Virtually Dead

Chapter Twenty-One

He seemed to be tethered to something anchored at the bottom of the sea. He couldn’t breathe, or move, but had the sensation of floating, as if in water. It was impossible to open his eyes. And as oxygen starvation increased, the pressure in his chest became almost unbearable. He tried to draw breath through his mouth, but something was stopping it. And then, as he thought despair might steal away all reason, he found himself sucking air in through his nasal passages. Long, thin columns of it that he dragged down into his lungs, almost gagging from the effort.

And it was as if the tether had been cut. He went spiralling upwards through the water. Up and up, endlessly it seemed, until at long last he broke the surface. He breathed out, but still couldn’t draw air back through his mouth. He opened his eyes. Wide. But he couldn’t see anything. He could feel the physical pounding of his heart against his ribs. The sound of it filled his head. The rushing of blood filled his ears.

And slowly, as comprehension took hold, he realised that it was consciousness whose surface he had broken, not water. He was perfectly dry, apart from the sweat that ran in rivulets down his face. He could feel it dripping from his chin. He couldn’t see for the simple reason that it was dark. Profoundly dark. He was seated, his arms bound behind him, tied at the wrists to a chair. His ankles, too, were secured, cutting off circulation, biting into his flesh. He couldn’t open his mouth because there was something taped across it, holding it firmly shut.

As his breathing became more regular, and his heartbeat less frantic, he tried to listen. But he could hear nothing. Not a sound other than the rasping of his own breath. Although he had the very strong sense that he was not alone. A smell, perhaps. Something in the air. The heat emanating from another body.

And then suddenly he was blinded. Cold, white light sent pain spiking through his brain. He screwed up his eyes against it, turning his head away as much as his bindings would allow. Hands grabbed his head roughly from behind, and forced him to look forward again. As his pupils contracted, the scene before him began to take form, like something rezzing in Second Life. An office desk. Polished mahogany. A desk lamp, its shade swivelled toward him, so that he received the full, reflected glare of its naked bulb. A man sitting in an executive leather chair, leaning forward, forearms planted on the desktop, staring intently at Michael. There was something lying flat on the desk in front of him, but Michael couldn’t see what it was.

He tried to swallow, but his mouth and throat were so dry his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. For a moment he thought he was going to be sick and started to panic. The man nodded, and someone reached around to tear away the tape that sealed his mouth. He heard the sound of it ripping free of his flesh and the sharp sting of it as it tore hairs out of his skin. He gasped for air, and felt the threatened bile retreat to his stomach.

The man leaned forward into the light, so that Michael got a clear sight of him for the first time. He wore a plain dark suit, with a white shirt and red tie. He had ginger hair, gelled and scraped back across a broad skull. His skin was very pale, very un-Californian, and spattered with freckles. At a guess Michael would have put him at mid- to late-forties. But he was carrying a fair amount of weight and might have been older. He was clean-shaven, almost shiny-faced. His lips were exceptionally pale, and his green eyes were so cold that Michael could almost feel them on him like the tips of icy fingers.

Michael started to speak, but the man quickly raised a silencing finger to his lips. Then he waggled it backwards and forwards in front him. A tiny shake of his head.

“Just listen.”

Michael nodded.

“You are a thief, Mr. Kapinsky.”

Michael began to protest. But the man tilted his head to one side and raised a single eyebrow, and Michael shut up.

“You are a thief. And a liar. You stole more than three million dollars from our account, and if I’d let you, you would have denied it, wouldn’t you?”

Michael assumed, because this had been couched as a question, that he was expected to reply. “Yes. Because I didn’t steal it.”

“See? A thief, and a liar. Just like I said.” He raised his finger again to pre-empt any further attempt by Michael at denial. “We were most perplexed when that money suddenly disappeared from our Second Life account. Vanished without trace. You can imagine how we felt. Close to three and a quarter million is no trifling amount, Mr. Kapinsky. But just as well for us that human frailty is something we have always been able to exploit to our advantage. We are past masters in the art of bribery and corruption. In truth, it is such an easy path to tread. People are so... bribable. And... corrupt. So we had little trouble finding someone in San Francisco who would take a look for us into the Linden Lab database to tell us what had happened. As you can probably understand, we were unwilling to go through official channels. The fewer questions asked the better.”

