As the sky flickered from dark to pearly dawn and back, I tossed Devon the device and jumped on Tad’s back. I wrapped one arms around his throat, clinging like a limpet.
The shark appeared, mouth agape. It took a bite out of the corner of the raft, just missing us. It was tuned to either me or Tad.
“Oh, look, it’s still hungry,” I cooed. “I bet it will swallow us both next time.”
"Turn it off! I'll tell you where your boyfriend is; just shut it off before the shark drags me there!" The panic on Tad's face made me scream inside. Because whatever he feared, Mike had already experienced.
*MIKE*
That’s not a wolf. Mike had gambled he could surprise Tadzhikistan into dropping the device because he’d thought he could deal with the wolf. Shove it overboard. Done.
The Great White shark struck out of nowhere. Mike had no time to react.
Saw-blade teeth crunched into his arm. The shark dragged him backwards, screaming, into sunlight-dappled water. A vicious wrench kept him screaming underwater, bubbles streaming from his mouth. His body jack-knifed in agony.
The shark had bitten off his arm.
Mike fought the wave of shock coursing through him. It’s not real. The shark is just VR. Your arm is fine.
But it didn’t feel fine. It blazed like a sun. Should VR hurt this much? Was something wrong? Safety protocols, anyone?
He kicked for the paler surface of the water and emerged spluttering and coughing. He stroked clumsily with only one arm, unbalanced.
A long gray body bumped into him, sharkskin rough against his skin. Terror rocketed through him, but the shark turned and swam away.
Knowledge from some long-ago documentary came back to him. Great White’s preferred prey was seals; they found humans too bony to digest and often only took a ‘test’ bite. Unfortunately, a bite from something the size of a shark often proved fatal.
Blood poured from the stump of his arm, the red liquid curling like smoke as it mixed with the blue-green seawater. His skin tightened with cold and shock. I’m bleeding out.
No. It’s not real. Nevertheless, his leg kicks grew weaker, and it became harder and harder to keep his head above the surface of the water.
Where was he? There was no sign of the raft, though a large boat loomed off to his left. It was hard to make out in the dim sunlight, but he didn’t think it was the Titanic. He seemed to be in a bay. He could see land on several sides: green mountains in the distance, and a nearby rocky beach. A small airplane droned overhead.
And then his limbs stopped working. His body rolled, floating face down. Don’t panic. The water isn’t real. NextStep won’t let you drown. But it was hard not to freak out, when his vision darkened and the world went silent.
Great, I’m a corpse.
His mind still worked; his heart still beat. He just couldn’t move. Either the VR suit prevented him, or something unseen held him in place.
He remembered Joey Tatsuigi, who’d been shot in the jewel robbery. X’s had appeared on his eyes, signifying that his body had been replaced by a VR copy and that the real Joey, now invisible to their VR-overlaid vision, had walked off the Titanic set, eliminated from the competition.
“Exit,” he subvocalized. “Escape.” He waited for a lighted path to appear on his VR contacts, but the commands didn’t work.
Mike willed his legs to move. No dice.
He was stuck. Trapped, in the dark, unable to see or hear, helpless. Alone.
*ANGEL*
The fifteen-foot long shark bumped the raft, hard. Water sloshed, and everyone scrambled for the middle of the raft.
Devon jabbed Tad hard in the chest. “Start talking, or you’re shark bait.”
“Your shared boyfriend’s in a different scenario. The code is there underneath so NextStep can save money and run two scenarios using the same movie set piece,” Tad spoke rapidly. “The under-scenario is the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.”
“Fine. Great. Now, tell me how to get Mike out of there.” I spit the words out. Energy crackled under my skin. I wanted to pace, but there was no room.
The shark’s conical white snout emerged again, and Ron hit it with the oar. Brave, but stupid. The shark bit down, splintering the make-shift paddle.
Face pale, Ron retreated to the middle of the raft with the VR carpenter.
A sly expression stole over Tad’s face. “You can’t wake him from here. You have to enter the scenario, too.”
