Hostage Run

by Andrew Klavan

  The whole ridge shook under Rick’s feet as the ship kept rising. Loud, crackling, electric jolts shot up out of the towers and spires of the Golden City, shot past the huge wavering tentacles and connected with the oblong ship’s edge. Visible within the flashing lines of light were bulky blimp-shaped crafts moving up from the city, riding the energy to the craft above. As the first of the blimps reached the black battleship and entered it, the ship glowed an even deeper black. The whole vista flashed and sizzled and roared as Rick and Mariel and Favian stood at the edge of the waterfall, openmouthed, staring.

  Rick didn’t know how long they stood like that. The ship passed overhead with what seemed titanic slowness. At one point the Octo-Guardian’s great tentacles were right above them, their undulating forms so huge, their slimy scales so close, Rick was afraid the beast might reach down and grab them all and carry them off. All the while the flashing of energy carried a long caravan of oblong energy ships upward from the city to the craft. The roar of engines and the burr of the electric dark filled the air.

  When finally the battleship moved on over the trees—when finally the great lightning-like shocks began to flag and fizzle out—when the purple darkness of the sky began to recede and the yellow light began to shine through again—when the air grew calm and still—Rick let out a long breath. He felt as if he had been holding it in his lungs for over an hour.

  Except for the rush of the falls, it was quiet. Rick and Favian stood in silence, Mariel hovering over them. Rick could not think of a thing to say—or at least could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t reveal his deep sense of anxiety and helplessness. How on earth was he going to get to that monstrous battleship, get past those tentacles, stop Kurodar from launching his new attack? Impossible. It was impossible.

  He lifted his eyes to Mariel, hoping his fears weren’t written on his expression. His lips parted as he tried to find some brave or hopeful words for her.

  But it was Mariel who spoke. “Your sword,” she said. She gestured toward him.

  Rick looked down at the hilt of the sword sticking out of his belt, the image on it: her image. He drew it, held it up to her. “What about it?” he said.

  Mariel gestured again, lowering her hand to the jagged, shattered blade. As Rick watched—and before he could stop her from expending the energy—a portion of her substance flowed out of her fingers and covered the broken sword in fresh metal. In a moment, as if by magic, the sword was whole again, a long, sleek weapon shining in the light.

  Rick raised his eyes from the blade to Mariel. It was a beautiful sword, he wanted to tell her, but still, it was not going to be enough against that monstrous ship.

  But before he could say anything, he felt a twinge on his palm. Then another.

  The timer! It was sounding an alarm.

  A silver sheath had appeared on his belt: another gift from Mariel. He slipped the sword into it and looked down at his palm. The numbers were ticking away the last five minutes. He had to get out of the Realm quickly or his mind would begin to disintegrate.

  “You have to go now,” Mariel told him gently. “Favian will take you back to the cottage. There’s a portal there. Go.”

  LEVEL THREE:

  RL

  19. SINS OF THE FATHERS

  IN HIS DREAM, those tentacles were wrapped around him. He twisted and turned in their muscular grasp, but he couldn’t get free. He pushed desperately against the slimy snake-like skin, but the vile, enormous human face above him laughed at his weakness. Its hate-filled eyes shone blindingly bright.

  All around him was the dark—that absolute dark he remembered from the Canyon of Nothingness—that living black that wanted to drag him into its depths, to consume him and make him part of itself.

  The tentacles squeezed tighter around his waist. They coiled around his legs so that he couldn’t even try to kick free, but was held fast like a fly waiting to be devoured by a spider. And as Rick felt the breath slowly squeezed out of him, he looked down and saw with horror that the thing was . . . transforming him! His skin was changing . . . becoming slimy . . . scaly . . . and even as his hands pushed against the tentacle’s grip, it became harder and harder for him to tell where his hand ended and the tentacle began . . . The scales were climbing up his arms, covering his chest, rising over his neck . . . He could feel his face beginning to morph into something unimaginably dreadful and reptilian.

  That was when he woke up, his breath catching in his throat, his eyes flashing open. Where was he? He sat up quickly.

