Serafina and the Virtual Man

CHAPTER Seven



Jilly’s heart raced. She hadn’t hesitated to obey Exodus’s instructions, yet now that the door stood open, she had to force herself to go in.

Empty room full of exciting technology?

Or him?

The room was dark as before; light from the outer office penetrated only the first few feet of the lab. Beyond, everything looked shadowed, mysterious.

She gripped the laptop tighter and stepped inside, every sense on high alert. She couldn’t hear anyone moving or even breathing. The room smelled sterile, as if no one had been there since it was last cleaned. And yet the hairs on the back of her neck stood up in awareness. Like Sera’s in the presence of spirits.

I am not psychic. I am so not psychic.

She moved farther in, eyes darting to every corner of the room. And then, just as suddenly as the last time, the lights came on, and she was blinded by the dazzling green glow that zapped into her and seemed to consume her. At least it finished its scan—or whatever it was doing—faster than before.

Breathing deeply, she opened her eyes and saw him sitting by one of the computers watching her.

He slouched in his chair, untidy, unshaven, every bit as carelessly attractive as she remembered. And terrifyingly real.

Was this how Sera saw ghosts?

His lips quirked into a rueful smile, and he stood, walking toward her. She followed every move with fascination, the faint swing of arms and hips, the play of sinew along his wrist and hand as he held it out to her. Solid. Real.

“JK. I’m glad you came back.”

He’d touched her before, without permission, the faintest brush of his fingertips against her skin, and she’d liked it. Or, at least, looking back on it defensively, she hadn’t minded. It had been so quick and unthreatening. But this, this hand held out to her, loomed huge in her mind because of what she’d learned since the first time, since the first visit, not just about what he was, but who he’d been.

She stared at his hand. It was big enough, but hardly huge in this reality. The fingers were long, his nails cut short but not professionally manicured. A capable, efficient hand that she shouldn’t be able to touch.

Slowly, she set down the laptop on the nearest desk and lifted her hand to touch his fingers. They curled around hers, warm and solid, and she gasped and clung to them for support.

“You’d better not be taking the piss out of me,” she got out, and his eyes narrowed in sudden laughter, the skin crinkling around the corners. He had a good, silent laugh, an excellent match for the mere smile she’d glimpsed before.

“It’s just technology,” he said, as if he knew exactly how to soothe her. “Virtual reality. No headset, no goggles, no gloves. When you touch the sensor just past that first computer, it sets off the machine over there”—he pointed toward the dental drill-shaped things above the two benches—”which scans your brain and the rest of you and plugs you in so that others in the game can see you, and you feel with your whole body.”

“F*ck,” Jilly said in wonder, gazing from the machine back to him and their joined hands. “But it’s real. You feel real. You look real.”

“So do you.” His finger moved on the skin between her thumb and forefinger, sending tiny thrills down her nerves. It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. She turned his hand, pushing her fingers against his to open them, which he did at once, and she could study the lines of his palm and trace them with one finger.

His breath caught, and he curled his fingers back around hers. “You’re tickling.”

“Sorry.” She pulled free, only half as embarrassed as she should have been. “This is just so incredible. This is your new system? No wonder Ewan’s keeping it under wraps. It’s not just revolutionary, it’s mind-blowing. How’d you do it? How can it get so far into your brain without even wires?”

“A combination of very new techniques from both neurosurgery and VR.”

Jilly wandered across to the benches, touching the unknown equipment with reverence. “You’re a neurosurgeon too? Somehow the papers missed that.”

“Not me. We have a friend, a doctor, who helps with that side of things. Gives me what I need and even tests it for safety.”

She glanced back over her shoulder. “And he passed it, right?”

“Right.”

She frowned. “It’s clever,” she allowed. “F*cking clever. But I don’t get this room. Why put such fabulous technology in such a shite virtual environment?”

He grinned. “The environment’s still real. We haven’t programmed it to anything else yet. Where would you like to go?”

She felt her eyes widen. “Where have you got?” she asked breathlessly.

“Hmm, prohibition-era Chicago? We can go gangster shooting and take on the mob. Or 1940s occupied Paris. Or there’s a half-finished futuristic with some magnificent aliens.” He considered her, leaning his head to one side. “I can see you in Paris, all chic and secretive.”

