Psychic Warrior

Chapter Eleven

Knowing what to expect didn’t make it any easier. In fact, the dread of what was to come always made things worse, in Dalton’s opinion. The hardest part this time was the breathing crossover, but eventually he was past that and Hammond had him linked to Sybyl, who was going to introduce him to the avatar form that Hammond’s team had crash-designed with the help of the computer.

Dalton had slept for two hours, if one could call it that. Hammond had given him a shot that had knocked him out for that time period. Dalton didn’t feel rested, but as they used to say in Ranger School so many years ago when he’d gone through that training, he could rest when he was dead.

Remembering Ranger School, Dalton’s lips curled in a slight smile inside the TACPAD and around the tube shoved into his mouth as he followed the instructions of Dr. Hammond. It was the same routine he had done the first time: focusing on the white dot, followed by moving along the grid line. What would his grizzled Ranger instructors have thought of this new form of soldiering? Floating in a freezing tank, connected to a computer? They would have liked the freezing-tank part— it seemed like every military school Dalton had gone through had always had immersion into cold water as part of the curriculum.

“Now we fit you to your basic avatar,” Hammond said, her “voice” filtered through Sybyl. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.” Dalton found this talking inside of his own head to Hammond very strange.

The grid lines disappeared. A stick figure replaced them after a brief blackout.

“This is you.”

“Lost some weight,” Dalton said. “This form has no mass at present, although once projected out of the virtual and into the real world, it will have mass out of the energy we will send using Sybyl.”

“It was a joke,” Dalton said.

There was a long pause.

“We will proceed. Sybyl will run you through a series of maneuvers to familiarize you with your avatar.”

Dalton waited patiently. He had no idea how much time had already elapsed. That was something he was going to have to ask Hammond— how could one keep track of time in the virtual world?

“Move your left arm,” Sybyl commanded.

Dalton tried to do as he was told, but he could feel nothing from his left arm.

“Again.”

They went through this how many times Dalton didn’t know, until suddenly he felt a painful twinge in his arm. “Hey!” Dalton yelled.

“You are getting feedback?” Hammond asked. “I can feel my arm.”

“You feel your virtual arm,” Hammond said. “Now you can move it. We have to make sure you have feedback before we allow movement. Now we will allow your nervous system to interact more fully with the form.”

Dalton focused on moving his arm forward. The stick figure in front of him slowly moved its right arm forward. Dalton felt his arm move at the same time. It was very confusing, since he knew that his arm had not moved in reality.

“Experiment,” Sybyl told him. “Practice.”

Dalton did just that for a while before he noticed something. “What about my hands?”

“We must start with the basics,” Hammond said. “This form is the barest outline of the avatar you will eventually employ. Tr y the other arm.”

Soon Dalton could move all of his limbs individually. Sybyl then tested him in much the same manner that she had with the grid lines. A light would flash next to one of the limbs and he had to move in the direction of the light. The computer would also rotate the figure left and right, so that he had to move forward and back.

As the practice went on, Sybyl started flashing lights in combination and at a fast pace. Dalton found himself totally immersed in trying to keep up. It was like when he had first learned martial arts, the practice at making all movements a routine, an instinct.

Hammond’s voice came back. “The goal is so that you can move the avatar as naturally as you move your own body. For example, if you were to do a forward roll, you would not be thinking how each of your arms and legs moved. You would do the roll. The avatar needs to be as much a part of you, so that you can move in combination in an unconscious mode. The major thing keeping you from that right now is the belief in your mind that you are not really the form you see. You must suspend your disbelief and believe you are looking into a mirror. But focus on what you feel, not what you see.”

Dalton did as she instructed and found that his action became more natural. It felt as if he were floating in the tank at scuba school, weightless and free. He rolled forward.

“Whoa!” Dalton yelled. The figure in front of him was tumbling and he felt like he was spinning out of control. With great effort he brought himself to a halt. “How do I know which way is up?” Dalton said. “I’ve got no feeling of weight. Even in water, I can tell direction by checking out my air bubbles. Here there is nothing.”

