Dream Walker (7 page)

Demesne was two things. It was a real video game—an intergalactic war simulator and role-playing game, where players used SurroundVison visors and controllers designed as replicas of real weapons to explore and take over worlds. Raze had developed the game during his tenure at Quantum Gaming Systems, who then produced and distributed it. It was their best selling video game to date.

Demesne was also a special, little sphere within the fourth dimensional energetic grid called The Stratum. The Stratum was policed and controlled by Infinium Incorporated. Demesne was created and controlled by Raze with The 8’s explicit blessing. Through the game, Raze could lure targets into his fourth dimensional funhouse and from there directly seed ideas, manipulate thoughts, and influence the actions of targets as directed by The 8.

Only Raze’s unsuspecting targets received his special SurroundVison visors that manipulated the oscillation patterns in their brains and opened the portal that transported them from the 3D game into his 4D, holographic space. There were only two of these visors in existence. Both were sitting in the crime scene at the Parrish house waiting for Raze to retrieve them once the heat cooled off.

When the stray creature interrupted today’s operation, she created a disruption in the oscillation patterns of Demesne, so Blake’s consciousness, and subsequently the whole construct, fell apart. But Raze wasn’t going to tell The 8 that. He didn’t want them to know Demesne was compromised. Not just yet. Hopefully, not ever.

He needed to sandwich the bad news with some good.

“Fortunately, when I realized Blake was in flux, I initiated the option-lock command and I have confirmed that this was effective. The younger Mr. Parrish is in police custody under psychiatric observation due to his catatonic symptoms.”

Raze paused and let the state of affairs sink in before he offered his solutions. “The option-lock can remain in effect or it can be enhanced to place Blake in a vegetative state. I can also attempt to complete the original assignment, by getting Blake to commit suicide via dream seeding or remote influencing. I await your direction.”

Raze stepped back and waited while The 8 deliberated. They were quiet for a long while, mulling over the situation and its options amongst themselves. Raze kept his head respectfully lowered; he didn’t want to appear desperate by searching their faces for their thoughts.

“Obviously, none of us are pleased that the goal was not accomplished,” Number 7 finally spoke again. He always seemed to speak for the group; whether or not he carried more authority than the others was unknown. Raze found that sometimes the more people spoke, the less authority they actually had. “As for what to do, does anyone have a problem with allowing the option-lock to remain in effect?”

“I do,” said Number 6 immediately.

“I, as well,” said Number 5. “While we have had success with option-lock settings before, it has been with older targets whose brains and memories were already compromised. Due to the age of this target and the resiliency of his youthful brain, I am concerned he could reacquire a stable line to the Third, heal his synapses, and reintegrate. Even if he only partially reintegrates, anything he may reveal is too much information. I vote for remote influencing or dream seeding. Finish this thing.”

There was silence again.

“Is there anyone who disagrees with 5,” asked 7.

No one spoke.

Number 7 placed his fingertips together and looked down at the table a moment as if gathering his thoughts. Slowly and deliberately he spoke again. “Raziel, you are directed to finish the project. But let us be perfectly clear. There shall be no more failures. If you cannot accomplish our objectives cleanly and succinctly, you will be replaced. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Raze replied.

“You may go.”

Raze turned and left the room. He had a busy afternoon ahead. The sooner he accessed Blake and got him to kill himself the sooner he could begin hunting down the girl.

No fucking bitch was going to invade his world and mess with his reality. He was glad he kept her to himself. It gave him more freedom to do what he wanted,
how
he wanted.

This was going to be fun.

CHAPTER 5

Mathis really just wanted to go home, pop open a beer, and hit the hay for a few hours before enjoying the rest of his weekend, but leave it to a Fuck ’em up Friday to ruin those plans.

After spotting the blood-soaked boy cowering in the corner, everything went from big nothin’ to cluster fuck, right quick. Mathis immediately called for a perimeter to be set up. Knowing that there was at least one critical patient in the house, Mathis made the tactical decision to have a rapid response team from his own shift attempt to secure the scene. Having the whole watch on scene already wasn’t such a waste of resources after all.

They called for anybody inside of the residence to come out, but there was no response. So, much to everybody’s delight, Mathis let them kick in the back door. As they went room to room, clearing the house, Mathis half expected to find it ransacked from a home invasion robbery gone bad. But just as he saw from the window, the rest of the house was immaculate, not a single knick-knack or bric-a-brac out of place. The only people who appeared to have been in the house all evening were the victim, Scott Parrish, and his twelve-year-old son, Blake.

When they entered the den, the boy wouldn’t comply with commands, but he didn’t put up any resistance either. He sat in the corner next to his father, cradling his knees, rocking himself back and forth, repeating the same nonsensical sentence over and over under his breath.

“Two sticks and a bucket. Two sticks and a bucket. Two sticks and a bucket.”

Blake was what Mathis would call a hot mess, slick with sweat, blood, tears, snot, and drool. They got him detained without incident; and once he was secured in the back of a patrol car, he resumed both his rocking and his mantra.

While the rest of the house was pristine, the office looked like a scene from a horror flick. Blood splatter and brain matter made a grotesque abstract work of art on the side wall and across the television screen. There was a deep red Rorschach pattern stained in the Berber carpet.

Mr. Parrish had one bullet hole right between the eyes, with a massive exit wound that was more out of the top of his head than straight out the back. The average fan of CSI could have figured out that the suspect was a good two feet shorter than the victim, just the height of Blake Parrish. Because of this, along with the handgun lying right next to the boy’s feet, it was not going to be a surprise when the gunshot residue test came back positive on Blake, identifying him as the shooter.

