"Be bold, Jamie," Cardinal Fleming whispered to her. She raised her voice. "Take them to the Square and enact the sentence."
Their eyes locked as hands clamped on her arms. In some weird way she's urging me on? Jamie couldn't make sense of it, but then the soldiers were spinning her around and marching her and her team away.
They were herded into a horse-drawn wagon outside the building. Tildie huddled close to Jamie.
"What was she saying to you, Jamie?" she asked.
"I don't know. It was almost as if she was urging me to some kind of action."
"Her power manifestation implies she has a privileged control of the program," said Steven. "Which in turn implies that she is in a privileged position."
"Well, duh," said Belinda. "She's the Cardinal, head lady honcho, whatever."
"No. I mean privileged with respect to the alien's virtual reality program. That implies she's one of the controllers of that program."
Jamie stared at him. "An alien?"
"Highly probable that she's an alien avatar."
"What about you and Kim-Ly? You both have demonstrated augmented abilities in here and you're not aliens."
"I'm not so sure about him," said Jake.
Steven appeared meditative, preoccupied, as if, Jamie thought, the prospect of being burned alive – and staying alive to experience it - wasn't on his mind at all.
"True," he said. "But controlling mental operations would be far more difficult while maintaining identity than controlling physical expressions of power. The science thus far indicates new and isolated regions of the brain are responsible for telekinetics and governing exceptional speed, strength, teleportation, and other physical abilities. Intelligence is a general brain phenomenon. That would explain my retention of augmented intelligence and Kim-Ly's sporadic psychic abilities."
The team was leaning closer trying to catch his words over the clopping hooves and clacking wheels. Even some of their guards, judging from their puzzled frowns and exchanged looks, appeared to be listening.
"The bottom line," said Jamie, "is that you believe the Cardinal is an alien?"
"It's highly probable."
"You people are crazy," one of the guards standing closest to them burst. "Calling Cardinal Fleming an alien!"
"You're the ones living in a dreamland, moron," said Jake. "And crucifying people for bad language? What are you, the fucking Taliban?"
Jake narrowly dodged the butt of the guard's spear. Horner surged up, driving his head into the guard's midsection and lofting him over the side of the wagon. The other guards converged on Hulk. Jake got his wrist chains around one guard's throat and dragged him down, gagging. Thomas wrapped his manacles around a spear and ripped it free of the guard's hands, driving its point into another guard's chest. Jamie sighed. What the hell. If they're going to burn us anyway. She leaped on a guard's back, imitating Jake, snaring his neck with her wrist chains.
Fifteen minutes later they arrived – bruised, bloodied, and in various states of dismemberment – and were shoved from the wagon onto hard gravel. It had required a fresh influx of "Holy Brigade" soldiers to subdue them.
Jamie's vision cleared – enough to see a twelve-foot cross blocking the sun. On the cross was Denise Rogers. Arms spread wide, palms nailed, a grimacing, bloody smile on her sunburned face.
"You guys sure...took your time..."
"How're doing, babe?" Jake rasped, flopped on the ground, missing his left hand and blood from multiple sword and spear thrusts pooling at his knees.
"Just hanging out," said Denise. "Doing better than you."
"Don't worry, babe. This is a virtual reality. None of this is real."
"Funny. I've been sort of thinking that..."
"We're gonna get outta here. Promise you..."
"I can tell. You guys look so...ready to...kick some ass."
"Definitely. Just getting' our second wind."
"Crucify you?"
"Nah. Vultures got a taste for barbecue..."
Jamie doubted even Jake Culler would be joking much longer. Barring a miracle, they faced a week of torment beyond imagining.
Their arms and ankles were chained to a cross-shaped pipe that was then hoisted into a hole by rope and heaving soldiers. The moment the full weight of her body torqued her arms downward her shoulders burst with white-hot pain. And the fire hadn't even started! Her teams' harsh muted cries and moans told her she wasn't alone in her discomfort.
