Serafina and the Virtual Man (19 page)

She stopped short at the sight of him but at least didn’t seem inclined to scream. “Okay,” she said calmly. “Who are you?”

“Jack Urquhart, Mrs. Ewan,” he said civilly. “I’ve been sent to ask you to join Mr. Ewan in his office.”

There were, he supposed, advantages to looking academic and unthreatening—which, of course, he was in most senses. Mrs. Ewan didn’t bat an eyelid, merely sighed and without so much as a thank-you, walked past him and along the gallery to the study.

Hurrying after her, Jack hoped Blair was still hidden under the desk, or the game would be up. She’d seen Blair before.

Well, wherever he was, he wasn’t skulking around the study. By the time Jack got there, she’d sailed through the open door into the lab and paused. She could see what Jack did: the bare test lab with her husband standing in the middle of it, clutching at his hair in clear distress. There was no sign of Jilly, cleverly hidden from the real world by the lab bench as she was from the virtual world by the sofa.

“Dale?” Petra said sharply, walking toward him. She halted, flinging up her hands as the green light blinded her. “Dale, what the hell is this?” she cried out, stumbling forward.

For a moment, she may have glimpsed herself sitting on the sofa. Adam had said the makeshift VR Petra would vanish when the real Petra arrived to replace her. She most certainly saw Adam, however, for she spoke his name in a hoarse voice of sheer panic.

“She’s in,” Jack said. By the time he’d finished speaking, the vampire loomed at his shoulder.

****

Adam hadn’t underestimated how difficult it would be to relive this scene. Even the bits he already knew, like the violent struggle with Killearn. And however it ended, he knew it would hurt even more. But he had to know, for himself and for JK. And so he fought for his life once more with Killearn, felt the blood drip down his arm from the knife gash and twisted the gold chain around the killer’s neck before getting his fingers into his windpipe and pressing.

What surprised him was the resurgence of genuine anger.
How dare you, a complete stranger, try to kill me? For money!
The loathing that came with it helped him finish Killearn for the second time. Now, of course, he knew he was killing him, but he wasn’t sorry.

He became aware of Petra’s voice calling in panic to Dale. That was new; that hadn’t happened before, he could swear it. So Petra herself had arrived, and from now on, who knew what course the scene would take?

As Killearn’s struggles finally ceased, Adam let him go with distaste and hauled himself to his feet. Which was when Petra said his name in sheer disbelief.

“It isn’t real, Petra!” Dale shouted from the other side of the room. “It’s VR.”

“Why did you bring him back in VR? Dale, that’s sick and stupid!”

“He didn’t,” Adam said. “I did it.”

She stared at him in horror. “You can’t! You can’t! Dale, how is this even possible? He can’t do this!”

“He has.”

Petra shook her head vehemently. “No. No.” Her eyes were wild, her lips thin and twisted with fear as she stared at Adam. “You can’t do this to us. It’s all coming right at last.”

“Then make it
all
right, Petra.”

Deliberately, he turned his back, crouched back down over the body of Killearn to search for a pulse, just as he’d done back in August. He felt her moving toward Dale—could be for comfort, but he knew Dale had moved the gun, presumably to the place it had been in reality. And Petra knew it was there. He could twist his head a little to the right, follow her movements with his eyes this time, because although part of his mind couldn’t help but hope he hadn’t killed Killearn, the more determined, controlling part knew that didn’t matter here.

What mattered was Petra retrieving the rifle from the back of the sofa. And Dale still not moving, although his eyes suddenly pleaded with her. Had he pleaded with her then too, Adam wondered bitterly, or was that new?

“It’s VR, Petra,” Dale uttered. “A game. We just play it differently. We don’t need to kill him.”

“Don’t you understand?” Petra snapped back. “If he’s in control of the VR, he’s in control of all the computers. He can still destroy us!”

“That’s memory talking, the VR forcing you to do what your brain knows you already did! It doesn’t need to be like that. We had his share of the company. Petra, he never needed to die.”

Somewhere, Adam had known all this before he began. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have set this up. And yet to hear the betrayal, the callous cruelty of what had been done to him by those he’d imagined immovable friends, was unbearable. Later, maybe, if there was a later, he’d be grateful for Dale’s regrets, for his belated effort to replay the game differently. But now all he felt was pain.

