Dream Walker (10 page)

Raze was called and the Project was initiated.

Lucky for the company, Mr. Parrish just happened to have a member of Demesne’s target demographic living in his home.

∞

Raze came back from his run, let himself in through the Qi in the front door, stripped off his sweat-soaked clothes and threw them at the bottom of the stairs.

“Blake Mix,” he said out loud.

The voice recognition system of the house began playing music from a playlist specifically created by Raze to remind him of Blake Parrish. Music was a basic tool for activating the brain centers, especially the lobes that housed memory and recognition. Even the common maggot used music as a gateway. A song on the radio could throw someone in a good mood into the depths of despair over the nostalgia of a lost love, or send someone with a bad case of the Mondays into a joyful butt dance during his morning commute.

Linking music associations to targets helped Raze tune in to them. It put him on their scent and got him in the mood for the hunt. To help him track Blake, Raze used a little Disturbed, mixed with some Hatebreed and Drowning Pool to touch base with the boy’s angry side, with just enough bubblegum boyband to hark back to his more innocent days of just a few months ago, when Raze and Blake met for the first time.

Raze grabbed some more water, another snack from the fridge, and took the stairs two at a time to the third floor, master bedroom suite.

“Tonic,” Raze commanded to the shower.

The shower responded by turning on all 18 heads and heating the water up to a lukewarm temperature. Raze stepped inside, allowing the shower to wash off the lather of his run, then relaxed as it ran through a programmed sequence that stimulated the six zones of his body. He drowned himself in the dropped D power chords and raw screams of Billy Talent and conjured up Blake in his mind.

He had his first peek of the lad right after receiving the assignment. Blake was just growing out of cute little boy and into awkward pre-teen: gangly, awkward, walking around with a constant boner, and a voice that broke somewhere in the middle of every sentence. He was ripe for the picking—in the sweet spot of pulling away from his parental influences without any established attachments to his peers, yet. The fragile seeds of angst and rebellion were just beginning to germinate, ready for Raze to cultivate.

It didn’t take any influence at all on Raze’s part to get Blake to pick up the game controls. Demesne was the most popular MMORPG on the market. Everyone in Blake’s age group was either playing it or talking about it. Just having it present in the house was enough to ensure Blake would get a hold of it.

Demesne itself handled a majority of the hard work. The game had just the right mix of attributes for creating addiction, especially in one who had a personality type such as Blake, a twelve-year-old with a razor-sharp intellect, accompanied by social interaction skills that left him a bit of an outcast. Loneliness and isolation had found inviting nooks and crannies to hide within the Blake’s subconscious. Raze understood this well. Viewing Blake was like gazing into a looking glass that reflected Raze’s own childhood. But time and society had not yet violated Blake to the point of hardening him or inspiring him to build up a wicked offense. That was Raze’s job.

In the unsupervised hours after school, before the parental authorities got home from the office, Demesne worked her magic, engaging Blake in role-play that allowed him to behave completely different from his normal self. Where Blake was completely powerless in his day-to-day life, Demesne gave him complete control of everything: weapons, equipment, armies, and people. Intense scenarios stimulated his adrenals and endorphins flooded his brain, sending him into euphoria.

But what snagged Blake, hook, line and sinker, was Raze himself. Raze befriended Blake in the game immediately. He took the little n00b under his wing, showed him the ropes, gave him inside tips, and kept him from getting pwned—leetspeak for being owned or totally dominated in the game by other players. Raze established the camaraderie that quickly brought all of Blake’s psychological defenses down.

When Blake wasn’t in the game, he crashed hard, a hangover of depression and irritability that could only be alleviated by playing. Blake literally itched and trembled through the insufferably long weekends when his parents were home.

When his family became concerned about the changes in Blake’s behavior and realized he had been playing the game, Scott Parrish changed all the passwords. And Raze helped Blake hack back in.

When his father locked the control visors in the gun safe, Raze just happened to have a pair of beta visors, that no one else in the world owned, which he sent to Blake surreptitiously.

Using the visor interface, Raze was able to shift Blake’s brainwave patterns, opening the portal in his mind that took him into Raze’s 4th dimensional space. Once there, Raze could fully influence Blake’s defenseless subconscious mind. Within two months, Raze had manipulated, tweaked and fine-tuned his protégé, slowly and methodically turning an innocent boy into an on-demand killing machine. A machine programmed to kill his own father.

The shower completed the relax sequence, chilling the water to a brisk invigorate mode. Raze was both relaxed and completely alert.

“Off,” he said, stepping out of the shower and toweling himself dry. He went into his closet to get dressed. While it was theoretically possible to work naked—no one was going to be able to see him—Raze liked to wear attire that made him feel professional. He selected a pair of black slacks and a form-fitting black turtleneck from his closet. He dressed, ran some gel through his jet-black hair and slapped a little of his favorite cologne on. He was ready.

Raze stood before the full-length mirror at the far wall of his room. A Qi panel inside the mirror scanned his energy field, then slid open, revealing a set of stairs that led down to the hidden second level of the warehouse. He stepped through the opening, the wall closed behind him, and he descended the staircase into the sterile environment of The Womb.

Raze opted for a remote influencing operation rather than dream seeding. It was actually easier to manipulate thoughts and influence people while they were still awake. Seeding took several astral visits to fully implant an idea. During sleep, Raze could seed an idea in a subject’s mind but then could only wait, and
hope
, the concept germinated enough before the subject woke up so that they would follow through with the implanted idea.

There were too many variables in seeding. If the subject was under the influence of alcohol or medication, or if they were not evolved enough to pull dream information up through the wavelengths into their subconscious mind, the seed could go latent or perish. Blake would surely be medicated, so Raze wasn’t going to waste his time trying to dream seed suicidal thoughts.