Devon curled her lip. “Do you think we’re stupid? You just want to trap us, too. Give us the wake-up code.”
“There is no wake-up code,” Tad sneered.
“Yes, there is. Nations Against gave it to me. It woke Gabriel, briefly. I spoke to him.”
Tad was shaking his head. “Not possible. I didn’t program in a wake-up code. All Nations Against probably did was let him hear your voice and temporarily release the lock on his vocal cords. I bet he saw you as part of the under-scenario.”
She inhaled sharply, as if she’d been struck. From her appalled expression, Tad had called it correctly.
“You keep talking about the under-scenario. Is that what the shark’s for? To pull us into the under-scenario?”
“Yes,” Tad admitted grudgingly.
My pulse beat in my temples. Mike had been gone for too long already. No more talking. The next time the shark bumped the raft, I threw myself overboard, knocking Tad in the water with me.
Cold hit like a strike of lightning, seizing all my muscles. Needles of ice stung my skin and shocked the air from my lungs. Stubbornly, I kicked for the surface. As soon as my head popped out, I grabbed a handful of Tad’s hair. I ignored his underwater thrashings.
No need to swim toward the shark. It cut through the dark water towards us, a pale, lethal shadow.
Its mouth opened wide—I pushed off Tad’s torso and arrowed to one side. Tad loosed a muffled scream. My hands brushed rough sharkskin. Contact.
The waters warmed. Day replaced night.
The shark released Tad, whipping around in a tight circle back toward me—then vanished. Pop.
Huh. Had it come to the end of its program or had Devon called it back to the Titanic scenario?
A few feet away, Tad clumsily surfaced, sobbing and swearing. His side bled from a toothy imprint, but he’d mostly lost cloth instead of flesh.
I ignored his name-calling and trod water, searching for Mike. I flinched as a bomb exploded in the distance and aircraft whined overhead. What—?
Right. Pearl Harbor. World War II.
I surveyed the situation: We were in the water between two large gray ships, both of which appeared to have been bombed. The nearest, the USS Utah, was in the process of sinking. It strained against the two mooring cables holding it to a free-standing quay numbered F-11. Navy personnel cursed and screamed, splashing and swimming for shore or clambering inside one of the small launch boats used to ferry people between the Utah and shore.
A ridiculously tiny one-man plane with red circles on its dark green sides and wings swooped down on a strafing run. A machine gun stuttered, and bullets stitched across the water.
Clumsily, Tad began to swim for the quay, despite the fact that almost all the sailors were abandoning it. They headed for the grassy shore despite the columns of black smoke that rose from behind a row of palm trees. An airfield?
After a last glance for Mike’s body, I swam after Tad. He splashed with every awkward stroke. Oil slicked the surface of the water. Oddly, a number of logs also bobbed about.
When we were about ten meters out, the heavy mooring lines abruptly snapped. The cables whipped through the air and the Utah let out an unwholesome groan as it turned belly-up and floated.
A few more sailors bobbed to the surface, but not many. The rest were trapped. One man with a head wound shouted at us for help, but I forced myself to ignore him. It’s only VR.
Tad ignored the stairs and swam under the hexagonal quay. I followed him, taking shelter u
nder the numerous posts.
Devon and the shark suddenly popped into existence, right where Tad and I had just been. I held my breath, but the shark swam away, dorsal fin cutting through the water, mission accomplished.
Devon stroked cleanly through the waves and joined us under the hexagonal pier. She had a scrape across one cheek, but otherwise seemed to have made the crossing unharmed. She shot me a defiant look that I chose to ignore. I had more important matters on my mind than taking her down a well-deserved peg.
Treading water, I turned to Tad. “Show us where the exit is. Now.”
He capitulated immediately. “It’s easy. You orient yourself, facing east, then reach up and tap the far right.” He started to suit actions to words, but I grabbed his arm. I carefully stretched up as if trying to reach the blue sky and tapped. Nothing happened. On the fourth try, a menu blinked into being.
“Then you select Exit,” Tad said. “That’s it.”
I let the menu vanish.
