9

by James Phelan

  ‘I’m down to my last med-pack,’ Alex said. The game had gone from a fun way of beating nightmares to a nightmare in itself. Try as he might, Alex just didn’t see that they could get beyond this boss of a tank. He was tired and thirsty, and his hands were aching from the controls.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘That tank must have a weakness …’

  ‘No,’ Shiva replied. ‘That, my friend, is Matrix. I’d know his gameplay anywhere. He wouldn’t allow any weakness in the design. We just have to keep at him. Coordinate more players to come to our aid.’

  Alex scanned around 360 degrees and saw that while there were some individuals and small groups of players joining in the fight, they were falling thick and fast.

  ‘Matrix always did like to showboat by being the biggest and baddest dude on the block,’ Shiva said.

  Alex felt stupid, sitting there under cover, waiting until this tank found their final hiding place on this pier in the shipyards.

  When that happens … we lose. We lose, that tank rumbles on, keeping the real world plagued by nightmares.

  ‘So, what happens when we die in this game?’ Alex asked. ‘Tonight, I mean?’

  ‘A bad night for about a hundred thousand people,’ Shiva replied. ‘I just hope that the other players attacking his flanks have some kind of brainwave to get him neutralised.’

  ‘So what can we do?’ Alex said.

  ‘We can be a decoy to distract some of his guns,’ Shiva said. ‘Buy our buddies a little time, that’s about it.’

  ‘Great …’ Alex’s avatar used the magnification of his sniper rifle’s scope to zoom in on a huge container ship tied up to the pier, half unloaded. If they were seen getting onto that, they’d be sitting ducks for Matrix’s main gun, which he’d already seen turn a platoon of good guys into a crater the size of a city block. The only other thing on the dock was the massive overhead crane that moved the shipping containers on and off ships.

  The crane …

  ‘Shiva, call me crazy—’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘Ha, yeah, but you see that crane behind us?’

  Shiva said, ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I think I just … yep,’ Alex said, hope in his voice. ‘I did—I just had an idea that I know you’re going to like!’

  32

  SAM

  ‘Sam,’ Rapha said, his voice full of awe. ‘I do not think that we are in Kansas anymore.’

  ‘You sure do like your movies …’ Sam said. His voice trailed off as they emerged up a final flight of stairs onto a stone podium, four columns soaring above to what might, five hundred years ago, have been a thatched roof. Now it, like the rest of the roofs on the thirty or so structures around them, was long gone. The result was a vast maze of stone buildings, covered by the canopy of giant trees, their upper reaches consumed in an ever-present layer of low, thick cloud. Sam could make out a wall, like a cliff, that curved around the entire space. ‘I think we’re inside an old volcano.’

  ‘And that is why this has not been seen from overhead,’ Rapha said. ‘We are in a basin that is always clouded over.’

  ‘It’s incredible …’ Sam said.

  They made their way down twenty or so slippery stone stairs to a courtyard filled with oddly shaped totems carved with similar animal reliefs as the entrance hall floor. Sam watched his footing but found that the ground appeared to be solid stone, flat as a concrete parking lot. As they walked on, he saw plants and flowers that looked unlike any he’d ever seen before.

  ‘Now I feel like we’re in a movie—a sci-fi one,’ Sam said. Before them, pillars of ancient wood stood as towering sentinels. Beyond them stretched hundreds of such pillars, some waist height, others taller than a two-storey house.

  ‘This must have been a prehistoric forest,’ Rapha explained. ‘Maybe the volcano was dormant for a few hundred years, maybe longer. The trees grew in here, then it flooded with lava one day. Covered by silt and sediment, they survived when everything else eroded, leaving this. I’ve heard of a similar thing before.’

  ‘Where?’ Sam asked.

  ‘A long way from here …’ Rapha said. ‘Or, at least it looks like it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This place reminds me of a place my father told me he’d seen as a boy, Mount Roraima, at the border with Venezuela. It was “found” by the English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh in the late 1500s. Here, close to the border with Peru, we’re a long way away.’

  ‘Well, this place was found by Europeans around that time too,’ Sam said. ‘But do you think it has remained untouched for the last five hundred years?’

