Serafina and the Virtual Man

CHAPTER Fifteen



Dale stared at him, slack-jawed, as if mesmerised. Behind Dale, a computer monitor showed the open chat program with JK’s messages. Adam must have switched it on subconsciously when he sensed the contact, but he couldn’t really have done her a worse disservice. If Dale knew they’d been in touch…

“You,” Dale said hoarsely. “Is that really you? Adam?”

“Weird, isn’t it?” Adam agreed, far more nonchalantly than he felt.

“Is it…are you just the VR program from the database?”

“Just?”

A reluctant smile flickered across his old friend’s face. “All right, you’re good. You’re a f*cking genius, we all know that.”

“So how’s it going? All ready for the launch?”

“Got a few issues. We miss you, to be honest.”

“Don’t like to be mean, Dale, but you should have thought of that when you were watching that psycho try to rip my heart out with a machete.”

Dale’s eyes widened. He swallowed, as well he might. “You remember that? How can you? Your database file dates from well before that.”

“All things are possible,” Adam drawled.

Dale, perhaps thinking of the poltergeist which Sera had, presumably, dispatched, nodded thoughtfully. But his eyes were sharp. “What else do you remember?”

“I remember strangling the psycho with his own medallion. I remember killing him, and then I remember being shot.”

“Would you believe we had burglars as well as the psycho that night?”

“Funnily enough, I would.”

Dale’s lips formed into an unhappy twist. But his eyes were veiled. Why had he never realised before that Dale hid so much? They’d been friends and partners for so long, it had never entered Adam’s head to distrust him, to even imagine any kind of betrayal. Even after their lives had drifted apart, Adam would have done anything for Dale, and not just because they shared their baby, Genesis Gaming.

It felt like a sharp claw around his heart.

“And now,” Dale said, “you can actually control your own VR program? It really was you who contacted me the other night?”

Adam quirked his lips. “Fancy a pint?”

“F*ck, you know I do.” Dale’s voice cracked as if he was genuinely upset. Or perhaps just worried. “But I can’t take this, Adam. You wouldn’t believe what we’ve just had to do to get rid of the bastard you killed. How can we cope with you living in the VR machine?”

“Might make your demos more exciting,” Adam observed. Placing his palms behind him on the bench, he lifted himself into a sitting position and regarded his old friend and partner steadily while his brain whirled and tried to find a way to prevent Dale simply switching him off.

A breath of laughter hissed between Dale’s teeth. More like the old Dale. “It would certainly get us attention. I’d do it too, as a tribute to you, if I thought you’d behave.”

Gently, Adam reached into himself into the network and sent the betraying monitor with JK’s messages to sleep. Turning the whole computer off would cause too much electronic activity that would just attract Dale’s attention. By whatever fortune, Dale seemed to have caught sight of him before he could see the computer.

“I might, for the sake of the new system. What’s your problem with it anyway?”

As if involuntarily, Dale took a step nearer him. “Getting it all to work together. Individually, all the parts work wonderfully. Stick it all together and it throws out the sort of glitches you wouldn’t believe.”

“Not surprised. None of the guys know what the others are doing.”

Dale’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been checking up.”

Adam spread his hands. “Hey, I’m only human. It’s my baby too.” Except Dale had stolen it from him, but neither of them brought that up. Adam swung his legs, saw Dale’s fascinated gaze follow the motion. “I can fix it up for you,” he said casually.

Dale’s gaze flew back up to his face. “You’d do that?”

“Sure, a few e-mails, a few instructions, and it’ll all be hunky-dory in a week. Or two. Gives you time to train a few guys in demonstrating the finer points of the game before launch day.”

Which would guarantee Adam two more weeks, at least. In which time, maybe he could come up with another extension plan. Or he’d at least have made JK safe…which kind of involved putting his old partner behind bars.

Dale’s mouth curved into a smile. There was regret there as well as a flare of hope in his eyes. Ever the opportunist, Dale would even use help he feared and distrusted. “Almost like old times,” he said wistfully.

“Almost,” Adam agreed.

