IN THE REALM, Reza had wings. Kurodar had given them to him: webbed wings sprouting from his shoulder blades so that he could fly. Reza loved this. He loved to fly. He loved the Realm. He loved Kurodar. More than that. It was just as his friend Ibrahim had told him it would be: he worshipped Kurodar. Why not? He used to worship the God, and what had the God ever done for him? Kurodar, it turned out, had more actual power—here in the Realm, anyway.
Here in the Realm, Kurodar had made Reza a fearful creature altogether—more than a man. His bared upper body was now uncannily muscular and strong. His skin was a kind of pink leather. His eyes were enormous and sharper than human eyes. And the savagely sharp talons of his hands could suddenly extend into sword-like weapons. His tail—well, he wasn’t sure what his tail was for, but he thought it was dashingly satanic.
He was inspecting the fortress Generator Room now. He did this obsessively, every chance he got. It was the living heart of the fortress and he always wanted to reassure himself that it was still beating.
Today, he took a few extra moments at it, because he wasn’t relishing the idea of breaking the bad news to his master. He flapped his wings slowly, hovering just above the floor of one of the iron galleries that ringed the flagstone walls.
The Generator Room was three stories high, and nearly as broad as it was tall. An enormous Disperser Wheel rose out of the cellar toward the ceiling. The lines of purple energy from various nearby portal points poured into it in lightning blasts from the center of the room to its base. The wheel absorbed this energy from around the Realm and dispersed it throughout the fortress, giving Kurodar the power he needed to finish his work here, to complete the Sky Room and create more of the guardian bots who were to form Reza’s army. With that army, Reza would be able to protect the fortress in the unlikely event of some sort of attack by the Americans.
Everything here seemed to be working well. The fortress should be fully supplied with power for now.
So there was no putting his duty off any longer. Reza flapped his webbed wings harder and glided out the iron door into the fortress’s Great Hall.
The strange guard-bots at each door saluted him as he flitted across the central room of soaring stone and gorgeous stained glass. When he came to the entrance of the Sky Room, the guard-bots stepped aside. The big double doors swung open.
The Sky Room! What a place this was! The control center of the fortress—the launchpad of what would be their first real attack on the Americans. Reza looked up at the dome with a feeling of almost child-like wonder. It was as if the great Kurodar had created a sky of his own. Seemingly infinite black space. Starry lights so white they seemed beacons of purity and perfection. Multicolored lines of energy streaking across the vault. And thousands of minuscule rainbow-colored bots swarming like beetles around the edges, the servants of Kurodar’s imagination, ceaselessly laboring to bring the master’s vision to life.
The dome was held in place by fluted golden columns soaring up from the marble floor. Gigantic classical statues stood in the alcoves between them: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, bin Laden—all the heroes who had labored and sacrificed to bring humanity to perfection. As Kurodar himself was laboring now.
There he was. Reza hovered beneath him, staring up at him with a sense of awe and joy. The sight of his master gave Reza the same powerful feeling he used to have when he was worshipping the God. It was the ecstasy of submission and obedience.
In RL—Real Life—Kurodar was just an ugly little man with spindly legs, slumped shoulders, and a frog-like face. But that was in RL. Here in the Realm, he appeared in his true form: a hazy pink presence, liberated from the flesh. Pure mind. Pure genius. The god of the MindWar.
“My master,” said Reza, his words full of feeling.
The hazy form pulsed, and the hollow voice answered him, “Why are you interrupting me? I have to finish the dome. There’s not much time. The Traveler is already on the move.”
“I know, Master,” said the assassin. He took a breath. Braced himself. “I thought you should be told: there’s been a disturbance in the Blue Woods. The guardian of the Scarlet Plain was activated—and the security feedback shows it was destroyed.”
The hazy form of Kurodar shifted. It was hard to tell, but it seemed a note of surprise entered the master’s voice as he said, “Destroyed? You’re certain? Not just disabled?”
Flapping his wings to stay aloft, Reza shook his head. “According to my information, the bot was completely destroyed.”
“We have an intruder then.”
“Yes, my master. Possibly more than one. Should I send more guardian bots to hunt them down?”
There was a pause as Kurodar’s great mind considered. Then he said, “No. They’ll have left by now. The fortress guard isn’t finished. If we spread them out to search, it will weaken our defenses. I’m almost done here. Keep watch—and if anyone tries to approach the fortress itself, kill them.”
Reza lowered his chin in a gesture of submission. His webbed wings gave another muscular flap and he glided from the room.
When Reza was gone, Kurodar turned his attention to the dome of the sky again. It was strange, he thought. This place—this Realm—it was purely the product of his imagination. It sprang from his mind day by day, as RL had sprung from the mind of God. Here, he was the god. This was his creation.
And yet, as powerful as he was, he was afraid.
He had tried not to show it while the assassin was present, but the report from the Blue Woods frightened him. They were coming for him again. The Americans. He had known they would. He had known they would not give up. They were going to try to destroy his life’s work, just as they’d destroyed the lifework of his father. He had to finish the Sky Room. Quickly. He was running out of time.
He hated this. Building the Sky Room. Building this fortress to protect it. Staging this raid when what he wanted was to launch a full-fledged attack that would leave the United States in flames. He needed to get back to his main work, the work of completing the Golden City. That was the real weapon of the Realm. That was the structure that would give him the power to bring the U.S.—Europe—all his enemies—to their knees.
But the fortress and the Sky Room were necessary. This was an emergency. The Assembly was losing faith. If he didn’t show them something soon, they would cut off his funds and the Realm would go unfinished. The Canadian train wreck had caught their attention, but it wasn’t enough. It had no real point or purpose.
Now he had the chance to show them something real and effective. The Traveler was on the move. The entire U.S. security apparatus was geared up to protect him. If Kurodar could defeat that apparatus, it would show the Assembly the real potential of the MindWar Realm.
On the other hand, if the Traveler should escape . . .
That was why Kurodar was afraid. The Traveler was the one man on earth who might just be as brilliant as he was, who might just be brilliant enough to destroy his creation. The prospect of that, the prospect of defeat at the hands of the Americans, frightened him more than anything. It haunted his nightmares. Defeat. Humiliation. The idea that the same horrible fate that had overtaken his father might now overtake him . . .
He had to stop the Traveler. He had to—and he would.
He turned his attention to the dome again, and continued creating the sky.