Dream Walker (21 page)

“Names carry a signature that can be tracked. My real name carries a signature that has been tracked since I escaped from my original life. I never speak the original name. It would be enough to send the hounds sniffing our way. But I needed a name to use as I traveled. I came up with Walker because it was the best way to describe what I had found myself to be.”

“A
Walker
? What the hell is that?”

“It’s really hard to explain in a way that won’t make you flip out the way you do. But, here it goes. Aislen. You have the ability to transmigrate dimensions.” He stopped and watched her.

She stared at him blankly.

“Everybody is capable of it, it is a natural aspect of being human. But when they do it, for the most part, they do it unconsciously and don’t remember. You, on the other hand, are able to walk your consciousness from the third dimension into other dimensions, at will.”

“Are you freaking kidding me? Do you even hear yourself? And you tell me
I
can’t use drugs? What are
you
on?”

“I know it is a foreign concept for you, but that’s the gist of it.” He shrugged his shoulders as if it was really no big deal, even though he was blowing her mind.

“There are other dimensions that exist just beyond your normal, sensory perceptions, Aislen. Your corporeal consciousness normally tunes them out—it kind of has to in order to function within the ‘rules’ of 3D. Your body is only capable of experiencing one, very thin slice of the spectrum of existence. But your consciousness, the essence of who you really are, isn’t limited to the confines of your brain. It transcends the physical altogether. Always has and always will. You are being forced to operate on a new level now, whether you like it or not.”

“Alright, enough! This is all sounding a little too ‘woo woo’ for me.

“Well, welcome to the ‘woo woo’ then. You’ve been living in the fiction long enough.”

She could only stare at him. It sounded completely outrageous, but was it really? When she applied it to what she had experienced the past twenty-four hours, what she was experiencing now, it kind of made sense.

“So these dreams I’ve had?”

“Were travels to another plane—the Fourth, actually. People call it different things: Mundus Imaginalis, Alam-i-Malakut, Olam-Hadamut, the Astral. The people who will be interested in you call it The Stratum.

“Your little journey last night, your
dream
as you say, took you to a place in their Stratum where you weren’t supposed to be and you saw something you shouldn’t have seen. They’ll be looking for you because of that.”

Aislen thought of the dark soldier boring holes through her with eyes of ice and a bullet of lead and a shudder went through her.

“This is where it comes down to you,” Preston said. “I told you that you have a choice. You cannot change what is happening to you. Your abilities will continue to develop, whether you like it or not. And people are already looking for you. Trust me, if they find you, find out who you are and what you can really do, they will hurt, maim, or kill anything that gets in their way. Your mother. Your friends. They don’t care.

“You can choose to go this alone, like I did. Or you can choose to let me help you.”

Aislen didn’t know what to say. It seemed ludicrous to her that anyone would think she was that important or dangerous that they would go to such lengths as to kill anyone to get to her.

You are dreaming
, she reminded herself as she looked up at Preston, her father. His eyes blazing at her with conviction. As much as she wanted to hurt him by cutting him off and denying him, she couldn’t. The words that rang from his lips, the emotions that played upon his face, were full of truth.

“What do I have to do to keep Mom safe?”

CHAPTER 17

Raze chillaxed in the chair, lingering on the cusp of Theta, enjoying the afterglow of his Aislen assignment. He had been spot on about the confluence of music, booze, and movement breaking down her walls and giving him the gap he needed to move in close enough to find her baseline.

It had left him feeling a little intoxicated himself. He was tempted to reopen the aperture and take another spin. But Raze recognized the hook and pulled himself away. The brain was a strange chunk of chuck; a few drops of dopamine ricocheting across a couple of strategically placed neurons and you were a goner—lost in the sauce of lust.

“Alpha 14.”

The Womb turned up its luminosity and cranked up the volume on the jazz.

“Metal,” he told the Womb. She started playing Pantera. “Ahh, you know me too well,” he said aloud, feeling gregarious.

He got out of the chair, went to the control console, and pulled up the programming app. With a few taps on the keyboard he initiated the homing device on the visors. He knew the GPS coordinates of the Parrish residence, but he did not know where the visors were inside the house. He wasn’t about to waste his valuable time playing hide and seek with a pair of inanimate objects, when he had a much more tantalizing game to play with Miss Aislen.

“North 37 degrees, 39 minutes, three point nine, eight, five, two seconds. West 120 degrees, 59 minutes, 46 point eight, one, two, six seconds,” he said to the Womb. Once the sequence was initiated, he laid back down in the chair.

“Theta 8.”

The Womb descended through the cycles. When Raze wound his brain waves down to Theta 8, she repeated slowly, “North 37 degrees, 39 minutes, three point nine, eight, five, two seconds. West 120 degrees, 59 minutes, 46 point eight, one, two, six seconds.”

As simple as e=mc², Raze acquired a signal line for the coordinate and stepped through the wrinkle in reality.

CHAPTER 18

Mathis pulled his truck onto a side street and walked around the corner to Magnolia, trying to appear officially casual, like he was supposed to be there. If anyone happened to be looking out a window at this hour, seeing a uniformed officer wouldn’t cause them to call the cops. But the sleepy, little neighborhood was just that, sleeping. All houses were dark and the streets were deserted.

He checked to make sure no new vehicles were parked in the driveway or garage, that Mom or Sister hadn’t made it home yet; then he sidled along the easement between the Parrish house and its neighbors, tracing the same path he took last night.

