Truth be told, the tracking process didn't take long. Like, at all. It only took a mere five minutes for us to find our first target—Tanya.
Well, technically, the Oculus found her in two minutes. The other three were used to quench Lenny's insatiable inquisitiveness. In simpler terms? His curiosity.
"This baby could tell us where Mr. O is right now!" Lenny protested when we tried to stop him from stalking the President of the United States. "It could give us his phone number, along with the numbers of each and every celebrity in the world. C'mon guys, just give me five minutes and I'll have Ellen on the phone for you."
"Phil?" I sighed. "Get this bastard out of my way."
"Gladly."
Once Phil got Lenny to shut up, I entered Tanya's full name (the Oculus automatically retrieved her picture from her ID), a search radius of 600 miles, and an 8-hour timeframe. Two minutes later, we were staring at a pretty straightforward route. It was a zigzag pattern that connected the motel with the CIA safe house.
"Try narrowing down the time frame to the last hour," Phil suggested. "If there are cameras in this place, the ones in the room where Tanya's being held should've caught an image of her."
"I thought you were the one who said that there weren't any hidden cameras in here." I pointed out.
"Just do it."
I did as he asked.
As you would have thought, nothing showed up. No images, no video clips, nothing. It was like Tanya had mysteriously vanished from the surface of Earth. Which, technically, was true.
"Try the past two hours," Phil said, his voice strained. I had heard doctors in the Emergency Room say "Charge him up to 200, please" in that tone of voice.
I placed a gentle hand on Phil's shoulder. "Phil, maybe she might not be—"
"Just change the fucking timeframe, will ya?" Phil's voice was deathly calm.
This time, we got something. It was a series of pictures, followed by a video recording of Tanya sitting on a chair inside a white room that looked similar to the one that I was in half an hour ago. Judging by her lolled head and lack of motion, I would say that she was indeed, as Phil had predicted earlier, in a drug-induced sleep.
"Which room is that?" Phil muttered as I scanned my eyes along the subtitle for the video clip.
"Room 7," I announced. With a flick of my fingers, I brought up the map of this building. It took me no time to spot the words 'Room 7'. "It's just two doors down from here."
"Then what are you waiting for?" Phil cried urgently. "Let's go!"
"Wait. We still have to find Royce, remember?" I reminded Phil, my fingers busy typing in the necessary parameters for the Oculus to perform the search. Comically enough, I was stumped at the first question.
"Anybody got Royce's first name?" I asked, mentally-reprimanding myself for being so ignorant when we were having tea in Royce's office earlier. Oh, Jarod, you fool. "No?"
"Spencer." Lenny offered. "Spencer Royce."
I took a full minute to stare at Lenny like he was Jesus.
"Eidetic memory." Lenny shrugged, pointing at his head. "Can't help it."
"Thank you," I said, and I really meant it. I punched in the last of the information and hit 'SEARCH'.
The search results were almost similar to Tanya's. There were images of Royce within the premises two hours ago, but none in the previous hour. Dang it. It must be either he'd really went off the grid, or...
...he'd worn a mask.
But then that didn't make sense either. I'd found a Guy Fawkes mask in Royce's drawer, hadn't I? But again, he could have a spare...
Hastily, I changed the parameters to fit the description of The Duke. As I hit the 'SEARCH' button once more, I prayed for the Oculus to work its magic. Find me The Duke, please, find me...
Bling, bling. The familiar red bracketed wordings appeared on the bluish screen of the Oculus.
[NO RESULTS FOUND]
My shoulders slumped. I've lost him. He's gone.
My mind was a blur as I tried to figure out how Royce could've pulled this off. To disappear completely from the grid? He must be wearing a burlap sack over his head to do that.
Through the fog of confusion inside my head, I faintly heard Phil shouting, "We gotta go, now!" I made no move. I was too busy thinking how I was supposed to escape prison, now when The Duke has vanished. Horrifying thoughts of being a fugitive on the run for the rest of my life buzzed across my mind's eye.
Just before I started ripping my hair out, Phil, who'd apparently lost his patience, seized control of my legs and started marching towards the vault door.
"What is this, a mutiny or something?" I yelped, grappling for the controls of my legs. Phil knocked me aside with a Mayweather punch.
"I'm sorry, man. I truly am. But I just couldn't stand there and let my wife die while you waste precious time chasing a ghost." Phil snapped.
"What do you mean? She's not gonna die!" I shot back. "And The Duke is not a ghost; you know that! Now gimme back my legs."
"Relax. It's not like it's the first time I'm in control."
"In control?" I snorted. "More like 'hijacking my body in broad daylight'. Jesus." I was starting to regret not filing a restraining order on Phil when I had the chance.
