Virtually Dead Read online

  A million thought fragments searched for a glimmer of light in the dark recesses of Chas’ mind before one of them sent a blinding reflection arrowing back through his consciousness. The white cherub clutched in Janey’s hand. Not Angel or Angela, but Angeloz. Luis LA Angeloz. The skinny half of Laurel and Hardy. Hadn’t they seen his AV in Second Life? Phat Botha. Wasn’t it possible he had a second account? An alt. Chas looked at Dark afresh, and the gun pointing straight at him. “Stanley?”

  For a moment it seemed as if Dark had frozen. “What?”

  And in that moment, Chas double-clicked the first LM his cursor landed on in his Inventory, and he teleported out of the Blackhouse before Dark could pull the trigger.

  ***

  As the grim brick and brownstone buildings rezzed around him, Chas realised he was back where most of his SL adventure had begun. In Crack Town, Carnal City, where Doobie had trapped and killed the griefer, Tommy Tattoo. He knew that Dark could only be a matter of seconds behind him. He clicked into Run mode and started running down the street. Past Dura’s Play Lounge and Carnal Street Urban Building supplies, and Urban Grims offensive textures.

  On the corner, a police car was pulled up on the sidewalk, and an officer was handcuffing a young thug against the wall. A scrawl of graffiti read Fight apathy—or don’t. He heard the report of gunfire echoing along the street as the brick wall ahead of him splintered under the impact of a bullet. He glanced back. Dark was pursuing him at a run. He knew, from his brief experience how hard it was to hit a moving target. The secret would be to keep moving.

  He passed a prostitute touting for business.

  Becka Cale: Five hundred for an hour, Chas. What do you say?

  But he didn’t stop, even to turn her down.

  He ran past the Bad Art store and turned left at the end of the street as another shot rang out. A butcher with a bloody white smock stood outside his store, a meat cleaver in his hand. He was holding up a string of sausages and grinning, as if he thought Chas might be interested in buying. Ahead, a single-decked bus was burning at the side of the road, and beyond it mist swirled around the headstones in the Carnal City cemetery.

  Chas veered away from the cemetery gates and found himself in what seemed to be a dead-end yard. He panicked, aware that Dark was only just behind him. Then he spotted a narrow, concealed exit that led out between tall buildings, and he ran through it and into a maze of passages that zigzagged between meshed off courtyards. The walls were very nearly obliterated by graffiti. He passed Strangled and Strangle animations. Ahead was Le Baron 24-hour store, selling “kinky accessories and more”.

  Chas turned right, still afraid to look back. And suddenly the landscape seemed familiar. He ran straight up the street and turned left on to a bridge spanning a river of chemical green sludge. This was where Doobie had finally caught up with Tommy Tattoo. At the end of the street stood the Carnal City Police Department.

  In a momentary but absolute failure of logic, Chas thought that he might find safety there. He glanced behind him to see Dark turning the corner, and when he turned back, found himself confronted by two bizarrely deformed AVs. Badwolf Lilliehook was a punk, with his right leg impossibly stretched and extended well above his head, his right arm growing out of his thigh. Ariel Kyle was a white-faced demon with a long, thin neck and both legs doubled over above her head. They looked like they had been pulled through a machine and mangled beyond any recognisable human shape.

  Badwolf: Hi, Chas.

  He sounded friendly enough. Chas stopped dead. Uncertain whether they posed any threat or not.

  Chas: Hi. I guess you guys are into the deformed look.

  Ariel: This is how we get off. Normal toon sex iz boring.

  Almost before her words had registered onscreen she exploded, like a watermelon dropped from a great height. Blood spattered everywhere as the shot from the Super Gun echoed around the street.

  Badwolf: Jesus Christ!

  Chas took off again, running to the end of the street, straight for the precinct office of the Carnal City police.

  A hooker in a short black skirt and thigh-length red boots called to him at the door as it slid open and he ran inside. But he didn’t stop to read her text.