Below, the surreal scene continued with other wagons rolling up filled with tree limbs. The wood was dumped near the base of each cross. Soldiers spread and stacked the branches in an ascending pyramid approaching their feet. The swishing of robes and snapping of branches was Jamie's universe. But there was another sound present in the silence: dread. She could see it in their eyes, could hear their silent pleas – Jake saying, You gotta be fucking kidding me.
Jamie didn't want to look at their faces. She was their leader, and they were here because of her decisions. It didn't matter that they wouldn't blame her, or that Jake and Greg had acted impetuously. It didn't even matter that they were dealing with stuff way beyond their pay grade – in effect, children at play in the fields of gods. They and this mission were still her responsibility. She remembered one of her dad's old Army friends saying that the hard part about leading troops was not making decisions; it was feeling every injury or death that occurred under his command as a personal blow. She'd been somewhat skeptical of that. Now she knew.
She looked across at Tildie. Seeing her friend's brave smile, forced through the taut fear in her face, made Jamie turn away as tears welled in her eyes.
"Come on, Jamie, cheer up." Tildie's voice, thin and reedy, crackled through the tense air as she broke into song. "Always look on the bright side of life..."
Tildie broke into a whistle, scratchy as an old phonograph with a worn needle, but Jamie recognized the tune. They'd all stayed up one night at the Alkie drinking far too much, and Life of Brian had been playing on the giant screen television. At the time, it had seemed insanely funny, maybe partly because of the alcohol, but now it was beyond insane. She felt a crazy giggle burbling up – just when Jake's laugh cut through the air like a thunderclap.
First Jay started whistling the Eric Idle tune, and then Jeremy and Terry. The soldiers paused in stacking firewood and stared up at them with disbelieving eyes as Jamie joined in with the demented whistling.
Then a soldier, probably an officer, shoved through the gawkers and lit a match under Tildie's firewood. The whistling and grins stopped. Other soldiers bent to their fire-lighting tasks. Soon the cheery whistling was replaced by the high-pitched keen of wood releasing moisture as the flames built with startling speed on the breezy day.
The ache in Jamie's shoulders was but a gentle preamble to the smoke which was already burning into her lungs and the hot sidewalk sensation on her feet, which soon evolved into hot coals – what she'd imagined a "fire walk" would feel like – and from there past anything she'd every imagined, even in her worst nightmares. The flames were infinite claws tearing into her ankles, her calves, her legs –
She blacked out, but there was no respite in the darkness, because the fire and pain continued its merciless advance, and she awoke to a fiery cosmos, to the sizzling and overdone barbecue smell of her own frying flesh. She didn't know who was screaming for several endless moments until she felt the rawness of her own throat somehow over the multitude of exploding nerves. Her vision filmed over as the heat burned off her eyelids and started melting her eyes. The healing program or whatever kept people going cut in, halting the destruction at a murky mist just short of blindness – while at the same time she lost most of her hearing – trapping her in a near-silent-sightless cocoon as an extra torture. Jamie couldn't understand how her brain didn't short-circuit under assault from every nerve in her body. But the aliens, clearly as ultra-advanced sadistically as technologically, conducted a masterful symphony of pain that held her right on the edge of
mental annihilation.
Jamie had lost her words, but not her thoughts, and they burned with a rage as fierce and unrelenting as the flames consuming but not consuming her. She would give them what they'd given her and her people. They would suffer horribly and, unlike her and her team, die. She wasn't a vicious animal like they were. She would give them that mercy.
"Jamie!"
The shout – Denise Rogers, she thought – seemed to come from another world.
"Jamie, you're fading! You're breaking up!"
The words swirled around in the raging inferno in her head, making no sense but somehow feeling significant. Before she understood she glimpsed something: a transparent panel. In the window was a reflection of herself, eyes blinking open. In the next instant, she was back in the flames.
Steven was right. Someone was screaming, but there were words within the scream. Tildie.
"Do it, Jamie, do it!"