Turning to Lenny, I shot him an accusatory glare. "What happened to the whole 'free me of Kristoff's electrical restraints once I woke you up' promise you made, huh?"
"What I promised you was that the triggering of my consciousness could block the yellow light emitted by the nanochip implanted in the primary motor cortex of your brain," Lenny replied. "'Stopping Phil from deliberately seizing control over your legs' is an entirely different thing."
"Thanks a bunch, Captain Gobbledygook," I muttered drily. Then the full force of his words hit me. "Wait a sec. Did you just say 'nanochip'?"
"It's part of the optogenetics," Lenny explained. "The gene of the halorhodopsin protein added to your neurons are stimulated by the light produced by the nanochip. It then releases a flood of negative ions that blocks you from accessing your motor neurons. Hence, your immobility."
"Right." Honestly, I had no idea what he just said. "Well, when you're done with your lecture, perhaps you might wanna help me end this coup d'état right here?"
On hindsight, I must say that for a guy who was having all four of his limbs hijacked and toyed around like a possessed puppet, I was behaving remarkably well. In the end, I even relented and allowed Phil to trundle off to Room 7 where his wife was being held.
We reached Room 7 in no time. However, the moment I saw the familiar SpongeBob's-pineapple-house-metal-door, I knew something was terribly wrong. Three seconds later, it hit me.
There was nobody guarding the room.
"Wait," I told Phil. "Where are the guards?"
He shrugged. "Toilet break?"
The gears in my mind whirred. Something peculiar was going on here. Tanya might not be a threat physically, but she is the only reason Phil and I are still here in this godforsaken place. Being a calculating criminal mastermind, surely Royce should know that if he lost Tanya, he would've lost his only trump card on Phil. So why would Royce be so negligent in guarding her?
Unless it's a trap. A tiny voice inside me whispered.
"Stop!" I blurted out, but it was too late. Phil had already opened the door. I shut my eyes and curled into a ball, bracing for the imminent ambush.
"Dude, relax―" Phil said. I opened my eyes. I figured that since Phil was still able to talk, he's probably still alive, and so was I.
Here's the good news.
Nobody came forward to tackle me like I was the quarterback. Nothing came whizzing at my head, chopping it off before I can say Jack Robinson. No giant bonfire erupted at the threshold where I was standing.
In fact, there was nothing at all. The room was empty. No guards, no chair, and yeah, as you might've guessed, no Tanya.
And there's the bad news.
"No, no, NO!" Phil bellowed. "Where is she?!"
Lenny and I had no answer to that, so we kept our mouths shut. But I had a feeling that I knew why there weren't any images for Tanya in the past hour. Royce must've had her moved elsewhere an hour ago.
The whole 'blank stare' strategy didn't work out very well for me, as two seconds later, Phil whirled around and started shouting at me. "You sure this is Room 7? Could you have...I don't know, misinterpreted the map? Maybe what you saw was Room 1, but you thought, 'Oh, the '7' has such a short head, but who cares?'"
I held my hands up in defense. "No, I'm absolutely sure―"
"Then why the fuck isn't my wife here?!" Phil exploded.
"Look, man―" Sensing the situation was about to get ugly, Lenny the Peacekeeper decided that it was time for damage control, but he'd barely uttered two words when a robotized voice boomed from the walls.
"Jarod, Jarod, Jarod." The voice chanted. "You are, indeed, resourceful as ever. I must say that you surpassed my expectations. Breaking into the vault―that's totally incredible, I must say."
Seeing me stagger around clumsily in search of the source of the voice, it spoke again. "Oh, in case you were wondering, these walls are equipped with nano-mikes, nano-speakers and nano-cameras, each one of them too small for the naked eye to spot. However, if used in large quantities, they serve the same purpose as their normal-sized counterparts."
I wanted to remind Phil of his oh-so-brilliant deduction about the absence of hidden cameras in this place, but decided this wasn't the right time.
"What do you want?" Phil cried, his voice close to breaking. "Where is Tanya?"
"The lady? She's safe." The voice replied dismissively. "The real question is the first one. But I believe I've given you the answer already."
I ripped back mouth control from Phil before he could start cursing out loud. "Don't do this, Royce. You said you needed me to complete Operation Athena, right? So leave Tanya out of this. That woman had suffered enough."
Royce scoffed. "Oh, I assure you that she is, in no way possible, suffering right now. I give you my word on that."
Phil gasped. "What have you done to her?"
I relayed the question.
"Don't worry; she's alive and well, just...y'know, dreaming away." Through the mini-speakers, I could almost feel Royce's smile. It felt uber-creepy. "But she won't be for long. Not if you do something."
"Do what?"
"This." He said.
Right on cue, the floor beneath me caved in. Caught unawares, I shrieked in a very unmanly fashion as I tumbled into the bottomless abyss beneath, its darkness striking fear into my heart...
