by David Hosp
For my family
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Acknowledgments
THE GUARDIAN
PROLOGUE
I’m floating. I take a deep breath to quiet the feeling of claustrophobia. It’s like a drug – paralytic – someone else controls my every move. My senses are sharp and alive, though, as I go with him, a silent partner in his world, unseen and unknown.
He walks down a long corridor. The walls are stark white, the wood floors stained black. I see through his eyes as his head turns, taking everything in, as if he wants to remember every detail, every image, every moment. He looks down and I can see his shoes – black cap-toed boots. The pants cover them to the ankle, and with every step they ride up ever so slightly, so that I can see the bottom edge of the patch of elastic on the side that allows the boots to be slipped on without laces and still fit well. He reaches out and drags his fingers lightly along the wall and I can feel the tingle on my fingertips. The shirt flows loosely over his shoulders.
He pauses as he looks up and sees the door at the end of hallway. It’s red, and it stands out against the sea of this otherwise colorless world. I hear his breathing grow heavy, and in my wrists I am aware that his heartrate has increased. He starts walking again, hesitant at first, but each step like a gathering storm.
When he reaches the door, he waits there for a moment, listening. I hear faint moans – no words, only the guttural sounds of animal desire. He reaches up and runs his palm along the edge of the door, his head tilting. He’s panting now.
The door opens and he stands there, scanning the room. It, too, is white, with fifteen-foot ceilings and ten-foot windowed doors that lead out to a balcony. The doors are open, and a gentle breeze blows the gauzy window dressings in. They billow and fall and turn as if dancing on cue, giving only a glimpse of the world outside. The room is barren except for a large four-poster bed with a loose canopy that matches the curtains on the window. It rustles nervously against what remains of the breeze inside the room.
He wipes his forehead and turns to the bed. I feel his sweat on my hand. Through the canopy I can see the outline of a woman. Soft cries of desire waft across the room. They are so quiet they are difficult to hear, and yet they reach down with an ancient yearning to some core instinct in both of us; some primal drive that is base and male and irresistible.
He walks slowly over to the foot of the bed and pulls the thin curtain aside. She is there, lying on the bed. The first thing I notice is her face. It is so perfect it seems unlikely that it could ever exist in the real world. Her white skin is flawless, her features perfectly symmetrical, her lips red and wet and full, parting with every gasp. It is her eyes that hold me, though. They are a shade of blue I have never seen, with flecks of gold and crystal, and they are so penetrating it feels as though they are reaching out straight through his eyes into mine, begging me for . . . something I can’t quite make out. It’s like those eyes have captured the dialectic of every human emotion that ever mattered – love and hate; ecstasy and terror; comfort and jealousy – and rolled them into a single glance that could level entire cities. I am slaughtered.
His eyes travel the length of her body. Her hands are bound to the headboard with leather straps. She wears white lace and a matching bustier that ends just below her nipples, which are small and erect. Sheer white leggings cover sculpted, perfect calves and thighs, kept taut by a satin garter and stockings. Her dark hair is spilled out over the pillow.
He moves to her and as he approaches her breathing quickens, matching his. Her moaning gains volume as he reaches out to caress her legs. I can feel her skin on my hands, warm and smooth, like the finest velvet ever woven. He slides his hands up the insides of her thighs and I can feel the heat she gives off intensify. He slips her panties down, over the garter and leggings, over her feet. She gasps and writhes from side to side in anticipation, as though given over wholly to his spell.
He stands before her, slipping down his pants. Then his hands are on her again, and her skin is like fire. He crawls over her, so that we are both looking down at her now, her face so close I can feel her breath. She smells of jasmine and musk. Her eyes are so large, so mesmerizing, they are all I can focus on. I sense his rhythm, and the way she matches it, her gasps now synchronized to each thrust of their hips. And yet still all I can see are those eyes. Eyes so deep I fear that I may be lost here forever.
His hands slide up her body, over her breasts, under her arms. Her hands are still bound above her head, and he runs his fingers up over her elbows to her wrists, and then back again to her shoulders. My fingers go along for the ride.
Their rhythm is mounting now, and her gasps have become loud cries. His hands move from her shoulders to her neck, caressing the soft skin below her perfect jaw. He is holding her tight, and I feel his hands and mine close on her throat. She is still matching each thrust, but something is different. I can see it in her eyes. Those pools of wonder and trust darken with fear and doubt. I want to scream out. I want to stop it, but I am powerless. Our fingers grip her throat tighter. She writhes and I can no longer tell what she is feeling. I can sense what he is feeling, though. His heart is pounding in my wrists, and his rhythm is gathering speed and losing consistency, his control slipping as the end nears. Her face is flushed, her eyes bulging, and I know she cannot breathe.
The end comes with an explosion that shatters the world. They spasm and recoil. He screams. Her mouth is open, as though she is trying to call out, but no sound escapes. For both of them, every muscle contracts with such force it seems as though their bones will snap.
