Game Over (18 page)

Molly gave an angry snort of derisive laughter.

“I am!” Mars protested. “I panicked when Moros blackmailed me. I gave him the specs to the Battle Station, but the Axis is years—decades—away from acquiring the technology needed to build it. By the time they got one up and running, we'd have come up with something more powerful. I never imagined . . .”

His voice trailed away. The room was silent.

“You never imagined what?” Molly snapped at him.

But Rick said nothing. The Traveler said nothing. They looked at each other. They had both already guessed the truth. The portal in Rick's head . . . Kurodar's hack of Mars's computer . . .

“Kurodar has taken control of the Battle Station,” Rick said.

Mars answered nothing. He walked slowly, unsteadily, down the length of the long conference table until he was standing at the opposite end from Rick. There was a small black control panel there, with black switches in black plastic slots. He threw some of the switches. The monitors all along the wall lit up. On each big screen, there were animations of space . . . images of the sun . . . the earth . . . a depth of stars . . . And at the center of each screen was an animation of a satellite. Rick recognized it at once: it was the Battle Station, the space weapon he had seen on the specs in Mars's computer. He felt fear spreading through him like a mushroom cloud.

“Kurodar followed my computer straight into our defense systems,” Mars said. “Straight into the controls of the weapon itself. Half an hour ago, the Pentagon alerted me . . .”

He stopped talking. His hand shook so hard he had to press it against his leg to still it. Everyone was looking at the massive floating space cannon turning around on the screen between earth and sun. Mars managed to reach for
another switch in the panel, to draw it down. Next to each image of the station, a meter appeared, a long black bar that was only just beginning to fill with green light.

“He's using the sun to charge the station now,” Mars said. “Within three hours, that bar will be full, the cannon will be operational.” Mars raised his haunted eyes and looked at one and then another and then another of them.

“When that happens,” he said, “Kurodar will be able to set the entire country on fire.”

25. MISSION CRITICAL

SUDDENLY EVERYONE WAS
talking at once. The Traveler, Molly, Professor Jameson, Mars, even Miss Ferris. Their voices were overlapping as they reacted to the news. Kurodar had control of the Battle Station. Three hours before it was operational. Three hours before the United States was in flames . . .

Only Rick was silent. He stood at the head of the table. He went on gazing at the screens along the wall, the images of the Battle Station, the earth, the sun. The meter filling with solar energy.

The same words kept echoing in his mind over and over:

Through me. He did it through me.

“I have to go back into the Realm,” he said quietly.

No one heard him. Molly was snapping accusations at Mars. Mars was defending himself. Miss Ferris was trying to get everyone to calm down. Professor Jameson and Lawrence Dial were discussing possible ways to break Kurodar's grip on the station.

“I have to go back into the Realm,” Rick said again, louder this time.

Molly stopped talking midsentence and turned to him. Mars turned to him, then Miss Ferris. Finally, the two scientists ended their discussion and looked at Rick. The room was quiet.

Rick said it for the third time: “I've got to go back in. I've got to break Kurodar's interface. It's the only way we can stop him before the weapon charges, before he sets it off.”

The others stared at him. For a moment, no one responded. No one said a word.

Then Miss Ferris said, “But . . . you can't. There's nothing there anymore. You said so yourself. The Realm is just blackness now. It almost killed you.”

“The Golden City is still there,” Rick told her. “I've seen it. Kurodar has let the rest of the Realm go dark and concentrated all his energies on the Golden City. For this. So he could do this.”

Again, there was a moment of silence as everyone took in his words.

“But we have no portal in the Golden City,” Miss Ferris said. “We've never established a presence there.”

Rick looked into her eyes—those robot eyes that were now very human, very afraid. “I have a portal,” he said. “I am the portal. I'm the passage Kurodar used to get into our systems. I can use that same passage to get into his. I've done it. I do it every night. All I have to do is go to sleep and I'm there.”

“But . . .,” Miss Ferris began again.