A red line appeared next to the figure, arrows on it slowly going by pointing up. “Orient on the arrows,” Hammond suggested.

Dalton did the roll again, but this time he focused on the red arrows. He did two complete revolutions, then halted himself.

“Very good.”

Dalton felt like he was gasping for breath, but he knew now that it was only a part of the virtual feedback.

“Now feet and hands,” Sybyl said.

Dalton found that more difficult. He had never truly realized how complex the human hand was and how many moving parts it had. The foot was also hard to master.

Soon Sybyl had him mimicking the act of walking, the stick figure moving jerkily along. One thing Dalton found disconcerting was the lack of resistance, particularly to his feet.

“Right now you might consider what you are doing walking in space, much like an astronaut, ” Hammond said. “As you may have noted you have no weight. You are acting against no object. You are totally free. It is important to learn this type of movement, first because it is the most strange for you and also because it is the way you will feel while you travel on the virtual plane.”

“Can I go somewhere?” Dalton asked.

There was a pause. “I must check with Raisor.”

“Why?”

There was another pause. “Because he’s in charge.”

“Forget it,” Dalton said. “You have completed this phase of training,” Hammond said. “We are pulling you out.”

“The fools will never succeed,” Feteror’s grandfather said as he stood at the edge of their glade, peering in the direction of the open fields. There was the distant heavy coughing sound of the Combine’s tractors working the land. Even in the virtual world, the State intruded, Feteror thought wryly. He knew he could delete the sound, but it was the way he had last been in the glade.

Feteror frowned. He had told his grandfather his entire plan and this was his response?

“Did you hear me, Opa?”

“I heard you. I know little of such matters, so you must do what you deem is best.” His grandfather shook his head, his heavy gray beard slowly swinging back and forth. “They think the group is stronger than the individual, but it is not so. Because the group is only as strong as the weakest individual. A good person can beat any group.”

“Then you believe I will succeed?” Feteror asked.

“Even in the war,” the old man went on as if he had not heard a word. “The generals used us as if none of us mattered. They threw us against the Germans like so many pieces of garbage to be tossed onto the scrap heap. They’d keep our artillery fire so close that we lost as many of our own as the Germans did to our shells. But what did the generals care about us? We weren’t them. More importantly, from their perspective, they weren’t us. They had a goal and we were the means to achieve that goal.”

Feteror stared at the construct of his grandfather. Zivon had developed this persona out of the memories that Feteror had poured into the computer, but in the past year or so, Feteror had slowly become aware that the persona had grown beyond the memories. It used words his grandfather had never known, but underneath, Feteror still felt that the essence of the construct was his grandfather.

“And we did win,” Opa continued. “But what did we win?”

“You defeated the Nazis,” Feteror said.

“Yes, we won that” the old man acknowledged. “But what was the total result? The entirety? We thought we were fighting for good.” His withered hand swept around, taking in what Feteror knew was supposed to be the farm. “We produce less now than we did when we worked the land, our land, with just a sickle and horses to pull the carts. Sometimes you can think you win but actually lose if the price you pay for winning is too high. You can lose your soul.”

“What— ” Feteror began, but the old man cut him off.

“I want to know what happened to you, grandson. Tell me of your last battle.” He waved the hand about. “I do not understand all this. I must know where you have come from.”

That memory was in Zivon also, a recollection that Feteror was loath to go into. Feteror felt a spasm pass through a nonexistent stomach, his mind reacting.

The glade faded and he and Opa were over a village set in the mountains. Feteror knew the when and where: Afghanistan, August 29, 1986. Feteror realized he didn’t have control over this playback, that his grandfather would see the true extent of what had happened:

A dry wind blew down off the mountain peaks that surrounded the valley, kicking up small dust storms. Feteror pulled the cloth tighter over his face and narrowed his eyes as his men drew closer, stepping onto the dirt road that served as the village’s main thoroughfare.