  ‘Yes, I believe it’s possible.’

  ‘What a mind trip …’ Sam said. ‘Exploring where no-one’s been for hundreds of years. I’ll really have to introduce you to Zara when we get out of here,’ he smiled, thinking of how they had discovered da Vinci’s hidden workshop.

  Rapha pointed, said, ‘Look!’

  In a small street between a couple of low buildings, there was the unmistakable glint of gold. Sam rushed over and came across a golden shield. About the size of a large pizza, he wiped the dirt and moss from the front to reveal patterns set into it with jade.

  ‘This is cool …’ Sam said. ‘This looks like the zodiac. See the symbols?’

  ‘Look here too,’ Rapha said. Before him were piles of gold, from carved idols to discs and coins and swords, packed into rotted-out timber barrels. ‘Looks like they were all stacked up here to take out in a hurry.’

  ‘But they didn’t get away—if this was the Spanish or Portuguese, they’d not leave this treasure behind.’

  Rapha nodded.

  ‘We need to search for the Gear,’ Sam said, pulling his mind into focus. ‘Any of this feel familiar, from your dream?’

  ‘It is a very strange thing … like I’ve seen it before,’ Rapha puzzled.

  Sam chuckled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s just that’s exactly what it feels like,’ Sam said, sorting through more and more gold objects and carvings. ‘Deja vu. We all feel it sometimes, that we’re experiencing something familiar, that we’ve done before. As Dreamers, we dream it and then we live it. And this is all gold here—no Gear.’

  ‘We need to get to higher ground,’ Rapha said, distracted, pointing away from them. ‘Up there.’

  ‘Let’s check it out.’

  From where they stood they could see across the olden tree trunks to a stone roof, covering an altar. There was a helmet resting on it. They left the gold and made their way towards the altar, climbing more steep stone stairs on their hands and knees. The stone floor around the altar was covered with knee-high grass. They walked through it.

  ‘This is Portuguese,’ Rapha said, picking up the helmet.

  ‘And here’s an armoured vest,’ Sam said, pulling it out of the grass. ‘And another, and another.’

  All around them there were maybe twenty sets of armour.

  ‘They made a stand here,’ Sam said. ‘Protecting something.’

  ‘Or someone …’ Rapha said. ‘The expedition leader?’

  Sam stood next to Rapha, who was looking down at a spot he’d cleared. There was a set of vest armour that was intricate and ornate—not one worn by a humble foot soldier.

  ‘It’s here,’ Rapha said, rummaging around under the armour. ‘I can … feel it.’

  Sam moved through the thick tall grass to help him.

  Rapha stood up. ‘No, I mean I can really feel it.’

  Sam saw that Rapha had something in his hands. Sam came to stand next to him, peering at it closely, the dull grey sky above them not making the identification easy. In Rapha’s hands, covered in a fine layer of silt, was a round object made up of several cogs. He wiped his thumb over the face of the largest gear, removing the patina of filth.

  ‘This is it, isn’t it?’ Rapha said.

  Sam rubbed more, cleaning it off all around until—

  ‘Yes!’ Sam said. ‘We’ve
got it!’

  ‘Who’s we, Sam?’ a voice boomed.

  Sam turned around.

  Hans!

  And about ten armed men, all of them traitorous German Guardians, all with weapons pointing at Sam and Rapha. Now it was Sam and Rapha who were trapped on top of the altar platform, just as five centuries ago the Portuguese soldiers had been.

  ‘I take it they’re not our friends,’ Rapha said out the side of his mouth.

  ‘You guessed about right,’ Sam said, weighing up his options.

  ‘Two choices …’ Hans called out to them. ‘Run and your friend here dies, and I then take that Gear from your unconscious body. Or hand it over, and he gets to live.’

  33

  EVA

  The cops had gone downstairs, pulling Mac’s office apart for any clue where to find him. Eva stood with Lora and the Russian Guardian in the office above.

  ‘The guy who posed as Mac isn’t talking,’ Lora said. ‘At least, he’s not saying anything of any use—he’s just a paid actor from the local improv group. He had no idea that it was a legit police operation. He thought I was an actor too and that this was some sort of audition he was taking part in.’