  There was no one behind the desk. He ran past a wall of wanted posters and a map of Carnal city and turned through open steel doors into the cell area. Several role-playing prisoners lounged behind bars, drinking from beer cans. They looked up as he came in. Chas was panicking now. He was painting himself into a corner with no way out.

  He ran down the hall and through the only door at the end of it, finding himself in a small, square interview room with scarred green walls. There was a plain black table with two chairs at either side of it. A blackboard on the wall was scrawled over in yellow chalk. Witness. Photos. F/prints. Fluids. Weapons. The door slammed shut behind him. He was trapped. He cursed himself. There was no way out.

  An IM chinged into his dialogue box.

  Doobie: Chas, what’s happening? Did you get out okay?

  Chas: I’m in deep shit, Doobs. In Carnal City.

  Doobie: TP me.

  Chas: No time.

  He opened up his Inventory and clicked on the Landmark folder, then tried to turn at the sound of the door opening. The movement of his arrow key shut down his Inventory, and there was no time to open it again before he saw Dark standing in the doorway, the Super Gun pointing straight at him. It was all a question, he knew, of whether he could find the Quit key, before Dark clicked his mouse and fired the shot.

  But there was no competition. Dark fired. Once. Twice. Three times. Chas felt the impact of the bullets. His AV reacted, thrown backwards as each one struck him, until the third propelled him against the wall. There was, of course, no pain. Just a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, as his screen turned first red, then black, and his SL software crashed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Michael sat staring at his screen in disbelief. How could he have let it happen? Why hadn’t he teleported out earlier, or simply quit?

  Chas was gone, and with the erasure of his account, any chance of proving where the three million had come from. But Angel was gone, too. And in spite of everything that had pointed in her direction, any thoughts that he had harboured that Angela Monachino was the killer had been blown out of SL by three shots from the Super Gun. It could only have been Stan Laurel—Detective Luis LA Angeloz.

  He slumped forward, elbows on the table, head in his hands, bereft of the least idea of what to do now. He found himself mourning for Chas. In some way that he barely understood, he had been born again in Chas. Rediscovered the emotions he had thought were dead inside him. Chas had shown him how to live again. How to be. How to feel. And now he was gone, leaving Michael all on his own to face murder charges and death threats. The killer had destroyed Chas and would almost certainly now come after Michael in RL, too.

  And with that thought came the realisation that Angela was also in danger. Dark had only killed her AV. But Angela would know his true identity. Angeloz must have been one of her patients. While he might simply be content to let Michael be gunned down by the mob or sent to prison by the state, he would have to kill Angela. She knew too much.

  “Sorry, Michael, I’m going to have to ask you to leave now. It’s closing time.” The bearded barista smiled at him apologetically over the counter. “You, too, ma’am.”

  Michael looked around, waking as if from a dream. The place was empty now, except for the elderly lady in the corner. Half the lights had been switched off, and the rain was still falling outside, battering off the metalled surface of the road with such force that the mist it created almost obliterated the far sidewalk.

  His computer beeped loudly, and he looked down at the warning on his screen. Battery level critical. Almost before he had read it, the screen went blank and the machine whined, clicked, and fell silent. It had just shut itself down. No more juice. He closed its lid and stood up.

  “Excuse me.
”

  He turned to see the silver-haired woman in the corner slipping her MacBook into its carry-case and gathering together her belongings.

  “Do you know if there is somewhere else around here that I can access the Internet? I haven’t finished my business online, and it’s rather important that I do.”

  Michael didn’t want to be rude. But neither did he want to waste time directing her to an Internet cafe. He knew that somehow he had to get himself back home to get online. He needed to talk to Doobie. He needed another head to bounce all this off. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really not sure. I think there’s a place somewhere over on the Lido. But you’ll need to ask the barista.”