“Oh, Dale, grow up!” Petra exclaimed. “What did you think he’d do when he finally noticed that he no longer owned half the company? That he was meant to be in rehab? Do you imagine he’d just have faded obligingly into insignificance? What never needed to happen was the forging part, because it turned out he’d left us everything in his will anyway. We only ever needed to kill him!”

Adam heard the gun mechanism click. Safety catch off. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He’d nothing to lose at this point. He could stand and rush her. Only then he’d never know what they did with his body. Dale might stop her, and even though that might still prevent the truth coming out, Adam found himself hoping he would, not just for auld lang syne but because he knew it was going to fucking hurt.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dale said desperately. “Everything is fine now. Put the gun down.”

Adam heard a footstep, Dale taking a pace toward her, and through the pain came hope for him, for himself and a friendship already betrayed in the vilest way imaginable. But it wasn’t going to change. Dale spoke up this time, he even took that one step, but then he stopped. Because the VR memory was too strong, perhaps, or because in Dale’s heart nothing had changed. Whatever regrets or affection for Adam lay in there, his love for Petra overruled all.

The world exploded. He fell forward over Killearn’s body, just as before. There was a yell of agony from Dale and excruciating pain somewhere in his shoulder. Just as before. But something was different this time. The sound of JK’s anguished voice shouting, the flurry of her sudden arrival as she slid against him. The sweetness of her trembling hand on his cheek, his brow; his own sorrow for her because she cared, she cared, and he rather thought this was it.

There were safety controls. No one died from a virtual shot from a virtual gun. But he was only a program, a program that was about to die as surely as the Chicago gangsters he and JK had shot together.

****

The hardest thing Jilly had ever done in her life was to stay behind that sofa with her phone recording every word while Petra Ewan pointed a bloody great shotgun at Genesis Adam. But she’d promised to stay out of it, to let the scene play, because, after all, there was nothing else the Ewans could do to a man already dead. To a program of a dead man.

And yet when the bitch shot, sheer instinct drove every promise, every ounce of common sense out the window. With an inarticulate cry of rage, she flew out from behind the sofa, kneed Petra in the back, grabbed the gun as it fell from the woman’s numb hands, and hurled it through the virtual sitting room window. Then she shoved the stunned Petra over and rushed at Adam, arriving in a sliding heap across the wooden floor.

“Adam,” she whispered, stroking his face. “Adam…”

Unceremoniously, she yanked the virtual body of Killearn out from under him and pushed it away with her feet.

Adam’s face was white, thin-lipped with pain, and she thought rather more than physical pain haunted his clouding eyes. And yet he tried to smile. “JK…” His hand moved, and she clutched his fingers, feeling them coil weakly around hers. “I wondered. I wondered if I could spend a lifetime in VR, with you.”

Tears spilled onto his face, and yet she hadn’t known she was crying. She dragged their joined hands to her cheek. “I wondered too,” she whispered.

“We’ll never know, JK. And that’s for the best. Love is for life.”

“Love,” she repeated, kissing his hand as a sob rose up her aching throat. “Love. My love. Remember, please remember!”

She retained enough sense to glance back over her shoulder. Dale and Petra were no longer in the room. They’d vanished from the game.

Jilly gasped, trying to force reality back to her. And then, even harder than letting him be shot, she left him.

There was no time to give in to the dizziness as the bloody sitting room became the empty, sterile test lab. She lurched toward the trigger point and found Dale clutched in the arms of Blair, who appeared to be having a snack.

She didn’t need to speak. Without detaching his teeth from Dale’s throat, Blair lifted one finger and pointed out the door.

“Don’t kill him,” Jilly warned. “We need him alive.”

But she couldn’t wait to make sure she was obeyed. She rushed out, dashing along the gallery and down the stairs. She couldn’t see Petra, but she was pretty sure where she’d be.

In the hollow under the stairs, where she’d so often vanished and reemerged on the security-camera footage.

But she wasn’t there. Only Jack was, yelling, “Jilly! Blair!”

“What?” Jilly demanded. “Where is she?”

“There’s a trapdoor, but she slammed and locked it from the inside before I could catch it. She knew I was there!”