Rick lifted a hand and she fell silent. “I can do it, Miss Ferris. I've got to do it. It's the only way to stop him.”

Miss Ferris looked at him another long moment. Then she turned a questioning gaze to the Traveler.

Lawrence Dial nodded. “It could work. We give Rick a tranquilizer, put him to sleep . . . He might be able to control his immersion.”

“I can control it,” said Rick. “I'm sure of it.”

“If you could,” said his father quietly. “If you could get into the Golden City . . .”

“I can.”

“If you could
destroy
the Golden City . . . it would sever Kurodar's interface. The Realm itself would collapse. And Kurodar . . . I have to think he's blended his brain so completely with his computers that he can't be separated from the Realm and live.” He gazed thoughtfully at his son. “If you could do it, you could end this.”

“No,” said Molly. She had turned her fierce gaze from Mars to Rick. “No, even if you got in there, how would you destroy it? How would you even know what to do?”

Rick moved from the head of the table to stand close to her, to look down into her eyes. “I'm not sure, but I think there's a way.”

Molly shook her head. “No,” she said again. But then she said, “What way?”

“I met someone—in my dreams,” Rick said. “In the Golden City. There's a . . . a sort of witch. Part of Kurodar's imagination. He doesn't want her there, but he can't help
it. She goes wherever his imagination goes. She told me I had to travel into the belly of the beast. She told me I had to face the horror Kurodar can't face . . .”

“But . . .” Molly went on shaking her head. Her eyes had turned soft and glassy now with a sheen of tears. “What does that even mean? Do you even know what that means?”

Rick had to admit it: “Not exactly. I'm not sure, but—”

“Not sure!” Molly said. “Dreams! Witches! You don't even know if any of it's real, Rick. You almost died last time. You can't just go in there and face . . . No one knows what . . .”

She stopped talking but went on shaking her head. And Rick went on gazing into her brown and urgent eyes a long time. He could not imagine why it had taken him so long to figure out he loved her.

“I've got to, Mol,” he said finally. “I've got to go in there and destroy it. Not just part of it, all of it. For Victor One. For everybody.”

“No . . .,” Molly whispered.

Rick glanced up at the Battle Station on the monitors. The energy bar slowly filling. He turned back to Molly. The sight of her made him ache.

“One last time,” he promised her. “One last time.”

26. DOORS OF THE MIND

THEY WERE IN
the deepest part of the compound's underground complex now. The two glass portal coffins stood in the center of the room. In one coffin lay the body of Fabian Child—the Army clerk who was trapped in the Realm as Favian. In the other coffin was the blinking black box that held the Mariel program. A cot had been placed between them.

Rick lay on the cot. His sleeve was rolled up, his arm bare for the injection. A plastic monitor strip had been wrapped around his brow, colored lights blinking on it. It would project images from his mind into the compound's computers.

The computer screens and keyboards and servers were arrayed all around the walls. Some of the screens showed images of the Battle Station turning in space, its power bar filling. Others showed Rick's vital signs. Some were blank, ready to project images of the Realm when Rick got inside. Techs had crowded into the place to monitor Rick's progress. Lawrence Dial and Professor Jameson both had seats before keyboards and screens.

Molly stood at Rick's side, holding his hand. Miss Ferris was next to her, a gleaming steel tray beside her. It was the sort of tray you see in a hospital operating room. There were glass vials and syringes laid out on it. Miss Ferris was stone-faced as she fed the chemicals in one vial into a syringe.

Mars wasn't there. He had slipped away at some point. No one knew where.

“All right,” Miss Ferris said, squirting a little fluid out of the syringe to clear any air in there. “This should relax you.”

Rick smiled wryly with one corner of his mouth. “Nothing's going to relax me,” he said. Funny that he could smile and joke with his stomach in such a knot. “Just knock me out, that's the idea. Get me to sleep and I'll do the rest.”

“Now that I know who Fabian is,” the Traveler said, nodding toward the glass coffin that held the Army clerk, “I'm going to try to program a new portal designed for him specifically, taking into account the damage he suffered: that's what locks him inside. I'm going to try to inject the new portal into the Realm through your mind. With luck, it should appear wherever you are.”