  ***

  Collar up, laptop held to his chest, he ran through the almost tropical downpour to his SUV across the street and slipped into the driver’s seat, rain streaming down his face. He tossed the computer aside and dug out his cellphone from an inside pocket. There was a good chance that Angela might still be alive. Her number was in the memory. He listened to it ring. And ring. And then the answering service cut in. He hung up, and had an ominous sense of foreboding. He needed to get into his house.

  The engine coughed and spat, as if clearing rainwater from its throat, before roaring into life. He slipped the transmission into drive and swung a u-turn across the street, accelerating hard toward the bridge, and the long climb back up to PCH. He turned right at the lights, and right again into Irvine Terrace. In Ramona drive he reduced his speed to a crawl and turned off his lights as he veered right at the end of the street into Dolphin Terrace. Between the rain and the black, moonless night, he could barely see as he navigated west toward his house.

  He was almost upon the patrol car before he saw it. It was parked right outside his gate, two uniformed officers only just visible through a fogged-up windshield in the halo of yellow light cast by the courtesy lamp above the rearview mirror. He cursed in a whisper, as if they might somehow be able to hear him, and swung right again into Patolita Drive, waiting until he was out of view before turning on his lights and accelerating back toward the highway. He was going to have to try to get in the back way.

  ***

  He parked in Bayside Drive and peered up through the rain and the dark to the line of houses along the top of the bluff, a hundred feet above him. Michael had never before tried to reach his house from here. Dolphin Terrace had been built precariously on the edge of the drop, and over the years several home owners had been forced to sink piles down to bedrock to underpin the foundations and stop their houses from sliding down the hill.

  The gradient was just a little less than sheer and would have been almost impossible to climb had it not been so thickly planted with shrubs and bushes and small trees. Michael remembered when Mora had first had the house remodelled, the construction company had stripped the slope bare to facilitate the drilling. During a downpour not dissimilar to tonight’s, Michael had spend a perilous two hours trying to position tarpaulins to prevent the soil from being washed away. The next day the architect had suggested a prolific planting from top to bottom to prevent further erosion.

  Michael was glad of it now. For without these hand and footholds, he would never have been able to climb it. As it was the ascent was difficult and dangerous. Thorns and spikes tore at his face, and arms, and hands. His feet slithered in the mud, his hands straining to hold on to roots and branches made slick by the rain.

  At one point he lost his grip, and slithered down ten or fifteen feet, before grasping a gnarled vine root to stop himself falling. A glance back down toward Bayside reminded him that it would have been a long way to fall. He scrambled up the slope to where he had slipped and forced himself on again toward the top.

  It took him nearly fifteen minutes to get there. He heaved himself over the low boundary wall along the edge of the terrace, and fell in a gasping heap on to the tiles beyond it. He lay on his back for several minutes, rain pounding his body, washing him clean of mud and dirt and blood, and he closed his eyes, wishing that he could simply fall asleep and awaken in some sunny tomorrow, remembering all this as just a bad dream.

  But instead, he made himself roll over, and got unsteadily to his feet. He found his keys and unlocked the door to his office, sliding it aside and stepping with relief into the warm, dry safety of the house. He knew that it would be fatal to turn on any lights, and so he hurried over to his desk and switched on his computer. He didn’t care about the trail of mud he left on the white carpet, or the mess he made of his leather office chair.

  He found the Second Life icon on his computer desktop and double-clicked it. Up came the welcome page. The cursor blinked at him from the window in which he would normally type his SL name. It was more in hope than expectation that he tapped out his username and password. An error message appeared almost immediately. Login failed. Please make sure that you have the correct account name and password. He tried again. The same message. Chas really was dead, his account terminated. And he had no way of getting back into Second Life. There was no time to sit down and create a new AV. So he was on his own.