  ‘Great,’ Eva said. ‘So what do we do now?’

  Lora’s phone rang, and she answered it on speaker-phone.

  ‘We made an appointment to see each other,’ Mac’s voice drawled out. ‘I can see you. But can you see me?’

  Lora spun around, Eva too, and the four Guardians began checking the room.

  ‘Oh really? I don’t think I’m there,’ Mac said. ‘Not in the building, no. But look outside, to the lake. You’ll see a strobing light.’

  They all looked through the glass and sure enough, a tiny speck of a boat was strobing a powerful beacon at them.

  ‘You see,’ Mac said, ‘I knew that you wouldn’t play fair. I knew that you’d bring the authorities with you. But you see, I can’t have that. You have to give me the chance to tell you what really happened.’

  ‘Did you attack the Council?’ Lora asked.

  ‘No, of course not. Why would I? But I knew no-one would believe me, after leaving the Council in the way that I did. I was justifiably concerned that people might jump to conclusions. Everyone seems to be losing their heads over this race.’

  ‘But what about the whereabouts of the missing Councillors?’

  ‘I have no idea about that.’

  ‘But what about Sam and Zara?’ Lora insisted. ‘What about what you did to them in France?’

  ‘A simple disagreement about how best to proceed,’ Mac said smoothly. ‘But I’d really prefer to have this meeting in more comfortable surroundings.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ Lora asked.

  ‘If you want to talk, to hear my side of it—to learn what you need to win this race, then come to my little boat. Bring your Dreamer friend too, since I know she’s listening in. I have a proposal for you. It concerns Sam—in fact, all the Dreamers and the Gears that they seek. But just you and your friend—no-one else. You have my word that once we talk, you can go. But hear me out, because I think it best that we be wise.’

  ‘Wise?’ Lora asked.

  ‘You know my connections, my power,’ Mac said. ‘I can get this done, against all the others. Hear me out.’

  Lora looked to Eva, her expression asking—shall we go?

  Eva nodded.

  I’ve come this far to help in the race, now it’s my chance to really make a difference.

  The Russian Guardian, close by, grunted, ‘Mac, you harm them, and I’ll tear your puny little boat apart with my bare hands.’

  Eva nearly chuckled—she liked this Guardian.

  ‘Ah, Guardians …’ Mac said. ‘I do wonder why it is that those charged with keeping the peace are always so keen to destroy things.’

  The Guardian looked at Lora and shook his head. It was clear he didn’t like this new plan at all.

  ‘OK,’ Lora said. ‘We’ll be there soon.’

  34

  SAM

  Sam and Rapha had no choice but to surrender. Three of the men tied up Sam and Rapha and then stood guard over them with their guns. Sam grimly named them Dopey, Grumpy and Happy in his mind.

  ‘What do we do?’ asked Rapha, seated next to Sam on the ground, ankles tied out in front of them, their hands tied behind their backs.

  ‘We get the hell out of here,’ Sam said. ‘And we get that Gear.’

  ‘You two, shut it,’ Grumpy said to them, then moved off to sift through a pile of gold.

  ‘Man,’ Rapha said, struggling with his bonds that were tied tight. ‘Soon as I get out of these …’

  ‘What, you going to beat us up?’ Dopey said, then walked off to join his mate in wonder at the great wealth scattered across the valley floor.

  Sam watched as Hans cleaned the Gear with water from his canteen, chuckling at his victory. He walked down to join his other men in surveying the treasure before them.

  ‘Say, Rapha,’ Sam said, loud enough for Happy to hear. ‘All this gold, whaddya reckon it’s worth?’

  ‘Worth? It’s priceless,’ Rapha said. ‘A hoard like this, telling an amazing chapter in an unknown period of this people’s lives—’

  ‘Seriously? You ever thought of a career as a tour guide?’ Sam whispered at Rapha meaningfully. ‘I mean,’ Sam said loudly, trying to make his friend understand what he was doing, ‘how much do you think it’s worth?’