For some reason, a flush rose through her body to her face. She hoped her makeup hid it. He only quirked his expressive lips and turned to the computer he’d just left. His fingers flew across the keys.

“The computers,” she said, frowning. “Real or virtual?”

“Real. Well, both, I suppose, since our virtual forms can operate them.” He glanced up at her over his shoulder. “One thing you have to bear in mind. The game is an environment. A blank canvas with only the most basic of plots. You control the events by your thoughts and desires, and when you want to leave, you do. But that’s the tricky part. You have to really want to leave not just the scene you’re in but the entire game, otherwise it doesn’t work. That bit takes practice, so you’d better just tell me. Which means you’ll have to stay with me at all times. There should be a safety cutout on a time mechanism, plus a distress sensor, but they weren’t properly operational when I made this stuff, and I don’t know how far along Dale’s got with it.”

“Not very, if you’ve been here for two days,” she observed and was instantly sorry when his expression clouded. His eyelids swept down, and he turned back to the computer.

He had long, dark eyelashes that looked oddly appealing against his pale skin. “That’s different. I’ve got nowhere else to go. OK, Paris, 1942. Ready?”

“What do I do?” she asked, suddenly panicking.

“Nothing.” He straightened and came toward her. “Take my hand.”

She did, clinging to it like a lifeline as the world changed dizzyingly around her.

****



The force of the vision dropped Sera to her knees. A man’s terrified face stared up at her, contorted because someone else was ruthlessly squeezing the air out of his windpipe. Crackling flames loud in her ears, the glow of fire close to the dying man’s head. A log fire.

It vanished as quickly as it had come, and Sera knelt, panting on the hard hearth of the Ewans’ sitting room.

F*ck.

A man had died here, deliberately murdered. And it was on this spot at the hearth. Touching it with her foot had brought the vision; falling to her hands and knees had intensified it for the instant it lasted.

Sera rose shakily to her feet. Violent visions never got easier to bear, but she had a job to do.

“Well,” she muttered, gazing around her. “No wonder you’re pissed off. Someone killed you, right here. Tell me all about it.”

She stood by the hearth where he’d died and closed her eyes, concentrating on her memory of the vision, of the dying man—youngish, wild-eyed, unkempt brown hair. Presumably Genesis Adam, although she tried to avoid thinking the name, just held on to the feel of the vision, to the cool fringes that hung in the air like the echo of the angry spirit, and called to it.

Without warning, a gust of air hurled her hair back from her face. She had to hold on to the mantelpiece to avoid staggering backward.

“Be easy,” Sera told it, sending calming, soothing vibes. “I’ll find who did this to you. I’ll make sure he’s punished. It’s not your concern now. I’ll do it.”

Something moved above her head. She only just managed to leap out of the way as the framed original art crashed to the floor where she’d been standing.

No wonder there was no “stuff” in the house. The bloody poltergeist kept trashing it.

“You have to go,” she said firmly and began imposing herself upon it, pressing into its essence, forcing it apart.

Then the door crashed shut, and her mind was left clutching nothing.

She might have imagined it had gone, except she could hear doors banging all over the house.

“Stand still, you bloody awkward…” No, no point, in being angry with it. It would bury her. Taking a deep breath, she followed it.

****



Jilly dangled over the side of a bridge, which she clutched with both hands. Below her, in the almost pitch darkness, stood Adam, ready, she hoped, to catch her. It was a long way to fall. She dropped straight into his arms.

He grunted with the force but didn’t stagger or drop her. Instead, he let her slide down his hard body until her feet touched the ground. There was no time for confusion or embarrassment. Already she could hear the voices of the German foot patrol pursuing them, and they had dogs with them.

Hand in hand with Adam, she stumbled back along the muddy bank of the River Seine until they were completely under the bridge, their backs against the stone wall. She tried not to breathe. Beside her, Adam’s chest rose and fell evenly. In the deeper darkness beneath the bridge, she couldn’t even see his face, although his teeth gleamed briefly in a quick smile.

This was amazing. Not only did she have a cool and savvy partner actually in the game with her, the surroundings, the actions were so real that her heart pounded and adrenaline flooded her, almost as if she really was helping Adam sabotage a bridge while avoiding capture by Nazi soldiers. She hadn’t had so much fun in…well, ever. Even when she and Sera had stolen that car from under police noses when they were sixteen, she hadn’t felt this kind of glowing exhilaration.

