Kurodar was going to unleash an attack of unimaginable scope on the United States and, at the same time, he was going to kill the Traveler’s son.
He was, at this moment, everything he had always wanted to be.
He had been dreaming of this day forever. When he was a little boy, he remembered looking at his father in his sharp, crisp KGB uniform. He remembered thinking his dad was almost like a god, inspiring fear in everyone who saw him, wielding the power of life and death. There could be no one, he had thought, more powerful than his father was. And he had wanted to become like that himself. Even as his father laughed at him for his ugliness, or made fun of him for being a weak, puny intellectual, or struck him in his drunken rages, dealing out humiliating beatings in front of his mother and in front of strangers . . . Even then, Kurodar worshipped the man and wanted to inherit his god-like strength.
Now he had. The King of the Dead was the very image of that father he admired—but with this twist: he had the son’s mind, the son’s genius. In MindWar, Kurodar had become the man he always wanted to be. He had become his father. He had become that god.
It was the point and purpose of all his work. And now nothing and no one could stop him.
As Rick peered down into the silver water of the canal, Mariel’s face and form appeared to him faintly. He wasn’t sure whether she was really visible beneath the glinting current or if he simply imagined her there as she would be. But he could feel it was she—her spirit, her essence. He could feel it in the response of the armor she had given him, the metallic second skin that rippled and shone over his entire body.
He drew a breath and when he let it out, it carried the words he had been holding inside him all this time.
“Mariel,” he said down into the water, “I can’t take you with me.”
Mariel’s voice rose up to him and surrounded him, filling the mist that hung everywhere. “I know that, Rick. I’m not strong enough anymore to break through the cloud. You’ll have to go and face this last security bot alone. You’ll have to—”
“No,” he said, “that isn’t what I meant. I meant I can’t take you out of here. I can’t take you out of the Realm.”
Mariel didn’t answer. It was Favian, hovering just behind Rick, who said sharply, “What? What do you mean? That’s crazy. You said you could. Why not?”
Rick swallowed. He could feel the seconds ticking away, the Battle Station in RL charging, time running out. But he had to say this. He had to. “Mariel, you’ve done everything for me. I would never have survived this long without you. My sword, my armor, the fact that I can use my spirit to control the fabric of the Realm—you gave me all that and I’d’ve been dead a thousand times over if I didn’t have it.”
“That’s right!” said Favian. “You’d’ve been killed if it weren’t for her. We both would’ve been killed.”
But Mariel remained silent.
“But see,” Rick stumbled on, “Favian here, he’s an avatar, like me. He’s made out of the link between a living human being and a computer. I have to bring him back to free that human being from his interface with the Realm. So he can live, see. So he can go back to his life.”
“But what about Mariel? What about her life?” Favian said. “She’s got to live too.”
Still Mariel said nothing.
“You, Mariel, you’re not what Favian is,” Rick said. “You’re what’s called a connectome. A computer-generated code that imitates a human mind.” It was hard, but Rick finally forced it out. “Look, I’m not a science guy. I’m just a football player. But the bottom line is this: You’re not a person, Mariel. You’re a program. There’s no you in RL. There never was. There’s just a machine, generating code.”
“That’s crazy!” Favian cried out. “That’s ridiculous! That’s—”
Now Mariel finally spoke, cutting him off. “Rick, are you sure?” she said. And the sound of her voice made Favian stop talking. The sound of her voice made Rick stand straight, gripping the stone of the balustrade. He had never heard her sound this way before. He had never heard this tone of doubt and fear from her. But he heard them now. “I can’t . . .,” she began. “I mean . . . it doesn’t seem . . . I remember things . . . the laughter . . . the blue of the sky . . . I remember . . . that kiss . . . How is it possible if I’m just . . .?”
Rick shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess those are memories from the people they used to make your code. But I’ve seen what you are in RL, Mariel. You’re a black box. Numbers on a screen.”
It made Rick’s heart ache to say it. And it made him ache even worse to hear the pleading tone that entered the voice of the woman who had been his source of strength and wisdom here. “But I feel . . . I feel so real . . . I remember things . . . I am someone. I know I am. I can’t just be . . . a code. I’m a person. I’m real.”
Rick shook his head. “You’re real here. You’re someone here. You are. But not in RL. I can’t take you back to RL because there is no RL you. There’s no person for you to become there. What you are here . . . It’s everything you are. There’s nothing else. I’m sorry, Mariel.”
Mariel was silent. Rick could feel her anguish in the armor encasing him. It was awful. He could feel the very struggle of her mind to come to grips with the truth he was telling her. The moment of silence between them seemed to last forever.
Then she said in a steadier voice, “You’re sure of this, Rick.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I saw the box with my own eyes. Believe me, Mariel, if there were any way . . .”
“No, no, wait, this is crazy!” Favian shouted suddenly.
Rick glanced at him. The blue sprite flashed back and forth from one side of him to the other. “This is nuts! Of course she’s a person! She’s Mariel! We know her! We know who she is! There’s gotta be some mistake.”
Rick spoke through the tightness in his throat. “There’s no mistake.”
“There is!”