Feteror knew that because of the war, the people of the village had seen much pain and suffering but to them that was simply the way life was. The Soviets had invaded Afghanistan seven years ago and still the war dragged on, but he had learned that it was not of much concern, since if it was not the Russians, then the people would be fighting another village or some other foreign power. War was an integral part of life for the mujahideen who controlled the countryside, and it mattered little to them who claimed rulership of the country in Kabul.

The mujahideen did, however, enjoy the new weapons that the Americans were sending in through Pakistan, especially the Stinger missiles. Just a week ago, a passing band of mujahideen had downed a Russian helicopter flying by low in the valley. When the villagers had come upon the crash site, they’d found eight dead Russians. Feteror had a good idea of what had happened next from other villages he’d raided. The Afghanis had cut the heads off and brought them back to the village to be used later when playing the Afghani version of polo, the heads replacing the ball in the Western game. The game, of course, would have to wait until the men of the village returned. Most of the men were gone, either dead or off fighting. Feteror knew there was little concern in the village about the Russians or their Afghani Army lackeys because the village didn’t sit astride any route of communication nor did it have any resource of great value. The war had been going on for long enough now that the Soviets no longer sought out conflict, but stayed inside their fortified positions, fighting only when forced to. Feteror was counting on the villagers’ complacent attitude to get his disguised band of men into their midst.

Thus, when the small group of eight men was spotted walking up the valley floor toward the village in the early morning light by a young boy tending his flock, there was not much concern. The elder, summoned out of his house, could see that the men coming up the valley were dressed in the traditional robes and turban of the mujahideen fighter and that they were moving openly. As they approached, he ordered the eleven remaining families to contribute some food so that the fighters might be nourished as they passed through.

It was too late when the elder turned to yell for his youngest son to get his weapon, as Feteror’s men whipped aside their robes. AK-74 assault rifles began firing, killing the few villagers who had weapons. Resistance was destroyed in less than thirty seconds.

The elder had not moved throughout the entire time. Feteror knew he knew that to do so would invite death and his duty was to the village and the people as a whole. Feteror’s men spread out, mopping up.

Feteror walked directly toward the elder, his rifle held loosely in strong hands, while yelling commands to his men in Russian. With one hand, he ripped off the turban he had been wearing. He pulled a pale blue beret out of his robe and set it on his head. The other men did the same.

The elder raised his hands wide apart. Feteror brought the weapon up and fired, the round ripping through the elder’s right leg, knocking him to the ground.

“Any other men?” Feteror asked in Pashto, the language of the mujahideen, which surprised the elder.

“No.”

“Order everyone into the street. You have ten seconds. I will kill anyone who hides or runs.”

Ignoring his pain, the elder yelled at the top of his lungs, ordering all into the street.

There was a burst of automatic fire as the middle son of the elder’s brother ran out, firing an old rifle, and was cut down in a hail of bullets from the Russians, his body tumbling down the street like a rag doll. The old man’s black eyes watched this, but he said nothing, nor did he show any sign of the pain radiating up from his leg.

Slowly the rest of the villagers came out until there were seventeen women, twenty-two children, and four other old men standing under the watchful guns of the invaders.

“Is that everyone?” Feteror asked.

“Yes.”

“The men are all away fighting.” Feteror made it a statement, not a question. “You thought yourself safe here, high in the mountains, didn’t you?”

The elder remained quiet, feeling the deep throb of pain from the wound on his leg.

“My name is Major Feteror.” He was a slight man, his body lean like a blade under the robes he wore. But it was his face that the elder focused on. There were scars running down the left side, and he had ice-blue eyes under straight blond hair. Those eyes worried the elder. Feteror reached up and touched the beret. “We are Spetsnatz. Special Forces. Your fighters call us the ‘black soldiers.’ You would do well to— ”

Feteror paused as there was a sudden consternation among the Russian soldiers. One of them came forward carrying a dirty burlap sack. He laid it at the feet of Feteror and opened it. Inside lay the battered heads of the eight Russian soldiers from the helicopter.