Nah, not really.
What actually happened was I fell for about 2 seconds into something soft, so yeah, no broken bones or a shredded spleen. But the shrieking part was true though. I screeched like I had a beetle up in each of my orifices.
When I finally came to my senses and stopped my girlish screaming, I realized I was lying on a bed in a brightly-lit room. It was fully air-conditioned, and the walls were pristine white. There was a―
Wait a second. I was back in Room 7.
My mind struggled to process the news. So I fell from Room 7, and I ended up back in Room 7. Or was it Room 5? For the record, the two of them looked completely identical.
Golly. This shit was even more complicated than Alice's rabbit hole. At least that led to Wonderland.
"Welcome back." Royce's voice floated into my ears. My senses were kinda numb and dull, like I'd just recovered from a serious hangover.
It must be due to the falling. I thought.
From the corner of my eyes, I saw Royce. He hadn't changed much (well, how could he have, it's not like I've not seen him in decades or anything), but he was wearing thick gloves and a pair of huge goggles. Oh, and a lab coat. He's what, a scientist now?
I tried to move my hands and legs, but they were strapped to the bed underneath me with what I thought were FlexiCuffs. I tried to speak, but my throat felt so bitter that I had the urge to gag. In the end, I settled for licking my (parched) lips. And some really loud throat-clearing.
Royce placed a hand on my shoulder kindly. If I can move I would've torn that hand off. "Take your time. Don't worry, it's normal to have difficulties speaking at first."
When I finally got my voice back, I croaked out. "W...where is Tanya?"
"Always the selfless one, eh?" Royce replied approvingly. "Don't worry, she's fine―she's just in the next room."
I thought for a while, my eyes flickering around as I drank in my surroundings. "Am I dreaming?"
Royce chuckled. "No. But you were."
"Oh."
It took me a moment to fully compute what Royce had just said. "Wait, what do you mean 'I was'?"
"You were in a simulation, Jarod. For about an hour."
My mind was racing now. If everything in the past hour was just a dream, then could it be possible that Layla was...still alive? No! That didn't make any sense. When did I fall asleep? How did I even enter the simulation in the first place?
"So Layla is still alive?"
"Of course she's alive!" Royce looked horrified. "How on Earth could I've killed my loyal assistant? I assure you that she's totally fine, but if you need somebody to blame, blame the simulation, as it was left to operate and develop the plot on its own; all I could do was to spectate the whole thing through this MRI right here. I swear, if I could interfere, I wouldn't have had me shot Layla just like that."
I was still struggling to form coherent thoughts. "H...how...did I...?"
Royce grinned evilly. "Coffee or tea?"
Realization hit me in the face. The beverages! Royce must've added something in them. But still, the simulation must've been really smart to start off from the point where the beverages were served to make the whole thing seem so flawless and convincing.
"But, it all felt so...real."
"Surely it did; the tech is state-of-the-art." Royce agreed. "However, there were quite a few glitches in it; some of which that are blatantly illogical, while the others were just minor anomalies. For starters, there's no such thing as the Oculus; that technology is just too far-fetched for our era. The simulation made that up from your memories. It seems like you've watched the latest installment of Fast and Furious, eh?"
Ah. God's Eye. Right. I smacked myself (metaphorically, of course) for not making the connection earlier.
"You might also have noticed that there weren't any blood when Layla was shot in the head, and the time where Hector messed up the name of the car he lent you. Those are the smaller details that the simulation overlooked. The one last obviously irrational simulation is all the nano bullshit I was saying at the end. There might be nano-cameras around, but to make them invisible, I guess we might've to give Jack Griffin a ring."
"But why?" I rasped. "Why go through such elaborate means to create this so-called...simulation?"
Royce clapped his hands together. "Finally, the million-dollar question. But, as confusing as this might sound, I believe that you do know the answer to that question."
"To perfect your simulation into a virtual reality where dogs walk people and couches scratch cats?" The giddiness of learning that Layla was still alive was beginning to get to me.
Royce smiled, but I don't think it had anything to do with what I said. "Ask yourself, Jarod. What do you think Operation Athena is all about?"
I thought for a while. "To turn human immortality from fiction to reality?"
"Really?" Royce smirked. "You think I'm some sort of elderly multibillionaire who wants to transfer his soul to a younger body just because he's suffering from a terminal illness?"
"Well, you're the one with the looks of a cancer patient." I pointed out, referring to his awfully thin and tall physique. Oh, and let's not forget his bald head.
As an answer, Royce held a piece of white cardboard to my face. At first I thought he was gonna smother me with it, when my eyes focused. There was a single word on it, in bold.
