Mindwar Page 3

  “We had to get you off the street, somewhere safe, secret, quickly. We can’t be seen.”

  “We . . . ? Who . . . ? What am I, like—your prisoner?”

  “No. You can leave. When we’re finished.”

  Rick felt another wave of nausea. It was the drug, he realized—whatever they’d pumped into him. It hadn’t worn off yet. “When we’re finished with what?” he said warily. “What was that? That train I saw? Was that real?”

  “It was a hologram,” said Jonathan Mars. “A three-dimensional movie of a train derailment that occurred a year and a half ago. In Canada, as I said. And yes, it was very real. Eighty-three people died, in fact. The official investigation discovered no cause—none at all. No mechanical malfunction, no driver error, nothing wrong with the tracks. It all seemed to happen for no reason whatsoever.”

  Rick shook his head, trying to clear his mind, trying to think. “I don’t understand. Why are you telling me this?”

  “It was only when some of the top computer technicians in North America examined the train’s guidance systems that they discovered an almost undetectable disturbance in the train’s ATO, its automatic controls. Somehow, someone had done the impossible. They’d hacked the guidance computer from the outside and run the train right off the rail—almost without leaving a trace. That’s how we discovered the Realm—the MindWar.”

  With that, Commander Jonathan Mars vanished. Just like that, just like the train. Without warning, without a sound, he was simply gone.

  Confused and disoriented, Rick sat through another moment of utter darkness. Then, suddenly, people appeared all around him. Men. Grim-faced men in suits and ties. They were sitting in chairs on every side of him, like an audience in an amphitheater. And at the center of them, right in front of Rick, standing at a podium that had appeared out of nowhere, was a small, ugly little man. Hunched, spindly. A face like a cross between a skull and a toad.

  Rick was about to say something to him when the man began speaking. He was in the middle of a sentence, reading something off the podium. Making a speech. Rick realized: He wasn’t real either! He was a hologram, too. All of these people were just some kind of three-dimensional movie.

  The frog-faced little man spoke in a deep, droning voice that had some sort of accent. Russian, Rick thought.

  “. . . my system takes the Brain-Computer Interface to a new level,” he was saying. “By surgically connecting the default network of my brain to advanced computers of my own design, I will be able, in effect, to daydream a Realm into existence. Through that Realm, I will be able to move at will, to enter, disrupt, and destroy the enemy’s defense systems; his industries; energy grid; water supply; information networks; transportation; finance. All these depend on computers and the Internet, and I will be able to enter those computers and bring them down merely by imagining it to be so! The train wreck in Canada was just a test, just a sample. With your support, with your funding, I can be fully operational quickly. I will be able to wage a MindWar against the United States that will bring that nation to complete ruin in little more than a year.”

  On the word year, the man at the podium—and all the men sitting around him—vanished as quickly as they had appeared. They snapped off like a lightbulb, leaving Rick in total blackness again.

  “That man goes by the name of Kurodar.” Rick nearly jumped when Jonathan Mars appeared out of nowhere again, gliding toward him soundlessly, the one bright spot in the darkness. “That—his name—is almost all we know about him. He seems to be Russian, about sixty years old. And a genius, clearly. That’s the only time he’s ever been filmed. He came out of hiding to address the Axis Assembly, the gathered leaders of every tyranny on earth. What he told them was true. With their funding, he can finish imagining this—this MindWar Realm of his—into being. And with it, he’ll be able to control and destroy our most sensitive systems: turn our weapons against us; shut off our electricity; close our industries; foul our water supplies—all with little more than a single thought. People will die, Rick. Lots of people. Millions of people. This country as we know it will vanish into chaos and bloodshed.”

  Jonathan Mars was standing directly in front of Rick now, only a few feet away. A thought occurred to Rick, and he lifted a hand and reached out to the other man. He placed his fingers against Mars’s chest—and his fingers went right through him, right into his body, touching nothing, nothing at all.

  “You’re a hologram, too!” Rick said, amazed. “You’re not real.”

  “I’m real. I’m just not here in the room with you. I’m being projected from another location.”