Remote influencing could work in one visit. Raze could turn the right screws that would make Blake believe that Raze’s thoughts were his own and get him to complete the assigned task.

Raze sat down in the recliner. He checked his energy on the monitor, happy to see that the run and shower had brought his brainwaves down to Alpha 14.

“Alpha 8.”

The stereo faded the Blake Mix into a soft, white noise. Raze leaned back into the chair, let his body release its weight, allowed gravity to pull the idea of his body into the Earth. He began taking slow, deep breaths and placed his fingers in a sequence of hand mudras with each breath cycle to coordinate and influence the flow of energy through his physical and astral body.

“Theta 7.”

The Womb switched to automatic pilot and began monitoring his brain cycles, adjusting the environment to meet his needs as he traveled.

∞

Raze pulled all his consciousness into the center of his brain, softly holding his concentration in the space occupied by his pineal gland. An orb of golden light appeared in his mind’s eye. Raze evoked Blake’s signature frequency, visualizing a scene of colors, similar to an impressionist watercolor painting. He recalled the specific notes on the music scale that were unique to Blake. The process was just like using a phone number to call a friend. Once Raze reached resonance with Blake’s signature frequency, the orb would open like an aperture for his consciousness to walk through. Raze would literally step his astral consciousness through the portal and travel signal line into the space Blake occupied.

He waited for the connection to be made, which usually only took a moment, but nothing happened. No alignment occurred. No aperture appeared. It was as if Blake’s signature didn’t exist—he was disconnected, no longer in service.

This was strange. Even people in a coma still had a faint signature Raze could connect to and ride in on, but this was akin to something Raze got only when someone was dead. Raze brought himself back up to Alpha where he could access his problem-solving processes again.

The newswire had said that Blake was in custody, not dead. The option-lock command Raze had used that morning should have only locked Blake’s consciousness in place not erased it completely from existence. The line should still be intact. Somehow Blake’s frequency had changed. Raze closed his eyes, placed himself back in the center of his head and lowered himself into Theta again.

“GPS coordinates for Chrysalis Adolescent Resource Center, Modesto, California,” he commanded.

There was a hushed moment as The Womb pulled up the data and replied, “North 37 degrees, 40 minutes, point two, four, six seconds. West 120 degrees, 55 minutes, 17 point zero, two, five, six seconds.”

Raze attuned himself to the coordinate. The gold orb appeared as he acquired a signal. Descending deeper into Theta he opened the aperture and pressed his consciousness through the portal.

Raze experienced a slight vertigo, and then, with a snap, crackle, and pop, he was there. He opened his remote viewing eyes and found himself standing at the front door of the A.R.C. Raze shifted his perspective, lifting himself up above the building, for a birds-eye view. The A.R.C was a single story building, brown and plain, spread out over about an acre of land. Where Blake was inside the building was unknown. Raze tried tuning in to Blake’s signature again, but it was still flat. He’d have to do this old school. Raze placed himself at the front door again and pushed himself through it.

Astrally, it was easier moving through actual, Physical Time Zone portals, rather than pushing through solid matter. Doors and windows provided easiest access, but lamps, computer screens, electronic circuitry, even picture frames were also good options. Finding the gap between the two-by-fours of houses and moving through soft stucco and dry wall was possible, but more of a challenge. Brick walls took too much energy to push through.

Once inside the building, Raze moved through the hallway toward an elderly woman who sat at the reception desk. While Raze could see and feel himself as if he were real, to others in the Physical Time Zone he was an invisible essence, only discerned if one was really sensitive. This old hag was too engrossed in one of the entertainment rags published by Infinium, staring at the latest paparazzi photographs of a celebrity hook-up between some botoxed starlet and the “sexiest man alive.” She was oblivious to his presence. Raze moved around her and through the double doors that led into the hospital.

Young patients wandered the halls and chatted with each other while they waited for their next therapy session, meds, or meal. This would not be the area Blake would be in. He’d be in lock-down somewhere. Raze continued down the hallway looking for signs that would lead him to a higher security area. He spotted one that read Acute Care and pointed him toward a restricted access doorway.

Locked doors were no barrier for him. He pushed his energetic body through it and wandered down another corridor. He could hear voices echoing from around the corner. He made the turn and saw two men standing in the hallway outside a room. One was dressed in a rumpled, blue suit and tie, the other in a dark blue police uniform.

“Bingo,” Raze thought to himself.

Without traveling, Raze jumped his essence to a couple of feet outside of the men’s energy fields. While people were mostly unconscious to the subtle alterations of the energy around them, sometimes they could catch a drift that would shift their attention. If Raze didn’t disrupt or intrude on their fields in any way, he could gather more information.

“Here’s your venti, triple, rama lama ding dong,” the man in uniform said, handing a large cup of Starbucks to the suit.

“Whatthefuckever, dude. It’s caffeinated, and that’s all I care about at this point,” said the suit. “This is ridiculous.”

The old copper looked through a long, narrow windowpane into the room. He grunted. “No change, huh?”

“Not a bit. Still just rocking himself in the corner, repeating his ‘two sticks and a bucket’ bullshit.”

Fuckin’ A right he was
, Raze thought with smug satisfaction.

“When’s the doc gettin’ here?”

“
Therapist.
He made it really clear that he is not a doctor. He doesn’t want that kind of responsibility with this kid.” The suit checked his watch. “He should be here in twenty minutes. If he’s on time. You know how quacks like to keep you waiting. If this dude can’t snap this kid out of it, I’m gettin’ a rookie over here to babysit and goin’ home. Maybe Mommy can knock some sense in him tomorrow.”