The elder closed his eyes, waiting for the bullet, but seconds passed and he slowly opened them, to look into Feteror’s. The major’s face was expressionless, only the glint of the eyes showing his anger. He reached down and picked up one of the heads. The face was contorted, but it was easy to see that it had been a young man who had not yet reached his twentieth birthday. The elder had heard that the Soviets were sending younger and younger men to fight the war. He felt nothing about that. His brother’s middle son had been only eleven. A man was a warrior when he was big enough to pick up a rifle.

“It will not be that easy, old man.” Feteror barked some commands in Russian as he placed the head back onto the bag. His men lined the villagers against the mud wall of the elder’s house, then stepped back on the other side of the street. They put their weapons to their shoulder and aimed, waiting.

The elder was proud that his people stood still, glaring back. There was no crying, no pleading. One woman spit, then the rest did the same, while also putting their children behind them. The four old men walked to the very front.

Feteror yelled some more orders. The muzzles of the seven AK-74s moved back and forth, sighting in on one person, then moving to another. And another. But still no bullets came.

“Tell me when, old man,” Feteror said.

The elder couldn’t keep track of all seven weapons. He looked at his wife, whom he had been married to for thirty-two years. His four grandchildren. His two daughters.

“Tell me when, old man, or they fire on full automatic. As it is now, they will each shoot only once at your command.”

The elder ran his tongue along his lips, feeling the dryness. He knew that in the long run it would not matter. “Now.”

Feteror yelled a single word and seven rifles fired in one sharp volley. Seven bodies slammed back under the impact of the bullets. The elder saw that one of the seven was his wife, and in a way he was grateful that she would be spared whatever else was to come.

“You play well,” Feteror noted.

The Russian fired as the old man swung the knife he had slid out from under his robe. The round caught the elder in his upper right shoulder, knocking him back onto the ground, the knife falling harmlessly to the dirt.

“But you don’t fight so well.” Feteror kicked the knife away. “So we will have to keep playing and not fight.” Feteror leaned and smiled, revealing even teeth. “You are a disgrace and a coward. ” As the elder struggled to rise up, he kicked him down with a heavy boot. “Watch my men play, old man. It was what you were going to do with them,” he said, pointing toward the heads. “You have your games, we have ours.”

While four of the Russians stood guard, the others dragged the women into one of the huts. The elder listened to the screams and curses of the women for several hours as the soldiers raped and sodomized them. When they were done with a woman, they slit her throat, throwing the body out the back onto the refuse pile. Halfway through, they simply killed the women, no longer able to force themselves on them. The old man noted Feteror took no part in that sport. While that was going on, Feteror had each of the children tied with a blue cord cinched tightly around their necks and made to stand in the center of the street under the bright sun, ignoring their cries for water.

It was early afternoon by the time all the women were dead. Feteror had the old men executed, a bullet to the back of each head, and then only the children were left. The elder had watched the sun slowly climb across the horizon with a growing feeling of contentment.

Feteror attached a small green plastic tube to the end of one of the blue cords and walked over to the elder, who was now weak and dizzy from the loss of blood.

“I am being merciful, old man,” Feteror said as he handed the green tube to him. The elder slowly followed the cord; it was tied around the neck of his six-year-old grandson. He looked to the Russian in confusion.

“Pull the ring,” Feteror ordered.

Still not comprehending the elder did as he was told. The detonating cord ignited instantly, and with a flash and small pop, the elders grandson’s head lay in the street, the body still standing for a few seconds before slowly toppling over.

“I think sometimes that the heads can see their own bodies if they fall in the right direction, ” Feteror commented as he inserted the next length of blue cord into the green tube.

“No!” the elder protested as Feteror held the tube out to him. “I will not!”

“Ah, then I will not be so merciful.” Feteror gestured to the guards. While two kept their rifles ready, the others drew knives out of scabbards and approached the closest child.

“I will peel them alive if you do not play,” Feteror warned.