  “And why . . . ?” Rick shook his head again, trying to dispel the last fog of the drug. “Why are you telling me these things? All this stuff about Kurodar, about how he’s trying to destroy everybody. Why are you telling me?”

  “Because we want you to stop him,” said Jonathan Mars.

  “Me?” Rick actually laughed out loud. Now he was sure: This had to be some kind of joke. Or a dream or a hallucination. It had to be. “A mad scientist is trying to destroy our computer systems and you want me to stop him? What do I know about this stuff? I’m an athlete, man. I was, anyway. When it comes to computers, I know how to send e-mails and watch videos and that’s much pretty much it.”

  The hologram of Jonathan Mars glided away from him, moving through the darkness in its eerie soundless way. When Mars turned, the bushy silver eyebrows had gathered on his face like thunderclouds; the eyes beneath flashed like lightning.

  “Have you ever heard of a video game called Dragon Soul 3?” he asked.

  Another laugh broke from Rick. This was now officially the craziest conversation he had ever had. “Dragon Soul 3? Yeah, sure, I know it. I play it all the time.”

  “In fact,” said Commander Mars, “you hold the highest score in the world.”

  “Really? I didn’t even know it had a score. I just like the sword fights.”

  “Well, it has a score and yours is the highest anywhere. Anywhere. We’ve actually trained people to play the game. Professional gamers. Soldiers. Army Rangers. Navy SEALs. Some of our finest, best warriors. They’ve never matched your score. They’ve never come close.”

  At first, Rick was pleased to hear this. Highest score anywhere. Not too shabby. “I guess I really got into it for awhile,” he said modestly.

  “I guess you really got into Starlight Warriors, too. No one’s ever topped your score in that either. Or in Zombie Apocalypse 5: The Return.”

  “Zombie Apocalypse. Yeah, that was a cool one,” Rick murmured. He was glad the dark was so deep because he felt his cheeks getting hot, and he knew he was blushing. Now that his first pride in his gaming achievements had passed, he was beginning to feel something else—he was beginning to feel embarrassment. The reason he had scored so high on all those games was because for the past four months, ever since his accident, he had sat holed up in his room doing nothing but fiddling with his Xbox. “I guess I’ve been kind of housebound lately,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of time to play.” It sounded like a lame excuse, even to him.

  Commander Jonathan Mars, his craggy face still harsh as a storm, said, “You’ve been hiding away in your room like a toddler in a sulk. Bitter over your missing father and your broken legs. Too weak-willed to rise above your troubles. Doing nothing with your life but playing video games. And with your quick wits and your athlete’s reflexes and quarterback skills, you’ve become very, very good at them very fast. Congratulations,” he added with dry sarcasm.

  Rick squinted through the dark at the hologram-man. His feelings were confused. He knew what Jonathan Mars said was true. He had been hiding away, sulking, bitter. Weak. But hey, what business was it of his? What business was it of anyone’s?

  Rick started to get angry. “What, have you been spying on me?” he said. “Watching me through, like, secret cameras or something?”

  “Yes,” Commander Mars thundered back at him. “That’s exactly what we’ve been do
ing.”

  “Oh great!” said Rick. “Great. And then you drug me? You kidnap me off the street? Bring me to this underground prison here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s . . . That stinks. That stinks! You have no right to do that! You have no right to do any of it!”

  “That’s true,” said Jonathan Mars. “Now: Are you going to help us save the country or not?”

  Rick’s anger burned hotter. He was frustrated by Mars’s stern, unshakable calm—and that made him angrier. And he was humiliated to find out they’d been watching him while he sulked in his room and wasted his days with endless gaming—and that made him angrier, too. He had the urge to jump off this . . . seat . . . this table . . . whatever this metal thing under him was . . . He had the urge to jump off it, and clock this guy a good one on the chin. The only problem was, if he jumped up without his crutches, his legs would collapse under him. And the only other problem was that Mars wasn’t even here: he was just a three-dimensional movie—and a fist would pass right through him. So Rick stayed where he was, frustrated, humiliated, and enraged.

