Dream Walker (2 page)

The small soldier named Blake pulled a handgun from out of a vest holster, raised it at the newcomer in front of him, and aimed it square between the lone soldier’s eyes. There wasn’t a hint of a tremor in his hand.

“Blake,” the solo soldier shouted again, this time with a bit of hysteria. “I demand that you put that gun down right now!”

But Blake did not lower his weapon and he did not waver his aim. The leader looked back at the newcomer, his smirk becoming more a gloating snarl, then looked back at Blake.

“Blake. Kill.”

And with that, a single gunshot ripped through the city and into the soldier’s head. His body enfolded upon itself like an accordion, dissolving from the uniform before it even hit the ground.

Blake lowered his weapon and looked up at the leader.

“At ease,” the leader said as he kicked the lump of uniform at his feet. “He definitely won’t be a problem anymore.”

He turned back to Blake. “Now you.”

Without hesitation, Blake turned his weapon around, and placed the muzzle into his mouth.

A gasp escaped from Aislen involuntarily.

The whole group jerked their heads her direction. The leader strode toward the car she was hiding behind; the two lumbering soldiers followed him. Flight instinct took over and Aislen made a run for it. She lurched out from behind the car, but the thick ash encased her feet and she stumbled forward, falling face first onto the charcoal crust.

It was too late anyway. The leader was already upon her. He raised his rifle. The other two monster soldiers raised theirs as well, mimicking the leader’s every movement. She could never outrun them or their bullets.

“Get up,” the soldier demanded.

Aislen, covered in soot, got to her knees and raised her arms in a gesture of surrender. She hoped he would see she was an unarmed, harmless woman and would spare her life.

“How did you get here?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know where I am.”

The leader paused for a second, analyzing her, his rifle still on target for her head. “Blake! Come here.”

Blake shuffled over beside the leader, gun still in hand; but he seemed confused and lethargic now.

“Blake,” the leader’s voice became monotonic again, “carry on.”

Blake looked at the leader, then looked back at Aislen. He raised his gun, pointing it at Aislen’s head.

“Please, don’t,” Aislen managed to say, more as a prayer than a real request.

Blake, surprisingly, lowered his gun.

“Blake! Carry on,” the leader commanded, his voice taking on an edge that wasn’t there before.

Blake looked back and forth from the leader to Aislen and raised his gun again.

Aislen couldn’t help it, her eyes flooded with tears. She wished she could remain stoic in the face of her impending death, but her emotions were now out of her control. She blinked and the overflow slipped from her eyes streaking down her soot-dusted face.

Blake lowered his gun, yet again, then reached up and removed the visor from his face.

Aislen was dumbfounded. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen years old! He was tall and lanky, but he had the youthful face of a boy. He looked at her, then at his leader, then back at her, saccadic movements tormenting his face. He fell to his knees in front of Aislen and let out a single sob.

The leader took off his visor and stormed toward the boy.

“Blake! Attention!” His fury was apparent now.

The command elicited no response. Blake was done, slumped and broken, staring blankly into the gray particles of ash. The leader grabbed the boy by the hair, pulled his head back and looked into his eyes. The glassy, vacant orbs must have said it all. Blake was lost. The leader kicked the gun from Blake’s hand then turned to face Aislen.

Time stopped. With his visor removed, the intensity of the soldier’s face blazed. His sculpted features appeared to have been carved out of a marble reserved only for a mythological god, and the glacier blue of his eyes bored into her own, chilling her bones, yet burning her with terror.

He took several deliberate steps toward Aislen, his eyes unwavering from hers. She could find no sign of warmth within their frozen terrain, but she felt held by them, cradled and calm. She was but prey, hypnotized and completely at his mercy. He stopped in front of her, bringing the barrel of his weapon up underneath her chin, lifting it to get a better look at her face. He surveyed her for a moment, then cocked his head to the side.

“Do I know you?” His voice was soft, almost gentle, despite the steeliness of his demeanor.

“No,” Aislen managed to say through her choked throat.

“Good.” He took a step backward and aimed the muzzle at the center of her forehead.

Aislen squeezed her eyes shut, bracing herself for the impact. A cracking sound split through her skull, jarring her brain, taking her breath away. A loud tinnitus burned her eardrums and reverberated throughout her body. She felt a chill wash over her flesh and then she felt a breeze caress her skin.

She lay breathless. Was she crumpled up like an accordion now, too? No. She felt stretched out and flat on her back. She felt a lifting sensation, her body moving up, up and further up like she was being raised into the sky. The piercing ringing in her ears faded away, replaced by a hushed whirring sound.

Was this what it was like to die?

Pale light glimmered through her eyelids. Aislen took a breath and opened her eyes to a blur of dark and gray, shades of shadow and amorphous shapes.

Where am I?

She blinked a few times, trying to adjust to the light and rolled her head to the side. Neon green blinded her; 3:33 read her clock.

Aislen was awake.

∞

In the same moment, Raze felt the hard resistance of the trigger fighting against his index finger, the lever give up its useless battle and release, the hard tap of the hammer striking the firing pin which made contact with the primer, and the sizzle of the gunpowder igniting. He felt the click of the casing eject out the side port, the scrape of lead against steel as the bullet slid through the long flue, and the fever it created radiate off the barrel. He saw the fierce glister from the muzzle as the bullet made its escape and watched the suspended spin of the slug as it traveled its perfect trajectory.

In the same second, he saw her face, covered in ash, streaked with the tracks of her tears, her eyes clenched in anticipation. He watched them open wide when she felt the searing heat envelope which preceeded the approaching bullet; the intensity of their green, the sparks of gold alight within them, the calm, the acceptance, the complete tranquility, clear eyes that blazed right back at him.