He went to the back patio door. They had broken one of the multiple panes of glass in order to unlock the door. In a convenient case of incompetence, the broken pane had been covered in nothing but cling wrap and masking tape, rather than nailed over with plywood.

“Thank God I work with a barrel of monkeys,” Mathis said to himself. The last thing he wanted to attempt was hefting his fat ass through an unlocked window. He stuck his hand through the edge of the window, ripped the tape with his fingers, and placed his hand on the inside latch.

He took a moment to say a quick Hail Mary, of which he only knew the words “Hail Mary,” flipped the lever, and popped open the door. He paused at the threshold, listening for the timed beeping of an alarm system waiting for a proper pass code, before it set off a siren and called the cops. The house was silent except for the soft purr of the refrigerator.

Mathis stepped inside and quietly shut the door behind him. He wasn’t about to lollygag now. He needed to get the console and get the fuck out. He went directly to the den and immediately to the entertainment center, careful to walk around the still-damp bloodstains on the carpet where Mr. Parrish had laid just 24 hours earlier. He located the black cube on the bottom shelf and set about unplugging and untangling cords as quickly and methodically as possible.

What little he understood of video games, he at least knew he needed some kind of hand-held controller, so he started searching the shelves for one. He located a shelf littered with an array of tools: a plastic handgun, a long plastic sword, and a black mesh glove with segmented panels on each finger and the palm. He scooped up the lot of them and placed them next to the console.

It was then that he noticed a red light was strobing somewhere in the room, lighting up the walls in rose, then throwing them back into darkness. He scanned the room to find where it was originating from; and after a few flashes, he traced it to the far corner of the living room.

Lying askew against the wall, under the splatter pattern of Scott Parrish’s brain, were what looked like a pair of shades only elderly men who just had cataract surgery would be caught wearing. The lenses were massive, large enough to cover half a grown man’s face, and even in the low light, Mathis could tell they were mirrored with the particolored glean of an oil slick.

They could only be a part of the game, so Mathis added them to the pile of accessories. He regarded the amassed collection of gear. He only had two hands and, because he was unskilled in thievery, he hadn’t brought a bag along. He needed to be selective about what to take with him.

As he was trying to decide which things were most important to take, a loud pop sounded in the room, like a small rock had been thrown at the window. With the reflexes of a very old jaguar, Mathis threw himself onto the couch and held his breath.

CHAPTER 19

Raze stepped through the portal and into the den of the Parrish residence. A sluggish movement from the corner of the room caught his eye, a large, lumbering presence hurtled itself onto the couch.

Jesus Christ! Could anything be routine?
In the middle of the night, in the quiet of a deserted house, his presence could be sensed easily. He held very still, watching the space where the burly creature fell and hid itself.

He only had to wait a couple of minutes before a massive man-head peeked up from the back of the couch. He looked directly at Raze, but Raze knew he could only see the window that was behind him. After making sure the coast was clear, the man, dressed in full police regalia, stood up.

Well, I’ll be damned! It’s the fuzz from the hospital! What the hell is he doing in here?
Raze bided his time, watching to see what the officer was trying to do.
This oughtta be good.

The officer walked over to the television and started grabbing items off the floor. He rolled up a glove and shoved it into a pocket, picked up a plastic gun and stuck it in his waistband, then picked up the visor, blinking red from the homing activation and slid them on top of his head.

Holy shit! He’s taking the game,
Raze realized with amazement. As soon as he thought he was reigning in the chaos, he met with another snag. The cohesive thread of The Project was fraying into an irreparable mess, more convoluted and out of control by the hour.

Raze watched as the officer fumbled frantically with the game pieces, obviously breaking the law.
What could he possibly be thinking?

Raze moved himself directly behind the officer. He placed an etheric palm at the back of the man’s thick neck and switched into receiver mode. The man was transmitting a lot of anxiety. The fear weakened his defenses and amplified his signature. Pulses of maroon, amber and earthy brown flowed from the officer along with the running monolog that was screaming in the cop’s brain.

What am I doing?

Just get the game, and get the fuck out of here! I’ll figure it out later.

I’m a frickin’ idiot!

There’s something to this game, and I’m gonna figure it out.

There was Raze’s answer. The officer suspected there was something more to the game.
Hmmm. Impressive intuition, officer.
He couldn’t help be amused.

Raze channeled the officer’s base frequency into the storage area of his brain, disengaged, and slipped around to the front of him, noting the stripes on his arm, then reading the name tag on his chest.

Raze moved out of the way as the man stumbled past, in an obvious hurry to leave.
You go on ahead, Sergeant Mathis,
Raze said to him,
I’ll catch up to you later.

The sergeant had only taken one set of visors. Raze needed to get a lock on the second so he would know where to find it when he came in the flesh to repossess it.

Raze checked the shelf, but there were no other blinking lights there. He scanned the room but was unable to locate any pulsing from the second visor. It didn’t make any sense. Both Scott
and
Blake Parrish would have to have been wearing them in order to transport into The Stratum; and if the police hadn’t confiscated the console or the other pair, they would still be somewhere in this room.

He moved one more time around the room, looking for the beacon, but the second pair of visors was nowhere to be found. He’d have to deal with that later.

He turned his attention to the desk and checked the computer. The screen was asleep, but a green glow from the monitor told Raze that it was still powered on. That was good. The Intercept program he set up in The Womb would be able to access the hard drive and fry it with no problem, wiping out all the incriminating information about Infinium that Scott Parrish had accumulated.