The elder took the green tube and pulled the ring. A second head lay in the street. The Soviet slid another end of blue cord in. The elder closed his ears to the cries of the children who were left. His hands worked automatically, taking the ignitor each time the Soviet gave it to him and quickly pulling the ring. He lost count, but mercifully there were no more lengths of blue cord.

The elder turned to the Russian leader. “Kill me.”

“I would,” Feteror said, “but then who would tell the others what I have done here?” Feteror grabbed the old man’s chin. “This was a warning. You take heads, we take heads. I think I have made that perfectly clear.”

“Kill me,” the elder insisted.

“No. I will have my medic bandage you and tie you so that you cannot hurt yourself. When the men come back, you will tell them how you failed the village and what I have done. Then they will kill you. And the war will go on, but there will be that many less”— Feteror gestured at the heads lying in the street— “ to grow up and fight us and that many less women to bear more spawn to grow up and fight us.”

“You are the devil!” The elder tried to work up spit in his mouth, but it was dry. He had expected to die now. The thought of facing the men in the midst of this was unbearable.

Feteror smiled. “The devil-Chyort. I like that.” He suddenly straightened and looked to the north, toward the mountains. Then he glared down at the elder. “You kept me here. You knew they were coming. That is why you didn ’t fight me when I first came.”

The elder smiled as Feteror slammed the stock of his weapon into the old man’s head, knocking him out. Yelling orders, Feteror turned and ran for the southern end of the village, his men falling in line behind him. The radio man ran next to Feteror, proffering the handset. From the north there came a sound like thunder, hundreds of horses’ hooves striking the hard-packed ground and closing on the village.

Feteror took the handset and began calling for extraction when the earth exploded in front of him.

When Feteror regained consciousness, he was greeted by the stare of a line of lifeless eyes. The heads of all the children he had had killed were arranged around him in a circle. He slowly took an inventory of his body. He could feel pain in his chest, from both the ropes wrapped around it and several broken ribs. He could sense something hard and straight against his back and realized he was tied upright to a thick pole. He was naked, the cool night air brushing against his skin.

Carefully he tested, but the stake was set deep into the earth and solid. The ropes were thick and well tied.

It was dark outside the circle of heads, the only light coming from a lantern set on the ground three feet in front of him. But Feteror could sense the people lurking there, watching, the hate washing over him in waves. Feteror smiled.

A whip snapped out of the dark, the leather knots on the edge slashing into his skin, peeling back a long slice on his chest.

Feteror’s only response was a sharp intake of breath, the smile still on his face. The whip came again. And again. The smile disappeared only when he slid into unconsciousness, the skin flayed from waist to neck.

When he came to, it felt as if his upper body were on fire. Just taking a breath caused his wounds to reopen and agony to surge into his brain. He looked about. Night still blanketed the countryside and the heads were still watching him. He leaned his head back and looked up to the stars. He remembered seeing those same stars as a child while riding on the open steppes. His grandfather telling him the stories of the animals the various stars represented. He also remembered seeing that same sky often while in the field during training. He had traveled by those stars many times on operations all over the world, but he knew tonight he would be taking his last journey.

Movement drew his attention back to earth. A woman came out of the shadows. She was small, wrapped in robes, only her dark eyes showing through a slit in her turban. In her hand she held a short curved knife, the firelight glinting off the highly polished surface. She was one of the women who accompanied the men when they went to war.

Feteror knew what to expect. The woman reached and grabbed him between the legs, pulling none too gently. The knife flashed. Surprisingly, Feteror felt little. Despite the pain he was able to think quite clearly with a part of his mind. He figured that any pain from below his waist would have trouble overriding the tide of agony from his flayed skin. The woman held up his severed penis in her hand and, with a shrill scream, carried it back into the darkness to throw it to the dogs. Another woman came out with a dirty rag and a piece of rope. She pressed the rag up against the new wound, tying it in place with the rope. Feteror knew they weren’t concerned with infection but they didn’t want him to bleed to death. Not yet.

