Serafina and the Virtual Man

CHAPTER, that was all. The basics were still, surely, the same.

Dale bounded up the stairs, pleased by his own fitness, and breezed into his study, barely pausing to close the door against the prying eyes of the housekeeper who would inevitably clean up here, before keying in the code to the lab. She hadn’t been here already because the curtains were still closed. He didn’t pause to do it himself but strode into the lab, punching the Close button with the heel of his hand.

He surged through the trigger point, calling out, “Adam? It’s all going great! We’ve almost caught up f—”

He broke off and stopped dead in his tracks. “What the…?” He was back downstairs, in his sitting room. Disoriented to the point of dizziness, he dimly realised two other things. It wasn’t daylight, but nighttime, for the spotlights were casting their atmospheric glow. And Adam was sprawled on one of the sofas, gazing up at him. He still looked tired, but now he was clean-shaven and wearing not the worn old jeans and T-shirt of before, but chinos and a dark, open-necked shirt that Dale vividly remembered.

Petra sat on the other sofa, twisting her gin and tonic in her fingers.

Shit, was I dreaming and never got up? Or… F*ck, did the last five months never happen? Oh, please, God…

“So what do you really think?” Adam asked.

Dale’s knees almost buckled. Those were the words Adam had said to him the night he’d died, the night after showing him the new system, after they’d played with it a bit and then had dinner with Petra and retired to the sitting room. Dale had been blown away by Adam’s new toy, which was far more than he’d ever expected. Adam had always shown flashes of brilliance, but this new system was pure genius…

I did dream all that came after that? Thank Christ, thank Christ… Only what do I say? What did I say then?

“I think you’re fishing for compliments,” Dale said huskily. “And for once in your life, you deserve them. You know you do.” That was it, word for word. This is weird… But better. Surely much, much better…

Adam grinned. “Who’s the genius?”

“You’re the f*cking genius.” Dale threw a cushion at him, and he caught it with his usual deftness.

For an instant, just like he remembered, as Adam’s smile faded, there was a hint of uncertainty in his dark eyes. “This could be really big, couldn’t it?”

“Shit, Adam, this is really big. Even better than I’d imagined from what you told me. We are so set up for life.”

And this time, this time, Adam would keep his life too. F*ck St. Tropez and Florida. They could wait a couple of years. He wanted to wait a couple of years.

“That’s what I thought,” Adam said with engaging relief. “I’ve been too close to it, too involved to get things in proper focus. Sorry,” he added, reaching for his beer, “I haven’t been doing my share of the day-to-day stuff. I never mean to dump on you, but I know I do.”

Dale shook his head mutely, for panic was galloping through him. How much of the past was real? Which parts were dream, which reality?

Reality! Shit, am I in virtual reality? I just walked through the trigger—of course I f*cking am!

“Adam,” he said hoarsely, just as the curtain flapped and the wild figure of James Killearn charged across the room, wielding his machete. Petra screamed; Dale staggered backward in spite of himself, and Adam leapt to his feet, just as he’d done when it had really happened.

What’s going on? Why is he doing this? Is this his punishment, making me relive it?

“Arse!” he shouted. “You think I want to live through it all again? You think I won’t just wish myself out of this?”

Adam, rolling on the floor in a deadly struggle with the brutal Killearn, actually laughed. That was the only thing he hadn’t done the night this had actually happened. “Make it different, then,” he gasped, hanging on to Killearn’s wrist and bashing his hand repeatedly on the hearth. “Show me what happened, or what you wish had happened. Choose and play, you bastard.”

In spite of everything, the challenge spoke to the gamer in him, stopped him leaving instantly. And then he couldn’t take his eyes off the struggling men, looking for faults in Adam’s memory of events. It looked pretty much as it was. Then he scanned the room, because if he was going to play, it had to be right. Then he could make different choices, and even if it made no difference to the outcome in reality, at least Adam would know he’d make it right if he could.

Adam? This weird, digital spirit of Adam, whatever it was. Christ, this is doing my head in… Don’t think, just play.

His hunting rifle lay on top of the drinks cabinet. That was wrong. Wrong gun, wrong place. He couldn’t change the gun, but he could put it closer to where it was meant to be. Picking it up, he walked around the struggling bodies on the floor toward the empty sofa where the still figure of Petra sat. She didn’t bat an eyelid as he pushed it down the cushions behind her. But then it wasn’t Petra, it was Adam’s program of Petra, and he’d obviously had no idea what she’d been doing after the fight began. Good. This could be changed with ease…

So why was he so terrified of the outcome? Because even after everything that had happened, he wanted Adam’s approval, Adam’s forgiveness?

Then why was he as afraid of Adam killing Killearn as of the other way around? He couldn’t help it; he just was.

Because that was how he’d felt the first time, the night this had really happened. The VR machine knew what he knew and was casting his own memory in his way. Adam had known it would. That was why he’d done this. F*ck, not so easy after all…

He found he was clutching his head, circling the fighters much as he’d done on the night in question, only now for rather different reasons. Back then, he’d been paralysed by the knowledge of who’d brought James Killearn into his home. He’d read it in her calm face.

****



Jack emerged from under the desk in Dale’s outer study and shook himself. It was as well the desk was large, since it had had to hide both himself and Blair.

“Better stay there just now,” Jack warned the vampire and walked out the study into the gallery.

Jilly should really be doing this part, he thought ruefully, but she’d refused point-blank to leave Adam and insisted on recording everything herself from behind the virtual sitting room sofa.

What did he do? Walk up to her bedroom door and knock? Mrs. Ewan? Your husband is asking for you in his office. That might work. He certainly didn’t want to go in there and carry her sleeping person from her bed to the scene unfolding in the lab.

Although Jilly had seemed to think this the best possible outcome. “She’ll wake into the world and assume it’s real,” she’d said with considerable satisfaction.

“Well, you do it, then,” Jack had said flatly, and she’d backed down, since she couldn’t actually force him to do it her way.

In the end, it was taken out of both their hands. As he walked along the gallery to the Ewans’ bedroom, the door of it opened and Petra emerged in a long, fluffy white robe. Wearing no makeup, she looked a little older than the virtual-reality Petra Adam had shown him, but she was still undeniably beautiful and walked with the kind of sexy elegance that would make any man weak at the knees. Jack, however, being a realist, suspected his own shaking limbs had more to do with his mission than his libido.

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 f*cking 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 f*ck, 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!

“F*ck 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.