****



By lunchtime, Jilly had discovered the record of Genesis Adam’s cremation in Sydney, spoken to the minister who’d performed the private ceremony, and located the phone number of the apparently solitary mourner, whose name, according to the minister, was Kat Francis.

Jilly called her too and gave the same spiel. “Hello, Ms. Francis? My name’s Jill Kerr, I’m a freelance technical journalist researching a feature on Genesis Adam. I understand you were a friend of his and wondered if you could spare me a few minutes.”

“Oh dear, no, I don’t think I want to talk to the press!” The accent was interesting. English with a definite Australian intonation.

“Don’t worry, Ms. Francis, it’s not that kind of article,” Jilly assured her. “It’s concentrating on his technical achievements and how his work changed the world of gaming and computers in general. Can I ask how you knew him?”

“Um, we were students together,” the woman said, flustered. “We went out together for a couple of months in our first year, stayed friends after that.”

Jilly asked a few more questions about his early signs of genius as a student, listened patiently to the answers, and then asked what she really wanted to know. “Did you find it odd to be the only person at the funeral of such a brilliant man?”

“Well, I would have done if I hadn’t known the circumstances.”

“Which were…?” Jilly prompted.

“Well, how he’d died over here, without any of his friends. Everything was handled by lawyers over here, representing his lawyers over there. And Dale didn’t want a media circus.”

Of course he didn’t. Some enterprising journalist might have dug up the fact that Adam had never left Scotland.

“So the funeral was never announced. Via the lawyers, Dale just organised a quiet, dignified cremation. I think it’s what Adam would’ve wanted.”

“So how did you hear about it? Did Adam contact you after he came to Australia?” That would be an interesting one, casting doubt on all Jilly’s theories.

“No, he didn’t,” Kat said, regretfully. “I only wish he had, but we’d lost touch after uni. He probably didn’t even know I’d come over here and got married. It was Dale who contacted me after Adam’s death, to ask me to go to the funeral. He said it bothered him that none of us would see him off, as it were. I agreed, so I went for all of us.”

She said it with considerable pride, and yet Dale had only sent her as a witness to the burial. Jilly was sure of that.

“Thanks,” Jilly said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“Hey, you won’t quote me, will you?” Kat said uneasily. “I had to hide from my husband that I went to the funeral. He’s a bit jealous of my past boyfriends.”

“I won’t publish your name,” Jilly said with perfect honesty. Though she didn’t promise not to pass it on to Alex McGowan when the time was right.

Putting down the phone, she suddenly saw her computer screen and stared at it, paralysed for several moments.

JK: Have you really gone for good?

Exodus is online

Exodus: I’m back for now. Everything ok?

JK: I think the poltergeist switched you off. It was hurling things at the computer before Sera blasted it, but it took me a while to realise it. I thought you’d gone with the poltergeist.

Exodus: Nah. Went to sleep for a bit, then I felt you summoning me, and when I came back, Dale was there.

JK: Shit. Did he see you?

Exodus: Sure. We had an interesting chat. I’m going to help him with the launch.

JK: That’s so bizarre.

Exodus: He needs me, so he’ll keep me switched onto the lab computer.

JK: I’ve got no excuse to go there anymore. The poltergeist is gone. They won’t summon us to exorcise you.

There was a pause, then:

Exodus: I think that’s as well. Dale mustn’t know you’re helping me, or you won’t be safe.

JK: It wasn’t Dale.

Exodus: ?

JK: Sera knows when people are lying. She asked them outright and they denied it. With such a clear-cut question, she’s one hundred percent right. Dale and Petra didn’t kill you.

Another pause.

Exodus: I want to hear that too much. Was it your brothers, then?

JK: I really don’t think so. Can yet another person have been in the house?

Exodus: Maybe. It doesn’t make any sense.

JK: Maybe it will when I’ve traced all the rumours about you and the false documents about your death.

He didn’t reply to that. Elspeth was talking on the phone in gentle tones of understanding and sympathy. On the other side of the room, Jack had his feet up on the desk, reading a book.

JK: Did we win?