A man appeared, large, as tall as Feteror’s six and a half feet. He carried something long in his hand. Feteror forced himself to focus. It was a sledgehammer. He could even see the Cyrillic writing on the side as the man came closer. It must have been taken off of a Russian tank that the mujahideen had destroyed. Forged in a factory back in the motherland. Feteror found that strangely amusing. That he and this sledgehammer, both forged far to the north and west, would end up here at the same place at the same time in this godforsaken land.

The man gestured and the same woman who had tied the crude bandage in place came up, carrying another piece of cloth. She folded it over several times, then knelt, pressing it up against the front of Feteror’s right knee.

Feteror’s thoughts on fate and his newly developed theory on pain below the waist were both gone in an instant as the man swung the sledgehammer into Feteror’s right kneecap, smashing it against the thick stake he was tied to, the sound of the bone underneath the cloth being crushed as devastating as the pain.

Feteror screamed for the first time.

The sledgehammer went back once more. And again. And again.

Feteror, the essence of him, retreated from the pain, climbing into the recesses of his mind, praying for death or at least unconsciousness, but each time the latter came, the mujahideen would bring him alert with pain to a previously undamaged part of his body. And they kept death at bay by searing shut any bleeding wound with a hot knife, although the use of the cloth kept the hammer from opening too many wounds. Feteror’s only hope lay in the possibility that they would run out of things to do to him or that they would grow bored and kill him.

But as dawn touched the eastern sky, neither appeared to be close.

He could now see past the circle of severed heads. He was at the edge of the village. A crowd of mujahideen watched him silently, the hate in their eyes not abated in the least. Feteror was now in some other place, someplace removed even from his own mind, floating above, able to look down on his own body tied to the stake. He wondered if he was dead, but the body— his body— still twitched with life.

The old man, the village elder, was tied to a stake on the other side of the circle of heads. A leather band was stretched around his forehead, forcing him to look directly ahead. His eyelids had been sliced off. A man stood next to the elder, speaking in a low voice that Feteror could not make out. The elder was also naked. Several leather bands were wrapped around his body and limbs.

A woman came up, several similar strips of wet leather in her hand. From above, Feteror dully felt her tying bands around his arms and legs, a most strange experience.

The man who had been speaking to the elder came over. “The leather shrinks as it dries. It will take a few hours.” He pointed at the elder. “We put the bands on him two hours ago. It is beginning to dry. The sun will quicken this. You think you know pain now. Watch.”

As the sun came up, the elder began screaming, begging. The leather tightened down on his flesh, compressing all beneath. Something gave way in the old man’s legs and he gave forth an undulating cry that didn’t stop. For fifteen minutes it went on. A young man talked to the man who had spoken to Feteror. The man reluctantly nodded. The young man went over to the elder and slit his throat, stopping the cry.

“You will not be so lucky,” the man informed Feteror.

Feteror could tell that the straps were tightening. The pain was drawing him back to his body, something he fought with all his will.

Feteror began praying for death, calling on a God he knew only from the stories Opa had told him many years ago. He was back in his body as the agony reached levels he had never thought possible.

Through the pain, he heard something. Very distant. His eyes flickered up, his mouth wide open as he took careful breaths. Yes. He could hear it. He wondered why the mujahideen didn’t. The sound of helicopter blades cutting through the thin air.

One of the mujahideen was coming close, holding the red-hot knife just pulled out of the fire. But this time it was not to close a wound. Feteror pushed his head back against the stake as the man brought the knifepoint toward his face. Feteror ripped muscles in his neck, trying to avoid the knife. The man called for help in dealing with the Chyort, the devil man.

Two others ran up, grabbing his head and holding it still with all their strength as Feteror fought them with every once of energy he had left. The night had been too long, the damage too great. It was a lost battle.

The knife came forward. Feteror felt it touch his eyeball, and pain, far beyond anything he had felt so far, hit his brain like a spear splitting it straight through. He screamed, his battered and sliced body straining against the ropes, which brought even more pain and deepened the primeval essence to the shivering cry he let loose.

But still he could hear the sound of the helicopters so close, and machine-gun fire. And screams coming from others. And then there was only blessed darkness.