"Get them alien motherfuckers, Blond Bitch!" Thomas Mayes' hoarse shout faintly penetrated the curtain of fire.
Jamie focused on her rage – the one thing that seemed to sabotage this reality pain. I'm coming for you, you bastards! She fed the rage with anger and the anger with rage until it bloomed into a wildfire in her brain that matched the flames that surrounded her.
Chapter 29
Jamie was staring at her reflection in the transparent panel again. She was surrounded by lights, lit up like a Christmas tree, within a coffin-like compartment – just as the Native American chief had seen.
She felt herself being tugged back, and lashed out with her mind. The transparent panel blew off and the lights died. Yes. Grim satisfaction rippled through her. Her powers were in full bloom. Not going back this time.
Jamie levitated out of her virtual reality "casket." The difference between this reality and fiery nightmare that had been her world only moments ago. She knew time was critical, but she needed a moment – a long moment – for the new reality to sink in. Her body thrummed with its usual irrepressible energy, urging on her mind to accept that she was okay and what she was seeing and take action. Without Steven and the Native American leader's heads-up, she suspected she'd be lost.
Maipayminee's description from his peyote/sweat lodge trip was right on: countless rows of identical chambers spiraled out of sight above and below. The chambers were suspended in space by a skeletal structure - no walkways, stairs, or corridors. If you couldn't fly, you'd have to hop from casket to casket or climb on the support structure. Fortunately, not a problem for her. The problem was what do I do now?
One obvious option was releasing the people in the virtual reality coffins. Jamie drifted over the closest chambers, and was cheered to see her team members lined up on either side of her, their blank faces showing no sign of the torment they were probably still enduring in their virtual world. Brian Loving was among the sleeping beauties. She blew their lids off and extinguished the internal lights with a quick series of thoughts.
Four beings materialized a short distance from her. Or she assumed they were beings. As shiny black as the Object and vaguely humanoid in shape, with several arm-like appendages but no legs and a visor for a face.
Jamie hit them hard. Two broke into parts, but the other two disappeared. Alarms rang in her head as she felt herself starting to discorporate – the exact same sensation from her encounter with the jihadist. She spun around – they'd reappeared a few feet behind her – but too late: her telekinetics were offline and she was one second from the Phantom Zone or worse.
Hulk Horner exploded out of an open casket and hammered both with his big fists. Their "heads" imploded and they dropped downward in the zero gravity while Horner flew up. Jamie paused his ascent telekinetically and set him back on his VL chamber. She coasted over and they slapped together a shaky soul-shake.
"Thanks," she said. "Good timing."
The others were standing up, blinking, looking around with dazed eyes. Jamie and Horner released their handshake and Jamie drifted back from him. Jake and Denise Ice Queen floated toward each other, stopping with their hands on each other's forearms, their gazes locked.
"Where the heck are we?" asked Tildie.
"'Welcome to the real world' I think is the line," said Jamie. "I assume we're inside the alien ship."
Hulk performed a slow circle, shaking his head. "This place looks gay to me."
Belinda released a shaky laugh. "I was going to say freaky."
Above them a huge, circular light glowed to life. Jamie gazed up at it, shading her eyes. The same lights I saw on the outside of the alien ship?
"What do you say now, Mr. Prophet?" Jake asked Brian.
"Is this real?" Loving scratched the stubble on his head. "We're truly in an alien space ship?"
"Jamie got us out," said Tildie. "They were burning her and most of us at the stake in your little paradise. Turned out that was a mistake. Jamie was able to wake up."
"We must stop wasting time and assume control of this place immediately," Steven spoke up. "Before they can initiate more deadly countermeasures."
"How do we do that?" Jamie asked.
"Locate the control center."
"Any idea where that would be?"
Steven surveyed the spiraling rows of virtual reality chambers with unnerving calm. Jamie imagined his augmented intelligence sorting through all the patterns like a giant IQ puzzle. From where they stood, the interconnected chambers formed tight spirals with a few body lengths' clearance between the rows.