“I’m telling you, pal . . .”
But Favian’s hand flashed out at him. “Don’t you call me that. You’re not my pal. You’re not anyone’s pal. You just came in here and used us, and now you’re going to leave us behind here to die in this place.”
“Not you . . .”
“You think I’d leave without Mariel? You think I’d desert my best friend?”
“There’s no choice,” said Rick. “You know I’d take her with me if I could. I care about her, man! Same as you. More than that. I . . .”
But his voice trailed off. His emotions were too confused to put into words. He loved Molly, he knew he did. Now that he had seen the truth of it, there was no unseeing it. She lived and breathed and he wanted to be with her forever, was meant to be with her forever. As for the feelings he had for Mariel, this silver phantom who had guided him through the terrors of this place . . . well, what could he make of them? She wasn’t real. She wasn’t a person. His attachment to her was as fantastic as this entire world.
“You don’t care about anything except your mission,” Favian said. He wasn’t yelling anymore. His voice had dropped to a dangerous undertone. “You used us for what you could get out of us and now you’re going to leave us here to suffocate inside this nightmare . . .”
“Favian!”
With that word, Mariel erupted out of the canal water. With a silver splash, she rose above them, majestic and commanding. As the metallic water took her shape, Rick saw again that face and form that touched the deepest parts of him. He saw the rapid aging that was sucking the life out of her, and he saw the sorrow—the deep sorrow—in her expression, but none of it changed the strength and compassion that were always in her eyes. Her voice filled the mist, strong again and steady, but Rick could feel the depth of her grief in the armor clinging to his skin. She was going to die here—and she had never even lived. She had never seen the green grass she remembered or the blue sky, and she would never see them now.
“Rick is only telling us what he knows,” she said to Favian. “He can
’t change it. If he could, he would. You can’t hate a man for speaking the truth. In the end, the truth is all we have.”
Rick looked at Favian—at his face made of shifting particles of light. He saw the fury of betrayal in the sprite’s eyes. He knew there was nothing he could say.
“Your time is running short,” said Mariel to Rick, forcing her feelings down completely, all business now. “You have to get to the interface. You have to shut this place down before Kurodar destroys RL.”
“What do I care what happens in RL?” said Favian. “I’m never going back there anyway.”
“You are,” said Mariel. “You’re not what I am . . .”
“Why? Because he said so? Why should we trust him? He didn’t even tell us about this until he had to.”
“Favian . . .,” Rick said, but that’s all he said. His friend was talking crazy, he knew that. But there was no argument you could make to a guy who was determined not to believe the truth. He turned away from the blue man and raised his eyes to the liquid silver form above him. “I better go,” he told her. And then he said, “Mariel . . .,” but he didn’t know what else to tell her.
She gave him a queenly nod. “I understand, Rick,” she said. “It’s all right.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
He took a step back from the balustrade. He glanced at Favian again. “You coming, man, or what?”
“No,” said Favian, giving him a stony stare.
“Favian,” Mariel said. She lifted a flowing hand and pointed toward the graveyard. “Go.”
“No,” said Favian. “I won’t. Not with him. This is wrong. This is insane.”
For another second, Rick looked at him. Then he raised his eyes one last time to Mariel.
She met his gaze and he felt her spirit not just in his armor but in his heart. He did not know how to leave her behind. She was special. Unique. She had . . . What could he call it? A unique generosity of spirit, a power of outward-flowing kindness he had never felt before. He had never known anyone like her and he doubted he ever would again.
She nodded at him. He nodded back. Then he forced himself to turn away.
He forced himself to turn toward the graveyard, the stones and statues covered with drifting mist. He looked beyond it to the churning, boiling wall of cloud with the lightning flashing in it and the thunder rumbling and those gigantic pacing footsteps within making the whole Realm shiver.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
He hated to leave his friends like this. He felt absolutely sure he was going to die in that cloud, and the idea that they would remember him as the would-be hero who had failed them, the man who betrayed them—it was tough to bear.
He glanced at Favian and got the stony stare again.
He turned back to the roiling cloud.
“All right then,” he said softly. “Alone.”
And he started to walk toward the lightning.
33. MORTAL COMBAT
THE WHITE FIGURE that represented Rick moved in and out of view on Chuck’s misty monitor as it traveled toward that great central black stain that swallowed all the other images of the Realm.
Holding Rick’s hand, Molly watched the picture on the screen and thought, Mariel is you.
At first the words her father spoke had overwhelmed her. She could not make sense of them. She could not take them in. But as the moments passed and as their meaning filtered into her understanding, a strange, warm sense of gladness went over her.
The black box went on blinking in its coffin, faceless, soulless, nameless, and yet Molly felt the presence of the imaginary woman inside it, the woman who had protected Rick and inspired him and fought beside him.
Mariel. Mariel was her. Mariel’s mind was made from her mind. Mariel was just an image of her brain.
And yes, it made her glad. It wasn’t just that Rick—in admiring Mariel, in depending on Mariel, in, let’s face it, loving Mariel—had been admiring and depending on and loving the essence of herself all along . . . Oh well, it was that. Yes, it was. Sure it was. But it was more too. Or at least, she thought, maybe it could be more.
