe millions, will die,” his father said.
Rick tried to think but he couldn’t. The storm of emotions gathering inside him pushed every thought away. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I can’t go into the Realm. I have to find Molly.”
“Listen to me—” his father began.
The storm of emotions broke. Rage flashed through Rick. Before he could stop himself, he snarled, “Maybe you’re willing to hurt the people you love for the sake of a mission, but I’m not!” The moment the words were out of his mouth, he was sorry for them. He knew full well his father was only trying to do what was right. And even he himself wasn’t sure what the right thing was. All the same, the anger still boiled in him and he couldn’t bring himself to apologize.
But his father didn’t seem to need it. His voice remained steady; his eyes, blinking behind his glasses, remained calm.
“I have a better idea,” he said—as if Rick hadn’t spoken at all. “If we try to contact anyone outside—the police or any federal agencies—Kurodar will know and they’ll kill her. Also, there’s Mars. He’s not with us on this. He’s likely got law enforcement holding back.”
“What?” Rick nearly shouted.
“I know. He doesn’t want anything to jeopardize the mission.”
“Why, that lousy—”
“So that leaves it up to us,” Rick’s father said, cutting him off.
“That’s why I have to go find her,” Rick insisted.
“No,” said his dad firmly. “You go into the Realm. Victor One will go find Molly.”
Rick drew a breath. His eyes shifted to the bodyguard. Victor One was standing slumped on one hip, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He looked relaxed, but all the wit was gone from his expression. His blue eyes flashed like gemstones.
Rick shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m Molly’s friend. I’m the one who—”
“You’re the one who’s trained to go into the Realm,” said Victor One. “Me—well, the Army taught me how to kill people and break things. I’m good at it. Very good. And I move quiet. No one will see me coming. I’m trained for this, Rick. You’re not. Trust me. I’ll find her. I’ll set her free.”
Rick’s lips moved, but no more words came out. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t even know what to think. He was haunted by the image of Molly forced to kneel on that hard floor—and by the image of Molly crying when he said good-bye to her the last time. But even awash in anger and fear and guilt, he knew deep down that Victor One was right. Rick’s hours and hours of video-game playing had been a sad and stupid response to his accident, but by some work of providence they had turned him into the one person who could best do battle in the Realm. When it came to a search-and-rescue mission in RL? Rick’s legs were still weak, plus he had no real fighting or weapons training. Victor One, a former special forces hero, was a better man for the job.
“All right,” Rick said. It was hard to get the words out, but he did it. “You go. But how are you going to find her?”
At that, Victor One and the Traveler exchanged an uncomfortable glance. With a sinking feeling in his gut, Rick realized: they didn’t know where to begin.
Victor One gestured at the computer. “Run her part of the video again,” he said.
Rick nearly groaned aloud when he saw Molly’s image reappear on the monitor. He couldn’t stand to see her—even to think of her—held captive like that by thugs without a conscience. Brave as she was, strong as she was, she couldn’t defend herself against them. Why had he ever left her behind? Why hadn’t he realized she’d be vulnerable? Why wasn’t he there to protect her?
“Look at her hands,” Victor One said. “Tapping her legs like that . . .”
Rick looked. He had noticed it before but had thought it was just an angry tic. Could it be more than that?
“She’s a volleyballer,” Rick murmured. “That’s what they do. They signal each other with their fingers before the serve so they know where the ball is going.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” said Victor One. “Before they serve, they point. But what’s she pointing to?”
Rick shook his head. “She only does it twice. When she says the word jog, and when she says the word hard. Could she be pointing to the words?”
“We thought of that,” said his dad. “It would have to be something simple like that, but . . . well, it doesn’t mean anything. Jog hard? That doesn’t tell us anything.”
Rick shook his head. Jog hard. His dad was right. It was just random nonsense.
His father started to go on. “We thought maybe she was giving some kind of directional signal, but—”
“Wait, I know what that is!” came a piping voice behind them.
The Traveler, Rick, and Victor One all swung around together, startled to see Raider standing in the office doorway. For a moment, they could do nothing but gape in surprise at the nine-year-old’s eager, pie-plate face.
Raider blinked at them. “Well, I do!” he said.
“What is it, son?” Lawrence Dial asked him. “What do you think it is?”
“It’s an app. JogHard. You put it on your phone and it tells you how far you ran.”
The three men continued to stare at him.
“Well, it is!” said Raider.
In spite of all the dark feelings swirling inside him, a bleak laugh broke from Rick’s lips. “You know, I think the kid’s right. Molly does have an app like that on her phone. Nice going, Raider.”
Raider beamed like the sun,
delighted to have helped.
“Molly’s phone has been turned off . . .,” the Traveler murmured.
Rick raised his eyes to his father’s. “But maybe the app feeds location info to the cloud for storage.”
Rick’s father nodded and quickly swung away from him, his fingers moving to the keyboard of his computer.
As the Traveler tapped away, trying to work his way into Molly’s cloud account, Rick’s gaze moved to Victor One.
Victor One lifted his chin to him. It was as if he knew the trouble raging in Rick’s heart.
“I’ll find her,” said Victor One again. “Put it out of your mind, Rick, as best you can. Do what you have to do. Go into the Realm. Fight the MindWar. Stop these fools before they unleash red hell on the lot of us. Just trust me. I will find her. I will bring her back. Alive.”
The two men’s eyes locked for a long moment. Even with the guilt plaguing him, eating at him, Rick knew there was no other way. He was going to have to trust Victor One to make this happen.
He nodded. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get it done.”
7. THE SECRET OF SPACE OCTOPUSES
THE MAN WHO looked like a troll walked quietly through the forest. His hands pushed deep into the pockets of his overcoat, he shivered with the cold. All around him, visible through the naked branches of the winter trees, deep stretches of stagnant swamp shimmered. Small patches of ice flashed in the gray light. The Troll Man’s breath turned to small puffs of fog in front of his lips. He bowed his large head and pushed on.
The Troll’s name was Ermias. Once an enforcer for an international gang of drug dealers, he had spent a lifetime bringing death to the enemies of his bosses. Now death had come for him. The strange little man was sick. He was dying. At best, the doctors told him, he had only months left to live.
And he was afraid. Ermias was an evil man, but he was not an atheist. He had been raised a Christian, and he had never lost his faith. He believed that when he died, he would stand before the throne of God and face eternal judgment for the things he had done. The thought filled his sleepless nights with terror.