“Liar,” Devon accused. “That’s standard VR protocol. If it was this easy, why is Gabriel still in a coma?”
Tad bared his teeth in return. “Because his character’s dead. He can’t move. Just like him.” He pointed.
Ten feet on the other side of him, Mike’s body bobbed face down in the water. I squinted. There was something wrong— He’d lost an arm. I clenched my teeth to keep from shuddering. Not real, not real.
Overhead, another Japanese plane began a strafing run, aiming at the line of ships and the men in the water.
“Watch Tad,” I ordered Devon, then dove for Mike.
Logically, I ought to have waited for the plane to pass over. Mike’s VR character was already dead, and I didn’t want the same to happen to me. But I couldn’t just float there and watch him get shot up. I couldn’t.
The water muffled the roar of the approaching aircraft, but I could tell it was almost overhead.
I snatched in a brief breath—glimpsed pale sky and water—then dove back under. I grabbed Mike’s remaining limp arm and reversed, towing him toward the dubious cover of the quay.
Bullets created little white trails through the water around me. Mike’s body jerked under an impact, but I avoided being hit.
Gasping for breath, I surfaced under the shelter of the quay alongside the same two-foot diameter post as Tad and Devon. I took a closer look at Mike.
Pale face drained of blood, blue lips, closed eyes, still chest. His flesh even felt cold. I wanted to wrap him in blankets and warm him. Perform CPR.
I took a deep breath. It didn't matter if Mike's VR body became cold or didn't appear to breathe, what mattered was waking him up to the real world.
Still, I found myself watching his chest, willing it to rise and fall. It felt like a premonition of mortality to see Mike this way.
I draped Mike’s remaining arm across my shoulders to hold his face out of the water, but it took too much energy and left me with no hands to deal with Tad. Reciting my mantra—It’s just VR—I let him float facedown.
“—but VR death should automatically cut one out of the program,” Devon argued, voice shrill.
Tad smiled nastily. “Not in the under-scenario. The protocols aren’t turned on.” He gestured at Mike. “He can’t wake.”
Chills roughened my skin. “You mean he’s still conscious in there?”
“Yes, but all of his senses are shut off.” Tad smirked.
"You’re talking about sensory deprivation." Horror made my voice breathy. I’d read about sensory deprivation experiments where they’d put people in darkened water tanks. For a short time it could be relaxing, but prolonged periods caused hallucinations and severe anxiety.
And those people had been able to move, not paralyzed the way Mike was.
“Monster.”
I pushed Tad under the water and held him there while he thrashed. Tad outweighed me, but he wasn’t a good swimmer and he quickly panicked. Devon watched coolly, arms folded.
The dark desire to hurt him rose inside me like a leviathan. I could drown him. It’s just VR… But that would make me like them, ruled by hate. I yanked his head up.
He coughed. Gasped. “Stop!”
Devon dunked him again, rage contorting her face. “Gabriel’s been in a coma for weeks!”
I let her hold him there for thirty seconds. “Let him up before some sailors decide to rescue him from us.” She didn’t respond. “Even if Gabriel is beyond help, Mike needs him.”
That got through. She retreated to the pillar, shaking and pale.
A metallic tapping noise caught my attention. It was coming from the hull of the battleship, VR sailors trapped beneath, likely in a shrinking bubble of air…
Focus.
I gave Tad a moment to cough up the water he’d swallowed, but his flushed face did little to satisfy the terrible rage that burned under my surface calm. “If you don’t give me what I want, I will drown you. What you’ve done is torture.”
Tad’s nostrils flared, offended. “Only the second scenario is hellish. I designed it so that a portal would open to a more pleasant game. Gabriel’s at least three layers deep now. Your friend will do the same soon.”
“Soon? When?”
He didn’t want to tell me, I could tell by the set of his jaw, but my hands on his shoulders convinced him I meant business. “Okay, okay. The parameters are set so that a portal to a beach scenario will open up once two conditions are filled. One: that thirty minutes have passed since the initial insertion into the first under-scenario. Two: that the subject’s heartbeat has exceeded 110 beats per minute for a sustained five-minute period.”
