Page 10

CHAPTER 10

Victor drew in a strained breath as his eyes snapped open. For several seconds, he could not release that breath; it burned in his lungs like a cloud of fire, exacerbating the dull throbbing in his head. His discomfort only began to fade after he finally exhaled.

“That fucking shadow,” he growled through his teeth.

Clutching the arms of his chair, he sat forward. The small, dimly lit room spun around him. He squeezed his eyes shut and reached behind his head to press the release on his sim-needle. The device detached from the connection port implanted at the base of his skull and fell away.

That damned faceless glitch had been a thorn in Victor’s side for years , constantly disrupting his leisure time. But now he was also disrupting Victor’s business. That was unacceptable. This situation, this shadow , needed to finally come to an end.

Victor shoved himself out of the chair and walked toward the door. His legs felt rubbery and unsteady, and his stomach churned; being jolted out of such an immersive simulation almost always brought on sim-sickness, but he refused to be placed in a temporary comatose state after a forced despawn. That was for the patients, for the worms .

Victor Koenig was the director of this facility. He wouldn’t be stopped by a little nausea.

“That was the last time.” He threw open the door and strode into his office, his sim-sickness recoiling from his growing anger.

He’d been despawned by the shadow more times than he cared to count, but years of hunting—and many, many programmers and simulation specialists being hired and fired—had turned up nothing . That faceless, always changing shadow was a ghost in the system, totally untraceable.

Victor tugged the tablet from his belt and activated it, synching its display to the holoscreen on his desk as he sat down there. For what must’ve been the millionth time, he pulled up the patient records list and scrolled through it, scrutinizing every one of the pictures it displayed in a search for any features he could attribute to the anomaly that had plagued him for so long.

He knew the shadow was one of the patients. But which one?

“Going to find you,” he muttered. “You won’t escape this time.”

Victor paused when a familiar face appeared on the list—a young woman with blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Alice Claybourne.

He’d had her in his grasp despite Winters’s ineptitude, despite the shadow having taken an apparent interest in her. She was the point where business and pleasure overlapped. There were far more attractive patients in the facility, many of whom were far more willing, but where was the fun without a little challenge? Conquest with no struggle seemed meaningless. At the same time…she did need to die. The financial gain he’d see through her demise was far greater—and more personal—than the government subsidy the facility would receive by bringing another new patient into her soon-to-be vacant immersion chamber.

He would take care of her—but he was going to enjoy her a little first. Something about the thought of breaking Alice was particularly appealing to him, especially if it would upset the shadow.

Fulfilling those goals, however, would be complicated so long as the shadow kept close to her.

“I’m going to take my time with you, little Alice.”

An insistent, chiming tone shattered Victor’s thoughts. Gritting his teeth, he tapped the tablet screen to answer the incoming call.

The holoscreen on his desk displayed a video feed with Doctor Kade’s face on it. She wore her usual expression—a little cold and largely unreadable. One day, Victor would get her into the simulation, just to see if he could make her face change. It’d be worth the effort to see her features contorted in fear.

“What is it, Olivia?” he asked.

“You’re out early, Victor,” she said in a dispassionate but subtly judgmental voice. “Have you seen the reports?”

“No. I haven’t checked my messages. I’m well aware of Accounting’s assessments, regardless.”

She shook her head. “No, the reports from Operations. Fourteen deaths since the change was implemented.”

“Good.” Perhaps he’d not been set back by the shadow quite so much as he’d assumed. “Causes?”

The doctor raised a hand and slid up her glasses to pinch the bridge of her nose. “Cardiac arrest induced by total overload of their nervous systems.”

Victor smiled; the news was good enough to make him forget about the shadow, if only a little. “Just as you predicted.”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit much, Victor? Fourteen ?”

“They’re just the beginning—and only seven were by my hand.”

“It’s been less than five days.”

“And?”

“Twelve dead of identical causes in five days, Victor, with more to come?” Doctor Kade sighed heavily and lowered her hand. “You’re going to attract outside attention.”

“Perhaps. But these are the dregs of society, the unwanted. No one cares about them. And you are going to work with Operations and Engineering to ensure our explanations of these deaths don’t draw any suspicion.”

“Victor, this is?—”

Victor leaned forward and slammed his hand on the desk, silencing her. “Don’t you dare tell me how to run this facility. We are nearly at full capacity, but we need new patients coming in to boost our revenue stream. I am solving a problem.”

She pressed her lips into a tight line, and the set of her eyebrows hardened. “You’re indulging yourself.”

“And you, doctor , are already complicit in all this,” Victor snapped. “I expect you’ll handle the situation accordingly.” He terminated the call before she could respond.

The video window closed, returning Alice’s picture to its former place of prominence.

No more games , the shadow had said.

Victor agreed. Too much was on the line now to let the shadow put it all at risk. The time had come to stomp out this problem, to grind it to dust beneath his boots, to make it clear to everyone both within and outside Wonderland—Victor Koenig was the fucking king .

And Alice had a role to play in this beyond his desire to conquer her, beyond his urge to take her apart piece by piece, beyond the money he stood to gain in silencing her forever. She would be the key to finding the shadow.

Victor leaned back in his chair, drumming the fingers of one hand on the armrest while he resumed scrolling through the patient list with the other. He absently ground his teeth as he perused the faces, unable to shake his irritation and impatience—at least until he stopped on a picture of a patient with unsettling, reptilian eyes.

Victor grinned. The shadow wasn’t the only anomaly in the system—just the only one they’d failed to identify and contain. Perhaps all it would take to erase the glitch was another glitch.

His grin remained in place as he made a call.