The German soldiers and their dogs ran over the bridge, talking excitedly. One of the dogs barked but presumably only out of general high spirits, because the footsteps didn’t pause, just kept running overhead and onward.

Jilly counted to ten, then breathed a sigh of relief.

“They’ll be back,” Adam warned.

“So we have to blow up the bridge before they do.”

“You want to waste your explosives on this little bridge?”

“No, I want to force them to bring the new guns over the bigger bridge instead, and blow up more of them at one time.”

“I like the way you’re thinking. But we’ll need more explosives.”

“Fine,” Jilly said, getting the battery torch from her coat pocket and switching it on. “Pass the book.”

“What book?”

“There’s always a book,” Jilly said impatiently, patting the chest of his trench coat until she found the hardness of a book in his inside pocket. “And it generally makes all the difference between completing a mission and not. I’ve played enough of your games to know that. How much explosive do we need to blow this bridge? We shouldn’t waste any.”

In her torch beam, Adam grinned, and took a dog-eared book from his inside pocket. In the game, he was clean-shaven and his hair was shorter and tidier under the dark trilby hat. He looked both handsome and mysterious in the shadows.

“Yep, you can save some,” he said admiringly. “Come on, they could be back any moment.”

Adam, it seemed, was a gentleman. While he dangled upside down laying wires and explosives under the middle section of the bridge, Jilly much more daintily laid the charges at either end, from the relative safety of the river bank. Which gave her time to pick up his discarded coat and hold her torch steady for him as he worked. Her gaze tended to slide away from the explosive to the rippling muscles of his arms and shoulders.

Then he swung himself up beside her on the bridge, breathing deeply and they ran together to the far side, Adam letting out wire from the reel as he went. They climbed down the river bank again, stumbled as many yards as they could before the wire ran out, then lay flat on the ground.

“Stick your fingers in your ears,” Adam said. Then he pushed down the lever and flung his arm across her head and shoulders.

Jilly heard her heart beat once, and then the world exploded in the loudest noise she’d ever heard in her life. Adam’s arm tightened briefly. A scattering of light debris fell along the length of her body, but it felt like little more than dust.

“All right?” Adam asked.

Jilly tried to nod. She could barely hear.

He leapt to his feet, drawing her with him, and they ran again, stumbling away from the scene before the soldiers or police could get there.

“Okay, so that was bloody real,” Jilly gasped with approval. They slowed and turned to look at the bridge in the distance. Or at least what was left of it.

“Ace sabotage,” Adam said with satisfaction. He licked his lips. “Could murder a pint.”

“Hey, you’re in France.”

“A pint of wine—or even Cognac—is equally acceptable. We can report to our Resistance contact at the café.”

“How far? Do you have the map?”

“I remember the way, and not very.”

“Good.” Jilly was all set for the next step of the game, which was great fun in Adam’s company. It wasn’t just playing either—it was living.

But with the realization came a short blast of reality. She remembered who and what he was and what she was really here for. To say nothing of Sera taking on the poltergeist single-handed.

“Wait, though,” she said uneasily, “I don’t think I’ve got time—”

“Time goes faster here,” he reminded her. “It goes at the speed of your thoughts and mine, not of actual reality.”

She stared at him. “Then how do I know how long I’ve been here?”

“Your phone’s in your pocket, isn’t it?”

“In my real pocket,” she corrected, feeling inside her 1940s raincoat. Her hand closed around the comforting shape of her phone and dragged it out triumphantly.

“It comes with you,” Adam explained. “And since it’s hardly a 1940s thing, all its displays will be of actual times and events, not our VR.”

Jilly stopped and blinked at the phone screen. “According to this, we’ve only been here for about ten minutes!”

He took her free hand and swung it high into the air as they walked on. “See? We’re fast thinkers, you and me.”

****



The poltergeist clearly didn’t want to be sent away, and it was damned if it would stay still for long enough to let Sera disperse it against its will. She chased it around the house for nearly half an hour before she admitted she was wasting her time. She needed to corral the bastard somehow.

Dissatisfied, she slid her back down the nearest wall until she was sitting on the floor. Now what? she thought, dragging her hand through her short, spiky hair and taking stock. She was in a small, narrow corridor leading from the utility room to the back door. Like the rest of the house, it was spotless.