Oh fuck, she’ll kill him this time if he isn’t already dead!
“Blair!” she yelled.

Jack had already run back and was pointing to an area of floor. Peering, Jilly could just make out the faintest of cracks. A tiny table bearing a small, fallen vase made of onyx had been pushed haphazardly to one side as if it normally resided over the trap to hide it.

“She pushed it in a particular place,” Jack said, “and it sprang up.”

Jilly began frantically shoving at the trap, but in a flurry, Blair landed beside her as if he’d leapt from the gallery above. He dragged her back by the shoulder, and the trapdoor flew up.

“Jilly?” That was Sera’s voice, presumably just arrived from Mel’s, but she couldn’t wait to explain things. On impulse, she grabbed up the small onyx vase by way of a weapon and threw herself down the trapdoor, stumbling and lurching down some ladder steps until she found the ground under her feet.

A light was on in the centre of the room, and the tableau revealed pulled her up short. On a bench very similar to the one in the test lab lay a prone, still figure. Wires flowed from electrodes in his head to a machine not unlike the dentist’s-drill-shaped thing upstairs, and a computer screen buzzed close by.

Adam, not dead, not dead…

Not yet, maybe. Petra, in a white, fluffy robe, was huddled over him, detaching electrodes. Then, abruptly, she twisted to face Jilly—and Jack and Blair, who skidded to a halt behind Jilly. The sound of feet still clattering on the stepladder might have signified Sera. Or Dale. Right now, Jilly didn’t care, because in her right hand, Petra held a syringe to the prone figure’s throat.

“Stay back or I’ll kill him,” Petra said calmly.

“You’ve killed him already,” Jack said harshly. “His last consciousness died in the VR machine when you shot him again.”

He was right, God damn it, he was right…

“Sure about that?” Petra said. “Go and stand over there, or I swear I’ll finish him.”

There was no time for this!

“Fuck you,” Jilly snarled and hurled the vase straight at Petra’s head. Petra dropped like a stone in total silence. Jilly barely noticed as she ran to the figure on the bench. Beneath a slightly grubby quilt, his shoulders, at least, were naked.

Genesis Adam, eyes closed, thin, pale, bearded, connected to a drip through his hand. They’d kept him alive like this for five months, his body via the drip and his brain via the VR, which Petra had just disconnected.

Jilly pressed her shaking finger to the pulse that should beat at the base of his cold neck. She’d felt it, in a Chicago hotel bed, beating for her. But now it was still.

Sera held his free hand, feeling for the pulse there. Jack’s voice said, “Ambulance, please,” calling for help.

“He’s dead, Jilly,” Sera said helplessly. “Feel how cold he is…”

“Not as cold as Blair,” Jilly whispered. Which was hope, right? She seized Adam’s face between her hands. “Wake up, you lazy bastard,” she raged. “Wake up and
remember
! You said you would, you said you would…”

He hadn’t, of course. She hadn’t given him time because she’d had to chase Petra down here to the real Genesis Adam.

She shook him, ignoring Sera’s shocked plea of, “Jilly…”

“Adam, it’s JK, come back. Come back! Come back and
remember
!”

The body twitched, a breath surely. Jilly clutched his naked shoulders, afraid she’d imagined it. Adam’s eyelids flew up, unfocused and yet staring right at her. His lips parted, gasping in air, trying to form a word. It looked like “JK.” And then he moved, gasping again, hurling himself upward against her.

For a tiny instant, the world seemed to go dark, as if the shadow of death itself covered him. In a fury of fresh fear, Jilly held him tight against her, glaring at the shadow that was no longer there.

Relief flooded her. It must have been Sera’s shadow and Mel’s. Blair’s Founder, still snooping. Or looking for fresh blood.

Adam’s fingers grasped her shoulder. His whole body heaved against her. Jilly held him, stroking his hair and whispering his name while her tears fell onto his bare neck and she spoke his name repeatedly in baffled, incoherent wonder.

“Genesis, Genesis.” A new beginning after all.

Chapter Nineteen

“Can you do it?” Sera’s telepathic plea still filled Blair’s ears as he ran after the shadow of the Founder. “
Will
you do it?” He’d known what she was asking. If Adam was dead, could he bring him back, make him undead.

