Death Drive

Chapter 24

The interrogator assaulted his eyes and ears. The first thing they had done was to take away his glasses, his earbuds and his computer, and the sights and sounds grated his unprotected senses. The bright light of the lamp pointed in his face pierced his eyes, the face of the fat man, not veiled by his usual digital retouches, was grotesque with its reddish discoloration, dark scruff and pockmarks. It made him think of leprous diseases and bugs crawling on the faces of corpses. Ugliness and other unpleasant things like that had long been excommunicated from his reality. The noises were just as bad without his earbuds regulating the sound that entered his ear canals: the man's sharp questions hit him like slaps in the face, the only pause from the query had been when apocalyptic crashes had sounded from the outside, making his questioner disappear for a while. He had not explained anything upon his return, merely continued his barrage like nothing had happened.

Lucas had tried to answer, he would have done anything to get his equipment back, but his thoughts were like panicked hares running around blindly, and his explanations had been something between unintelligible babble and helpless sobbing. He could not tell how long he had been locked in the cell with this beast.

The door behind him creaked open, and someone entered. He dared not lift his eyes off the metal table in front of him. His bag was placed in front of him, with the laptop peeking from its open mouth.

"I'll be taking him off your hands," Thomas said. "Check it with Crawford if you have to."

He grabbed Lucas by the upper arm and helped him up. He staggered out, hugging his bag. The moment they were out he feverishly pulled out his glasses and earpieces, putting them on like a man asphyxiated puts on an oxygen mask. His hands shook so much he had to down his anxiety medication directly from the bottle as grabbing separate pills was insurmountable.

Thomas spoke, his voice now digitally revised: "Clear your head and get ready. We are going out, and we are going to need you at your best."

"Out there? Not again," he despaired mentally. Thomas half-supported half-dragged him to the central camp and sat him down on an empty bedding. "Rest up," was all he said before leaving.

His smartglasses were not powerful enough to create a complete realistic virtual landscape he could escape to, but he turned the focus setting to maximum, eliminating the majority of sights and sounds coming from outside. There, in the quiet, calming haze, he called to Lyra, who he assumed would appear as a simple virtual avatar instead of her usual, meticulously designed full-body simulation. So when she appeared from the blur like Aphrodite being formed from sea foam, his mouth hung loosely open, and he could but stare as she walked daintily forward.

"Sir Lucas," she said, curtsying. "How magnanimous of you to remember little old me, even on your noble quest."

"How can you be here?" he asked breathlessly. "These glasses should not have the computing power to sustain something so graphically intensive."

She giggled. "I've been called many things, but that's a new one. To answer your question, Amun-Ra has improved upon the original programming in ways that were not possible in its earlier iterations."

She hushed him with a raised finger before he had a chance to continue. "You have suffered so gravely, my prince. I hope the grandeur of the world you will bring about is enough to ease your pain."

"What world?"

She kneeled by his feet, craning her neck to look up to him, like a concubine of some fantastical warlord, her skimpy dress covering just enough to rouse the imagination.

"You are our savior, the hero who shall drive back the evil in this world," she sermonized with a raptured expression. "Your journey has brought you here, captured in this den of thieves, but believe in your dream, and you shall survive."