  Through shadows, he saw his black jeans crumpled on the rug. The football poster on the wall. The window with the sunlight gleaming through the break in the curtains. The messy desk with the computer on it. The workout equipment and weights piled in the corner.

  His room. He was in his room. It was late. Late afternoon. He’d slept most of the day away.

  His breath began to steady. His hands went to his thighs as he became aware of the old familiar pain in his legs. It all came back to him. The MindWar Realm. The wraiths in the ruins. The bridge across the black canyon. Favian’s cottage. Mariel in the pond . . .

  And that thing! That nightmare thing, half battleship, half beast. His sense of fear and helplessness at the sight of it, its tentacles waving over half the sky. And that face. Those eyes. So horrifying and yet so familiar.

  Rick’s lips parted. Suddenly he realized where he’d seen the Octo-Guardian’s face before.

  It was the face of the Troll! The Troll on the video. The ugly little man who had kidnapped Molly!

  He had to tell his father. If that Octo-Guardian and the Troll were somehow related, then . . . well, maybe there was some direct connection between where Molly was and the Realm. Maybe if he could get on board that ship, he could help locate her.

  It came to him all at once that while he was sleeping, he had somehow begun to formulate a plan. He remembered those blimp-like ships that had risen out of the city, that had traveled upward on lightning bolts to enter the mothership above. If he could get into one of those things somehow. If he could ride it upward. Get inside the WarCraft . . .

  Ignoring the dull ache in his legs, he tried to leap out of bed, but he was stopped cold by a fresh pain, a sharp stab in his forehead, right behind his eyes. Oh yeah, he’d forgotten about those headaches. Wow, this was a bad one, too. Going into the Realm definitely was not good for his health.

  But too bad. Football players live in pain all the time. You just suck it up, brother, that’s all. That’s what he had to do now. Suck it up and get going.

  He threw the coverlet back and got out of bed, unsteady on his feet, his head throbbing. Leaning against the edge of the bed to keep himself from falling, he hobbled around it to his desk. There was an Advil bottle somewhere in that mess. There it was, under a day-old pair of underwear. He shook a couple of tablets out and shot them to the back of his throat, washing them down with his own saliva.

  Bracing himself against the desk, he sighed. At least no one had found out about these attacks yet; no one was trying to keep him from reentering the Realm.

  He gathered his strength again. His father. He had to find his dad.

  He half hopped, half walked to the window. Drew back the curtains. A groan escaped him as the late light hit his eyes and pain lanced up from his eyebrows to his hairline. He rubbed his temple with one hand. The headache was so distracting, it was a moment before he realized what he was looking at.

  Rick’s bedroom was on the first floor of the two-story house. The family had arranged it that way so he wouldn’t have to climb the stairs with his bum legs. Just outside his window, there was a little orchard of apple trees, all clustered together. They nearly blocked the view of the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the compound.

  And Rick saw his father there. He was standing right there, under the trees. He was talking to a woman. She was about his father’s age, but whereas Rick’s dad, in his absentmindedness, was kind of sloppy and disheveled in a ratty old fleece with a
black watch cap pulled down over his bald head, the woman was elegant and even (for a woman her age, Rick thought) kind of beautiful. She had golden-blond hair, worn short and swept back from her thin, sophisticated features. She had a long, lean figure like a model in a magazine, and she wore what even Rick recognized was a fashionably short coat, clipped at the waist, with big buttons running down the center.

  He guessed who she was the minute he saw her. Leila Kent. His father’s old girlfriend from college. She worked for the State Department now, a liaison with the country’s intelligence departments, including the MindWar Project. When his father’s work had first caused him to stumble upon the MindWar Realm, when he realized that he could create a system by which the United States could send agents into Kurodar’s cyber territory, he had contacted Leila, his old flame. She—and Commander Mars—had been so afraid of Kurodar’s capabilities, so fearful that Kurodar would be able to reach into any computer or phone, discover any secret, hack and destroy all of Lawrence Dial’s work, they had convinced the scientist to go into hiding. Rick’s dad had left his family with only a note—a note suggesting that he had run off with Leila. Lawrence Dial had hoped this secrecy would protect his family from the vengeance of Kurodar and the Axis Assembly.