As if there weren’t enough stupid, annoying fledglings in Edinburgh cutting up his peace, drinking blood from his humans, and generally endangering the secrecy of vampire existence that was so necessary to their survival.

But he’d looked into her huge, desperate eyes, full of compassion for her friend’s suffering and the need to alleviate it, and his silent throat had closed up. He’d known he would do whatever she asked.

“For Jilly,” she pleaded.

Maybe for Jilly. He’d grown to like the girl’s prickles and aggression, which came with the appealing leaven of humour. And after all, it would have served her right for all the vampire hatred she’d expended on him in the last five months. So he might have done it for Jilly. For Sera, certainly, God help him. Only that seemed not to be necessary. The human lived, and amid the flurry of activity around him and phone calls to the emergency services, Blair had seized his opportunity to chase the shadow that had been following him and his.

The glass front door stood wide open. And yet Sera had closed it behind her when she’d arrived. Either Dale had woken up and done a runner or…

Could the Founder go out in daylight?

Blair picked up the biker’s helmet from the floor where Sera had dropped it to rush down to the cellar with everyone else, and took the gloves from the plastic bag beside it. Then he walked into the cool, grey daylight. Nothing moved. Even the birds weren’t singing. And yet Blair sensed a presence as surely as he knew his own name.

“Can we talk?”

He sent the thought out there with more hope than expectation. It didn’t get a reply. He wished he knew what the Founder was looking for.

And then it came to him that the Founder’s quest was none of his business, except in so far as it affected him and his, and it seemed he knew what to say after all.

“Things happen around her, that’s all. She makes them better.”

Something touched his mind, a flutter of amusement, not untinged with pity, and then it was gone, along with the presence he’d still never seen. After a moment, he realised the undead skin under his thin clothes was smarting, and he backed into the house and closed the door.

In spite of the unsatisfying nature of his one-sided conversation, to say nothing of his physical discomfort caused by the daylight, he felt oddly soothed, almost…contented. Because although the Founder hadn’t spoken to him, he had touched his mind, almost like a father’s caress. For now, at least, Sera was safe.

****

“Where’s Dale Ewan?” DC Alex McGowan demanded.

The ambulance had taken Adam away, breathing but heartbreakingly weak. The police had refused to let Jilly go with it, though. Now they all sat once more in the Ewans’ gracious if empty entrance hall. Petra, flanked by two policewomen, held an ice pack to the lump on her head. Sera sat close to Jilly in silent solidarity while Blair sprawled in the shadows in the corner, wearing biker’s leathers and holding a black helmet dangling from one hand.

“Good question.” Jilly frowned at Sera. “Where
is
Dale?”

“Um, asleep on his bed,” Sera said tranquilly. She didn’t once glance at Blair, although while Alex issued instruction to two uniformed men, she did murmur in Jilly’s ear. “Blair took enough blood to make him lose consciousness in the study. Which is why he left him there when he came to open the trapdoor. When it was all over, he bunged him on his own bed.”

“Won’t they be suspicious he’s so weak?”

“In all the rest of this shit, I doubt they’ll notice,” Sera said frankly. “Anyway, at least it means Blair’s less likely to drink from the police.”

Jilly couldn’t help the sudden hiccup of laughter. And then Alex was there, studiously ignoring Petra’s glare as he sat on the low table facing Jilly and Sera. Jack strolled over and sat on the arm next to Jilly.

“Okay. Spill. You’re really telling me Mr. and Mrs. Ewan kept Genesis Adam down there for five months, connected to nothing but a drip and a state-of-the-art virtual reality machine?”

“The evidence is all there,” Sera pointed out. “They forged documents and spread false rumours in the press alleging Adam’s descent in drink, drugs, and rehab. They forged the documents that signed over his share of the company to them for a relative pittance, which the Ewans then got back anyway because they were his chief heirs.”

“So why didn’t they just kill him?”

Sera didn’t really understand this part, so Jilly forced her own lips apart. “Petra meant to. I suspect Dale just wanted to squeeze him out, relying on Adam’s disgust and unwillingness to drag everything through the courts for justice. Dale probably reckoned Adam would just start again on his own.”

“Would he have?” Jack asked curiously.