  ‘Oh, right …’ Rapha said. ‘Well, of course, a lot of the pieces could easily sell on the black market to collectors for millions of dollars. Each. All those piles of smaller trinkets, some of the ingots I saw over there, putting a weight value on it at today’s prices … I reckon there’s a couple of billion dollars’ worth of gold there, easy.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought,’ Sam said, nonchalant, and he watched with a fire in his eyes as Happy walked over to a stack of gold bars and lost himself in the possibilities at his fingertips. ‘A couple of billion dollars …’

  ‘Sam,’ Rapha said out the corner of his mouth. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Improvising …’ Sam said, wriggling around to a new position where he spied a sharp edge he could lean his wrist ropes against. ‘Let’s get outta here.’

  Sam struggled against his ropes—then stopped cold when he spied something unusual under him. What he thought were lumps and rocks in the mossy ground cover were actually skeletons.

  ‘I think we’ve found the bodies that belonged to that armour,’ Rapha said.

  There were over a dozen skeletons, laid out in a haphazard semi-circle with their backs to the wall as Sam and Rapha now sat.

  ‘This is where they made their final stand,’ Rapha said. ‘And the locals later took all their armour and put it on top of the altar as an offering to the gods. Or a sign to others from the outside world.’

  The skull nearest Sam, still with a conquistador helmet of the age, had an arrow stuck through the eye socket. Then Sam saw something else—something very useful.

  ‘Well, it’s not going to be our last stand,’ Sam said, picking a short sword from the body, and using its edge to cut through his ropes and then Rapha’s. They scrambled over to the low wall where they saw Hans’ men loading packs with gold.

  ‘There,’ Sam said, pointing to the Gear sitting on top of one of the packs. It was between them and the rest of the men. ‘But where’s Hans?’

  ‘Right here …’

  Sam turned to face the voice, to see Hans smiling down at him, his pistol in his hand.

  ‘Going somewhere, boys?’

  ‘No,’ Sam said calmly. ‘But you are.’

  Before Hans could react, Sam lashed out with a leg flip that put Hans on his back—and he knocked his head on a conquistador’s helmet as he landed. There was a hollow thud and he was out cold.

  ‘Come on, that’s our cue to exit the scene,’ Sam said and scurried close to the ground to get what they had come for. He slipped the Gear into his retrieved ba
ckpack, all the while watching as Hans’ men continued to scoop all the gold they could carry into their packs, oblivious that their commander was down and out. Rapha tapped Sam on the shoulder, pointing to the low building that they’d entered from and started creeping towards it.

  ‘Hey!’ a German voice rang out. ‘Stop!’

  ‘Run for it!’ Sam yelled as they sprinted across the hidden valley of gold.

  35

  ALEX

  ‘Tell me again how you talked me into this?’ Shiva asked, getting his avatar ready behind the wheel of a beaten-up taxi.

  ‘Because,’ Alex replied, climbing the seemingly never-ending ladder of the crane, ‘you said that Matrix will recognise your gameplay. So you start messing with him and getting his attention and then you race back this way …’

  ‘He’ll follow me, yeah, I know the plan,’ Shiva said. ‘But I think you’ll find that he’ll vaporise me as soon as he sees me.’

  ‘You said you had mad gaming skills.’

  ‘Um, yeah,’ Shiva said, revving his engine. ‘OK, well, I guess it’s now or never. You ready up there?’

  ‘Almost at the controls, so yeah, go for it in three secs.’

  ‘If you hear an angry scream and a big explosion, don’t worry, it’s just that I’ve been vaporised.’

  ‘Go!’ Alex insisted.

  ‘OK, OK … pushy.’

  Alex reached the top of the crane as he heard Shiva burning rubber flooring the taxi.

  ‘I’m in the crane control room!’ Alex said.

  ‘He’s seen me!’ Shiva yelled.

  The gunfire from the tank started up, rounds from the smaller turrets blasting away at the road all around Shiva while still peppering the other hundred or so players making futile attempts to take down the armoured beast.

  Alex knew he’d only have one chance at this, if he was to have any hope of beating Matrix in that mechanical monster of a tank.

  ‘He’s chasing me back towards you!’ Shiva yelled. ‘He knows it’s me in here!’