  And Jonathan Mars, still calm, still stern, went on speaking. “Because Kurodar has imagined the Realm into being, it’s a place of human dimensions. It has fields and forests, castles and towns: it’s a place where Kurodar can feel comfortable, where his imagination can move freely.” Mars put his hands behind his back and floated toward Rick again. “But that means you can move in it, too. Our scientists have developed a system that will put you inside—a digital version of you, anyway, a digital analogue of your mind, your spirit. You’ll be able to spy on the Realm’s secrets, outwit its security bots, locate its weaknesses. You might even be able to deflect its attacks. The Axis wants a MindWar. We’ll give them one.”

  The man’s words began to cut through Rick’s anger. He was starting to understand.

  “You mean, it’s like you want to put me inside a video game,” he said.

  “Something like that,” said Jonathan Mars. “But with two significant differences.”

  “Like what?” said Rick.

  “Like it’s not a game—and you only get one life. We’d be linking the most intimate part of your brain to a system of computers. What happens to your digital form will happen to your body. If you get cut in there, you’ll bleed. If you get killed in there, you’ll die. And if you stay in the Realm too long, the strain on your brain systems will cause your mind to disintegrate, leaving your body here in a vegetative state forever. Don’t make any mistake about this, Rick. We’re asking you to risk everything. Go into the Realm, and you may never come back.”

  With those words, Commander Jonathan Mars was gone. His disappearance was so quick and silent that for a moment Rick sat staring at the emptiness, the impenetrable blackness, as if he expected the man to come back, to go on speaking.

  What happened instead was this: There was a thick, metallic clunk, like a great switch being thrown. The lights came on—bright and blinding at first, so that Rick threw up his arm to protect his eyes. When his eyes had adjusted, he looked—and what he saw was somehow even stranger than the holograms and 3-D movies that had surrounded him before.

  He was in a small chamber—little more than a closet. It had seemed large to him because of the images he’d been seeing: the train, the audience, the speaker, Mars floating from place to place. Now in the light he saw its blank, white walls pressed close around him. There were no windows, no doors, no way out. No furniture except a shiny steel cot attached to the wall—the metal thing on which he was sitting.

  Rick felt panic starting to rise inside him like an icy whirlpool. He wasn’t claustrophobic exactly, but he didn’t exactly like tight spaces either. Had Mars abandoned him here? Was he going to be left here alone, confined in this tiny cell until he cracked and agreed to play along with whatever Mars wanted?

  No. The very next second, there was a soft clicking noise, a quick hiss of air. A rectangular portion of the wall swung open. A door. An exit into a hallway. And there were his crutches, leaning against the wall on the door’s far side.

  Carefully, Rick slid off the cot, holding on to the edge of it to support his weight so his rubbery legs wouldn’t fold up under him. He shuffled along, flinching with the pain, until he reached the wall. Then he braced himself against the wall as he went on shuffling, grunting with the effort, to the doorway. Here, leaning against the frame, he snagged the crutches and got them wedged under his arms.

  There. Now he could get somewhere.

  He looked up. He was in a narrow hall, its white walls lit as brightly as the cell. The corridor ran in only one direction and had only one exit: a door at the far end. Rick swung down the hall on his crutches until he reached it. It was already ajar. He shouldered his way through and came into a chamber on the other side.

  It was like stepping into the bowels of a great machine. The room was big, and every inch of it was crowded with electronic equipment and monitors. Lights and graphs and meters were flashing and rising and falling all around him. Men and women in dark suits sat at keyboards before lit screens, where red and blue and white indicators flickered and images shifted and audio speakers let out small electronic buzzes and bleeps, while numbers flitted across long electric strips.

  On the far wall, implanted right into the wall, surrounded by lights and monitors and sensors, was what looked to Rick, for all the world, like some sort of coffin, a glass box standing vertical, lined with silvery foil and stuffed thick with wires.