The village was gone. They were back in the glade. Opa was crying, tears flowing down his weathered cheeks.

“Do you see now?” Feteror asked. “Why I must do this thing?”

Opa opened his mouth to say something, when the sky and glade disappeared along with the old man.

“Time to work.” General Rurik’s voice was harsh. There was a bright glaring light in Feteror’s face. He knew that was a construct the programmers used to get his attention, feeding the input directly into his occipital lobe.

“What is it?” Feteror was disconcerted.

“We have lost contact with one of our surveillance units,” Rurik said. “We want you to see what has happened.”

“Why don’t you send a plane?”

“Because it is very far from the closest plane,” Rurik said. “And more importantly, the surveillance team was watching where we used to be headquartered.”

Feteror waited.

“We are inputting the coordinates.”

Feteror read them as they came in. Information about the history of Department Eight had always been strictly withheld from him by Zivon on General Rurik’s order, under the theory that knowledge was power and the less Feteror knew, the weaker he would be.

Feteror could have gotten this information from Oma, after she had received the papers and CD from Colonel Seogky, but he had not wanted her to know that he wasn’t aware of the information contained in them. It had taken him four years to simply find out that the phased-displacement generator had been built, and that had only been because of a most fortunate meeting. The location of the generator had been something for which he had needed Oma and her organization. He had pointed her to the man in GRU records who would know that information. He could have taken it out of Vasilev, but the added fact that they would need the CD-ROM to program the computers to work the phased-displacement generator— and Vasilev himself the only survivor among those who had invented the machine, to properly operate the computers— had precluded Feteror from pushing the old man too far, too soon. Vasilev would pay, but only after he made penance.

Feteror translated the grid coordinates as they came in. The far north!

“Find out why the surveillance unit has not reported in and come back immediately. You are to observe only.”

“Why is there still a surveillance unit there?” Feteror asked.

“That is not your concern.”

“Why was Department Eight moved from there to here?”

“That is also not your concern. Just do as you are tasked.”

The tunnel beckoned and Feteror jumped. He felt the weightless feeling of flying as he roared into the virtual plane, assuming his winged-demon shape. It was what he felt comfortable in. The first time he had been like this was in the village in Afghanistan. Rurik and his minions thought they were so brilliant! The computer link only gave him more power, more information.

The body was basically humanoid, except larger, more powerful, and armed with sharp claws at the end of each hand. The wings were something he had worked out with Zivon. He had not liked the feeling of floating free or moving from place to place without a sense of spatial orientation. The wings gave him that, although it had taken him much time to get used to them. They gave him a solid way to control his orientation, direction, and speed. And they helped scare the piss out of anyone he appeared to on the real plane.

Feteror stretched his wings wider, moving faster, the virtual plane going by in a rush, his mind focused on the location he had been given.

The virtual plane was a strange place. There were times when even Feteror felt concern as he traversed it. It was a gray world, and traversing it was like moving in a vast mist, but references from the real world could be spotted poking through here and there if he made an effort to see. If there were no references, then Feteror would have to stop and come out of the virtual, into the real, and align himself. Sometimes he sensed other shadows, forms, moving in the fog.

Some he recognized— psychics, real ones— plying their trade. Sometimes he knew they were Americans, from their Bright Gate operation. He knew the presence in the rail station had been a Bright Gater. How much the Americans knew he could not tell. He was also unsure exactly what their capabilities were. He knew they could remote view but he had picked up some different disturbances at times that indicated the Americans were doing something more advanced than just RVing. He had tried once to breach their facility in the state they called Colorado, but it was well protected from psychic probing.

He had given General Rurik the information about the Mafia in order to move the timetable of everything up, so that whatever the Americans might plan would occur too late. But now he knew they also knew the timetable was sooner rather than later.

Feteror sensed he was over Siberia. He could feel the vast emptiness of that land reflected around him. He could not explain how he knew where he was, he just knew it. It was one of the strange aspects of the virtual plane. Often the emotion of an area was what passed through to him, not the physical realities. Feteror oriented himself and continued his flight.