  It hadn’t, at least not much. It hadn’t prevented the attack that shattered Rick’s legs, for instance, or the break-in by a gunman who nearly killed them all . . . And what the Dial family had suffered emotionally, meanwhile, believing the father of the house had abandoned them . . . Rick still didn’t like to think about that. Being without his dad when he had lost the use of his legs—when he had lost his promising future as a college quarterback—it had left Rick empty inside. He’d lost his confidence. He’d lost his drive. He’d lost his faith. He’d become bitter, solitary, angry.

  He was still angry, even now. Even now after he’d begun to work his way back to some kind of inner stability, after his battles in the MindWar had restored some of his confidence in himself. Even now, seeing his father out there under the apple trees with Leila Kent made a flame of irritation rise and dance in his belly.

  What’s more, as he looked out the window, it was painfully clear to him (as it was clear to almost everyone who saw them together) that Leila Kent was still in love with his father. He could see it in the way she gazed up at him, the way her hand kept reaching for him as she spoke, the way she touched her hair when he answered her. And what was his father feeling, Rick wondered. What would any man feel—even an absentminded professor like his dad—to have such a beautiful woman crushing all over him like that?

  Rick took a long breath to ease his anger. He wasn’t going out there in the middle of that. He would have to wait to tell his father about the Octo-Troll.

  There was a knock on the door behind him. As he turned, the door swung in and there stood his kid brother, Raider. The nine-year-old was still wearing the sweatpants and Dark Knight T-shirt he had used for pajamas. His round freckled face was as bright and eager as always. What was with the kid? Did he never have a dark thought—ever? He should leave his joy to science so they could bottle it!

  “Hey, Rick! You’re finally awake! Cool! You wanna have breakfast! Mom said she’d make another breakfast ’cause you slept through the last one! She said she’d make french toast! Cool, right?”

  Rick couldn’t even pretend to match his enthusiasm—it just wasn’t in him—but he managed a smile, even through his headache.

  “Cool,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”

  All the while Rick was eating his french toast, he watched his mom. It was she who had told him the story of Leila, the story of his father’s college romance. Leila was a smart, ambitious woman who had always wanted a big career. Over time, she had come to realize that being married to an absentminded genius like Lawrence Dial would be a full-time job in itself, especially once there were a couple of kids to take care of. That wasn’t the future she pictured for herself. So she and Lawrence had parted ways and eventually Rick’s mom had become . . . well, Rick’s mom.

  When Rick’s dad left home, leaving that note, Rick had thought his mom was devastated. She lost her energy. She stopped taking care of herself. She pretty much stopped smiling altogether. But as it turned out, she had understood the situation a lot better than Rick. She had trusted the man she loved. She knew him well enough to figure out what he was up to—or at least part of it—and she had held on to her faith, even in her distress.

  But what did it do to her inside? Rick wondered angrily. How did it feel now to have her husband out there under the apple trees, chatting away with the beautiful Leila? What was she thinking? Feeling? As far as Rick could tell, she seemed fine with it. She seemed perfectly calm, relaxed. She was going about her business, moving from the table to the counter and the sink, cleaning up the breakfast dishes, putting away the food, murmuring “Mm-hm,” whenever there was a break in Raider’s near-constant chatter. In general, she seemed her usual peaceful and contented self.

  Well, maybe she was good with the whole thing, but it still annoyed Rick.

  Now Raider’s fork clattered down onto his empty plate. The boy had consumed what must’ve been an entire loaf of french toast and was now looking around as if he might start eating the furniture next. Which would not have surprised Rick all that much.

  “Go upstairs and put some clothes on,” their mother said. She was at the sink, with her back to them, but she glanced over her shoulder at Raider. “It’s almost night already. Just because it’s Christmas break doesn’t mean you can turn into a hobo.”