OPTOGENETICS
This word looks familiar. I thought. Suddenly, I was flung back to the moment where Lenny was talking to me in Gibberish. He did mention this word, didn't he? I was about to point this out to Royce when a voice interrupted my train of thought.
"Stop!" It was Lenny, screaming urgently. "Don't you tell him! Don't you dare tell him!"
"Dude!" I exclaimed, inwardly of course. "Where have you been? For one moment, I thought you were gone for sure. Where's Phil?"
"Yeah, and now we're back. Boo-fucking-hoo. I bet that was a pretty awesome moment for you, huh," Phil muttered, sourly. "And why the hell are you in handcuffs?"
"Those are FlexiCuffs." I had barely gotten the words out of my...cerebral cortex when Royce's voice rang in my ears.
"Jarod? You remember something?" Gosh. The fake concern in his voice was just...disgusting.
"No―I mean, yes, but no―" I spluttered.
"Buy me some time, kid," Phil ordered, as he started to contract and squeeze my hands, forcing my thumb to touch my little finger. "I'll see what I can do with these annoying cuffs."
"Calm down, Jarod." Royce shushed. "It's normal if you're unsure about the things you remember from the simulation. Just try to relax yourself...and the memory will come back to you."
"Can you tell me why am I not supposed to tell him about the nonsensical baloney you were going about earlier?" I asked Lenny.
Lenny snorted. "'Cause that nonsensical baloney might just start a freaking world war, that's why."
"Oh, right." I decided that I didn't want to have anything to do with the knowledge that could cause Armageddon. So I tried my best to stall.
"Yeah..." I closed my eyes and started nodding slowly like a meth junkie. "Ah...I think I remember it now...maybe..."
As I did that, I paged for Phil. "Dude. You done yet? I don't think the Duke is buying my Regan MacNeil act."
"Yup...just about it..." Phil murmured. My hands were starting to sweat with all the jerking and squeezing. That's a good thing though, 'cause getting my hands sweaty kinda increases the prospect of slipping them out from the zip ties. And as it happens, my hands were slightly smaller than my wrists, so yay me.
"Optogenetics, huh. Does that have something to do with cottage cheese burgers? Wait a second―" I could tell that my act was losing its convincingness. From the corner of my eye, I saw Royce frown and take a step back.
Shit, nonono―
But it was too late. Royce's eyes traveled to my hands, widening as he realized what I was trying to do. "What the heck are you―"
Fortunately, Phil chose that moment to free my right hand from the FlexiCuffs by ripping it out with a quick tug. It hurt like hell, but what happened next sort of made the agony worth it.
Swinging it in a wide arc, Phil socked Royce in the face. Hard.
"Way to go, Phil!" I cheered.
As Royce cursed and clutched at his bloodied nose, Phil fumbled with the other FlexiCuff. With the help of my right hand, he got the other hand out in a matter of seconds.
Sitting up, I scanned my eyes around my surroundings and quickly spotted a scalpel on the desk next to my bed. I grabbed it and sliced the zip ties around my ankles with two swift cuts. Sayonara, suckers.
I vaulted down from the bed, just in time to catch Royce's retaliation. The guy, infuriated that I'd snuffed him in the nose, was now returning the gesture by smacking me in the face.
Or at least, he tried to. After all, Phil wasn't a prized, coveted Bruce Lee for nothing. As quick as lightning, he brought my hand up and caught Royce's punch with astonishing ease. Then, using Royce's force against him, Phil allowed Royce's punch to travel through to the point that the poor guy lost his balance and tumbled into Phil's waiting arms.
Before Royce knew what was happening―heck, even before I knew what was happening―Phil had already twirled Royce around and secured him in a headlock. The tall guy struggled and choked viciously, but Royce barely flinched.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I must've mistaken you for Mr. Pretentious." Phil tut-tutted. "'Cause right now, you look more like Mr. Pathetic."
Even though his windpipe was being forcefully constricted, Royce still managed to choke out. "You...can't...kill...me..."
Phil replied with the most ridiculous-sounding snort I've ever heard. "Piss off, Dracula. Stop possessing this brainless mortal―"
"Tanya..." Royce gasped.
The single, inarticulate word took effect on Phil immediately. He tensed, and tightened my arm around Royce's neck. "What about Tanya?"
"Bluphbthhh―" Royce choked.
"Um, I don't think he can speak with you getting all WWE over him." I pointed out.
Phil loosened my arm by a tiny fraction, just enough to allow Royce to speak without sounding like a one-year-old choking on some alfalfa.
"The deal is simple. If I'm not walking out of here alive, so aren't Tanya and Layla. And if I don't get the information I want, or you'd surreptitiously called the cops to arrest me, they die, too." Royce's voice was a cold, deathly whisper.
"So choose." And then he smirked. "Though I don't suppose it's much of a choice, really."
Crap.