Thirty minutes. About fifteen had passed since the shark attack. If Tad could be trusted not to have lied about the length of time for the first condition, then Mike should be safe from the deadly lure of paradise for a while. Safe, but in hell. My fists clenched.
“And the only exit is in the hellish scenario?” Devon asked.
“Yes.” Tad looked pleased by her comprehension.
Dummy.
Devon went for his throat.
I dragged her away.
“Stop it,” I told Devon. “He may be the only person capable of writing code that can wake Gabriel and Mike out of their comas.” The admission made my chest heavy, but I was running out of options.
I needed to rouse Mike before he left the floating-corpse-hell of the Pearl Harbor scenario. If he hadn’t already.
I stared at Tad with loathing. He might not understand me, but I didn’t understand him either. “What did we ever do to you to deserve that level of hate?”
His eyebrows scrunched together. “What did you do to me? You made me obsolete, that’s what.” He spat the words at me. “I endured eight different operations by the time I was ten. The government spent millions of dollars in Augments on me, to make me the best, and then you come along and blow my test scores out of the water.”
He couldn’t mean me personally. I’d always taken great care to downplay my true potential when taking tests. But Tad was beyond listening to such reasoned arguments, all but frothing at the mouth.
“I can access a hundred datapoints simultaneously, but suddenly I’m a costly mistake. My program is shut down, and I’m thrown out with the trash. And normals don’t like the Augmented. They think we’re freaks, when you’re the ones who aren’t even human. Do you know how big my medical debt is? I’ll still be paying it off when I’m ninety,” he seethed.
My heart felt as stony as a statue’s. “They did that to you. Not me. Not Mike. Not Gabriel. I gave you a chance to pay off your debt and instead you chose to condemn someone you’d just met to a living hell followed by limbo.” I leaned closer. “As a human being you’re the failure, not us.”
*MIKE*
Blind. Mike couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or shut. He struggled to see, to so much as blink. Nothing. Pitch blackness like being deep in a cave.
Worse, he couldn’t feel anything. Nothing met his fingertips, or pressed
anywhere against his body. Not a hair moved on his scalp. No gravity. Mike's stomach lurched: he couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet. Logically, he knew he was still floating in the water, but it felt as if he hung suspended in mid-air—or was falling.
The instant the thought occurred to him, Mike tried to flail his arms, to catch hold of something to would break his fall—but he couldn’t move. Paralyzed.
He couldn’t even scream, his throat locked.
No. Logic beat back the panic. He wasn’t falling. He was in a VR scenario, and he was floating.
Even if it felt more like falling.
Was this death? This hideous emptiness?
No. He was trapped in VR—just like Gabriel. Gabriel, who’d been in a coma for weeks. God, he’d go mad if he remained stuck here that long.
No. Stay calm, concentrate. Assume this was VR and not real. How did he get out of here?
He tried all the VR command words he'd been taught. Even if he couldn’t speak, subvocalizing should still work. "Exit. Quit. Override. Escape." Nothing.
The panic rushed back like a Doberman snapping its teeth at his heels. The need to run, to move, burned inside him. “Let me out!” he yelled silently, trapped inside his own head.
And then he heard his heartbeat. It was faint, as if coming from a long way away, but he could hear it.
He hung there, motionless, listening to it. The panic receded and reason returned, leaving him with two truths.
Number one, he was alive.
Number two, if he was alive, then Angel would find him. And if the shark had gotten Angel, too, then Catherine would do her damnedest.
All he had to do was hang on until the cavalry arrived.
*ANGEL*
I held Mike’s body facing east while Devon lifted his limp right arm and tapped. His hand flopped uselessly. Nothing happened.
The first wave of bombing had ceased. The tapping noises in the flipped Utah had attracted the attention of an officer on shore and a rescue mission had been sent with a cutting torch. I was glad the VR sailor would be rescued—the tapping had gotten on my nerves—but it meant we’d had to move Mike around the other side to keep from being seen.
Angel Eyes Page 23