The room is quiet and I look down. She is still there, but no longer. She is limp and lifeless, and the fire that was in those eyes – those eyes I lost myself in – is gone.
The screen explodes in a flash of light that recedes into the center of the world until the monitor is black.
CHAPTER ONE
‘Yo, Slick!’
The slap on my shoulder shoots adrenaline through my overwrought body. I jerk forward in my chair, ripping the sensory unit off my face. Yvette looks down over her nose-ring at me with a conspiratorial smile. Everyone I know is captivated by
her looks. She has none of the attributes of conventional beauty: her nose is slightly askew; her eyes a bit too large and spread; her ears stick out when her hair is pulled back; and the hair itself . . . well, it would take a page for every day of the year to describe the ever-evolving, multicolored, kaleidoscopic mess that is her hair. She has a way of holding others with her piercing hazel eyes, though, that makes them feel at once understood, evaluated and dismissed, all before she’s even blinked. In short, there is nothing soft about Yvette Jones. And yet her sharp edges are compelling. She is a challenge, and I can understand those who see the prickly exterior and yearn to unlock the vulnerable little girl trapped underneath. I have known her long enough to be sure that the little girl doesn’t exist. Yvette is exactly who she appears to be; that’s one of the reasons I trust her more than anyone else I’ve ever known.
‘Shit, ’Vette,’ I say, shaking off the remnants of the LifeScene I’ve just left. ‘You could give someone a heart attack pulling them out of a GhostWalk like that?’
‘Walk was over, Nick,’ she says. ‘I saw the feed go dead. You were just sitting there like you needed a cigarette.’ The smile is there again. ‘That good, was it?’
I roll my gloves down from the elbows and put them with the sensory unit carefully on the stand next to the computer. ‘Don’t you have any shame?’
She laughs. ‘What do you think?’ She leans in and whispers, ‘Who was it?’
She knows we’re not supposed to share information about our subjects’ identities. Keeping our research double-blind is the only way to prevent bias, but it’s a rule that’s never been strictly followed or enforced. I suppose it doesn’t really matter anyway; the names are all fake, and it’s not like we’re curing cancer. Besides, I’m technically her boss – though it doesn’t always feel that way – and it’s not likely that she’s ever going to get me in trouble. ‘The Marquis,’ I reply.
She gives me a knowing nod. ‘De Sade. I walked one of his a few weeks ago. Very impressive graphics.’
‘The graphics were spectacular,’ I agree. ‘But the scene was a little too hardcore for my tastes.’
‘Sex too hardcore?’ She laughs again. ‘For you?’
I make an annoyed face. ‘It’s not the sex; it’s the killing I could do without.’
Yvette shrugs. ‘He did the same thing in the one I walked. He took it too far, but it doesn’t change the technical brilliance of what he’s doing.’
‘It’s pretty fucked-up. I wasn’t expecting it.’
‘She’s an avatar, Nick,’ Yvette points out. ‘She’s not real. She’s not even someone else’s avatar, she’s one of his.’
‘Still, he gets off killing her,’ I say. I understand Yvette’s nonchalance, and yet it bothers me for reasons I can’t explain. Fake or not, there was something about the girl in the scene that I can’t treat with my customary dispassion.
‘He does,’ she admits. ‘And millions of people get off killing other fake people in war games.’
‘That’s different.’
‘How? Have you ever watched a twelve-year-old play Mortal Combat? It’s disturbing. What De Sade does in his LifeScenes is actually pretty tame compared to some of the other shit people use the platform for. You’ve been in management too long, and you’re not out there anymore doing the daily GhostWalks. It’s hard not to get jaded. There’s some seriously vile crap I’ve seen out there that’s real misogyny: uninspired assholes who are too dumb to do anything but create half-baked dungeons . . . tie girls up . . . beat them . . . humiliate them . . . crap like that. That’s not De Sade’s thing. He takes his time, and comes up with some really innovative concepts. I give him some credit for that, at least.’
‘Even if he kills them?’
‘Like I said, they’re not real, Nick, and you’ve been in this business too long to start judging people’s fantasies now. Morality gets left at sign-in, remember? It might as well be right there in our Terms of Use. You told me that when you hired me.’
‘Did I?’ I remember that, and it’s always been my view. Something is different in this case, though. I just can’t explain why. ‘This guy’s taking it to a new level.’
‘What do you expect from someone who chooses De Sade as his username? The Marquis de Sade was the king of sick pornography back in the nineteenth century.’
‘He was more than that,’ I say. ‘A lot of people credit him with being the father of the Nihilist movement. They say that Nietzsche and others who followed were just picking up on the amoralism that De Sade explored.’
‘Look at you with the big words.’
‘I took a philosophy class once,’ I shrug. ‘Anyway, the original De Sade would have loved the Internet – the ultimate amoral world. Maybe this guy’s our perfect user.’