All in one instant.

Time was irrelevant. Events could be experienced all at once, in an overlapping cacophony, or they could be separated, each aspect of an event removed like the yolk from an egg then pulled apart like a fresh piece of taffy and slowed down, down, down, to be savored.

As the bullet made contact with the peach-down surface of her forehead, her lips parted to take one, last breath and just as it should have pierced through her skull and absorbed into her brain, she dissolved into a swarm of static.

Raze lowered his weapon.

What the fuck just happened?

He would have believed she was just a figment of his imagination, if she hadn’t left evidence of her existence—the curves of her body imprinted in the ash. She had existed here and then she didn’t—and that was completely impossible.

The girl’s deresonation created an electrical disruption, touching off a chain reaction in the fabric of Demesne. One after another, the buildings of the city, the cars, the streets, even the two droids that filled out his squad of four, collapsed into pixelated bits and pieces.

Raze watched the pale of his construction evaporate into the ethers, and within seconds Demesne was gone and they were standing in the desolate desert of The Stratum.

Raze turned his attention to Blake who sat slouched behind him, his eyes glazed over in a half-trance. Raze snapped his fingers in front of the little pawn’s face. There was no light on.

That was just fucking great. He had completed only half the assignment, the assassination of Scott Parrish, but Protocol had required that Blake eliminate himself, as well.

Raze considered his options. He couldn’t kill Blake from this space and be assured that it was effective in 3D; and with the schema of Demesne deconstructed, he didn’t think he could initiate a command sequence that would reestablish enough control to get Blake to complete the assignment. That only left one choice.

Raze reached over, touched Blake in the center of his forehead with his index finger and initiated the option-lock command.

“Two sticks and a bucket.”

Blake’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he deresonated out of The Stratum.

“That should buy me a little time,” Raze said to himself. He needed to get back to the Third and confirm that a matching body—the dead body—of Scott Parrish, existed there. He closed his eyes, “Theta 5.”

The Womb, the pet name he called his office, responded to his command and slowly began shifting the climate from Delta Phase into Theta.

The lighting in Delta had been pitch. Not even the tiniest bit of light illuminated the room. This enhanced his pineal gland’s production of melatonin and serotonin. The thermostat was set to correspond perfectly to his body’s fluctuating thermal readings, confusing his skin’s ability to differentiate between itself and its surroundings. White noise transmitted a psychoacoustic curve perfect for Raze’s auditory perceptions—a sound that could not be named. It wasn’t the waves, or the rain, or even the wind, but it caressed his second sense in such a way to be all those things and silence at the same time. Controlling these environmental settings allowed Raze to achieve and maintain the Optimum Octave of Operation with a delta brain wave of 2 cycles per second.

As The Womb adjusted to Theta, light began to dawn, similar to the glow of a single candle; and the temperature of the room lowered by less than one degree. Raze slowly became aware of being back in the controlled confines of The Womb reclined in his zero-gravity chaise. He began to feel the hum of blood flowing through his body.

“Alpha 8.”

The Womb replied by increasing the lighting, shifting from white noise to soft jazz and lowering the thermostat another degree.

Although a part of his brain was anxious to get right to Beta and try to figure out what the hell just happened in Demesne, Raze knew he couldn’t just jump out of the chaise without reintegrating first. Plebes do that crap. Their alarm goes off every morning—they jump out of bed, shit, shower, shave and move right into the chaos of the highest Beta frequencies. And as a result, they live their lives in complete oblivion.

Raze had to fight that aspect within his lower nature. Reintegration was important. It allowed him to pull his experiences in the higher Octaves from the Delta Wave level of his brain and into his conscious Beta state. Cognizance is what separated the n00bs from the Masters.

“Alpha 14.”

The chaise lifted forward into an upright position, the lighting dawned into 60-watt full spectrum, a fan circulated the air around him, and Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” began blasting through the surround sound.

Raze was beyond vexed. What had happened was all kinds of wrong—a violation of protocol, a breach of The Stratum, an invasion of Demesne and the near failure of the Parrish Project. Demesne was the section of The Stratum that Raze created and controlled. Right now, only two people, besides Raze had access: Blake and Scott Parrish, all through Raze’s unique SurroundVision visors with their brainwave controllers. Even members of the Infiniti 8 did not have access to Raze’s section of The Stratum.

That girl—whoever, or whatever, she was—got through The Stratum and into his area, a breach on two levels. Raze was not one to be trespassed against. He was the trespasser in this world—he and he alone.

He was going to have to report to The 8 and get their buy in to take other measures in order to complete the Parrish Project. Then, he was going to hunt down that pretty little bitch.

Raze stood up from the chaise, straightened his tie, grabbed his suit jacket off the wall hook and walked out the door.

“Off.”

The Womb powered itself down.

CHAPTER 2

The call rang on the MDC, jolting Sergeant Mathis out of his blank reverie and almost out of his own skin. He hammered at the received button on the keyboard to make the damn thing stop singing, then pressed his thumb and forefinger into the inner corners of his eyes until he caught his breath and his blood pressure went down. It was a pressure point technique he used to keep himself from heaving the computer system into the street and running over it with his patrol car.

The IT department had tried to pick out a pleasant musical tone to alert officers when they were being dispatched to a call. Epic fail. Hearing the same obnoxious, ringy-dingy tune again and again, 12 hours a day, 4 days a week was enough to make you want to stick your Glock in your ear and blow your ear drums out. It was fucking annoying.