By the time Mathis handed the crime scene over to Investigations and got his officers squared away on their reports, it was nearly noon. If he went home and went to sleep he would be up again all night, so Mathis decided to just push through the rest of the day. He headed over to the Old Mill for some breakfast. There really wasn’t anything that a four-egg Denver omelet, sausage, bacon, biscuits and gravy and strong cup of diner coffee couldn’t soothe—not even the cold-blooded murder of a father by his twelve-year-old son.

Mathis had been coming to this quaint little dive ever since he was a youngster. Back in the day, the cafe, trimmed in blue and white stripes with its miniature windmill sign, was nestled in a scalene wedge created by two intersecting streets and the railroad tracks that ran a mere 10 feet from the cafe windows. He and his grandfather used to drive into town to pick up supplies at the feed store, then head to the cafe for a hearty breakfast and some man talk before heading back out to the ranch for chores. They always sat in the same window table, timing their breakfast so Mathis Jr. could watch the trains parade up the Tidewater Southern, up the middle of 9th Street alongside traffic, and chug ever so slowly past them.

The city had demolished the beloved landmark years ago, but the owners relocated the cafe just down the street. It wasn’t the same, but it was his tradition and still the best breakfast in town. Mathis came here to reminisce about the good ol’ days when Modesto was all rails, rivers, and agriculture, when you didn’t come into town without seeing half a dozen people you went to church with and when you felt at home in the world.

Modesto lost that small town atmosphere when she spread her legs to the housing developers who cashed in on the real estate bubble, attracted a hundred thousand new residents within a ten-year period of time, and then dumped her like a two-bit whore. The old girl busted herself at the seams.

But she still had a way about her. Even though the orchards and crops that once graced the landscape had been plowed asunder to lay the foundations of cheap housing developments, their roots were still interlaced deep in the fertile soil and sprouted up into her people—roots that either anchored them to the place for a lifetime or brought them back. Only the lucky few managed to make a complete escape. Mathis was one of the former, grounded here for a lifetime. He hardly recognized the place anymore, but he didn’t mind. It brought him a certain comfort. He felt as rooted here as the trees in every orchard that surrounded the town.

His waitress came to the table to ask if he wanted anything else. She’d been working here for years and Mathis was a little in awe of her. He always thought there must be a factory in the Mid-west somewhere that spit out the cookie-cutter diner waitress: a heavy-set, with a back-combed, netted hair-do, snapping on her chewing gum type of broad that was found at Denny’s across America.

Well, that waitress factory broke the mold with Sabine. She was definitely not your ordinary diner waitress. Even on the busiest morning with the rudest customers, her eyes always held the light of a smile. Her long, wavy hair was lifted into a sexy, messy twist with loose tendrils curled down around her neck—and she had a damn fine set of legs. Mathis may not have been able to sit at his favorite window and watch the trains go by anymore, but he sure as hell made sure he sat in Sabine’s section of the restaurant so he could enjoy a completely different, and ultimately better, view.

Mathis was taken aback when he caught himself admiring Sabine the first time. He had been buried in grief for so long he was practically dead himself. But then one morning he noticed the way the morning light played through the honey and caramel of her hair, the easy sway of her hips as she sashayed table to table chatting up the locals, and the camber of her back as she leaned over to pour their coffee, and he felt jolted alive.

Sabine seemed to have an intuitive understanding that Mathis wasn’t much for small talk. She skirted around his table gracefully, respecting his privacy; and although he wanted to, he could never muster up the mojo to say anything to her. Besides placing his order, please, thank you, yes and no, and ma’am, his tongue froze up. He always felt awkward about the “ma’am” part, she was at least a decade younger then he was, but he didn’t want to act too familiar and call her by her name. He wanted to pay her a little respect.

Recently, he had been working himself up to attempt a conversation with her. It had been 35 years since he had hit on a woman—and that was Denise—their junior year in high school. Mathis was pretty sure that shouting, “Hey Sabine, you wanna go steady?” across the cafeteria wasn’t how it worked nowadays.

Maybe today he could think of a good icebreaker, like, “Nice weather we’re having.”

Mathis glanced out the window. It looked like God sneezed on the city today, leaving a wet low-lying fog that had embraced and sealed in one of the malodorous assaults Modesto was known to offer. You could never tell what fragrance would greet you on any given day. Some days the air reeked of maple syrup. The next day the town would be drenched in a perfume of dairy farm manure. Today was a dung day and Mathis was pretty sure that initiating a chat about the nice weather on a day that God’s sneeze smelled like cow shit would not elicit a very long conversation—or a dinner date.

Who was he kidding, anyway? He was a standard-issue copper, with a regulation, collar-length haircut, a mustache trimmed to the edge of his mouth, and a body nourished on a widower’s diet of beer, barbecue and half-off Happy Hours. What was he doing considering making small talk with a hot waitress?

“Maybe I’ll just pay her a nice compliment,”
he thought to himself as she strolled toward him, bringing him his check. He looked up at her as she approached, praying his tongue wouldn’t tie on him. Just as she arrived at his table, and as he opened his mouth to say the perfect something that was going to sweep her off her feet, his cell phone rang.

“Are you freakin’ kidding me,” he said out loud—not the compliment he was hoping for.

Sabine laughed. “They are annoying, little fuckers, aren’t they?”

Mathis was stunned. She just said “fuckers.” And he may have just fallen completely in love.

The annoying, little fucker kept ringing.

“You gonna answer that, sweetheart? Or at least silence the damn thing?”

“Sorry,” he stammered as he flipped the little fucker open. “Mathis.”

“Mathis?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” He rolled his eyes at Sabine, knowing she’d understand.

She smiled and placed his check on the table. “I’ll pick this up in a bit,” she silently mouthed to him, with the most perfect lips he ever laid eyes on. Then she winked and moved on to the next table.