Rick glanced at him, nodded. “Do your stuff, Dad,” he said. “I promised I'd get him out, so make it happen.”

“As for Mariel . . .,” the Traveler began. But then his voice trailed off.

Rick understood. “Just help me get Favian out of there. Mariel . . .” He glanced at Molly. “Mariel's just a computer
program. She doesn't know it, but we do. There's no point bringing her out. She's not alive, she can't die.”

His dad nodded. He knew that wasn't exactly the way Rick felt. Whatever Mariel was in RL, in the MindWar Realm she was noble and beautiful. She had been Rick's guide and protector every moment he was in that dreadful place. She had armed him and guided him and given him hope. Rick would gladly have risked his life to save her . . . but there was no one there to save.

Professor Jameson looked at a clock on a control panel. “We've only got two hours and forty-five minutes left . . .”

Rick glanced at Miss Ferris. She nodded. “I'm ready.”

Rick looked up at Molly. Molly squeezed his hand and tried to smile. “I'm ready too,” she said.

Rick let out an unsteady breath. “Then let's do this.”

Miss Ferris approached him with the syringe. Rick didn't look at her. He just went on looking up at Molly. If this was the last time he ever saw RL, he wanted her face to be the thing he remembered. If he was trapped in the slow, near-eternal death of the Realm, he wanted to be able to picture her for as long as he could.

He felt Miss Ferris swab his arm. He felt the needle press against his skin. He felt a drop of water: Molly's tear falling from her cheek onto his.

He smiled up at her. “Let not your heart be troubled,” he said. He glanced over at his father, seated by a monitor. “That's how it goes, right, Dad?” He did not know his Bible the way his father did, the way Victor One had.

But the Traveler nodded. “That's exactly how it goes. ‘Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.' ”

Rick nodded up at Molly. “Neither let it be afraid,” he repeated.

Miss Ferris inserted the needle into his arm and pressed down on the syringe plunger, flooding his vein with sedative.

“Neither let it be . . .,” he began again, but his voice faded. He felt sleep washing down over his eyes like a liquid curtain. Molly's face swam above him and started to sink away from him. He wanted to tell her he loved her one more time, but he couldn't get the words out.

Darkness.

Then, seconds later, he was in the worst nightmare of his life.

BOSS LEVEL:
THE KING OF THE DEAD

27. WITCH'S WISH

HE STOOD ON
the edge of the valley of death. It seemed to stretch out before him forever. It was bizarre: There was no color to it. It was like one of those old black- and-white movies his mom sometimes watched on TV. On every side, the stony ground stretched out in shades of gray. And everywhere, in shades of gray, lay the bodies.

Of course. This was how he had exited the Realm last time, so this was the only way back in: through the visions of Baba Yaga's table. The millions—the tens of millions—of people murdered by the Soviet Union, the country—the empire—of Kurodar's father.

Rick looked around him at the dreadful and macabre scene.

They wanted to make the world a paradise
, the Traveler had told him.

Pride
, Rick thought.
Like with Mars.

He wanted to turn away from what he saw. He wanted to turn back—turn back to the room in the underground MindWar complex where his friends were waiting for him. It was horrible to be trapped in this netherworld between
his own brain and Kurodar's buried memories. He wanted to get out of here now.

But he couldn't. Somehow, he had to make his way across this endless, hideous plain of corpses. Somehow, he had to return to the chamber of Baba Yaga. Back to Favian. Back to the Golden City.

He hesitated one more moment. He didn't like to step out among the bodies, but he knew he had to. He took a deep breath. He started walking.

The moment he made that choice, things changed. The scenery around him began—eerily—to move on its own. The black-and-white scenes began to speed back past him, like scenery through a car window. As he continued to walk, the scenes sped up, went even faster until they were going by in a blurred rush. Rick felt as if he were suddenly falling through this landscape of death . . . but weirdly, instead of falling down, he was falling up.