He pulled me close to his body and held me. I pressed my face against his chest and felt his warmth. We stood like that for minutes or maybe it was hours. It didn’t matter. All that did matter was that we were there together.

  Austin released me and took a step back.

  “So this is what hacking consciousness is?” I said. “Just a different way of moving around?”

  “This is just the veneer,” he said, looking around us. “When I had my stroke I was on a completely different level where I could see the energy infrastructure that forms all this.” He swept his hand toward the panorama.

  He was right. As exhilarating as it was to zip around the globe, drilling down to the base level of existence would be something else entirely. We needed to know more. We needed more abilities, more insight. “We have to find the next firewall,” I said, “but how?”

  “Our experiences seem to be rooted in our intentions. We focused our will on the door, so we saw the door. That was one firewall, and beyond it was our ability to move freely in space and time.” He looked at his wristwatch again. “Fifteen seconds left in the hack.”

  “So we just close and our eyes and make a wish?” I said.

  “Put that way, it sounds ridiculous, but we can’t deny the fact that my concentrating on coming here is what brought us here. We have nothing else to go on. We need a mental connection that attaches our intentions to the firewall just like we did with the red door.”

  “But the door’s not real.”

  “Doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t have to be. It’s merely a hypnotic suggestion for the subconscious mind.” He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. “We should choose something that’s easy for our minds to attach to, another door. A black door. I want you to hold that in your mind just like you did with the red one.”

  I nodded, then closed my eyes as well. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Picture it clearly. It’s black and floating there, right in front of us. Do you see it?”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t picture it.”

  “It’s right here. You can open your eyes now,” he said.

  I did, but there was no door. Austin was a few feet to my right, taking a step away from me with his right hand extended.

  “See it?” he asked, staring at nothing, as far as I could tell. “Just like I thought it would be. I’m going through it. Follow me.”

  Then I did see something, but it wasn’t a door and it wasn’t where he was looking. Just beyond him, to his left, was a shimmering white nothingness, a void, like a vertical seam torn in the air.

  “Austin, wait,” I said, but he was in midstep, and before his foot came down, he vanished.

  “Austin!”

  He was gone.

  My eyes went to the slit in the air. It was nearly identical to the one I’d seen during my first hack. It led somewhere, probably to Austin. It was all about intention, right? And my intention, like Austin’s, was to access the level where anything can be changed on an atomic level.

  Without hesitating, I walked toward the void and stepped through it.

  I felt no movement, heard no sound at all. Only the air changed. In an instant the crisp, brittle air was replaced by warm humidity.

  I blinked and an alleyway came into focus. Then the smell hit me—acrid and pungent. It was the scent of damp earth and decay and death. Mostly death.

  Where am I?

  2.7

  DAY 3 - 9:05 pm

  “YOU’RE CERTAIN?” Walter Bell said, his voice stern on the other end of the call.

  Stone held the phone to his ear as he glanced at the tablet computer resting on the passenger seat. A high-resolution satellite image of the warehouse filled the screen.

  “Yes sir. The satellite passed out of sight and went off-line, but we were able to track her before it did. We’re certain. It’s her.”

  “Why there?” Bell said, “The Feds had her on lockdown. Why’d she leave?”

  “I suspect she’s attempting to retrieve the data on her own. She’s obviously hiding something from them, though I don’t know what or why. Either way, it’s an opportunity. If she’s hiding from them, it means they don’t have anything yet. It also means she’s likely alone.”

  Bell was quiet for a moment. “How close are you?”

  “Twenty minutes.”

  “Call me when it’s finished. I want this resolved today.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Stone disconnected and slipped the phone into its sheath on his belt. The situation couldn’t have played out better. The girl had escaped the FBI’s watchful eye on her own and was clearly avoiding them. Whatever she was doing, she wanted to keep it in the dark. She wanted to disappear.

  He would make sure she did, and it would happen tonight.

  PART THREE

  3.1

  IN A BLINK the Himalayas had vanished from Austin’s world. It had taken nothing more than setting his mind on the image of a black doorway, a mental suggestion like the red one they’d used to access the first level.

  By walking through the black door he’d instantaneously traded one location for another. Now he found himself standing in the middle of a small clearing, hemmed in by a rainforest so dense it blocked the sky. The world around him seemed more material, more physical, not less, as he’d expected.

  He turned his head, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings. Trees taller than buildings grew so closely together it was impossible to see more than twenty feet into the jungle. Why was he here? None of it was remotely familiar.

  “Nyah!” he called. She’d imagined a black door too, and their destinations seemed to be determined by their intentions. So where was she?

  He tilted his head and listened for her—her voice, her moving through the jungle, any sign of her. But he heard nothing except the nearby rumble of thunder. The scent of approaching rain hung on the wind, and along with it, the earthen aroma of damp ground.

  “Nyah!” The jungle swallowed his words. Wind blowing through the trees was all that answered back. He couldn’t worry about her now, time in the hack was running out. Wherever she’d gone, obviously it wasn’t here. No problem. They would both come out of the hack soon enough.