Jilly shrugged. “Not sure that’s all he would have done. He is a fighter and doesn’t let go. Whatever, Petra was pretty sure Dale was wrong, so she took things into her own hands.”

Jilly glanced at Alex’s fascinated if slightly bemused face. “Petra didn’t have the long-standing friendship Dale couldn’t quite shake off,” she explained. “And she
did
, probably, bear a grudge for Adam rejecting her romantically at some point. Whatever, I’m sure her main motive was simply money. She hired Killearn to kill Adam here at the house. She feels in control here, you may have noticed, and I suspect she planned to bury him in the garden, probably where we eventually found Killearn instead. After all, Adam’s disappearance was already arranged and no one would look for him. Killearn, however, didn’t know anything about this plan, and so he set up my stupid brothers to take the fall. Only my brothers run faster than anyone suspects.”

Alex frowned. “That reminds me, I need to talk to Andy about something else entirely.”

“Axel!” Jilly exclaimed, suddenly remembering with a spurt of guilt.

“It can wait,” Alex assured her. “We’re talking about Genesis Adam.”

Jilly drew in her breath. “Adam demonstrated his new system to Dale here in the test lab. It was a planned thing, so Petra knew Dale would now have all the details. After the demo and dinner, Killearn attacked Adam with a machete, only Adam was stronger than the geek he clearly expected, and put up a fight that eventually killed Killearn.”

“Arsehole never knew when to back off, by all accounts,” Alex contributed. “So what did Dale and Petra do all this time the fight was happening?”

“Absolutely nothing. Dale must have known Petra was responsible, and he couldn’t expose her. He’s well under her thumb. Adam calls it love. Not the word I’d use, but still. So Dale did nothing to help Adam. And Petra, meanwhile, had covered all her bases by stuffing a gun down the back of the sofa.”

“It wasn’t a hunting rifle,” Petra said unexpectedly from the other side of the room. “Adam got that wrong. It was a much smaller handgun.”

Alex scowled. “Have you read her her rights yet?”

“Just about to,” said a shame-faced policeman.

Petra laughed.

“Go on,” Alex said grimly.

“Well, when she saw Adam had killed Killearn, she simply drew out her hidden gun and shot Adam in the back. Sweet girl.”

Petra cast her a glance of pure venom, but whatever she saw in Jilly’s eyes suddenly made her drop her own and turn impatiently to the policewomen. “I want my solicitor.”

“Okay, here’s the only good bit of the sorry tale,” Jilly said in a flat, hard voice. “She’s a crap shot and didn’t kill Adam. Dale was distraught. His wife had tried to kill his best friend, and he couldn’t let her take the rap. Nor could he watch his friend bleed out on the floor. Besides, they already had the body of Killearn to hide if they didn’t want the police asking all sorts of awkward questions. So Dale came up with the bizarre idea of keeping Adam alive and hidden in the cellar. He reckoned the VR machine would keep his brain patterns going in its database. But you might want to talk to one Dr. Stuart Cameron about that. I doubt he was in on it, but I suspect Dale at least consulted him. It was his work that made this whole system possible.”

Jilly drew breath and then looked at her hands. “I think Petra cleaned up whatever wounds Adam had and set him up on the drip. She used to be a nursing sister. She’s not as stupid as she pretends.”
Neither am I, and neither of us recognised it in the other for far too long…

“And as far as I know, it all went fine. They forged Adam’s trip to Australia and set up a fake death and funeral, and carried on keeping him alive. They must have known he’d die eventually, but presumably not until they’d thought of some other method of disposing of the body. The only fly in the ointment was the poltergeist, which they may have suspected was Adam’s fury at their betrayal. But since Adam was officially dead on the other side of the world, they felt safe enough to call in Sera to exorcise it.”

“Mistake,” Sera said brightly. “I like to know what I’m exorcising. And Jilly here is insatiably curious. She read far too much power in the house and went to investigate. She pushed the wrong—or indeed the right—button on a computer and started up Adam’s virtual reality program.”

No mention, of course, that Jilly actually broke into the test lab. No one would be able to prove it if Dale or Petra ever accused her.