He had no idea how quickly he moved. Sometimes he arrived at a place “instantaneously” in real time, yet it seemed like it took an hour on the virtual plane. Other times, going to the same place, real time had elapsed. There was no way to tell. He had asked the scientists, and their mumbo-jumbo answers had told him they didn’t have a clue why that was. He knew they didn’t even really know why he was able to do what he did.

Feeling he was in the right place and sensing death-something he was very familiar with— below, Feteror halted and focused so that he could see the real world. The island appeared below. Feteror could see the Cub transport plane parked on the edge of the runway. He swooped around in a large circle, going lower. He could see the backhoe and lines going from it into a hole in the side of a mountain.

Claws on the end of his feet splayed, Feteror landed right next to the hole. He bared his fangs in a grin as a couple of the mercenaries looked around, sensing something, not sure what it was, only that they felt danger in the air around them like a faint scent at the edge of their consciousness. Feteror could clearly sense their fear, like a wild dog near its prey.

Feteror was still in the virtual plane, the demon shape only something he felt, not something that was really there with the soldiers, but he knew the line between the two worlds was not solid and fixed.

He folded his wings and walked forward, into the hole. The ropes disappeared into a large elevator shaft. He looked down. There was a glint of light on steel far below. The phased-displacement generator.

“Careful, you pigs!”

Feteror looked at the man who stood on the other side of the shaft opening. Leksi. Feteror had seen the man before. And next to him the boy-man who had taken the papers from Colonel Seogky. Who was so stupid he had not listened when Feteror had whispered in his mind that his bodyguard was a double agent. Feteror remembered the name: Barsk, Oma’s flesh and blood.

Feteror blinked as an image of his grandfather passed across his mind.

“Even pressure on both cables!” Leksi was yelling.

Feteror threw himself back, spreading his wings wide and hovering. He felt a strong desire to gain solid form, to match his power against Leksi. To rip the man to pieces, to make him bleed and suffer.

But there was not enough power coming from Zivon. Only the beckoning signal to return from Rurik. And he needed Leksi for now.

Feteror tightened his wings and dove into the shaft. He landed on top of the generator. Looking beyond, he could see the skeletons and devastation in the control center. He could feel spirits floating about. Feteror stepped back in surprise. He had felt spirits before, but always very distantly, but these came at him. He “saw” nothing, but he knew they were all around him. Four men, long dead, who whispered to him of revenge, of pain and suffering. He felt an immediate affinity for their suffering. He promised them he would avenge their pain.

Feteror pivoted over on one wing and flew out of the cave, up into the virtual sky.

Vasilev screamed as he scrambled away from the demon that pursued him. Its red eyes speared him with their malice, and he could hear the creature’s claws against the floor. He scuttled sideways, trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and the monster.

It had halted and Vasilev did too. He breathed deeply, then almost smiled. This was just a bad dream. All he had to do was waken and the nightmare would be over. He would be home in bed, ready to wake up and go to the university for another day of teaching.

He opened his eyes and blinked. It was dark.

Then he saw the eyes and knew the nightmare was real. The demon came forward once more. Vasilev ran away, so hard that when the chain reached its end, the collar around his neck snapped him back so badly, he tore muscles in his neck and he flopped back onto the concrete like a rag doll.

“Please, please,” Vasilev pleaded as the creature leaned over him. He swore he could smell its fetid breath. “Mercy!” Vasilev begged.

“You gave no mercy on October Revolution Island,” the creature hissed.

Vasilev’s eyes widened in shock. How did this thing know of that? Those thoughts were brutally interrupted as a claw ripped up his right side, parting flesh with one smooth stroke.

The pain was like acid. He screamed once more.

“You will not have death until you atone,” the creature said.

“I am sorry!” Vasilev whimpered.

“Atonement requires action.” The creature drew back leaving Vasilev holding his bleeding side.

“I am sorry,” Vasilev whispered as the demon once more disappeared.