Or was it? Were those not muddy tracks along the tiles? She frowned and blinked, and the marks disappeared. Either her eyes were playing tricks or the present scene was overlaid with a past vision. Drawing in her breath, Sera opened herself.

Muddy tracks, made by the heels of shoes being dragged along the floor. They were attached to a man’s feet. And someone was dragging the man along the floor to the door.

Sera gasped, and the vision vanished before she could see either of the faces. She stumbled to her feet and lurched toward the back door, dragging her hand along the wall. Death surrounded her. Murder. Anger.

“You,” she whispered to the poltergeist. “It’s you, isn’t it? Oh God, I don’t want to do this…”

But she did it anyway. She always did. She wanted to call to Blair for help, lashed herself for thinking first of him and not of her earliest and longest ally, Jilly. It didn’t matter. Neither of them could help here.

She turned the key in the heavy door and stepped outside, still following death.

****



The pursuit and the sabotage might never have happened. War and occupation might never have been, for this part of Paris in spring 1942 seemed ridiculously serene. Sure, there were a few soldiers in German uniform in the café, two of them sitting at a table not far from Jilly and Adam, but the conversation surrounding her was civilised and jovial, and what she could see of the street outside the café window was quiet.

A man in the corner played soft, rhythmic piano music, and a few couples danced in the middle of the floor.

“I never imagined it like this,” Jilly observed. She had taken off her raincoat, beneath which she wore a figure-hugging cotton print dress. A tiny hat with a ribbon of the same print adorned her head. She’d found the hat in her coat pocket and looked at it quite carefully before she’d put it on under a corner streetlamp. “Shouldn’t we be surrounded by fear and tension?”

“We are. We’re just used to it and enjoying the lull.” Adam, his trilby on the table beside their wine, had put on a tie and unbuttoned his trench coat. He looked unexpectedly smart as well as handsome, although he still lounged untidily on his café chair and loosened his tie before raising his glass to her. “Salut.”

“Salut,” said Jilly, who’d done French at school. She clinked glasses with him and drank. Although wine wasn’t her usual tipple, she thought she could get used to it. There was something curiously beguiling about sitting in a Paris café drinking wine with him…having given the Nazis a successful kick in the pants and being about to make contact with their Resistance colleague, of course. Life didn’t get much more exciting than this. And it was stunningly real.

Unable to help herself, Jilly reached out and touched Adam’s coat sleeve. “Wow. It looks and feels exactly as if that’s what you’re wearing. And yet you’re in a T-shirt…”

He shrugged. “I’m in a box somewhere, six feet under. The T-shirt is just my default program from when the machine first scanned me.”

Jilly blinked. Stupidly, she felt as if her fondest illusion had been shattered. Although it had felt good, and strangely thrilling to be playing a game with him, she really wasn’t.

“Isn’t our contact late?” she said, just a shade desperately.

“Can’t say I mind,” Adam replied with a lazy smile. He leaned back even farther in his chair, as if he was about to put his feet up on the table.

Laughter caught at the back of her throat, and, as if he understood, his smile broadened.

Clearly rethinking his feet, he straightened. “Want to dance?”

Jilly laughed. “I can’t.”

“Me neither, but if we were around in the 1940s, I reckon we’d have been good at it.” He held out his hand like a challenge. “Come on, good for cover.”

What the hell. It was only a game.

Jilly laid her hand in his with pretended primness and rose to her feet with him. He swung her into his arms and onto the dance floor.

“See? How cool are we?”

“Cool?” she retorted. “You’re a walking anachronism.”

He grinned. “Dancing anachronism.”

She tried to draw her hand free to slap him, but he held on to it and spun her around to distract her.

“I don’t think this is a real 1940s dance,” she observed.

“Hey, it’s Paris. Anything goes.” He drew her a little closer, and the odd comfortableness which had been growing all night suddenly vanished. He was too close, too real, ironically enough, and she felt suddenly overwhelmed, not so much by his hold which remained light and unthreatening but by her own reaction to his nearness.

She recognised it as sexual desire. After all, she’d felt it before—usually just before a man turned into an arch wanker and killed it. She knew how to deal with it then. But this was a totally new situation. She was playing a game with someone who wasn’t even real. And he didn’t immediately say or do anything crass, just continued to dance with her, as if it was enough. As if he liked just holding her in his arms and moving to the music. As she did.