Exodus: Of course we did. Got half the Chicago gangster population either dead or in prison, including your slimy and jealous lover. Next up is Capone himself.

JK: Shoot the bastard for me.

Exodus: Maybe you can come and shoot him yourself, once this is fixed.

JK: I’d like that.

Exodus: Sorry we didn’t reach the finale.

JK: What finale?

Exodus: You and me on the lab bench.

Jilly’s whole body flooded with heat. Would he see that through her webcam?

JK: You’re pretty insatiable for a dead man.

Exodus: [Emoticon with lecherous eyebrows]

Jilly glanced around the office again to make sure no one was paying her any attention.

JK: Maybe we’ll get to that too.

Exodus: I’ll look forward to that most of all.

****



Jilly cooked her dinner with the chat program on the laptop in the kitchen, while she and Adam shared some of their favourite music with each other. It was almost like having someone round for dinner, except she ate it alone as usual, in front of the computer, and the subject under discussion was the location of her guest’s body.

JK: Surely they wouldn’t have buried TWO bodies in their garden.

Exodus: It’s a big garden. Though not as big as the fields and woodland beyond.

JK: Shite. They wouldn’t have buried you out there, would they? It’s quiet, but I can’t imagine they’d risk being seen by a stray farmer or dog walker.

Exodus: Then you’re left with inside the house. Under it, maybe.

JK: Let’s look at the plans.

There was a wine cellar that Adam knew about—an unlikely place to stash dead bodies—with a lot of unopened space beyond.

JK: Is Dale handy with DIY building work? Because it’s not the sort of thing he’d want to pay labourers to do.

Exodus: Never known him get his hands dirty.

JK: Well, that’s another thing. Who would he get his hands this dirty for? If he didn’t kill you, why go to all this trouble to hide the body? Your body and Killearn’s. To say nothing of the elaborate trail to make you “die” on the other side of the world.

There was a pause. It seemed to go on a long time.

Exodus: Petra. Only Petra.

JK: Who didn’t kill you either… Is he really that devoted to her?

Exodus: You find that hard to believe?

JK: Well, she’s beautiful, just…lightweight.

Exodus: I wouldn’t say that. There’s more to her than meets the eye.

JK allowed that to be possible. Just because Petra had discounted her when they first met was no reason to regard her as a negligible human being. She hated when people did that to her, as they did all too often, because of the way she looked. Or perhaps the way she made herself look.

JK: Roxy said

The door buzzer interrupted. Jilly slid her hands off the keys in mid-sentence and went to see who was there.

“It’s Alex McGowan. Sera said you had something for me.”

“Come up,” Jilly invited and released the door catch. “Never off duty, are you?” she remarked as he clumped his way up the stairs.

“Nope. What have you got?”

“We think Genesis Adam’s death in Australia was faked. We think he died the same night as Killearn. Tea? Coffee?”

“Coffee, please. Got any evidence?”

While she made coffee, Jilly outlined what she had already, then went to the laptop, hastily minimizing her conversation with Adam—Alex had come a long way, but asking him to believe she was talking to a dead man via Internet chat was probably a step too far. Then she sat him down in the living room and showed him the photograph of Adam, which purported to show his descent into addiction. Then she let him read the e-mails she’d received from Roxy and some of Adam’s other friends.

“That’s not really evidence,” McGowan observed.

“True, but look at what I can’t find: a rehab booking, a plane ticket, any communication from him at all after August, except by third party. I can’t even find any trace of the doctor who signed the death certificate. No one else seems to have seen the body, except a neighbour who identified it and no longer lives in Sydney. I can’t find him anywhere. The police might have better luck, of course.”

McGowan stared at her for a long time. “This is high profile, Jilly. I could get my arse kicked from here to the Outer Hebrides.”

“It’s nice there,” Jilly cajoled. “Quiet. Plus think of the kudos if you crack this.”

“Aye, just think. I’ll be the man who sent Genesis Gaming down the tubes. One partner dead, murdered by the other.”

“Sera doesn’t think Ewan did it.”

“Then who the hell did?”