  Angela was either already dead or in grave danger, and he had two possible courses of action. He could simply walk out into the street and tap on the window of the patrol car and throw himself on their mercy. But somehow he didn’t think they would be very receptive. How could he possibly convince them in time that Angela really was in danger? He could picture himself being left to stew in an interview room somewhere, while the officers assigned to his case drank coffee and compared notes on his ludicrous story, commenting on how Michael had always seemed a bit strange. A murderous avatar and three million dollars of mob money in an account that had vanished? They would very probably laugh in his face.

  No. If he could do anything for Angela, if it wasn’t already too late, he would have to do it himself.

  He made one final attempt to call her, only to get her messaging service again. Wearily, he hung up and stood to face the rain that still fell out there in the hot California night, and the long, treacherous descent in the mud back down to Bayside Terrace.

  ***

  There were two cars ahead of him in the line for the ferry. He watched its lights emerge from the mist of rain that fell across the channel. The ferryman, in baseball cap and oilskins, lifted the barrier and watched as his cargo drove off into the night. Then he waved vigourously at the waiting vehicles. He didn’t want to be standing out in the rain any longer than necessary.

  The trip across to the peninsula took less than five minutes. Everything was closed up on the other side. Jane’s Corndogs stood brooding darkly on the corner as the cars in front of Michael drove with infuriating lack of urgency to the traffic lights on Balboa Boulevard. The neon glow of Bubbles Art Gallery reflected foggy blue in the deluge as the line of vehicles idled at the lights, waiting for them to turn green. As the other cars made a left, Michael accelerated straight through and up Palm Street, turning hard right into the service lane providing vehicle access to the homes that ran along the boardwalk.

  He had no idea which was Angela’s. He had only ever approached it from the beach side. He made a guess at how far he’d come and pulled up outside a garage. There were no lights here, and as soon as he cut his engine, the world around him plunged into darkness. He waited a moment for his eyes to make the adjustment, before stepping out into the rain and peering through the dark to get his bearings. He crossed the lane and found a gate that opened into a narrow alleyway running all the way forward to the beach between two long, narrow houses. The gate at the beach end was locked, and he scrambled over it, feet sliding on the cross slats, to drop down on to the boardwalk. He was not sure why, but there seemed to be more ambient light here, and he saw that he was several houses short of Angela’s. He ran fifty yards through the rain to reach it and stopped at the gate.

  Rainwater was cascading from the Roman-tiled roof onto the first-floor balcony, then down on to the patio below. He could hear it drumming on the lid of the ba
rbecue and on the glass tabletop of the beach dining set in the garden. The windows at the front were screened from the boardwalk by a profusion of desert plants and shrubs, spikes and fronds and cacti. But he could see that the blinds were all drawn and turned down. There were no lights anywhere in evidence.

  He opened the gate, slightly surprised to find it unlocked and off the latch, and moved cautiously up the path to the house. Briefly he took refuge in the front porch, placing his hands on either side of his head to shield his eyes and peer in through the glass panes down one side of the door. But he could see nothing. He knocked and heard its empty, dead echo come back from within. No sound or sudden light returned with it to greet him.

  Back out in the rain, he ran down the narrow passageway between Angela’s house and the one next door, grey clapboard siding mired in darkness. He reached the side door about half way along. It was the door by which he had always entered and exited the house for his therapy sessions. The tradesman’s entrance.

  And there he stopped, standing stock still, with the rain running down his face. The door lay very slightly ajar, opening into the profound and impenetrable darkness of the interior. The wooden architrave of the doorframe was splintered and broken where it had been forced, and the lock broken.

  Cautiously, he reached out a hand and pushed it inwards. It swung open with the faintest of creaks.

  “Hello?” His voice sounded feeble and was swallowed up by the night. He tried again. More boldly this time. “Hello?” But as before, there was no response.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Doobie couldn’t concentrate. She hadn’t heard from Chas in nearly an hour. At the urging of her boss at Sinful Seductions, and under the threat of dismissal if she refused, Doobie had agreed to entertain a customer in the privacy of her own home. Had she had the least idea of what else to do, she would have told her boss where to stick her job, and what she could do with her precious customer.