‘Look, he’s clearly got some serious issues, but you’ve got to admit, until the end, his scenes are pretty erotic. In the LifeScene I was in a few weeks ago he had the girl tied to a chair, and he was switching off between whipping her lightly with a cat-o’-nine-tails and tickling her with feathers. Hundreds of thousands of them. He kept adding more and more, fluffing them over her skin while he touched her, and she was talking to him, telling him how much she loved it . . . how much she loved everything he was doing to her.’ Yvette flushes a little as she recalls the scene.
‘A fantasy of yours?’
‘Is now. I’d never imagined the kinds of things someone could do with a feather.’
‘It sounds very special.’ Sarcasm is my native tongue.
‘It was.’
‘What happens in the end?’
She frowns. ‘He wraps cellophane over her face.’
I look hard at her, wondering exactly how jaded she has become. ‘Lovely.’
‘Better that he’s working out whatever issues he has on the NextLife platform, instead of doing something about it in the real world.’ She looks at me. ‘There weren’t feathers in the one you just walked, were there?’ She almost seems hopeful.
I shake my head. ‘It was simpler. White room, lace panties.’
‘Was there bondage? He’s really into bondage.’
‘Yeah, but not over-the-top. Just the wrists tied to the headboard. Not some of the really twisted shit he’s into.’
‘Simple, clean,’ she comments.
‘It’s not the scene, it’s the graphics. I’ve never seen anything like them. The girl in this one is just . . . ’ I’m seeing her. The vision of her on the bed is locked in my mind. ‘I mean, I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve seen a lot of good visuals before, but this girl is . . . ’ I lose my words again, and it takes me a moment to realize it. I glance up and Yvette is giving me a look. She raises an eyebrow, and I can feel myself squirm. Honesty is dangerous with her. She is like a dog with a fresh joint when she senses the core truth in any personal revelation. She will gnaw on it for hours, sucking the marrow out of every emotional implication until there is nothing left but inert bone, all of the meat chewed out of it. It’s an exhausting process that usually requires several shots of tequila, and I’m not up for that at the moment.
‘He’s just a very accomplished technologist is all,’ I say with a wave of my hand.
Her face pinches like a dart aimed right between my eyes. ‘He’s a very accomplished technologist,’ she repeats in her best nerd voice. ‘Nick, admit it: the man creates some of the most erotic LifeScenes you’ve ever seen, and you call him an “accomplished technologist”? That’s a little like calling Leonardo da Vinci a “proficient portraitist”. The man is a genius. A twisted genius, but – shit! – Van Gogh didn’t cut off his ear because he was stable.’
‘He’s an artist,’ I concede. I have no interest in dragging this conversation out. ‘You had dinner yet?’ It’s one o’clock in the morning, but the office is busy. We’re in the basement of an industrial building off Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. It’s an open 4,000-square-foot span with 200 computer stations, each outfitted with comfortable chairs and full sen
sory units. The people here monitor nextlife.com’s heaviest users – the most active 10,000 or so – to get a good sense of what people want out of the LifeScenes. That way, we can figure out what changes to make; figure out what people will pay for. They don’t know we’re there, in the LifeScenes with them, and we don’t know their real-life identities, but it still gives the company a good idea of what’s happening on the site, and lets us stay ahead of demand.
Most of the stations are manned around the clock. There is no set business schedule; employees are required to put in their research hours, but the company doesn’t particularly care at what time of day those hours are done. Our members are online 24/7, so we are too. For obvious reasons it’s a secure facility with no windows, which means it has the feel of a Vegas casino. Time has no meaning once you walk through the door. We get a steady stream of people working, and I oversee the operation. There are two small private offices at the far end of the space, and one of them is mine, though I spend little time there. I’m usually on the floor.
‘I haven’t even had breakfast yet,’ Yvette says. It’s not surprising. One of the things that she likes about the job is that it lets her conform to a vampire’s schedule. It’s the way she’s been since she was fourteen and dropped out of school. She didn’t need school anymore; she’d figured out how to hack the Charlestown municipal computer system and graduated with a B+ average without ever attending class. She could have made herself an A+ student, but she didn’t want to set off red flags, and she never had any inclination toward higher education anyway, so why bother?
‘Diner?’
‘Diner,’ she agrees.
‘I’ll get my coat.’
The Diner is our weigh-station; a stopover between work and the real world. When you spend your professional life hip-deep in the fantasies and fictions of other people’s minds, it’s helpful to have a buffer before jumping back into the physical realm. It gives you a chance to reframe things; pause and acknowledge the differences between what’s real and what’s not.
The place has a Sixties feel about it, but that’s mainly because it’s really old. They weren’t trying for a ‘feel’ when they originally decorated; the stuff was contemporary back then. The throwback decor reinforces the sense that the place straddles the line between reality and dream. If James Dean and Marilyn Monroe were sitting in the booth behind us, it would complete the scene.