“Beats me. That’s what the boys in blue are for.” She regarded his smart, muted jacket and trousers. “Or at least the boys in grey with white shirts and red ties.”

He reached up and gave the tie an uncomfortable tug. Then he sighed. “Okay, I’ll look into it. Unofficially for now. I can call it tying up loose ends in the Killearn case.”

“Thanks, Alex.”

He laid down his coffee mug and stood up, glancing out of her darkened window at the park beyond. “All quiet these days?”

“No more fights, sorcery, or undead disturbances,” she assured him.

When he’d gone, she flopped back onto her favourite cushion in front of the laptop and found a new message from Adam.

Exodus: Sorcery? Undead disturbances?

JK: You wouldn’t believe what went on last autumn. A sorcerer tried to take over the world—or at least this country—by putting vampires in key banking positions. We saved the world in a huge fight in the park, just outside my window.

Exodus: We?

JK: Serafina’s. I won’t tell you my part in it, not online.

Exodus: Sometimes I don’t know when you’re kidding.

JK: Trust me, weird stuff happens around Serafina’s. Why do you think I bought into you so easily?

Exodus: I haven’t bought into “me.” What does Sera think’ll happen if and when we get to the bottom of all this? Will that be my cue to take off to the big computer game in the sky?

JK: I don’t know. Spirits have to move on. She says.

And yet, why should they? Why couldn’t he stay in the VR? Why couldn’t she?

JK: You should talk to Sera. She’s been trying to reach you.

Exodus: Here I am. Send me her chat ID.

JK: I’m serious. Sera talks to the dead all the time. There’s pretty much no spirit she can’t reach. If you hear her, feel her, however it works, please talk to her.

There was a pause before he typed “Okay.” She supposed it was a hard thing for him to deal with, even in his current impossible position. Old scepticism died hard.

****



Jilly was just about to climb into bed when, on impulse, she reached for her phone and texted Sera to ask if she’d tried to reach Adam again.

The message came back almost immediately. “Several times. No joy yet.”

Jilly texted back a thanks and got into bed. Why couldn’t Sera reach Adam? She had every possible connection to him, and yet the only time she’d been able to speak to him was in the VR machine, just like Jilly.

In the past, the only spirits Sera hadn’t been able to reach had been those closest to her, the ones she couldn’t shake her own quite unreasonable guilt over—her mother, her beloved foster parents. Hell, she could even talk to the undead, like Blair, when no one else could.

So what could that mean?

One: that Sera was somehow responsible for Adam’s death. No.

Two: that the VR machine somehow shut off normal spiritual communication? Possible, though God knew how that might work.

Three: that he wasn’t actually dead. After being stabbed and shot?

Jilly sat up in bed slowly, hugging her knees under her chin. Sera couldn’t feel his death or speak to him as a spirit. His only death certificate was almost certainly a fake. Dale and Petra hadn’t killed him, according to Sera’s infallible lie detector. They couldn’t have killed him if he wasn’t dead. And if Andy and George had done it, no way would it have been covered up as it had.

She pressed her cheek so hard into her knee that it hurt. She wanted this too much. She was making up convoluted reasons for him to be still alive. All she had was a computer program that learned. Wasn’t it just as likely that was all he was, without any spirit for Sera to reach?

She wanted him to be more because she’d had virtual reality sex with him. Because she’d liked it so much, liked him so much. But the harsh reality was, she was a lonely, damaged woman, a sexually frustrated woman who’d wanted sex without it hurting her. She’d craved an imaginary lover. He’d even told her the system was largely operated by the player’s thoughts and desires. And she’d got what she wanted, only now she wanted it to be more; she wanted him to be there all the time, when in reality, he’d never been there at all.

She threw herself back down on the pillow.

Or he wasn’t dead. Dale and Petra were hiding something, of that she’d always been certain. But hiding what? That they’d hired someone to kill Adam? Or that he’d never died at all? Hell, maybe they’d just forged his will.

F*ck, where was he? Dead or alive, where was his body? Somewhere in that damned, ugly house, she’d lay money on it.

If she had any.