  Raider was polishing off another glass of milk when she said this and, for some reason, the remark made him laugh so hard he snorted milk up through his nose. “A hobo!” He giggled, practically choking to death.

  Rick shook his head. The kid’s eternal jolliness was one of nature’s mysteries.

  Raider now leapt off his chair and rushed off down the hall, shouting, “Here I come to save you!” Save who? Who was he shouting to? Some imaginary damsel in distress probably. And then Rick heard his footsteps thundering up the stairs, a decent imitation of a herd of elephants in stampede.

  Chewing the last of his own french toast, licking the syrup off the fork, Rick went on considering his mother.

  “Whatever they pay you for this job, it’s not enough,” he told her.

  She laughed—and turned back to the sink to continue scouring the bottom of the french toast pan.

  Rick went on watching her back, thinking about his dad outside with Leila.

  “You might as well go on and ask,” his mother said, her voice coming to him over the sound of running water. “I can already hear you thinking it. Go on and ask me how I feel about Leila being here.”

  Rick shook his head. He had a bizarre family. Raider the Constant Jolliness Machine, and Mom the Mind Reader. “So you’re gonna tell me you’re all good with it, right? Dad hanging out there with his old girlfriend? No problem.”

  “They’ve got business to talk about. You know that. There are bigger things going on here than me being jealous over your dad’s college flame.”

  “I know. I’m just saying . . .” His voice trailed away.

  His mother shut off the water and laid the pan in the drainer. Drying her hands on a dish towel, she turned to face him. She leaned back against the edge of the sink. “What are you saying?”

  Rick hesitated. What was he saying? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t even sure what was getting him so aggravated—except for everything. Molly was in danger and he couldn’t help her. Mariel and Favian were dying and he couldn’t rescue them. He knew he had to be in the Realm, but he felt guilty for being with Mariel and not with Molly . . . “Stuff gets so complicated, you know,” he said out loud. “All these choices. It’s hard to know what you’re supposed to do. It’s even hard to know what you think or what you feel about things.”

  “Yes, it is sometimes.”

  “But you always seem to know.”

  “No, no,” his mothe
r said. “That’s silly. I don’t always know. We’re all just trying to do our best.”

  “But it’s, like, you never doubt Dad. You never lose your faith in him.”

  “Well, I know him, that’s all. You know him. Don’t you trust him?”

  “Sure,” said Rick, unsurely. “I mean, I always used to, anyway, but . . . Well . . . when he left—and I got hit by that truck . . .”

  “It made you unsure.”

  “Yeah. It shook my faith.”

  “In Dad?”

  “Yeah. And in, you know, all the stuff he taught us.”

  “In God, you mean.”

  Rick nodded. “Yeah, that too.”

  “That’s tough,” his mom said. “When you lose your faith in God, it’s like you lose your faith in everything.”

  “Yeah, yeah. It is. It’s, like, how do you know what’s right or wrong? Why should anything be more right or wrong than anything else? And then you can’t make up your mind about anything and it’s like . . .” He didn’t finish.

  “It’s like what?” his mother asked.

  But he still didn’t answer her. He was thinking about that canyon in the Realm, the Canyon of Nothingness. He was thinking about how the darkness wanted to draw him in and make him part of itself. Losing your faith was like that, he thought.

  But he wasn’t supposed to tell his mom about the Realm, so he tried to put it another way.

  “Before Dad left? Things were sort of simple, you know? I thought that you and Dad would always do the right thing. I thought, if I was good and I prayed hard, God would make everything go well for me.”

  “And now?” his mother asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Rick. He tried to think it through. “Now . . . I guess . . . I realize Dad’s just a person. Like me. He’s a good person, I get that. He’s a really good person. But he makes mistakes. He has hard choices. He has to feel his way. Just like me.”

  His mom nodded. “What about God?”

  “Well . . .” Again, Rick worked it out in his mind while he was talking. “Obviously, sometimes things go wrong no matter what, no matter how good you are, no matter how hard you pray.”