"Center of the ship, if this is a ship," said Steven. "That would be downward, since that appears to be the outer hull." He pointed toward the glowing light above. "Also, freeing some of the captives here might provide a useful distraction and possible alliance. They can begin freeing the others while we're searching for the control room."
"I was thinking the same thing," said Jamie. "Jay, go down, look around, see if you can find a likely candidate for a central control area. Don't engage with anyone unless you have to. And don't be long, please."
"Yes, ma'am."
Jake dematerialized. Jamie focused on the row on their level and imagined the lids popping off the chambers and the sides warping outward for as far as she could see – which they did, more or less.
"Wake up!" she shouted at stadium loudspeaker volume. "You're in an alien ship. You were in virtual reality under their control." A chorus of awakening gasps and groans rose around them. "Again, you are in an alien craft. You were deceived. Where you were living was a virtual reality designed by a highly advanced alien race. Help everyone around you to wake up."
"That should clarify everything," Tildie chuckled under her breath.
They watched dozens and then hundreds of people sit up and take stock of their startling new environs.
"Jamie!" someone – a man – called to her. "Jamie Shepherd?"
A grinning, barrel-chested man with a five or six o'clock shadow on his square jaw line pushed himself through the air toward her. He seemed familiar, but she couldn't quite place him.
"I know, I know," he said, "no longer John Travolta."
"Oh, shit – Rick?"
"Yup." He glanced around. "Damned if you weren't right. They had us all hoodwinked."
"Yes."
"What's the plan?"
"We're waiting – "
She gave a start as Jay reappeared beside her. It was something you never got used to, she thought.
"There's a big sphere down a mile or two that looks promising," he said. "I didn't try to enter it."
"Good." She turned to Rick Lambert. "We're going down to what might or might not be a power control room. Why don't you hang out here and try to break out as many of these people as you can."
"Will do. Good luck with the control room."
"Thanks. We might need it." Jamie faced her team, lowering her voice. "I'll take you all with me. We'll be moving fast. Stay focused. Kill anyone or anything that opposes us. I'll take twelve o-clock."
Jamie arranged them quick
ly into roughly equal firing power on two flanks, and they were off. She was used to fast flying and descents, but not between objects only a few meters apart. She held her people in a tight cluster with just enough spacing to deliver their super-powered ordinances. Jamie estimated they were descending at one hundred to one-fifty MPH, about as fast as she dared between the rows. How many people were here? It was impossible to say, but she guessed thousands, possibly millions. When and if they reached a central control area she'd release them all and destroy their illusory world. She wondered how many of them would be grateful for their liberation.
After a minute or two they encountered a grey sphere snugly situated within the rows of unconscious people. Jamie slowed to a stop, depositing her passengers on VL chambers near the sphere. The sphere reminded Jamie of a golf ball or electron photographs of certain viruses: speckled with tiny bumps and reticulated rectangular segments. It wasn't huge – maybe sixty or seventy meters in diameter.
"Jay," said Jamie, "take a look inside. Quickly."
"You got it."
Jay dematerialized. Jamie drifted over some nearby virtual reality chambers, staring down at the blank faces – how did the technology sever so completely their emotions from their expressions? – tempted to open a new batch of sleepers, but decided they might be more a hindrance than a help. She had a nagging sense that her initial release might've been precipitous. What if releasing all those people triggered an alarm that would bring in the alien heavy-hitters? Their disappearance would certainly send shockwaves through their communities. What would they make of all those people suddenly vanishing?
Jamie's attention pivoted back to the present. How much time had passed? She guessed only a minute or two, but it seemed longer. Each passing second grew more ominous.
"Um, Commander?" Kim-Ly's thin, high-pitched near-whisper scratched through the silence. "Lieutenant Utrecht has been captured."
It sounded to Jamie as if she'd shouted. She bore down on her panicking thoughts. "Can you describe his situation?"
"He can't move. Like he stepped into a trap. I see no one else. He isn't hurt."
Super World Page 50