  Standing beneath that raised coffin was the woman who had confronted him on the street near his house. What was her name again? Miss Ferris. She looked just the same as before. Stone-faced. Emotionless. Planted there with her arms crossed on her chest as if she were waiting for him. Beside her stood the block-man with the bizarre girl-name—Juliet Seven—the giant who had stuck the needle into Rick’s neck.

  Rick came toward them hesitantly. No one else in the room paid any attention to him. No one even glanced up from any of the monitors as he hobbled by. Only the woman, Miss Ferris, continued to gaze at him with that blank expression of hers. And Juliet Seven—the block-man—watched him approach with a slight and somehow dangerous-looking smile.

  Rick stopped in front of Miss Ferris. She stood silent. He lifted his eyes from her face to the coffin set into the wall.

  “What is that thing?” he said.

  She glanced up at the glass box for a moment. Then she answered him in her clipped, toneless voice. “That’s the portal, Rick.”

  Rick’s throat went dry. He licked his lips. He had to work hard before he could swallow. “The portal,” he repeated softly.

  The woman nodded. “The portal into Kurodar’s Realm. The portal into the MindWar.”

  6. THE CALL OF DUTY

  AS SOON AS Rick came through the door of his house, his mother was there hurrying down the hall to meet him in the foyer.

  “Where did you get to? You’ve been gone for hours! You didn’t answer your phone . . . I’ve been calling and calling you. I was worried.”

  Rick looked at the floor. He couldn’t meet her eyes. “Well . . . You said you wanted me to get some exercise . . .”

  When he did glance up, he saw an odd expression on his mom’s face. Her head was cocked to one side, and she was . . . well, she was practically studying him, studying his features. It felt as if she was trying to read his mind—as if she was reading it. After a moment, she nodded, as if she understood everything, as if she knew everything he was trying to hide.

  Rick felt embarrassed, exposed. He didn’t want to keep secrets from her, didn’t want to lie to her about Jonathan Mars and the MindWar Project and what they were asking him to do. But before Miss Ferris had sent him home in the green van, she had spoken to him very clearly:

  Don’t tell anyone about us. Whatever you do. Not your mother, not your brother, not your friends. Not for our sake—for theirs. Anyone who knows about MindWar could be in serious danger.

  He was tryi
ng to think of a way to answer his mother, something neutral he could say that wasn’t an outright lie, when Raider saved him charging down the stairs like he was some kind of miniature avalanche.

  “Hey, Rick! Did you take a walk? Did you get some exercise? You were gone a long time! I’ll bet you got a lot of exercise. That’ll make you stronger! I’ll bet you’ll be able to walk without the crutches really soon!”

  Rick seized on the excuse to look away from his mother. “Hey, punk! What’re you doing here? It’s Saturday. Don’t you have baseball or something?”

  “I’m done already. You were gone such a long time I already played and came back! That’s great you got so much exercise—isn’t it, Mom?”

  Mom put her hand on the kid’s shoulder, but she kept her eyes on Rick. The knowledge in her gaze made Rick uncomfortable.

  “Sure,” she said carefully. “Sure, it’s great, Raider.”

  “Well . . . ,” Rick muttered. He needed to get away, get out from under his mother’s scrutiny. He worked his crutches and swung down the hall to his room.

  Raider came after him, scurrying along at his heels like a puppy.

  “You gonna play video games, Rick? Can I watch? I won’t say anything! I just like to see it . . .”

  The anger, frustration, and confusion of the day welled up in Rick. He stopped suddenly in the hallway so that Raider went tumbling past him. He pinned the kid with a stare and was about to unleash all the fury he hadn’t been able to unleash on Jonathan Mars.

  Would you be quiet for one lousy second? Would you leave me alone? I can hardly think with you chattering at me all the time! Stop acting like I’m your hero! Can’t you see I’m not anybody’s hero anymore? I can’t even walk!

  The words were in his throat, on his tongue, but he saw Raider’s eager face, and he bit them back. He didn’t have the heart to smash the kid’s spirits. Instead, he just barely managed a smile and said, “Later, kid, okay? I gotta get some rest. After all that exercise, you know?”