  The ground around him was worn to dirt in the shape of a circle about ten feet across. Flat, polished stones lay side by side and formed a boundary at the circle’s edge. They were too thoughtfully placed to be happenstance. Someone had groomed this spot in the jungle. But who? And why?

  What is this place?

  A muffled snap reached him from the trees.

  He spun and gazed into the dense vegetation. He called, “Who’s there? Nyah?”

  A faint whisper replied, so soft it could have been only a breeze. A child’s voice, speaking a language Austin didn’t know. It haunted the air, this time coming from his left.

  He turned, but as soon as he moved the child’s voice called from behind, followed by the sound of feet padding quickly over soft ground.

  He crossed the clearing, stepped over the stone ring, and rushed in the direction of the noises, pushing through the thick leaves and bone-thick branches. He could’ve seen who it was if not for the trees.

  “Wait!” he said as he plunged forward and into a tangle of saplings that blocked his way. Beyond them, through gaps in the foliage, he saw a child with olive skin and dark hair darting away, deeper into the lush jungle. A boy. The child sprinted for several yards then hopped atop a fallen tree and glanced over his shoulder.

  With a wave of his hand he motioned for Austin to follow. He leaped off the tree with a laugh and fled into the jungle.

  Austin blinked. The boy saw him? How could that be? There was a reason he called this the “ghost state.” In all of the hacks he’d experienced, never once had another person been able to see him. No one except Nyah, and then only because she too had been in the ghost state. Austin felt certain that that he and the boy were meant to meet.

  Was the child in the ghost state, as well? How? Where had he come from?

  “Wait!” he called and pushed through the saplings, hurrying after the boy. Within ten paces Austin had lost sight of him and the jungle closed in on all sides. The damp ground became gnarled with roots and rocks, and he stumbled, falling hard against a tree trunk.

  Austin rose and rushed forward, weaving a path through the crowded trees. He planted a hand atop the fallen tree on which the boy had stood and hurdled it. Ahead, leaves rustled from the boy’s passing and he followed.

  “Come on,” the child called.

  Austin ran, arms held up to shield his face from the branches and vines clawing at him, snagging his clothes. Thunder bellowed and reverberated through the air as gloom fell over the jungle. The vast leaf canopy roared with the drumbeat of rain.

  The forest thinned ahead, and Austin came to a stop and gripped a branch over his head. A sound reached him, louder than the rain. It came not from the sky, but from everywhere at once, as though the earth itself were groaning and writhing deep in the ground beneath his feet. The tone swelled, a deep hum that traveled through him, turning his bones into tuning forks.

  He spotted something through the trees: a rectangular darkness beyond the tree line. It was a hut of some kind. Rubbing his arms, unnerved by the constant humming, Austin stepped out of the forest into a clearing completely devoid of trees, shrubs, and leaves. The soggy jungle floor had given way to a crackled dirt clearing, dry as bones despite the rain.

  At the center of the circular opening cut into the jungle sat a hovel made of thatch, mud, and palm branches. The crude structure arched to form a dome ten feet in diameter and seemed barely tall enough for a grown man to stand inside. A wisp of bluish-white smoke curled from a hole in the roof and disappeared on the wind.

  There was no sign of the child anywhere, or of anyone else, but there was still the sound—a low thrumming tone that changed now to a steady, unbroken rhythm like a heartbeat.

  Wum wum . . . wum wum . . . wum wum . . .

  Austin approached the hut’s doorway cautiously and stopped. His heartbeat throbbed with the rhythm in the air. He waited for a breath, then lifted a hand to the curtain covering the entrance—an animal hide with black, wiry hair—and drew it aside.

  In the darkness beyond, a fire flickered, its light almost instantly absorbed by the shadowy surroundings.

  For the briefest moment his instincts urged him to turn around, run into the jungle and never look back. But there was nothing to fear here, was there? If anyone was in control of the situation, he was. If he willed to be somewhere else, he could be there instantly, right?

  Austin ducked through the entrance and, cautiously, stepped inside. He released the pelt, and it fell closed behind him, shutting out the murky daylight. Shadows jumped toward him and pulled away, brought to life by the flicker of firelight. His eyes struggled to adjust, and he realized the humming sound had stopped.

  He squinted at the dancing shadows. The air was sweet and pungent, a mix of charred wood and roasted meat. The orange fire sawed at the air in the middle of the room and, beyond it, a broad-shouldered man sat cross-legged, watching Austin with unflinching attention.

  “Please,” the man said. “Sit.”

  The voice was familiar.

  As Austin’s eyes adjusted, the soft shadows sharpened and the stranger came into crisp focus. He sat shirtless on the other side of the fire. His face tilted down as he stirred the coals with a stick, sending sparks into the air like fireflies. The flames threw a shadow across half his face, but there was no mistake.

  It was Outlaw. A figment in his mind?

  His dark hair fell to his shoulders, strands of it fluttering on a current of air Austin did not feel. Black leather cords with tassels encircled the man’s biceps. The muscles in his arms were defined, like ropes pulled taut, and a large tribal tattoo marked his right shoulder. Strong hands with pronounced veins rested on his knees, adorned with silver rings that glinted in the light. The man bore the look and air of a warrior, but Austin felt no threat from him.