The white figure on Chuck’s screen reached the edge of the darkness. The silver figure of Mariel and the blue figure of Favian had vanished behind him. Rick was about to walk into that unknown blackness all alone.
“Daddy,” she said—speaking aloud even before she was sure of what she was going to say.
Her father stopped tapping at his keyboard and turned to her.
“Professor Dial,” she said.
And the Traveler turned too.
Both men looked at her.
“Connect me to her,” Molly said.
Neither Dial nor her father answered. They both simply gazed at her, the Traveler blinking behind his glasses.
“Connect me to the box,” she said. She gestured at the glass coffin that held Mariel’s machine. “There are, you know, what do you call it, outlets, plugs in the box. You can put wires in there. Connect my brain to Mariel’s code. So I can go into the Realm too. So I can be with Rick. So I can help him. So he doesn’t have to go into the darkness alone.”
Now Chuck was looking at her, too, and Molly could even feel Miss Ferris’s eyes on her. The silence seemed to continue for hours.
Then Professor Jameson said, “But . . .”
Then there was more silence.
Then Chuck said, “But we can’t do that.”
Then there was even more silence.
Then the Traveler said softly, “Actually . . . we probably could.”
Rick moved toward the graveyard. It was a journey from sorrow to fear. Behind him was Mariel, mourning, and also Favian, enraged. He hated to leave them that way, and the thought of it sat in his mind with a dark weight of sadness. Ahead of him loomed the misty graveyard and the flashing, churning wall of cloud. With every step he took, he felt the fear of it growing inside him.
But he did not look back. He kept his eyes on the stormy miasma. He had no choice but to go forward . . . No, that wasn’t true. He did have a choice. There was always a choice. But there was only one right choice, and that was the choice he was making. On he went.
He reached the wrought-iron gate of the graveyard. The mist rose up and swirled around him, chilling him through the thin silver armor. He reached out and felt the gate’s cold iron and pushed it open. It creaked like a ghost house door.
Rick walked steadily into the cemetery. The mist closed around him, and in the mist he caught glimpses of figures that seemed to watch him as he moved among the graves. They were stone statues: of mourning angels, of women shrouded in cowls, of sorrowful cherubs perched on headstones, and of bearded men peering grim and serious from the far side of death. The mist made these figures seem dim and ghostly. They formed out of nothing, became solid, began to fade, then were gone.
Rick shivered. It was cold here, and a wind was blowing, a swirling chill air that made the tendrils of fog spiral and blend and break apart again. Litter and dust blew and tumbled around his feet. An old yellow page from a magazine wafted by right beneath him, and Rick caught a glimpse of a picture on it, a picture of a building in a foreign land. He recognized the building right away: it was that first church he had entered when he came here, the place where he had first glimpsed the Realm’s deep blackness inside the coffin, where he and Favian had fought their way to the spiral stairs and the chamber of Baba Yaga.
He glanced up as the wall of cloud before him flashed and rumbled. When he looked down again, the magazine page had blown away. His eyes lifted and scanned the mist all around him nervously. All those gravestones and tombs standing motionless—it was creepy. It looked like a scene in a movie just before some phantom or zombie rises up to attack . . . Well, it could happen, couldn’t it? Why not? This was the MindWar Realm after all. He’d seen weirder stuff than that here.
That’s why he started and caught his breath when he spotted a motion at the
corner of his eye. His hand moving to the hilt of his sword, he looked toward the motion. Something lying against a headstone . . . Cautiously, he moved closer.
It was just a book, a child’s picture book blown up close to the stone. The chill wind was making the pages flutter. As Rick watched, the wind dropped, and the book lay open. There was an illustration on the open page that Rick recognized immediately. It was a picture of a green viny monster rising out of a swamp. As the breeze rose again and the page trembled, Rick had time to read a few words beneath the drawing:
Bagiennik—a water demon who lives in the . . .
Then the wind blew and the pages began fluttering by again.
Rick understood. All this litter around him—it was the detritus of Kurodar’s mind. All these graves—they were his dead memories. This was the part of the terrorist’s mind that held thoughts he barely knew he had. Images that had been living inside him since he was a child. It was a strange idea. The whole Golden City was constructed of these things—these things Kurodar had seen in his youth and only half remembered. The Russian church, the city streets, the canal . . . and the demon from the child’s picture book that had probably once given him nightmares.
Rick was about to leave the book behind and start walking toward the cloud again when softly, nearly buried within the growing whisper of the breeze, an eerie sound came to him: the sound of high, cackling laughter.
Rick’s mouth went dry. He licked his lips. He looked around the graveyard.
But when the cackle came again, he realized that no, it wasn’t coming from the graveyard, it was coming from the headstone beneath him, from the book.
Sure enough, as he looked down, the pages of the book against the headstone blew again and came to a stop, and he saw the drawing of the witch on the page, and the name:
Baba Yaga.
The drawing showed a hideous crone—even more hideous than the witch had been in person. She was stirring some gooey mixture in a big pot. The mixture was bloodred, and there were weird bits and pieces of who knows what in it.
Game Over Page 18