Sera said, “Somehow, Adam’s spirit—or consciousness, if you prefer—broke through into the program. Perhaps because of all those electrodes connecting him to the VR machine, which in turn was connected to the one upstairs.”

“Wait a minute,” Alex interrupted. “Where did this second VR machine now in the cellar come from in the first place?”

“Adam’s flat,” Jilly said. “He kept one in his own work area in his attic. I think Dale and Petra had it moved to their house and then installed it in the cellar, where they then bunged Adam. Only it was more convenient to keep things running from the original computer they’d used in the test lab. Which is why I was able to switch him on. And because of what he told me, I kept digging. Sera could never reach his spirit, either before or after she exorcised the poltergeist.”

Jack said smoothly, “We needed to know what happened to Adam and how he was connected to our clients, because we didn’t want to have been unwitting accessories.”

Alex glanced at him. “Aye, right.”

“Right,” Sera insisted. “Jilly began to suspect he’d never died. So Adam—or at least Adam’s consciousness in the VR program—recreated a VR scene of the night he was shot, to force Dale or Petra or both to give away what had really happened that night. While Jilly worked out from the security videos the likely area to find the entrance to wherever they’d hidden him, Jack hid himself round the corner there and watched under the stairs for the moment Petra would run to destroy the evidence. While Jilly stayed in the VR as a witness to Adam’s little scene.”

Jilly took her phone from her bag and passed it to Alex. “Their voices are all recorded on there.”

Alex took it slowly. “It won’t stand up,” he warned. “They can claim they were playing a game, however sick.”

“I know,” Jilly said. “But at least, from that, you’ll know what to look for to get the evidence and bang the bastards up.”

****

Outside, in the low January midday sun, Jilly watched with her friends as Dale and Petra were driven away in police custody. Odd, she thought vaguely, to be regarding the policeman in the select ranks of her friends, but it seemed she did.

The sun glinted off his bright red head and seemed to reflect into a metaphorical lightbulb in her own brain.

“Alex,” she murmured. “You knew Axel’s name. You know he’s another psycho, like Killearn? And he’s after my brother Andy?”

Alex shrugged. “So I heard incidentally. I know he’s responsible for a big designer-clothes heist, but we can’t prove it.”

“Why not?”

“Can’t find the goods,” Alex said ruefully.

“And if you could find the goods, it would send him down for long enough to forget my stupid brother?”

“Oh yes.” Alex’s gaze had brightened considerably. “Would Andy know where to look?”

“No,” Jilly said, “I doubt that. But I’m pretty sure he knows someone who does. Lend us your phone, Sera.”

Sera obliged with some amusement while the others waited, agog. “Andy? It’s me— No, shut up, I’m tireder than you’ll ever imagine, you lazy, useless sod. Your friend who left Edinburgh—find out from them an address for fashion goods, and you’ll be home free. Bye.”

She broke the connection on Andy’s splutters, passed the phone back to Sera, and smiled beatifically at Alex. “I’ll text you.”

Alex grinned, and she walked off toward Sera’s car.

“Come on, Jack,” Sera said behind her. “You’re far too tired to drive. I’ll take you back.”

“Why does she do that?” Jack burst out—perhaps louder than he intended; perhaps he meant Jilly to hear. “Why does she keep looking after the scumbags? I know they’re family, but—”

“Andy’s more than family,” Sera interrupted. “He’s her eyes and ears on her paedophile father. It’s the only way she could leave, and she pays Andy back for it any way she can.”

And that, Jilly thought for the first time, wasn’t fair either. She’d used Andy’s guilt, because as a kid Andy had known what her father did and couldn’t prevent it happening to his wee sister. And so he stayed for her and watched. Their father knew and behaved. But it kept Andy in the life Jilly so despised and Andy himself could hardly have enjoyed.

I’ll fix that, Jilly thought, climbing into the car and closing her eyes. Just as soon as I can think again, I’ll find a way to fix that too.

****

Adam opened his eyes with caution. He seemed to be in a hospital bed, in the same room as last time he woke up. The room was small and he its only occupant. A nurse scribbled on a chart at the foot of his bed. She was different from the last nurse he’d seen: older but kindlier in expression.

“Hello.” His voice was weak, hoarse, as if he hadn’t used it in months. But the nurse looked up with a delighted smile.