Oh f*ck…

“What sort of a name is Genesis anyway?” she blurted to avert her confusion. “You can’t really be called Genesis Adam.”

The breath of his laughter brushed her cheek, and she shivered. It was far from unpleasant.

“That’s what I said to my old mum,” Adam murmured. “In fact my dad may well have said the same thing. Never got the chance to ask him. I was supposed to be my mum’s new beginning, so she named me Genesis.”

She peered at him uncertainly. “Is that true?”

“That I was her new beginning? No, I was just a very short distraction. What about you, JK? You must have a real name.”

“It’s Jilly. Well, Jillian. But I like JK.”

“So do I,” he said.

She felt the involuntary contraction of her brow, just before a strange voice said in her ear, “Germans. Get out.”

She spun around, but Adam had heard it too and was already walking her casually toward the back of the café, his arm around her waist. “No wonder our contact was late,” Adam murmured, pushing through the doors to the kitchen. “She’s been caught and grassed us up.”

“Will we get away?” Jilly asked, making for the open door at the back through which she could make out a back alley. She couldn’t help wondering what it would feel like to be shot in this game.

“Haven’t the foggiest idea. Let’s try.”

The alley was quiet, although Jilly could hear German commands barked from the main street. Still with his arm around her, they hurried down the alley.

I like this game…

Jilly’s phone rang, the incongruous strains of the Proclaimers’ Five Hundred Miles blasting into 1940s Paris like a bucket of cold water.

Jilly stopped dead, her gaze flying to Adam’s. He didn’t drop his arm, just waited while she fished out her phone. It was Sera.

“What’s wrong?” Jilly demanded.

“I’ve found him, Jilly,” Sera’s voice said shakily. “I’ve found the body.”

Oh Jesus, oh f*ck, oh no…

“Where are you?” she managed. She couldn’t take her eyes off Adam’s face. Expressions surged behind his eyes—hope, fear, sadness, and, surely, irritation. Jilly’s pain felt physical, huge, seeping upward from her stomach to her heart. Behind her, all hell was breaking loose. The German soldiers had entered the café. More were rushing round the alley to the back door.

“In the garden. Through the back door at the utility room.”

“I’m coming,” Jilly said and broke the connection.

She dropped the phone back into her pocket and stared at Adam. “I need to go back.”

“I know.”

“Wait,” she said desperately, and his loosening arm stilled.

Sera had found the body. Adam’s eyes and her own head both told her this was very likely to be the end, that his ghost would vanish with the discovery of his body. Surely that was his only purpose in coming back, in contacting Jilly in the first place. To find out what had happened to him. And now they would know. And she’d never see him again.

“Adam, if this is it,” she whispered. “If it is…I’m so sorry I never knew you, so glad I did this. Adam…”

She reached up to him urgently, with what intention she didn’t stop to think, and, ignoring the soldiers rushing toward them, he tightened his arm around her, bent his head, and kissed her mouth.

Perhaps it was the soldiers, perhaps it was surprise or just the fact that it was all a game. But Jilly felt no need to knee Adam in the groin.

Rough in texture, soft in action, his lips took hers and parted them, and she let him. She even kissed him back, pressing up into his mouth with desperate fervour. He dragged her closer, and the growing hardness between his legs thrilled her. She opened her mouth wider, throwing both arms around his neck, and suddenly his tongue was in her mouth, stroking hers, and she finally understood what it was all about: sheer, shattering sexual desire.

She clung to him, lost in the pleasure of her aching nipples against his hard chest, of the pressure of his shaft at the juncture of her thighs, so dizzy with lust that she didn’t even notice when the German shouting stopped. She didn’t notice anything at all that wasn’t him until his mouth loosened on hers.

“Death has its charms,” he whispered against her lips. “Thank you, JK. It’s been fun.”

Her eyes flew open. They were back in Dale’s secret study, and Adam was letting her go. Her body felt cold, her mind numb.

Sera. I have to get to Sera.

She nodded, dumbly, grabbed up her laptop, and ran for the door, where she skidded to a halt and spun around. “I’m sorry, Adam,” she blurted.

But the room was empty. He’d gone.