He leaned back a little now, folding his hands in front of him on the desk.

“And what did we find? We found that our account had been erased. No record of it ever existing. And our three million plus gone, as if simply vanished into thin air. Perplexing you might think. And you’d be right. We were very perplexed, and not a little vexed. But then our friend in San Francisco stumbled across an extraordinary coincidence. A sum of money corresponding exactly to our missing cash — right down to the last cent — had been paid into another account the same day that ours went missing.”

His face softened into what was almost a smile.

“Now, I don’t know about you, Mr. Kapinsky, but I’m not one who believes much in coincidence. No effect without cause.” He leaned into the light again, lowering his voice as if sharing a confidence. “But here’s the thing. Before we could even lift a finger to do anything about it, the money was gone again. And that account erased. Almost before our very eyes. Again, no record that it had ever existed, and so no name to hang it on. As you can imagine, we were more than perplexed by now.”

He stabbed a finger toward a ceiling hidden by the dark.

“But wait. Fortune favoured us yet again. Because guess what? That self-same exact amount turned up in yet another account. The same day the second one vanished. And do you know whose account that was, Mr. Kapinsky?” But he raised his hand. “No, don’t answer. We both know whose account it was. It was your account, Mr. Kapinsky.”

He sat back again.

“Very clever. I have to confess to a certain admiration. From a purely professional standpoint. But from a personal one, Mr. Kapinsky, I have to tell you that I am extremely pissed off. In fact, I can’t even begin to convey to you just how pissed off I am. But we’ll come to that. Many things we will come to, very soon. But first things first.”

He reached in front of him to the flat object lying on the desk and lifted its lid. As he turned it around, Michael saw that it was a laptop computer. The screen was lit up and displaying the Second Life welcome page. The SL eye/hand logo seemed to be mocking him now. The man nodded, and a shadow emerged from the dark, light catching the blade of a large hunting knife. Michael flinched as the hand that wielded it swooped to cut through the bindings that held his wrists and ankles.

The red-haired man rose from behind his desk and walked around to the front of it. He took a folded sheet of paper out from an inside pocket and smoothed it open on the desk beside the laptop.

“Quite simple, Mr. Kapinsky. Here you have the name of an AV. You log yourself in, and transfer our money into his account. Quite painless, and all over in sixty seconds.”

Michael made no attempt to get to his feet, until rough hands grabbed him from behind and forced him into a standing position. He was breathing in short, sharp bursts, aware that there was only one possible way this could end. “I can’t do it,” he said.

And a fist came from nowhere, like bunched steel, driving itself into his diaphragm. The pain was nauseating, and completely robbed him of the power to breathe. He doubled over and dropped to his knees, before the same rough hands as before pulled him back to his feet.

“There is no such word as ‘can’t’ in our lexicon, Mr. Kapinsky.”

Michael shook his head, trying to find breath to fuel his voice. Finally he managed what was little more than a forced whisper. “I can’t make the transfer because the money is no longer in my account.”

All animation deserted the face of the man in front of him. It was as if he had laid eyes on the Gorgon and turned to stone. “Show me.”

Michael was shoved forward to the computer. With shaking fingers he typed in his AV name and password, and there was Chas standing in the familiar surroundings of Twist’s office. If only he could just be subsumed into the virtual. Become Chas, and escape this hell. The man with the red hair leaned toward the screen to check out the linden total at the top right. There were less than two hundred Lindens in Chas’ account. He turned back toward Michael, who saw a blind fury in the cold green of his eyes, belied by the calm, even tone of his voice.

“You’d better put it back, then.”

“I don’t have it any more.”

“You’ve spent it?” His voice became modulated by incredulity for the first time.

“I paid off my home loan.”

The man leaned in toward him, till Michael could smell the stale garlic on his breath. “Then you’d better take out another, hadn’t you?” He snatched the sheet of paper from the desk and stuffed it into the breast pocket of Michael’s polo shirt. “I’ll give you just twenty-four hours, Mr. Kapinsky. If you haven’t paid the money into this AV’s account by then, you will be seriously dead.”

He turned around angrily and snapped the lid of the laptop shut, as light crashed through Michael’s skull, blinding him again before darkness fell and pain vanished with consciousness.