  His eyes were drawn to necklace around the man’s neck, a braided-leather cord suspending a stone medallion over the center of his chest. The dim light obscured its details, but Austin knew it perfectly: an “O” meticulously carved in the middle, surrounded by tribal markings. And a single word: Deditio.

  “You,” Austin said. “I found you.”

  “Of course you did.” The man sat upright and the fire illuminated his face. A toothpick rolled from one corner of his mouth to the other. He wasn’t dressed as he had been when they first met in Boston—in a long black duster, motorcycle boots, jeans—but there was no doubt it was him. Stephen Carter, the man Austin knew as Outlaw.

  Austin still wasn’t sure if their previous encounter had been real or something else, a dream or hallucination.

  “How did you get here?” Austin said.

  “Same as you, I suspect.”

  “But . . . how?”

  “Rest awhile. You look tired.” A slight smile shaped his lips as he motioned for Austin to sit. Outlaw’s eyes glinted with an intensity that radiated not just from his eyes, but from his entire being. It was the kind of confidence known only by those who’d walked the world’s length and width, seen too much, and survived.

  Austin crouched, resting his arms on his knees, and studied the man for a long moment. Outlaw’s smile shifted a bit, as if amused by Austin’s confusion.

  “Where am I?” Austin said.

  “Here, of course,” the man said, and swept his hand through the air. “The place you intended to be. The place where everything can change.” His smile faded. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it, to find the place where you can heal your mind?”

  “You can see me,” Austin said. “How?”

  “The same way you can see me.” He pointed to his eyes. “It’s very simple.” He paused. “Even after all this time, I see that your mind is still using you.”

  “My mind isn’t using me, it is me. It’s who I am.”

  “So it would have you believe.”

  “It’s what I believe.”

  “And that is your greatest source of pain,” Outlaw said. “A mind focused on itself fears death above all else. It keeps you addicted to half-truths and illusions so you won’t realize what it desperately wants to keep from you.”

  “Which is what?”

  “The truth about what you really are. You’ve already forgotten what I once spoke to you. You’re trapped inside,” he said, tapping his temple. “This is the root of your suffering.”

  “Or my salvation,” Austin answered.

  “Tell me,” Outlaw tilted his head to the side and his smile faded. “How’s that working for you? Thinking your way to freedom and peace?”

  The man’s words weren’t laced with any judgment, yet they sliced straight through Austin. How was that working for him? Fantastically, that’s how. Maybe he never skipped down the road, giddy to face each day, but at least he found purpose in the pursuit of knowledge. If life wasn’t about knowing more, learning more, experiencing more, then what was it about?

  “Just fine, thank you,” Austin said.

  Outlaw chuckled. “Jika jika jawa, madman talking.”

  “I’m not the one who’s sitting in a loincloth in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Maybe you should consider that this here—” Outlaw looked around, then squinted up at him, “is the middle of everywhere.”

  Austin took in his surroundings. “Is this real?”

  “It depends on your perspective of real.”

  “No, it doesn’t. What’s real is real. Only perception is subjective.”

  “If that’s true, then what’s absolute?”

  “Everything that can be measured. The observable, material universe.”

  “And that which you can’t observe?” Outlaw arched a single brow. “Is that also real?”

  “If we can’t observe something it’s only because we haven’t determined how yet.”

  “Tell me, what do you observe in this moment?”

  For a moment the hut was filled only with the sound of wood popping in the flame. “A hut. This fire. You. The ground beneath us.”

  “All real because . . .”

  “I know it is,” Austin said.

  “You think, therefore the world is and you are.”

  “Of course. The mind is what gives reality form. It’s the greatest gift we ever received from nature. The experiencing of natural phenomena is not only reality itself, but all of reality.”

  “I see. And without our minds, without the ability to process the world around us, we are . . . ?”

  “Dead. The moment our biological minds die, so do we. There’s nothing more.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing,” Austin said and set his jaw.

  “Interesting.” Outlaw leaned forward. “We know this fire exists because, if I touch it”—he stretched his hand toward the flame—“it should burn me. That is the only possible outcome, yes?”

  “Of course. Hold it there long enough and physical laws guarantee that you’ll be burned.”

  Austin’s eyes followed the man’s hand as it hovered over the dancing flame, mere inches from it. After a few seconds he balled his hand into a fist, as if snatching something from the air, and drew it back slowly.

  “And what of that which defies physical laws? That which we cannot explain.” He said and opened his hand, turning it palm up. A bluish-white sphere of flame the size of a walnut swirled above his hand.

  Slowly, he tilted his hand as if he planned to drop the ball to the ground. Yet, when he drew his hand away, it neither fell nor disappeared. Instead, it hung suspended in midair.

  “Everything can be explained . . . eventually.” Austin sat, unmoved. “Everything. There are things we simply haven’t figured out . . . yet. But we will.”

  “Things like what you’ve seen through your experiments. Like this moment.”

  “Yes.”

  “What if there are things that simply cannot be explained and never will be?”

 

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